Image by Zachtleven fotografie from Pixabay
Look
around you. No matter where you live, no matter your economic level,
if you’re reading this blog, you probably have a home. You’re
surrounded by your personal possessions, things that have special
meaning to you. You very likely share your home, too, with people who
are important to you – family and friends, neighbors, members of
your community. Maybe you live in the town where you were born. Maybe
you’ve moved far away, but wherever you are, I’ll bet you have
happy memories, emotional connections and some level of physical
comfort.
Now
imagine that’s all gone. Imagine you’ve been driven out of your
home, your town, even your country – by violence, by war, by
famine, by disease. You have no place to call your own. Think about
what it would be like, to be forced to leave everything behind, not
just your possessions but also your culture, history and traditions.
If you’re lucky, you may have been able to take your family with
you when you fled. If you’re less fortunate, you may have seen your
husband, wife, son or daughter raped, arrested or murdered, drowned
in the effort to escape, or lost to starvation.
Who
would choose this? No one sane. Yet this is the situation faced by
more than 70
million refugees around the world. What do these people want?
What we all want: safety, shelter, sustenance, work that will support
them, a community to which they can belong, a future.
Today
is the World Refugee Day. I’m not asking you to donate. I’m not
suggesting you should feel guilty because you’re fortunate enough
to have a home. No, all I’m asking is that you stop for a moment
and use the power of imagination – the same power that allows you
to lose yourself in a book – to put yourself in their places.
Imagine
you’re a Rohingya man from Myanmar whose house was torched by the
army, now living in a squalid camp in Bangladesh with 700,000 of your
compatriots. Or a Syrian teenager whose parents were crushed inside
their bombed house, who risked his life in a leaky boat to find a
home in Europe. Or a young mother from Guatemala who’s walked all
the way through Mexico to the U.S. border carrying her two month old
child, after drug gangs raped her and shot her husband.
Imagine
the terror, the despair, the hunger, the deep loneliness. You can
identify with characters in a story. Can you do the same for the
refugees? Can you summon enough compassion to burn through the
xenophobic rhetoric so common these days?
I’m
not asking you to do anything – except to resist the
temptation to demonize these souls who have lost everything. It’s
easy to blame outsiders for everything, easy to fear them, all too
easy to reject them. Resist that temptation, if you can.
If
you do want to do something more – well, there are lots of
opportunities to work with or on behalf of refugees.
As
a really simple starting point – since I know you love erotica and
romance – consider purchasing the altruistic anthology Coming
Together: On Wheels. All
proceeds from this book support the United
Nations High Commission on Refugees. Of course, I have a story in
this volume, a romantic and arousing tale entitle “Test Drive”.
Here’s a snippet:
Pure
testosterone. That was Jack Taggart. I think I must have got a hit of
his pheromones or something, before I even saw him. I almost skipped
down the sidewalk that July evening, inexplicable excitement fizzing
through me. I should have been worn out from a long shift behind the
reference desk. Instead, I felt like dancing as I strolled along Main
Street, headed for home. I pulled off the elasticized tie and shook
out my hair. It tumbled around my shoulders and down my back, much
longer than Estelle thought was appropriate for a woman my age. Too
bad. My profession requires me to maintain a certain level of
propriety in my dress, but there’s got to be a limit.
“Hey
there, pretty lady.”
His
drawl rumbled through me, an avalanche of heat, melting everything in
its path. My hair flew as I turned back in his direction.
I’d
intended to scold him for his barely polite greeting. The words
caught in my throat as I took him in.
He
lounged in the doorway of the Indian motorcycle showroom, hands in
his pockets, broad shoulders braced against the frame, one lean,
denim-clad leg crossed over the other—six feet of loose-limbed
masculinity. A sand-colored braid hung down across his solid chest,
almost to his waist. The rolled-up sleeves of his plaid shirt
revealed tanned forearms furred with golden down. His sun-bronzed
face wasn’t classically handsome, but when his bright blue eyes
snagged mine, I couldn’t look away.
Thirty.
Thirty five at most. I could almost be his mother. Shocking that all
I wanted to do was tear off my conservative skirt and blouse and
throw myself into those obviously strong arms.
“Want
to come for a ride, darlin’?”
“Ah—huh—what?”
A master’s degree in library science, reduced to inarticulate
mumbling by a bit of flirting. What was I, a teenager?
“Got
a sale going on, through next week. Discounts of twenty to thirty
percent on all our models. I have to say you’d look fantastic on a
bike, Miss.” He unfolded himself from his casual pose and handed me
a business card. “I’m Jack Taggart. Top sales associate in the
Midwest, three years running. And you are…?”
It’s
none of your business
who I am, I wanted to tell
him. Fat chance. “Um—Alice. Alice Robinson.”
“Pleased
to meet you, Miss Robinson.” Apparently helpless to resist, I
accepted the large, calloused hand he held out. Lighting sizzled
through me as our palms connected. “Or is it Mrs. Robinson?”
His
cocky grin sent blood rushing to my cheeks. I straightened my spine
and tried to regain some sort of control over my autonomic functions.
“Mrs. My husband died four years ago.”
*
* * *
If
this piques your interest, I hope you’ll check out the book. In any
case, I hope this exercise in imagination will make you a bit more
grateful and a bit more kind.
Certainly
it has that effect on me.
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