Imagine... -- #UNHCR #WorldRefugeeDay #EveryRefugeeMatters

 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.