Write of Abode - From Newlyweds to Refugees

At the end of our ten-day honeymoon on the island of Hydra, my wife and I took the Flying Dolphin back to the mainland as many star-crossed lovers had done before us. In Piraeus we stayed at the Hotel Triton – an old standby – and had our last Greek meal which, like most Greek meals, was terrible but unforgettable nonetheless. Before going to bed we rambled around the block admiring homemeade soaps, sponges from the ocean, giant sacks of drying and dried herbs, there were fish shops, and magazine-porn-selling kiosks and a chocolate shop with a talking parrot. A large demonstration of some sort complete with TV cameras and police escort marched on the capital. A decision was due on the Euro deal with Germany and politics was rife in the air.

The next morning as we waited for the airport bus by the statue of Karaiskakis outside the church, we saw for the first time dozens of Syrian refugees on the grass. They had obviously spent the night in this little park and were in various stages of waking up and getting up but all under the gaze of the Athens public going to work – many of whom were just as surprised to see them as we were. We’d all heard about it on the news but now here they were, people like us whose country had suddenly been plunged into a war that the rest of the world didn’t know or care about. The women and children had blankets and there was water at least from a public bathroom block but the men made do with what they stood up in and stoically smoked. One family with three kids in tow made their way bravely to the middle of the intersection with their possessions tied in a cumbersome see-through plastic sack. It was like a scene from a movie except we were not in New York and, one suspects, there was no fairy tale ending.

We smiled politely and tried not to stare and wondered what we could do to help. We did not know at the time that we were a) pregnant and b) about to become refugees of sorts ourselves.

I’ve long been interested in immigration law. In Botswana there’s a big refugee camp near Dukwi housing thousands of refugees from not only Southern and Eastern Africa but all over the continent. Put up as tents in 1978 it is now something of a small town with houses and infrastructure. As a teenage humanist and idealistic sixth-former I knew in my heart that I cared passionately about people’s rights to three things; free education, free health care, and freedom of movement. I was soon to discover as I got older that none of these things can be taken for granted. The one I thing I clung to as I travelled the world and lived life as an expat in various enclaves was the knowledge that if everything went wrong I could at least go home to England.

Yet now I am forced to reckon with the reality that not even the latter statement can be taken for granted any more. What then has gone wrong? Have I and many others like me been naïve for all these years or has the world suddenly become extremely paranoid and xenophobic? Does it not look and feel like the political climate that presaged the Second World War?

If we as British citizens cannot rely on the benevolence of our own state, if we are not free to come and go as we please with our spouses and children, what then is left? My wife and I cannot afford to have our baby in the UK and she does not qualify for free NHS treatment even though we are legally married (our child would be allowed NHS treatment after birth apparently). We can only apply if I am normally resident and earning more than GBP 22, 400.00. Until then she (and our child when it is born) will have to wait elsewhere. Can the law really discriminate against non-EEA spouses and children in such a way?

In another twist that it won’t do to go into here, although my wife is Zambian and we were married there, I do not qualify for a work visa just as she would not get one automatically in England. In Botswana where we met and still live, I have work papers but a recent change in the interpretation of the labour law means that I lost my job. So, like many other couples, we are forced to live apart until the immigration minefield can be negotiated.