Women are the focus of World Refugee Day, which is celebrated this Thursday. Four women refugees who have started new lives in the Republic tell their stories to Nuala Haughey
AFGHANS: One of Shamim's Saljuqi's worst memories of growing up is of hiding in a wardrobe in her home while bullets and shells rained down outside. Her childhood was spent in the turmoil of the Afghan capital, Kabul, during the instability of the 1980s when fighting raged between mujahideen factions and the Soviet-backed communist regime.
Today the 21-year-old student recounts matter-of-factly the weeks and months of missed school, the interminable violence and the trek across desert-like plains to safety when she was nine years old.
That journey took her and her family first to Pakistan and then to Iran, where they spent 10 years eking out a living, largely as undocumented refugees along with millions of other Afghans.
The family's travels ended in November 2000 when they were brought to Ireland by the government, following a humanitarian request from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"I remember the day we left our country," says Shamim, who now lives in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin, with her parents and three brothers. At the time of their departure, she recalls thinking: "We will go out of our country for a short time and the war will stop and we will be back home. I didn't think we would be away for years. Now I dream all the time that we are leaving for another country and we are packing up - and I wake up and I am in Ireland. I'm tired of going from one country to another country."
Shamim has adapted easily to her new life in a culture very different to that of the Islamic republic of Iran where she spent her teenage years. This year she sat her Leaving Cert at Pearse College in Dublin, and she has applied to study dental technology at Trinity College.
"This year was good for me and I met a lot of Irish students. Before I went to college I always thought, how will the students react to me," she says. "I found them very kind, friendly and helpful and I found Irish people very cultural, sociable and kind during my stay in Ireland. I'm happy that I'm in Ireland now. I feel I'm free. Before that I didn't have any hope for my future."
While Shamim knows little of ordinary life in her home country, her mother, Aziza (48), still pines for her birthplace, even though she knows it will never again be the same.
A former kindergarten teacher, she has found a job in childcare in Dublin. Her command of English is basic, and she jokes that her children are her language teachers. But when she tries to express the relief she feels that her family has finally found security in Ireland, Aziza's facial expressions make up for her lack of words.
"Here very good," she says. "I sleep. I wake up happy. My children go to school and I don't ask them when they come back. I don't worry."
UGANDAN: When Sara Kasule and her husband, Moses, first arrived in Ireland, they suspected that the fire alarms and TV cable sockets in their accommodation were concealed microphones. They were so traumatised after being forced to flee their native Uganda that they were initially frightened and suspicious of almost everyone.
The young couple paid $5,000 to a trafficker for safe passage out of the troubled east African state after selling part of their farm and leaving their two young sons with relatives. They left after repeated threats from state agents who had arrested and beaten Moses, accusing him of supplying food to armed opposition groups.
"The government was after us," says Sarah (22). "It was not ready to protect us in our own country. Instead, they were persecuting us and they were so much after my husband it was horrible."
Sarah recalls the huge relief she and Moses (25) felt when they arrived in Dublin in June 2000 and lodged their refugee application. But these emotions were mingled with concerns about the safety of their children, whom they could not contact for several months.
"I remember the first night - we were safe but you couldn't sleep because if you heard footsteps you would be worried. After a few days we realised that it was safe. But at the beginning we were frightened at being in different hands and being checked and being in a situation you never thought you'd be in in your life."
On their arrival in Ireland, the couple were immediately sent to Cork under the mandatory dispersal programme. They lived at first in Cork city, and then, while their applications for refugee status were processed, in Cobh.
A spirited woman, Sarah is effusive about the warm welcome she and Moses received in Ireland and the kindness of their new friends. However, she is unhappy with her treatment in hospital when she discovered, shortly after she arrived, that she was pregnant. She says she felt she was treated differently by some staff who seemed to suspect that she had come to the Republic purely to exploit its unique citizenship laws, under which parents of Irish-born children are generally guaranteed residency here even if their claim for refugee status fails.
The Supreme Court is due shortly to hear an appeal on this highly sensitive issue, which has received considerable media attention.
"OK, people come here to have children and they are given residency because of their Irish-born child - but that was not my aim," says Sarah. "If it was my aim I would have withdrawn my application for refugee status. I wasn't treated like the rest of the people on the ward. At one point, I had to go out of the hospital and come back later."
Having been recognised as refugees, and accorded the same rights as Irish citizens, Sarah and Moses are keen to make the most of their new lives. They were reunited last January with their two sons, aged seven and five, who joined them from Uganda. The couple both studied in Cork and recently moved to Leopardstown in Dublin, where Moses hopes to attend university. "It's a big change for us, this life here," says Sarah, holding her young daughter, Blessed Esther, in her lap. "The business of making CVs is a big change, though we've tried hard and taken courses to maintain our family. But it's hard."
BOSNIAN: Eighteen months ago, Bahra Slavotic realised her dream to open her own shop. It was an ambition conceived in a village in eastern Bosnia, but the war there put paid to that.
Now she radiates pride as she walks around her food store on Dublin's Thomas Street, which she owns with her husband, Mehmed. She points out the range of stock, from Asian spices to Mediterranean olives and halal meats. The couple named the store Saray Mehran, the first word chosen to echo the sound of Bahra's birthplace, the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, which was besieged for nearly four years until December 1995.
Business is going well for the Slavotics, who have three sons and live in Swords, Co Dublin. "Me and my husband try to do something here in Ireland, to contribute to the country," says Bahra (32). "Ireland gave a lot of chances to the Bosnian people and I'm really trying to give something back."
The Muslim couple are among some 450 Bosnian refugees who were resettled in large groups in Ireland between 1992 and 1997, and were subsequently joined by 886 family members. The community has prospered, primarily in west Dublin- Clonsilla, Blanchardstown, Castleknock.
The Slavotics were living in the majority Muslim village of Rudo, on the border with Serbia, when the Bosnian war began in early 1992. Bahra had just had her first son, Ervin.
She had had some bags packed for months in anticipation that they might have to quit the village. Then one night in June 1992, a frightened neighbour came to their door and told them to leave."A Muslim village had been attacked and people were killed and houses burned. We heard that the Serbs from Yugoslavia were going to attack Rudo that night and kill the Muslims. I just took the bags and the baby. I didn't even turn back. I thought in a few days it would be finished and we would be back."
The young family journeyed to Skopje in Macedonia where, broke and homeless, they were taken in by an Albanian taxi driver, who helped them get emergency medical treatment for Ervin. Within a month, they were on a bus bound for Austria, where they lived for several months in a refugee camp before being accepted for resettlement in Ireland under a humanitarian programme.
The family arrived in Dublin in September 1992, but it was to be another three months before Bahra learned that her family was safe in Sarajevo. Within two years, her relatives, as well as Mehmed's, had joined them. The couple began working, Bahra as a translator and Mehmed in a mosque shop. They started their own wholesale food business in Swords in 1999 and opened their shop in December 2000.
While Bahra still hankers after Sarajevo and dreams of retiring there, she says she is happy with her new life as an Irish citizen. One of her sons recently came home from school crying, and told her that a child had called him a Bosnian refugee.
"I said to him: 'You know you are Bosnian, but the word refugee is not a bad word,' " she says. "Maybe they just want to tease you. Even for me, I know why I am here. I wouldn't have come here if that war hadn't happened. I am proud to represent my country, to be Bosnian but also to be Irish citizen."
