By Ness Sadri
Clutching my fashion jewellery, a gold cross I had bought in a hurry, I walk through a town that feels more hostile than ever.
Red and white painted roundabouts and zebra crossings. Patriotism, they call it. Pride, it is made to be believed as.
I can only see hatred. Hatred for me.
Hatred for my colour.
Hatred for my family.
“We want ARE country back,” I see written on local social media groups.
People make jokes about humans drowning at sea because it doesn’t matter, “they’d be a drain on the country anyways.”
They could be my family,my friends, my loved ones so easily. They ARE my countrymen!
Sudanese refugees fleeing from their war-torn country. A country that my father grieves.
A country he is proud of.
Streets he recognises from his childhood that are now unrecognisable.
Family that has been made to flee and leave their belongings and home behind.
You say “we don’t mean you” when we talk about foreigners or immigrants.
As if this is meant to make me feel better, honoured even.
It’s a party trick I joke to my soulmate: “ I don’t even have to open my mouth, but people already dislike me!”
To them, allI I am is another mixed-race person that is a “drain on their country.”
A Muslim who wants to “force their religion upon their country”.
All I am is another immigrant.
*The author is an Orthodox Christian but has received countless racial/Islamophobic abuse due to the assumption they are Muslim, based on their colour*
