لاجئ

When I was running a poetry workshop today with African migrant workers in Beirut, my students asked me how to say لاجئ in English. It was a word they were all anxious to learn. “Refugee,” I said. Re-fu-gee. It’s a word that gets a lot of play in Lebanon. “Last night, my friends and I were talking about the Syrian re-fu-gees,” a Sudanese student said–using his new vocabulary word in a sentence. Teaching the word “refugee” reminded me that our vocabulary is shaped by our geography. Here in Beirut, whether we’re from America, Sudan, or Ethiopia, we’re all confronted daily by the enormous suffering of the Syrian refugees–many of whom are now braving their 4th winter living in tents…