We cannot deny asylum

We can't deny asylum ... we can't deny asylum ... we have every right and responsibility to quarantine and screen any ship that arrives to our shores, but we cannot deny asylum ...

I remember when I was 8, and when the night went dark, and the radio said that Iraq attacked, and I started into the sky into my favorite stars waiting for a fast shiny object to pierce the night, scared, listening to the red-siren, waiting for the sound barrier to break and for the bomb to fall and wondering how would that shallow pool save us from the bombs ... and wishing our house had a basement (where we were told to hide) ... wanting to poop myself, wanting to cry [but I didn't, thanks to the serenity of those IRON-PARENTS of mine, who never panic and lose hope and fall into hysteria no matter how death and danger knock on their door] ... 

The bombs never fell on us and I didn't hear the sound-barrier break, unless once during a military exercise when I was much older (16 I think), and the war was about to be over--when a relative died in my mother's arms of explosion fright ... After two years of running to lower-ground, of hiding in the country and staring at the sky for a Russian Mig (which is what Saddam had) or a Russian Scud missile, I learned that we were safe in the far east, where we were surrounded by the unpenetrable mountains. 

Then, we had a chance to focus our fear on Afghan refugees, and we were scared of them because every theft and crime was blamed on them--although it was the Iranians who committed them (Although, my parents who were not scared of bombs were not scared of Afghans, because when we went away to see my grandparents in Kerman, they let an Afghan construction worker guard the house) ... We were scared and discriminatory and ungenerous, but to deny asylum was unimaginable. A country in war itself let hundreds of thousands of refugees ... to deny asylum was unimaginable ... just as it was unimaginable to deny asylum to the Kuwaiti and Iraqis running from George Bush 1st shock and awe campaign. 

I know what it is to grow in war-hardship but to not even imagine the possibility of any justification to deny food to the beggar who came to our door at lunch time, at a time that food was rationed, that rice and butter and sugar were rationed ... to deny food and shelter to a hand that extends is UNIMAGINABLE . 

To me, that in Canada, in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands and France, we oppose asylum is unimaginable ... to imagine a child of 8, staring in the sky and wanting to poop herself out of anxiety of a bomb is unimaginable ... to know that a bomb will fall on the child because the country doesn't have mountains to save it, is unimaginable ... 

we can't be petty ... we just cannot be petty ...