On this International Day of Friendship, I find myself reflecting not on friendships formed in ease, but on those forged in fire, the friendships present amidst the refugees in Egypt. I want the world to know about the kindness I’ve witnessed when filming with these forced migrants and asylum seekers.
It’s not the effort of governments, churches, mosques or international organisations that makes people survive. It’s the kindness of people towards each other, small acts of friendship that sustain lives and restore dignity.
At this precise moment in the Middle East and Africa, the barriers to girls’ education are many. War and religious persecution are top of the list. We filmed with young women and men who came to Egypt to seek safety. One young Eritrean woman said, “It is easier for the cats and dogs [of rich people] to have passports and to travel than it is for me... Animals are more respected than refugees.” A Sudanese woman said, “I wish people wouldn’t use the word ‘refugee’; it makes me feel like I’m a burden to those around me.”
Here in Egypt, people from African countries often face closed doors, unreturned “good mornings”, discrimination and complaints. Tellingly, this discourse and jargon is targeted solely at refugees with darker skin. Most of us Egyptians haven’t looked in the mirror.
Refugees are frequently taken advantage of – they are the most vulnerable to theft, harassment, gender-based violence and violence of every kind. In a context where simple acts of friendship and solidarity could go a long way, too often what they encounter is suspicion and silence.
All these guests from neighbouring countries are waiting for final resettlement to Western countries that can give them official status. The dominant dreams of most displaced people are either resettlement or to return to their homelands. Their bodies are here, but their hearts are elsewhere. And the waiting is indefinite, long and hard.
Filming these stories was sacramental work. Silencing the room to hold space for stories of pain and resilience purified our own hearts. We as a team of filmmakers were changed by it. Because when you truly listen, you truly change. We saw the fingerprints of God saving lives amidst human harshness and violence. His fingerprints were on the people who chose to be kind and offer friendship in a brutally harsh context filled with smugglers, abusers and fighters.
The least we can do as filmmakers, and as a SAT-7 team, is to honour their stories and stand respectfully in the presence of human suffering, the way we would be silent in sacred spaces. But silence and respect are not enough. We must think of and consider what else we can do.
I saw little kids — Ethiopian, Eritrean and Sudanese — give each other biscuits and hold each other’s hands, spontaneously, without being told, because that’s how they’ve seen others do life. I’ve seen a Sudanese woman host a young pregnant Ethiopian teenage girl and call her “one of my own”. I’ve seen Sudanese families host one another and make room for one another in small, cramped houses in the last two years. Their small resources go a long way.
Kindness may not be noteworthy when it costs you nothing, but what I’ve seen in the refugee communities is kindness that comes at a very high price. Yet they do it anyway. We may practise an easy kindness — a giving or a generosity that does not disrupt our lives. They do the harder work: the work of carrying each other through the desert, of selling their mobile phones and possessions to bribe a smuggler to allow someone they don’t know to ride on the back of a truck with them. Together they somehow make it safely from one country to another, just by making room for each other in cramped spaces, by doing their best to ensure that no one is left behind.
I am not trying to romanticise poverty, war, persecution or illegal passage from one country to another. Those are some of the harshest situations people can endure. But without friendship, kindness, and without “making room” in already crowded spaces, no one would have survived at all.
These are the stories we want to tell, and these are the stories that are sacred — and hearing them is like entering holy spaces, where people are told to take off their shoes. It’s time to take off shoes and wash the feet of our friends, those who have travelled a long and rough road.
That’s why we wanted to film the piece called 'The Chair.' Nowadays, globally, resources are becoming more and more limited, and yet somehow, because of kindness and because of making room, refugees teach us the reverse of the old game of musical chairs. They have taught us that when the chairs are not enough, we either bring more chairs or learn to carry each other.
May we be people who hold doors open.
May we be the ones who bring in extra chairs.
May we be the ones who move over to make room.
May scarcity teach us generosity to resist hoarding.
May we be good listeners and learners.
And may there be no strangers among us.
Because friendship — real friendship — looks like this.
Amen.
