voices from exile

Caroline Moorehead’s commitment to the displaced characterises her writing. On her travels, she collected sketches of people whose lives had been displaced by violence, civil-war and the arbitrary exercise of power.
Wednesday 17th December

The Chaldeans of San Diego

Caroline Moorehead, 17 December 2003
From Baghdad to southern California, the journey of a family from one of the Middle East’s ancient communities is a modern epic of survival.
Wednesday 19th November

From Mexico to California, and back

Caroline Moorehead, 19 November 2003
Imelda and her family are economic migrants, in two directions: hunger led them to cross from Mexico to California, poverty made them return.
Wednesday 22nd October

Y.K.L: abused in Ivory Coast, rejected in London

Caroline Moorehead, 22 October 2003
Y.K.L survived terrible torments in her West African homeland only to be denied asylum in Britain. On London’s streets, she joins the forgotten, global army of the displaced.
Sunday 5th October

Burundi: a life in fear

Caroline Moorehead, 5 October 2003
In Burundi, political violence by state forces and guerrillas has killed 200,000 people in the last decade. J.R., the child of a Hutu-Tutsi marriage, survived a savage ordeal at the hands of security forces. Now in Britain, but with no right to remain, his past is a daily torment.
Monday 15th September

M.L.: Russia eats her children

Caroline Moorehead, 15 September 2003
M.L.’s defence of Armenians in Azerbaijan and opposition to the Chechen war marked her as an outsider in the new Russia. Her shattered family has paid a price in blood.
Monday 25th August

The never-ending journey

Caroline Moorehead, 25 August 2003
A family of Roma origin displaced from Kosovo to England’s north-east are facing deportation back to Pristina. For them, outsiders in their homeland, it is a fearful prospect.
Monday 21st July

Inderjeed Singh: lost in Kabul

Caroline Moorehead, 21 July 2003
The epic journey of a Sikh man from the Afghan city of Jalalabad to London’s Southall district ended with his deportation to Kabul by the British authorities. If this policy of forced return of Afghans becomes standard practice, what will happen to the legions of the lost in Iran and Pakistan?
Sunday 22nd June

Afghanistan: land of widows

Caroline Moorehead, 22 June 2003
The gravest long-term casualties of war in Afghanistan are not the refugees, but the many thousands who were too poor to flee. Among these internally-displaced people, women and children are hardest hit.
Wednesday 21st May

Uganda: women in flight

Caroline Moorehead, 21 May 2003
The story of three Uganda women whose suffering doesn't end when they leave their homeland.
Monday 28th April

O.N.: between limbo and the City of the Dead

Caroline Moorehead, 28 April 2003
Having fled to Cairo from Liberia’s civil war, ON was plucked from the mass of waiting African refugees and thrown in jail. Why, he did not know.
Tuesday 25th March

B.E.: the price of loyalty

Caroline Moorehead, 25 March 2003
The aftershocks of Rwanda’s genocide still shake neighbouring Congo, wrecking innocent lives. BE, now washed up on Europe’s shores, survives to bear witness.
Monday 10th March

F.A.: no home in the world

Caroline Moorehead, 10 March 2003
The West African state of Guinea is home to thousands of refugees, in flight from its neighbours’ wars. One mutilated teenager – born in Sierra Leone, raised in Liberia, in limbo in Guinea – has nowhere left to turn.
Monday 24th February

Between camps: the story of D.T.

Caroline Moorehead, 24 February 2003
The childhood of DT, a young man with a richly mixed family history from the Serbia–Macedonia borderland, was made difficult by social tensions. When these exploded on to the political stage, his life became impossible.
Monday 10th February

R.S., from Ghana to nowhere

Caroline Moorehead, 10 February 2003
A divided family, village brutality, and the burden of dependency make one Ghanaian’s life in exile especially lonely.
Monday 20th January

Uganda: the ordeal of W.L.

Caroline Moorehead, 20 January 2003
What value can be placed on law, democracy, and progress in Uganda after reading of the horrendous abuse of a farmer and his family at the hands of state forces?
Monday 16th December

Adaf: a Palestinian in Lebanon

Caroline Moorehead, 16 December 2002
Forty years on, Shatila’s Palestinian refugees live in limbo, without the right to have passports, own property, move on.
Monday 2nd December

R.N.: shadow under the Congolese sun

Caroline Moorehead, 2 December 2002
A young, privileged woman of the Republic of Congo had found a place in an unsettled society. But a change of regime threw her into a spiral of distrust, arrest, torture – and exile.
Tuesday 15th October

Haji A.J.: returning to Afghanistan

Caroline Moorehead, 15 October 2002
After ten years in exile from the Taliban, this Afghan farmer has returned from Pakistan to his once prosperous farm. Now his harvest is not grapes and wheat, but unexploded shells.
Tuesday 24th September

A.G.: in exile from Kosovo

Caroline Moorehead, 24 September 2002
Mixed parentage in a divided society made this young Kosovan a target from either side in turn – and eventually forced him to flee.
Tuesday 30th July

Jawad: an education for life

Caroline Moorehead, 30 July 2002
Jawad is a young teacher of Hazara origin; the Hazara are an Afghan people who have suffered especially acutely from the repressions of the Taliban regime. After the rigours of exile in Iran and Pakistan, he is trying to rebuild his life.
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