Flag of Pink Stars
In my kitchen, above a white hutch that displays my treasures: my kids baby photos, a bone china cup painted with a seaside cottage, and a silvery Eiffel tower ornament, too pretty to pack away, hangs a long, skinny strip of pink. It is a ribbon clothesline with tiny bits of grey triangles and pink stars.
If I look closely, I can see the tiny stiches made by men who had fled for their lives, surviving a perilous journey from Libya across the Mediterranean to land in Rome. They seek refuge in a church basement –a 10-minute walk from the Coliseum--which serves as a drop in center for nearly a thousand asylum seekers every year. Their handcrafted peace flags, bits of yellow, scarlet, green or grey fabric, symbolize their deepest hopes.
Nearly all are Muslims forced to flee Afghanistan, Pakistan, or countries of northern Africa like Mali when their lives were threatened by civil war. Or terrorists. Half of them sleep in the streets or in the nearby Termini train station, long after the tourists have settled into their hotel rooms. The Church of St. Paul’s within the Walls, an Anglican church in the Vatican’s shadow, has been welcoming refugees for thirty years.
I had the honor of talking with some of the guests last summer when I visited my adult children in Rome. Some declined to tell their stories. Recalling such suffering for a stranger was too painful.
But Rakeen did tell me his story by playing a video on the center’s web site. His eyes were cast down while I learned about his nightmarish journey. After writing a book condemning the Taliban, the young author was captured and endured months of torture in Kabul, Afghanistan. He escaped his captors, only to have his four siblings and father killed in retaliation. Since he was visiting his mother hospitalized for a heart attack, Rakeen, 33, was spared but had to flee. The Joel Nafuma Refugee Center in Rome helped him obtain five years of protected asylum.
‘I was thinking, maybe God has given me a new family here.” he said. “But my dream, my real dream, is not to be a refugee anymore.”
Tonight I reread the short description that came with my peace flag: “made from scraps, these flags symbolize refugees around the world who are working to piece together their new lives. By supporting this project, you become part of a community that is working to choose unity over division, peace over violence, and hope over despair.”
Every time I look at my flag of grey triangles and pink stars, I think of the hands that sewed the stiches, far from my Illinois kitchen. As our country struggles to rise from the hatred and ignorance and fear that gave rise to the Muslim ban, the flag above my hutch reminds me that we are all in this together.