Do not call me a migrant. I am a refugee

(Insert picture: A Palestinian child with a message \”I\’m dying in the desert\”. Source Google)

Do not call me a migrant when I have been made a refugee.

The difference between you and me.

Is so much but then again not so much.

That’s what makes me and you so unique.

Do not dehumanize me.

I am not an alien or a stranger.

I am your neighbor.

Don’t take away my right to life, to seek safety.

I am not \’illegal\’.

I am not \’undeserving\’.

I am not a terrorist.

I want to spread my wings and fly to the horizons.

Where I can be safer, to find another home.

Do not call me a migrant. I am a refugee.

Borders and barriers are the dividers of mankind.

Meant to divide you and me, to make one above the other.

Just like you I had a home, a family.

Just like you I have an identity and a dream I built for many years.

I have a history, culture and a language that I so very much value.

I saw what war is.

It broke my limp.

It made me blind.

I felt what war is.

It killed my mother.

Don\’t call me a foreigner either.

There is nothing foreign about me.

I seek safety, homeliness and simplicity.

Not hatred, bitterness and rage.

I look like you, and like you I seek peace and justice.

In the name of God, of whom we know there is only one.