What are you doing for Refugee Week?
I am Refugee Week Coordinator, which means that I do anything from developing strategy to fundraising, organising events, promoting, networking, and talking to people.
Kindness to strangers…
Refugee Week is the most exciting opportunity in Britain to do something in order to have a reality check on your own or others’ attitudes toward refugees; and to meet and show kindness to strangers who might seem very distant from you.
…and revving up representations of refugees
It is also a great opportunity to be playful and subversive, to stop presenting refugees only as victims of circumstances but also as talented, spicy, sexy, imaginative people who have helped build this country and culture.
Almir’s arrival in the UK
I came here in 1995 for a few months to wait out the wars in Yugoslavia – which disintegrated. I’ve lived here for almost 13 years. In some ways I have grown up here - this is the place where I got my first proper job and discovered the uncensored truth about my country and Yugoslav wars. I have studied literature, anthropology and creative writing here.
Cures for loneliness
I love London. It has become home in many ways, though there are things that you never really get used to. Like weather for example, which is something that I believe even people born here don’t get used to. London is also the place where I greatly increased my understanding of the word loneliness. This was particularly the case in the beginning, when I couldn’t speak the language, didn’t know the system, people.Now I know that the best cure for loneliness is to take part in Refugee Week!
How did you spend last Christmas?
I went to San Francisco, which is a magical place. I would like to go back and spend more time in California, driving through the vineyards and listening to Tom Waits.
What would you do in an ideal life - if you didn’t coordinate Refugee Week of course?
I would live in a house by a river, writing award-winning books, drinking the best Croatian wines, walking, learning about trees, having friends from across the world coming to stay for long visits, and visiting them in return.
Interview by Alice Lagnado
