It's not easy being a stranger in your own home. To mark Refugee Week, STEPHEN LEWIS talks to a York family who fled here to escape Idi Amin.
After more than 30 years in the UK, Naseem Beebeejaun has seen the best and the worst of the British. The best, in the form of the Leeds family who welcomed her and her family into their own home when they first arrived, almost penniless, from Uganda in 1972; and the many friends they have made in York since.
"We could not have asked for better people," she says, warmly.
The worst, in the form of the abuse and discrimination they still occasionally suffer at the hands of a minority of people who cannot accept that anybody who is a little different should live in their midst.
"Sometimes, we've had our windows broken," she says. "We've had our BMW beautifully spray-painted. It is sad."
As a former refugee herself, she feels for those who are now desperate to make a new home for themselves in the UK, only to be met with suspicion and hostility.
They are not coming simply to sponge off the state, she says. Many of them are determined to make a better life for themselves - and to do that, they are prepared to work.
"A lot of them have given up so much," she says. "They are risking death. If a person has that much drive, they are not going to go on to the welfare system. They are going to create jobs, create wealth, and enrich the environment they are in. They have a lot to contribute."
She speaks from first hand experience. Naseem's grandfather left India for Uganda in 1918. He could not make a living in India, but was very strong, Naseem's father Yusuf says. He paid five rupees and two coconuts for his passage to Uganda, and once there began the long and painful process of carving out a life in a new and strange country.
By 1972, Yusuf was a rich man. He owned a mill, and other land and property, and had more than 100 people working for him. His daughters Naseem and Razia and their two brothers lived in style, attending private school. "It is fair to say that if the local ice cream parlour was shut, we would be chauffeur-driven to the next township," Naseem says with a smile.
Then, in 1972 when she was nine, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin issued an ultimatum to all Asian Ugandans who held a British passport: get out of the country or be shot.
"We didn't want to leave," Naseem says. "Our standard of living was so good." But the situation began to get ugly, with looting, abductions and intimidation.
In November that year, Yusuf, his wife and four children got on an plane to the UK - with just £55 to tide them over in a new land, all that they were allowed to bring with them.
Naseem still remembers landing at Stansted. "It was a November day. It was drizzling. It was terrible," she says. "I remember saying to my mum, 'I want to go back.'"
Instead, they were sent to an Army camp in Somerset for a month, before they took a train to Leeds, where they had been offered a place with a host family.
There was no one to meet them when they arrived with their suitcases at the station. "My mum sat on a suitcase and she was saying 'where have you brought us? What are we doing here?'" Naseem recalls.
Then their host family, who had been delayed, arrived and welcomed them with open arms. They stayed with them for six months, before moving to a house in Stockton-on-the-Forest the following May.
Gradually, by dint of hard work, they began to build up a business selling Indian food. It wasn't easy at first, Naseem admits.
"We had a sale and return policy in the beginning," she recalls. "People used to say they didn't want any of that foreign food." But gradually, the British began to develop a taste for Indian food, and the business, now based in York, became more successful.
It's just one example of the way in which people from different backgrounds can bring something new to a society, Naseem says.
"It brought some diversity," she says. "It has enriched life here."
If there is one hope she has for Refugee Week, it is simply that people can learn to live together and accept those from different backgrounds.
Not everybody will always like everyone they come into contact with, she admits. "But civilised behaviour is where, whether you like a person or not, you act civilly. It is about tolerance."
If we can all learn that, we certainly will be a society that's immeasurably enriched.
Updated: 10:56 Wednesday, June 18, 2003
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