EP. 104 — Healing Refugee Trauma with Zarlasht Halaimzai

Jameela [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast that has no interest in you feeling shame ever again. I hope you’re well, I’m alright. I’m just a bit annoyed with how long we’ve been talking about Will Smith and Chris Rock now, like I get it was a serious incident and needed to be discussed, but it’s been day six and there are still articles coming out about different random celebrities who aren’t involved and how they feel and how it’s making them feel about their own lives. I just we have to stop obsessing about this. I’ve never seen a celebrity incident create this much discourse for this many days, and it’s I don’t know. It’s not just grating on me because I want us to move on. It’s grating on me because something so serious is happening, and I feel like all of our attention has been diverted for way too long onto this random subject by these three extremely privileged people that we can’t do anything about their situation. We can do something about what is happening in Ukraine in that there are millions of people who have been displaced already and it hasn’t even been going on that long. And it’s it strikes me. Timing wise, a little bit suspicious that the media, who are often the government’s collaborators, are allowing and perpetuating us to keep talking about this. This event at the Oscars, so that we’ll stop being as politically engaged as a lot of us were becoming. Regarding Ukraine, what is happening with the displaced people, whether or not our governments are being as supportive as they can be towards those people. Also, we were starting to hear more and more reports of how there is a discrimination towards displaced people of color. We’re seeing that there is a double standard in the way that governments are talking about Ukrainian people who are displaced versus how they spoke about Muslims who are displaced. We were all so in the middle of it. We were all so involved and now we’re just fully out of it and not up to date on what is going on. Obviously, I’m not speaking for all of you, but I’m just saying the masses on social media. It’s just it’s out of this world. So if you are someone who would like to get back to the topic at hand, obviously there are wars going on all over the world, but this is a relatively new emergency and it is an emergency and through it all. I’m unbelievably lucky to have secured an interview with someone who is doing tremendous work with displaced people, including in Ukraine right now or people from Ukraine rather right now. Her name is Zarlasht Halaimzai, and she is one of the most exceptional and inspiring and just resilient people I have ever met or had on this podcast or the privilege of talking to. She’s an Afghan woman who’s now living in the United Kingdom, and she’s a former child refugee. She has had such an outrageous life and was so young when her and her family were displaced and all split up, and she talks me through what that was like, what the emotional experience that many of us, thank God we’ll never be able to even fathom. She talks me through the emotional impact, how that goes on to harm you and impact you through your life and how it can make such a difference to these people’s lives in the way that they are received by other people, by other countries. The opportunities that they are given because all of their opportunities have been stripped from them, their houses have been stripped from them, their friendships, their lives, their realities, their country, their their culture. Everything gone and they’re forced into being in a new place where they don’t speak the language. She talks me through that whole journey in such a clear and frank and visceral way that I think is really important right now because empathy is all we’ve got. That is the only way that we are going to charge ourselves up for the huge task of getting our governments to stop going around and fucking around in other countries and then leaving those countries completely in tatters and then turning their backs on the people who are trying to flee a mess that our countries have been significantly complicit in. And so we also talk a lot about that and we talk about the hopeful ways in which we could restore the dignity of displaced people and ways in which we can support them, other than just with the important things like supplies and donations. Her work is actually a lot to do with the psychology of the experience of being displaced. She works a lot with children, in particular with her organization that was previously called RTI, the Refugee Trauma Initiative. It has now been named AMNA. Just this week, it has changed AMNA. But they do all of the same things, and they work with children and with families to try to help them come to terms with what’s happened and help them find hope and help them process all of the trauma so that they can actually move on from what’s happened eventually. And even because I think a lot of the time, we don’t recognize that even if someone does find a home, even if someone does find a job, the pain of what’s happened to them, what they’ve seen, what they’ve gone through, what they’ve lost stays with them, sometimes forever. And so this is one of the most underfunded and underrepresented parts of refugee care, and it is extraordinary the amount of work she does. I mean, she’s been named one of the 100 most influential women on the BBC, and I think she will be remembered as one of the most influential people of all time. It’s a fascinating episode. It is a shocking episode, and yet it is extremely hopeful, especially as the person we are hearing from has directly been in this scenario herself and found her way to now become a beacon of hope and light for other people. So I would love to hear what you think about this. I would love for you to follow her work, and at the end of this episode, we instruct you as to how you would be able to do that. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you share this episode with other people who need to know what’s going on, and I hope that this teaches you as much as it taught me. So lots of love, and please enjoy the exceptional Zarlasht Halaimzai. Zarlasht, welcome to I Weigh. How are you? 

Zarlasht [00:06:51] I’m good, thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Jameela [00:06:54] No, thank you for being here, especially right. I mean, it’s I imagine your existence is kind of it must feel like you’re constantly in emergencies. But with everything that’s going on right now, it is especially exceptional for me to be able to have your time. And so thank you so much for being here and giving me that. 

Zarlasht [00:07:13] Thank you. I mean, funny, you should say that I just landed from Poland and in London, I was there last week just looking, assessing what was going on on the border and seeing what was happening to refugees coming from Ukraine. Because the organization that I set up and run AMNA will be providing psychological first aid to people affected in Ukraine. So it was it is a very large crisis and millions of people have been displaced. So it’s very, very difficult to witness that much suffering. 

Jameela [00:07:55] Yeah, I can. I mean, it’s something I want to get into at some point with you is the impact on your own mental health of everything that you and your colleagues are seeing out there. And there’s a kind of natural instinct to put that aside because other people are suffering more right in front of you. But I imagine at some point it takes its toll. Would you just kindly tell my audience about why you do this work and what your own experiences? 

Zarlasht [00:08:26] I was born in Afghanistan, which in a way should tell you everything you need to know about why I do the work, because that the country has been embroiled in a war that’s been going on for 42 years. So my mother got pregnant with me. I’m the eldest of five children a few years after the war had already begun in Afghanistan. And so, you know, and one way my family was this by ordinary Afghan family that had very ordinary aspirations. You know, my mom was a teacher. We had. We lived with my grandmother. We grow roses. Are all very ordinary and normal. But that experience was happening in the context of a war a global war that was the US and USSR clashing in Afghanistan and so my whole childhood and I think. You know, my whole life has been determined by that particular event, and what’s really sad is that it continues the war in Afghanistan has been going on and, you know, last August, the country going went back to the Taliban. So the reason I did the work is because having experienced what it is to see your home be destroyed, you’re losing the people that you love the most. Losing your language, your culture. I know exactly how that impacts someone’s psyche. You know your internal sense of safety and your relationship with the world. And so the work that we do is all about addressing that. It’s all about, you know, addressing the suffering, the emotional and psychological suffering that comes as a result of war and. The other reason I do this work is that not that many people do it, it’s it’s trauma from war and refugees that go through this kind of experience of that trauma is very much overlooked, and not many organizations provide any kind of support to refugees who have seen horrific things. 

Jameela [00:10:44] No, I mean, we see quite the opposite, especially coming from leaders in various countries that absolutely have the means to help. You’re saying, you know, exactly what it feels like to be displaced and to see your home destroyed and a lot of people listening to this podcast maybe haven’t had that experience. They may never have that experience if they’re incredibly lucky, although you never know when it can come to your doorstep. And therefore, for every reason, because of our own dedication to human beings, I think it’s really important for us to be able to empathize. I certainly can’t empathize, and I would, if you don’t mind, could you tell us what that experience is like, what that does feel like? 

Zarlasht [00:11:31] I was 11 when we left Kabul, and then I was 15 when we got to the UK. It’s it’s a really difficult thing to explain. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s so misunderstood. But I would invite the listeners to think about, you know, one, you know, something that’s had that happen to them that made them feel totally dislocated. You know, we’ve all lost people that we love, like grandparents or. And that feeling of grief and dislocation that people can experience when something like that happens, you know, it can really jolt everything out of place. Now, imagine that happening in a context when none of the things that you relied on when you were going through grief, when you lost your livelihood, when any of the kind of things that happen happened to people, you know, we just went through a pandemic. A lot of people experience the loss and grief. Imagine that happened without any kind of protection, so you couldn’t pick up the phone and call a friend and ask them for help because your friends are maybe dead, or maybe you can’t go to them or they can’t come to you. Imagine you have no way of kind of supporting yourself or your family. Your home’s not there whilst you’re dealing with this huge thing in your life. And you know, you can’t even speak the language to kind of go and ask for help. So that loss happens without any of the things that make us feel safe. It’s everything. Everything gets disrupted, and it what it does to people is really fundamentally disrupts their sense of feeling safe. So you because you’re under threat and there’s this existential threat that’s going on in your community or in your country, or even when you’re making the journey to come to safety, there is a threat to your life and your wellbeing. So, you know, and that that that continues when you arrive in Europe or in a country that you continue to feel on the threat. So it’s a really, really difficult thing to deal with because not only are you having to deal with something with a huge challenge, but you don’t have anything to help support you doing that. 

Jameela [00:14:04] Yeah. And also for you, by the time you left, I mean, you’d already endured, I think you were. Do you say you were seven when the war really started to kind of take hold of your country and that family events suddenly turned into attending family funerals? And so as everything you go through before the point that you realized this is no longer a safe or tenable living situation, it’s just unimaginable trauma to accumulate as such, like a such a young age. And it must follow you around, I imagine, for a long time. 

Zarlasht [00:14:36] I think, yeah, I think it follows war follows people around for sure. It’s something, you know, I see that in the people that we work with I see that in my own community. But there is a way to, you know, to help people, there is a way to help people feel safe again, to help people feel worthy again, to to take care of people, to acknowledge that they’ve suffered. And that can go a long way in helping people heal. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have had opportunities in my life where I can access the poor, where I’ve been able to have a community, you know, to create and build a community in the UK and then all over the world. And and that can help you heal. The problem at the moment is that when refugees experience those things, they arrive to, you know, to even more suffering, to even more hostility. And that can compound their trauma even more. 

Jameela [00:15:42] Yeah, because you don’t feel welcome in the place that you’ve come to that you didn’t really want to come to. You were happy in your home. This disgusting rhetoric that exists, especially in the United Kingdom, I mean, it exists all over the world, but I really feel like a particular level of mortification at our government and the way that they have spoken about refugees my entire life, but I think Calais was a real turning point in the in the same old rhetoric they’ve used for every single marginalized people in history. It’s always demonizing them when they’re coming for our jobs, they’re coming to take from us. They’re going to harm our women, our children. The same exact script, just a different cast. And so to see the kind of vitriol and fear mongering that gets whipped up so that other people won’t do the exact thing that you are suggesting, which is just make people feel safe, make them feel welcome, make them feel hopeful and afford them some basic fucking dignity. 

Zarlasht [00:16:46] Yeah. 

Jameela [00:16:47] It terrifies me as such a, you know, quote unquote developed country, how we continue to treat these people and then the fucking turnaround of the sentiment at the beginning of the pandemic, where it was the vast majority of people who are the frontline workers who weren’t born in the United Kingdom. So many of them were people who had moved over to the United Kingdom, and they were the ones stepping up and keeping the entire country running. And all of a sudden there was this like brief love of immigrants and championing of immigrants. And you had like far right wing people even saying, like these people are heroes. And so quickly that has gone away again. 

Zarlasht [00:17:28] The rhetoric itself is really traumatic and makes people feel unsafe. So I we run youth groups in Greece and in many of our groups, young people talk about how they’re represented in the media and the kind of exactly the kind of things that you’re talking about, the dehumanization that this horrible kind of demonization of anyone who’s black and brown and is seeking safety. It really impacts people and their psyche and their sense of self-worth. So there’s another added trauma on top of what they’ve been through, and it’s also prevents people from feeling like they belong in a community and that prevents integration and that prevents healing. So. It’s, you know, it’s another form of violence on top of what they’ve experienced in their country. 

Jameela [00:18:25] It’s also just so much shame to be poured over such young people to feel as though they have to be made to feel as though they’ve done something wrong. Somehow, this is their fault for being here. I think what I want to make sure I’m not doing and you know, I learned a lot of this from Josie Naughton, who’s a friend of both of ours and someone that you work with as well, is that I don’t want to try to paint this as as an undignified sob story there. There is massive hope and and amazing things to be achieved and so much good for every community from having all these added people who can bring diversity. And I don’t know their own innovation. I mean, look at what you’re now doing with your life. You’re saving the lives of other people. You have utilized the I don’t know the position of being welcomed into the United Kingdom and use that for so much good. There’s so much potential here. But also, I feel like in order to counteract this terrifying narrative that we’re seeing in the West, we need to talk about the emotional impact of what it’s like to be displaced, what it’s like to then feel unwelcomed. And and we need to understand what exactly it is that these people need from those of us who have the power. Aside from the obvious things like supplies and and rooms to stay and and donations, et cetera, and like and legal support. What are the things, the key things outside of those that you think that you know, refugees need displaced people need? 

Zarlasht [00:20:08] For me, you know, the first thing that we need to do is is understand why people are fleeing in such large numbers from where they come from. That’s the first bet. And I know that’s, you know, doesn’t answer your question in terms of what you know, what do we give? But it’s there is the reason why millions of people are leaving their home. And it’s usually to do with the fact that that, you know, in this world, we really love war and we keep perpetuating war. And there’s a whole industry behind, you know, making sure that wars carry on. So the people that I’ve been working with in the past six years have mostly been displaced by war on terror, which displaced 38 million people worldwide. And you know, and that’s that those were wars that were kind of declared it, you know, in places like the UK and US and they completely destabilized the Middle East, they. That the just war at the time, which was Afghanistan, where people went in on the premise of helping women and women’s rights and rebuilding country came to a complete kind of an almost ironic end when the US handed over the country to the Taliban and made them have, you know, they’ve made them their counterterrorism partner in the region. So that’s the first thing is to kind of try and kind of get to the bottom of why people are fleeing and prevent wars that causes so much suffering. And then, you know, now that, you know, for a lot of the people in there, that’s already happened. We need to be able to offer some safety, you know, you talked about supplies and all of that, and of course, there’s a ton of civil society organizations that make sure that refugees have access to food and they can get a tent and all of that stuff. And that’s amazing and we need to be doing that. But beyond that, we need to make sure that people have legal protection that they can actually claim asylum. Right now, the UK government has essentially criminalized the capacity, the ability to seek asylum and get to safety. That’s the that’s catastrophic for refugees. It means that if you’re fleeing a war and you come to the UK, you’re essentially either left to drown in the channel or you could be prosecuted for it. And then beyond that, I think we need to, you know, we need to kind of make sure that people who deal with refugees, teachers, doctors, anyone on the front lines have the understanding and the skills to be able to deal with everything that they bring you from the traumatic reactions that they have to all the kind of difficulties and challenges that they will bring. So when we first came to the UK, everything was difficult. You know, going to the library and getting a library card was a big thing because we didn’t know how it worked. We couldn’t speak English. We didn’t know. We constantly worried that we were pissing someone off because, you know, standing too long at a counter or, you know, the cashier at the supermarket. We just constantly thought that everybody was irritated because we didn’t know how things worked. So all that kind of support making sure that people doing the cards right now, people are have offered to help many, many Ukrainians. I think something like 100000 people have signed up to host Ukrainians. And I really hope that there’s, you know, the people that they have done, which is an incredible act of generosity that they reflected on exactly how complex the needs of those people are and how much cadre they will have to to give to make sure that they’re OK. So, you know, it’s a complicated solution. It’s a complicated problem that needs quite a multifaceted solution. Sorry, if that doesn’t give you a sort of a sound bite? 

Jameela [00:24:26] No, I think I think it’s really important because you’re talking about. No, I’m you know, I because of the emergency we’re in and I’m talking about the symptom and you’re talking about the fucking cause. And and also kind of bringing up the point of how our political engagement is something that we need to pay more attention to and who we are supporting and how vocal we are when a war is being planned and learning how to pay attention to what’s happening and learning how to find new sources that aren’t just dictated by those or, you know, who are protecting those who are doing things abroad that are destabilizing tens of millions of people. And it does. It definitely reminds me that I have a responsibility there to be a part of nipping this in the bud. When we were on the phone, we were talking about our mutual horror, especially as to brown people, as women of color, as to how different the rhetoric has been regarding Ukrainian people and how glad we are that they are being spoken about with so much more sympathy and and grace. And you know, everyone’s shock and horror that these people are being displaced, but also you cannot help but have in the back of your mind fucking hang on. Just six months ago, we were demonizing people in the exact same situation. They just look different. They’re not pointedly blond and blue eyed. They’re not white. And I would love for you to talk to me more about that, because that must hit home on a much more personal level for you especially. 

Zarlasht [00:26:08] I just came back from Poland, where, you know, and I went there with my colleagues from AMNA to help to make sure that the same thing that we’ve done for refugees in Greece and in Albania, that we’re able to do that for Ukrainians and people coming out of Ukraine because that’s the right thing to do. They’re suffering. And that’s and that’s a mission we want to help people affected by war. What was remarkable is how different the responses and Poland before the Ukrainian crisis. I’ve worked in Lesbos, I’ve worked in northern Greece, I worked in Calais and I have never seen anything like it and all the kind of different places that I’ve worked in. I worked in Turkey on the Syrian-Turkish border. It’s a completely different response. You know, people are being treated with an enormous amount of dignity. There’s all kinds of provision available for people when they come out of, you know, when they come out of Ukraine, right on the border, you have phone companies like Orange providing SIM cards. There is provision for pet food and pets with just anything that you can possibly imagine and people needing. It’s available. Of course, that doesn’t, you know, the people still suffering with all that provision. But at least there is care to think about how people might be feeling if they’re coming out with a dog. Is there food for the dog? All of that is being considered and thought of and all over Poland, you have posters in Polish and Ukrainian that says, you know, you’re welcome. You’re in our hearts. We want. We want to support you. So what’s made me incredibly you know, what’s inspiring is that there is a, you know, it is possible to have to respond to the suffering of the people and a humane and compassionate way, and that private companies, the EU governments, civil society can all come together and really support people so they don’t have to experience any more unnecessary suffering than what they have. But what was extremely difficult for me and made me, honestly, I can’t describe how it made me feel is what what’s happening on the Belarussian Polish border, which is another set of refugees that are mostly from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, some of these countries where refugees have been trapped for months. And that’s sort of no man’s land between Belarus and Poland. They’re not able to go back to Belarus because the border, you know, the army won’t let them. And they Poland is not allowing them to come in because the Polish government is very Islamophobic. And so they don’t want to allow this. And these are families. There’s lots of children. NGOs aren’t allowed to go and journalists aren’t allowed to go in. And I spoke to an activist who has been trying to raise awareness about what’s going on to these refugees, how badly they’re being treated, the fact that they don’t even have access to food. And she described a parts of this place, which they call the death triangle, where the refugees are basically trapped between a swamp barbed wire and kind of the sort of barbed wire area and then the railroad tracks. And so they keep being pushed between one side to the other, and in that process, people die. But because there is no documentation, because journalists are allowed to go and expats are not allowed to go in and journalists not allowed to go and these people just disappear, they just just disappear. And that, of course, made me feel just total despair and hopelessness because what it shows is something that I know, but I don’t really want to know, which is that if you’re brown and especially if you’re brown and Muslim in this context of being a refugee, your life doesn’t matter at all. And there is nobody, not the EU, not the kind of different states around the EU like Poland, Belarus, all of these that nobody will stand up and protect these people. And they, like the Ukrainians, are coming from places where their lives are in danger. And they, you know, in addition to that, they are coming from places that have been destabilized as a result of wars perpetrated by. NATO and the EU and UK and the US, so it’s it’s something that we all bear responsibility for and that’s how they’re being treated and. I mean, it’s just unconscionable. 

Jameela [00:31:25] It’s extremely depressing to hear that that is happening in the same place in the same area, that two such stark realities exist. I can’t I cannot imagine what it’s like, and there’s nothing scarier to me than people not being allowed in. The horror is so unimaginable that they can’t allow anyone in who would be able to report to the rest of the world what’s happening. And that is just the kind of thing that that is a level of barbaric, inhumane behavior that we would never associate with anything towards the West. That’s the sort of thing that you know you, you hear about in the fuckin Daily Mail happening in some faraway country full of brown or black people. And some of the worst atrocities I’ve heard of are not only perpetuated by these countries, but are going on within these countries and they’re locking everyone out. I mean, look at what’s happening at the border in the United States of America to people, you know, children being separated from their parents, all kinds of horrors happening and no one’s allowed in. We have no idea the full extent. I mean, how bad must it be that no one is allowed in? And so this change of rhetoric where they are speaking with such shock that this is blond and blue eyed people who are facing this displacement and, you know, explaining to people that, you know, we must do everything we can to support Ukrainians again, I’m saying this with not a shred of bitterness, just hope and inspiration for people who who don’t who aren’t white. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit for people who aren’t from the UK who maybe don’t know how sharp that town has been? 

Zarlasht [00:33:16] Sure. So the UK has been both UK media and UK government has been incredibly hostile to refugees and you know, we’ve there’s been some of the solutions, you know, quote unquote solutions that have been proposed by this government to the problem of immigration or refugees are things like a wave machine in the channel, for example, to to topple the boats that attempt to cross all 

Jameela [00:33:50] These are boats with with people with disabilities, women, babies, pregnant people, all kinds of different people are on these boats that they’re creating wave machines for. 

Zarlasht [00:34:02] Yeah. So these are some of the things that have been discussed. A lot of people put in detention centers when they do arrive. Even though the Refugee Council did a study to show that they looked at the people that were coming on the boats and the vast majority of people who would qualify for refugee status because they’re coming from places where there is conflict. So there’s a huge amount of hostility in the UK towards refugees. And I would see, you know, that extends to sort of all spheres of life. And when the Ukrainian crisis happened, there has been an enormous amount of outpouring of sympathy and generosity. The government has launched a website that where people could register to host Ukrainians. And I think in 24 hours or two days, something like 100000 people had already registered. There was a rally, I think, this weekend in Trafalgar Square for for Ukrainians, and there’s just a lot of. You know, a lot of expression of sympathy and empathy for the Ukrainians, which is exactly how we should behave when innocent people are under threat and when they are suffering because of violence of a dictator, or tyranny that is what we should do. But what I’m worried that that this will not translate into so long lasting sympathy for everyone who finds themselves in that situation. And I wonder, actually, you know, this is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last few weeks. What can we do to sort of to to galvanize this moment and create some sort of long lasting change where people clearly are seeing how painful it is for a mother to run away from from her home with a small child. It doesn’t matter whether that mother is white or brown, they will feel the same terror that anyone would feel. And if they’re in that situation, so something that I’ve been thinking a lot about is what can we do to to retain this, to retain this level of compassion within the communities that are showing that right now? 

Jameela [00:36:41] I think for me, it is massively and unbearably in the hands of the media. 

Zarlasht [00:36:47] Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, it is the media. The government play a massive role in how we how we rally behind such things. And so I completely agree with everything that you’ve said and showing. First of all, just kind of telling the whole story and then showing the positive things. In the UK, you know where where I grew up, there’s enormous contribution in the UK from refugee and other immigrant communities. It wouldn’t be the place that it is at the moment if it wasn’t for that. So, you know, there’s so much to be grateful for from the whole NHS is run by people from, as you said, from other countries. You know, my my two of my cousins are doctors, my best friend is a doctor on the NHS and worked the whole time when she barely had a day off when Covid was happening. So there’s so much to highlight in terms of what’s positive. And I, you know, just going back to trauma and how people, what enables people recover there is, you know, if people do, if people get that sort of compassion and care when they’ve been through something terrible, and they’re made to feel that they matter, like the way that Ukrainians are welcomed in Poland, the way that different countries are allowing them to come in the way that their civil society is taking care of all the different needs that they might have that will prevent long term traumatic impact. It will prevent long term physical impact on their health because, you know, trauma, the traumatic event is one thing, but it’s the care and the attention and the support that you receive afterwards that determines your capacity for recovery. So you doing something, not not something, you know, you’re doing something not just for the immediate alleviation of suffering the immediate right thing to do, but also you setting up people to put on a path where they can recover. They can regain their self some sense of confidence when they can connect with their body, where they feel like they were lives or worth something. And that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what I saw in Poland. 

Jameela [00:39:21] Can you tell me about your work with AMNA and just explain the organization how you work, what you do and why? 

Zarlasht [00:39:31] What we do is very simple. We set up safe spaces where people can come in and can convene as a community and heal as a community. Everything that we’ve been talking about in the past so far is disruptive to how people feel in their body, how their sense of safety is interrupted. Their relationships are interrupted. And for really young children, this is, you know, this can be really catastrophic because young children need stability and feeling safe to be able to develop healthily. If that’s not the case if children grow up in environments where there’s constant disruption and feeling unpredictability and uncertainty that can have a massive impact on everything from the way that they learn to their long term health outcomes. They’re simply adverse. Childhood experiences have been linked to all kinds of chronic disease, so it can be, you know, that kind of stress and trauma has a really profound impact on children and families. So what we do is try and create spaces where they can have that, where they can reconnect with a sense of safety, so we run programs for really young children. We run a program called Baytna, which means our home in Arabic and this is a program where we use play as a form of healing for children. So children come in and it’s beautiful, joyful spaces. They can play with their parents, they can play with their siblings. There’s always a facilitator who’s been trained in how to work with children that have experienced trauma available and that just that space and that access to a place where they can be a child can really help children feel safe again and a fundamental part of what we do. And this program is trying to get parents destressed because the most, you know, the most effective way of protecting children is making sure that their parents aren’t stressed because the relationship with the parent is the most protective thing. So we do a lot of work with mothers, we do a lot of we try to do as much with fathers, although I have to say that fathers of their attendance is significantly less in our fathers group than mothers. But, you know, it’s sort of a whole family approach to try and get families to have respite, to connect with each other, to play. We run therapeutic groups for men and women. These are long term groups to really help people unpack some of what’s happened to them and process their experiences and connect with others who have faced similar things. We work with young people and we do a lot of this work experientially, so we make films, we dance, we write and put on plays, we take photographs. You know, there’s just all of that is very joyful and creative. To try and counter what what they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing, which is a sense of worthlessness. This. Where they are, there’s very little joy and very little respite, so all that we do is countering what they’re experiencing in their everyday life. 

Jameela [00:43:04] I was so drawn to your organization because of the fact that this is one of the areas that because there’s so much of an emergency happening and I mean, you really can’t imagine the state of so many of these, especially any refugee camp that houses people of color, like the fact that there is COVID spreading everywhere because everyone is so close to each other, there’s no PPE, there’s not enough food. They have makeshift hospitals, if they’re even lucky. There it is a bleak environment in these camps where they’re not being afforded any help from the government whatsoever, and they’re just made to feel like criminals, essentially. And so a lot of people are thinking just of the the fundamental human basics, which are, of course, imperative as well, like nappies or medical supplies or school supplies, et cetera. But I’d say one of the most I mean this entire podcast is about mental health, one of the most fundamental parts of someone else’s like survival ability to be, you know, we’ve kind of touched on this already, but you know, their long term emotional and physical strength can often be impacted massively by their mental health state. And so to have seen that, what was it that made you realize that this is what was missing? This is where you needed to focus? 

Zarlasht [00:44:24] Well, my you know what I went through and made me, that was the first thing, you know, just thinking back to how difficult it was for my family to go through the experience. And then I worked in a few different crises. I worked in I was in Turkey when the Syria during 2014 were when the Syrian war was at its worst. And I worked in Calais, I worked in Greece, and there was just this this care for mental health and trauma was always missing. And I think it’s a fundamental part of emergency response because if you if people can’t cope with what’s happening to them, if they can’t take care of their children, if they don’t get out of get out of bed and try and kind of survive, that’s catastrophic for a lot of families. And so, you know, in a way what I see our role, for example, in a refugee camp where we’ve worked as I see our role as filling the cup enough so they can get up and take care of their children, or they can get up and face that seventh or eighth asylum interview where they’re having to recount their traumatic experiences over and over again to justify being in the country. You know, it’s people are so depleted and defeated that it’s really difficult to survive. So I don’t think creating opportunities for people to connect to remember that there’s other side of humanity, where there’s hope, where you can meet people, you can make friends, you can have a dance, you know you can express yourself in a way, you can create a piece of art with your child. All that those so they can get up the next day and cope with the horrible circumstances that they’re dealing with. And I think it is a fundamental part of responding to crises and making sure that people can get out of it and recover. 

Jameela [00:46:42] It means that you’re investing in their future. Do you know what I mean rather than? And again, like I say this, there is nothing more vital than the immediate care that is desperately needed. There still isn’t enough of that in any of these places. And we still need more supplies. We need more access to legal advice for these people. But I’m just saying that a lot of those things deal with the immediate, whereas I think you being able to remind them that there is something to live for and you know, these people kind of lose themselves in everything that they lose. When you lose your home, you lose your identity, you lose your language, you lose your friends, you lose your loved ones, maybe you lose your own children. You know, it’s all of you gets kind of stripped from you. And so to bring people back to the person they fundamentally are and remind them what a fucking hero they are for even making it this far. You are setting someone up for them for life after that camp. And I think that’s really beautiful. 

Zarlasht [00:47:40] I’m so glad you said that they are fucking heroes, you know, the mothers that put their children on a boat and try and get them to safety to try and give them a better life, to try and get them away from violence. That is enormous amounts of courage and strength, and I it really breaks my heart when that’s vilified in the media, you know, as you know. Right now, Greece is prosecuting a father and Afghan father whose son drowned on on the shore of one of the islands because the government believes that it was the father’s fault for the child drowning. But to me, like you said, that’s just a father doing taking a massive risk for sure. But from a place where you know there’s so much violence trying to get his child to a safe place, that’s that’s takes a lot of strength and courage. 

Jameela [00:48:38] That’s only your last possible option. So if there are bombs dropping above your head. Or if your child might be kidnaped and forced into an army what the fuck else are you going to do? And it’s not like there’s a boat that’s there to fucking pick everyone up. There’s no ferry that turns up being like everyone get in. Let’s bring you to safety and dignity. It’s the last possible option. I’ve seen so much of that rhetoric of, you know, just ignorant Westerners saying. Why would why would you ever put your baby in a boat in these kind of in this in the winter storms, it’s like, that’s exactly right. Ask yourself the question Why would you ever do something like that? Why would you ever try and cross the desert through Mexico to get to the United States? Like why? Why would you do that? Think about that yourself. How desperate must be? I really, really appreciate what you do, and I imagine it must be incredibly enlightening and it must be very beautiful to be able to watch people develop in real time. I also imagine it must be incredibly hard work that you do. And I wonder what you do for your own kind of self-care through all of this. 

Zarlasht [00:49:59] My my self care is a sort of a work in progress. I try to give myself the time and space to recover from both historically what I’ve been through, but also the work that I do, you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s a challenge because everything feels so urgent, you know, and there is so much going on. And we’re, you know, we’re we’re a small organization trying to meet such a big need. And so it’s it’s really difficult. But the things that get me through is I meditate quite a lot to try and find peace and find a sense of presence and stay in my body and and appreciate my body because it does so much. So meditation is a very important part of my self-care. I cook, I’m a really, really good cook. I love making spicy spicy food. It’s like, you know, just throwing cardamom and cinnamon and chilies and everything that just it’s everything to me. And you know, I try to have a very expansive perspective because when you narrow into the cruelty that human beings are capable of, and you expose that all the time, it can be very bleak and hopeless, and you know, really awful, but I really think of I tried to think about things in geological time, so you know, this is going to this is not going to disappear in my lifetime, it’s probably not going to disappear in my children’s lifetime. It’s something that will, you know, it’s part of human condition and hopefully we will slowly get better at being more compassionate towards each other. And, you know, sort of think about how that’s part of the, you know, having this expansive perspective as I think about the universe a lot. It really gives me a lot of comfort that we’re actually like a tiny, tiny part of it and that really we can’t really impact the universe as a whole. It’s so huge and vast and we don’t know what the hell is going on out there that we think we’re so big and huge and everything is about us, but it’s actually not. And that actually gives me a lot of comfort because we fuck everything up. 

Jameela [00:52:34] Yeah, 100 percent. But God knows we’ll try. God knows we will do our very level best. I love the work you do. Thank you so much for giving me this time. Zarlasht before you go to literally save the world. Will you tell me what do you weigh? 

Zarlasht [00:52:56] I weigh my capacity for joy because it’s something that’s taken so much to protect. And it’s that’s that’s what I weigh. 

Jameela [00:53:12] That’s lovely. Thank you for coming and talking to us and thank you for explaining a side of this that we are deliberately starved of by the media because it runs the risk of it may cause compassion. Warning may cause compassion. And I really appreciate you. I am so in awe of what you’ve done in taking your own incredibly difficult and traumatizing experience and trying to and just dedicating your life to making sure no one else does. It’s amazing work. And and I think that this it feels extremely it feels like the future of where we all need to be looking. You know, we’re into someone’s humanity and someone’s mental health state. Mental health is not only underfunded in when it comes to displaced people, it’s underfunded worldwide. This is a it’s a huge, huge conversation that is still nowhere near far enough along. And the fact that you are bringing it to probably where it is needed most right now is breathtaking. And I will support you and I will signal boost you and I will donate and do all the things that I can do, and I hope my followers join me in any way that they can, even if that’s just telling other people about this amazing organization and how great you are. So thank you, and I hope you have a lovely, restful night. 

Zarlasht [00:54:46] Thank you so much Jameela. It’s been a great conversation. Just so lovely to talk to you. Thanks for inviting me and for highlighting mental health refugees. Thank you. 

Jameela [00:54:58] Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnigan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson, and the beautiful music you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher Premium by going to Stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code, I Weigh. Lastly, over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 1-818-660-5543 or email us what you weigh at IWeighPodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. 

Listener [00:55:50] I weigh being an important and valuable member of my family. I weigh my time spent in a psych ward, then outpatient support groups. I wear a lifelong and non-linear path to healing. I weigh all the parts of me that do not serve me and that I have the freedom to subtract or unlearn. I love that I weigh all the best parts of me, and I want to weigh more with insight, patience and forgiveness and dirty jokes. I want to weigh more.