For some reason Sara Benincasa has convinced Neil Gaiman to do a live reading of the Cheesecake Factory's menu if they can raise $500,000 for refugees, sending the money to the UNHCR. I love Neil's voice. I love the way he reads. I can think of many things I'd like him to read other than that menu, but hey, RAISE THE MONEY!
A few days ago 68 children, and over 110 people total, were killed in a bombing in Syria. It happened after the Manchester bombing and, of course, received relatively little coverage. Each horror is a horror, but I thought of those dead children in two very different parts of the world, and I wept a little that morning.
When I interviewed Gaiman for my American Gods essay, I spent awhile asking him about Syria and refugees, but couldn't fit it into the piece. But it moved me, so I offer it to you here (edited slightly to make sense as paragraphs):
The last time I saw figures, which was before the latest round of madness, there were over 6 million people had fled Syria, and more were internally displaced. We’re 6, 7, years into a nightmarish civil war.
People should know that each of the refugees, each of the people who have made it out of Syria, has gone through a nightmare in order to get out. Making their lives worse helps nobody, making their lives worse is inhuman.
The UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] was never built to handle a world in right now there are more displaced person than there were even at the end of World War 2. It was set up to be there for refugees, for local crises, in the assumption that it normally takes about 1 to 2 years in order for people to go home.
The other thing that people should know is that they want to go home! They like Syria. They love Syria. If there were a civil war in America … and there was no food and people were shooting at you for sport and you decided to get out. What you’d like to do is come back again, because it’s a nice place and your home.
They really just want to stay there [in Syria] and eat and educate their children which no one has been able to do for 6 years in Syria. They’d like to go back.
