Today I was cooking for a Caritas charity lunch. It was the last lunch before Christmas, and our guests started singing Christmas carols.

I work in the kitchen, so I don’t get to see much of what is happening in the dining room, but when the singing started, I wanted to take a look. I took the pot of noodles I had just cooked and went to the large room where the food was being served. As soon as I entered, I felt tears filling my eyes. They were singing a Ukrainian song. They were singing a happy song with a sad voice. The voice of someone missing home and losing hope of ever returning.

I looked at the faces of the guests. I had known some of them since they came to Austria in 2022. Most of them were elderly people from Ukraine. I remember that when they first arrived, they were still full of energy. They even dressed up when they came to our lunches. Now they were different — not just because they had grown three years older, but because displacement leaves a sadness that carves scars into your soul and casts shadows on your face.

It must be horrible to be displaced at an old age. You can hardly integrate into a new community. And why should you? What would be the motivation, and what is the perspective? The only thing to do is wait and try to live safely until the day of return comes or until one leaves this world, carrying the hope of going home to the grave.

On the way home, an old song by Assala (a famous Syrian singer) came to my mind:

متغربين إحنا متغربين

تجري السنين وإحنا جرح السنين

لا حد قال عنك خبر يفرحّنا

ولا حد جاب منك كلمة تريّحنا

“We are estranged,

The years run by, and we are the wound of those syears.

No one has told us any news about you that would make us happy,

And no one has brought us a word from you that would ease us”

I remembered when we had to leave our home in Baghdad and lived in Diyala for almost 30 days, displaced and under difficult conditions, together with six or more other families of our friends and relatives. One evening, this song was palyed on the oud, and everyone in the room burst into tears. We were only an hour away from our homes, but were not able to go back. That was enough to make us feel desperate and displaced.

Today, as in 2003, millions of people are displaced and suffering because a few powerful politicians decided to start a war, without caring about the humanitarian misery they cause.