Afghan refugee reflects on complicated feelings of leaving home

An Afghan refugee who has lived for more than a decade in Charlottetown wants Canadians to understand the complicated feelings she has about being in Canada.

Ariana Sadat, now 25, arrived in Charlottetown 11 years ago. The journey from Afghanistan to Canada took years, so her memories of her home country, which she left when she was very young, are not very clear.

"I do remember a few things, just vaguely. Just being a kid, playing around. It wasn't that stressful as people make it out to be. But the areas were not safe, so we weren't allowed to go outside as much, go to stores by ourselves," said Sadat.

"We had no idea what was going on."

'Stuff I have no idea about'

Over the last decade people have had a lot of questions for her about Afghanistan, fewer as her accent changed. For the most part, people are very understanding, but others, she said, will go overboard with their questions.

"They keep asking me stuff I have no idea about," she said.

"How many people were killed in your family, or have you seen the war action, have you seen people getting bombed, stuff like that."

But what makes her most uncomfortable is the people who insist that she must be grateful: grateful to be away from the war, grateful to have the rights that she does as a woman in Canada. And she is grateful, she said, but her life story is not as simple as that.

"They say just how lucky I am to be here, and just how lucky it is for me to be in Canada," she said.

"I'm grateful that I'm here, but at the same time I'm not really happy that my country is at war. The reason I'm here is because there's war."

Don't make assumptions

Sadat said she is often happy to answer questions about Afghanistan, but said people shouldn't assume they understand her life from what they've seen on television.

"They assume that all that stuff happened to me," she said. "I just want them to ask how was my childhood."

People need to let refugees tell their own stories, said Sadat. They also need to remember, that while she still feels a close attachment to the country where she was born, she's a Canadian now.

"I was forced to leave. Now I'm making this my home. Don't make me feel [like I'm] from outside."

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With files from Island Morning