Not that long ago we were all that little boy from Syria

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Somewhere in our Irish genes, I believe, there is a throwback to a time in our history when as a people we faced starvation with a million of us dying from hunger, while as many more left on the coffin ships with empty bellies and even emptier pockets. We were at the mercy of those who might give us something to keep us going.

During last week, when we were presented with that deeply upsetting but poignantly powerful image of the three-year-old Syrian boy being taken from the waters of the Mediterranean perfectly intact and clothed, but lifeless, the feeling was there that if you turned the clock back by less than 160 years – or just three generations, then little Aylan could be one of us.

We call can be insular and look after our own corners and, to a point, there’s a value in this in terms of good housekeeping and minding our own business, but really one would want to have a heart of stone not to be perplexed at what we are witnessing, just a medium range plane flight from our shores.

The human tragedy that has afflicted the Syrian people over recent years is just beyond awful, torn apart by a vicious civil war involving a ruthless dictator and an even more savage extremist opposition where there is a really frightening manifestation of evil.

Through all this butchery of human beings, there exists ordinary families with fathers, mothers, grannies and children all quite willing to risk death by escaping from a land that’s as close as one can come to hell on earth. Can we, as a people turn our back, on those innocent, unfortunate human beings. I think not.

We’ll all listen to the talk in the street about too many ‘foreigners’ coming into Ireland and that we should look after our own first, and while we have our own problems of social deprivation and a poverty of sorts, it just pales into insignificance as compared to what the refugees from Syria and the Middle-East are enduring.

And yet there’s goodness to be found, sometimes in slightly unexpected quarters. The German people have a reputation for being super workers and highly efficient, but the other day as I listened to Radio One and heard that this country would take in 800,000 refugees this year, there was a real message of hope there too.

At times Angela Merkel seems like the strict but very kind granny who, while wanting a bit of law and order in the house, also wants to ensure that everyone gets a good supper before going to bed. When the big and the powerful show that kind of decency and courage, it also prompts countries like our own, to go that extra mile and play our part in what will be a long and taxing effort.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.