Refugee - by Reg Meuross

For my friend Ahmad Al-Rashid, and to mark Refugee Week. In March 2016 I met Ahmad, a young Syrian refugee from Aleppo. I invited him to come to a gig at the Green Note in London, and before I sang, he stood on the stage and told his story. What followed was almost too much for the people there to comprehend; the brutality, depravation, separation and horrors that young man and his people had experienced. I came home and wrote this song, all of which comes from either his actual experience or from the experiences of his fellow refugees. Ahmad wasn’t born a refugee any more than you or I, he was just unfortunate to be born in an area of the world where terror and brutality became a daily threat. He fled the horror and then had to face new threats of alienation, and exploitation, and of being unwelcome and unwanted by other nations. I wanted to show as much as I could in a brief piece of music how we are all humans. When a country is virtually destroyed by inhumanity and hatred the least we can do is show the