Writers in Exile - Leith Festival

Carlos Arendondo has lived in Scotland for some thirty year. He left Chile when Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected socialist Government of Salvador Allende. Pinochet was supported in the coup by the US because it was feared that th left wing elected Governmnent would ally itself wit the Soviet Union. As a result of the coup, many Chileans had to flee the country, becoming refugees all over the world. Carlos was reading from his new novel about his life, the first time he had shared the manuscript with anyone.

Carlos tells of the feeling of loss, but also the welcome he found in this country at a time when the Government and the public where less suspicious and more welcoming to refugees. What has changed?

Ayad Alhiatly\'s poem is all the more poingant for the fact that, even after five years, he has not been give leave to remain in the country. He remains, like so many asylum seekers, here, but insecure, in a limbo.

Ayad and Ghazi Husein have many shared experiences - they are both poets, both Palestinian refugees, and were at one time in the same prison in Syria, where both were tortured. But unlike Ayad, Ghazi has been given refugee status - a difference, he says, based on nothing more than luck. Even when asylum has been reached for a refugee, there is always the pain and loss of having abandond so much, and of being unable to return. This is Ghazi\'s poem, Return the Dream.

Tessa Ransford, who chaired the writers in exile event, closed the event with a poem of her own, written for human rights day last year.