Refuge from a painful past
In the media 12 September 2011
John is proud of the chard, beans and fennel he has nurtured in a corner of a north London community garden. For him, the plot is more than a pretty oasis: “It gives me a sense of belonging that I don’t get anywhere else. . . . it helps me forget about the past.” The 21-year-old, whose woolly hat slips back to reveal the two-inch scar on his forehead from the pistol-whipping he received in 2001, is an asylum seeker. He shares this patch of ground with nine men from Kenya, the Congo, Iran, Iraq and Russia, who are also seeking refugee status.
Read the Financial Times’s article about Room to Heal here.