Butterfly is the story of a remarkable woman, whose journey started in a war-torn suburb of Damascus and took her through Europe from Lebanon to Greece and onwards to Berlin and from there to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
A) Read an excerpt from the book
Part 3: The Bomb, chapter 6, pages 63-64
Life goes on. Training, school, training. I try to keep my head down, get through my last two years of school, but the war is always there to disrupt and distract me. Some nights, electricity outages plunge whole swathes of the city into long hours of darkness. In places, power is rationed to just four to six hours a day. Some Damascenes get around the blackouts using big car batteries, or, if they can afford to run it, a diesel generator. We adjust until the outages, too, become a part of daily life.
Death is random and ever present. It falls from the sky in the street, in midday traffic, without warning, then we dust ourselves off and carry on. In the spring, the attacks in Baramkeh around the Tishreen stadium start up again. The area is full of targets. The university, the state news agency, hospitals, schools, the stadium itself. Mum is beside herself with worry. A few nights every week, she calls me on my way to the pool. The conversation is always the same.
‘Come back home,’ she says.
‘Why?’ I say. ‘I’m going to swim.’
‘Just shut up and come back,’ she says. ‘Right now.’
I hurry home to find Mum waiting for me with news of more mortar or rocket attacks. I know she wants to protect me, but deep down we both know I’m no longer safe anywhere in the city. I could just as easily be killed in the pool as outside on the street or at home in my bed. We know a lot of people who die at home. A fire, a bomb, or just a stray bit of shrapnel.
Often I hear the mortars falling around Tishreen once I’m already training. One evening I’m in the pool, pushing myself as hard as I can. My face is burning against the cool water. I battle the urge to stop and rest. Another length, another whirl and scoop, just a few more metres. I reach out and grab the end of the pool, rest for a few seconds. My shoulders jerk up towards my ears in alarm as a splitting crash thunders around the pool. There’s a moment of silence. Then the swimmers spring into action, screaming and shouting as they splash over each other to reach the sides.
‘Out! Everybody out,’ shouts the coach, urgently waving his arms towards the exit.
There’s no time to register what’s happening. My mind is blank as I haul myself out of the water. Crowds of swimmers push past me, shivering with shock and panic as they hurry towards the doors. I reach the exit and turn back. I look up to the ceiling and spot a ragged hole in the roof showing a tiny speck of open sky. I look down at the water below. There, shimmering on the bottom of the pool, is a metre-long, thin, green object with a conical bulb thinning down to a point at one end. It’s an unexploded RPG. A rocket-propelled grenade. I stare at the bomb, unable to tear my eyes away. Somehow, it had ploughed through the roof and landed in the water without exploding. A few metres in either direction and it would have hit the tiles, killing everyone within a ten-metre radius. It takes a few seconds to sink in. I’m lucky to be alive. Again.
Every day, I read a passage from the book @englishclubvsl
B) Listen to Yusra Mardini > take notes
C) Find out what sport means to Yusra Mardini and how she joined the Olympic Refugee Team
Yusra Mardini is trying to qualify for the Olympic Games in Japan which have just been postponed to 2021 because of the global coronavirus global health crisis.
There are 6 Allianz videos with Yusra Mardini you can watch on YouTube:
1) Courage
2) Sharing
3) Curiosity
4) Sports
5) Olympics
6) Hope
D) Find out more about Yusra Mardini from the UN Refugee Agency
“Since Rio I’ve been training hard but I’ve also been thinking a lot about what I can do to help refugees across the world,” she says. “The most important thing in my life is swimming. Then speaking and doing things to help refugees.”
Yusra Mardini was appointed the youngest ever UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in April 2017. She advocates for refugees globally through sharing her own inspiring story and has become a powerful voice for the forcibly displaced across the world and an example of their resilience and determination to rebuild lives and positively contribute to host communities.
In April 2018, Yusra travelled with UNHCR to meet refugees in Sicily who had taken similar desperate journeys to her own to escape conflict and reach safety. The same year, her book Butterfly - From Refugee to Olympian - My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph was published.
Click on this screenshot to watch more videos with Yusra Mardini
Yusra is determined to use her own experience of flight to help focus the attention of the world on refugee issues.
I swam for my life, I swam in the Olympics, and now I want dignity for all refugees
E) Read her blog for the World Economic Forum posted on 11th January 2017
Yusra Mardini explains what it feels like to be a refugee and lose your home when you're 17.
I am Yusra. I am a refugee and I’m proud to stand for peace
My name is Yusra. Yes, I’m the girl who swam for her life, then swam at the Olympics. Now I want to tell you another story. It’s about my other name, my other identity. You see, my name is refugee. At least, that’s what they call me. Me and those 21 million others forced to flee persecution, war and violence.
"There is no shame in being a refugee if we remember who we are."
So, who is this refugee? Well, once I was just like you. I had a home, I had roots, I belonged. Like you, I lived my life day-by-day, caught up in my own hopes, passions and problems. Then war came and everything changed.
War gave me a new name, a new role, a new identity: refugee. Suddenly it was go, drop everything, run for your life. Leave your home, relatives, friends and run. It was only after I crossed the border I realised I’d lost more than my house and all my possessions. I’d lost my nationality, my identity, my name. Now I was refugee.
None of us could have prepared for that journey. The desperate prayers at sea, the long trek, the humiliation at the barbed wire. But however hard it was, we knew there was no way back. We’d already lost everything, there was no choice but to keep running, for shelter, for peace.
And then, with a jolt, the journey ended. We were safe. Somewhere, in a tent, a camp, a shelter, the next stage began: the long wait. I think that’s when it hit us. We had nothing to do except cry for what we’d lost. Now we really knew what it meant to be refugees.
So here we are, in a new life, none of us knowing how long we will live it. On average, we’ll spend 20 years in exile, never really belonging, just waiting for an end to the madness so we can go home. That’s half a lifetime, lost, nothing but strangers in a strange land.
We struggle on with our lives. We fight to study, to work, to learn a new language, to integrate. All too often the barriers are too high, the odds stacked against us. But we know we must make the best of this strange and unexpected twist in our lives. To make the best of being a refugee.
That’s our struggle. But this isn’t just our fight, it’s yours too. Many of you already know there’s so much more at stake. For my part, in the months to come I’ll be taking on a new role. I have an important message to spread. The refugees will not go away, there will be more of us. If humanity is to meet this challenge, you must know us for who we really are.
Somewhere, some of you lost sight of that. When our deaths at sea became normal, our misery at the borders commonplace. We faded out of sight, were ushered away behind closed doors. At times, a truly horrific image forced you to face our suffering. A dead toddler lying face down in the sand on the beach, a child’s dazed and bloodied face in an ambulance. Yet afterwards, life went on. Many of you forgot us.
Silence gave the other voices space to grow. From those who feared and hated us because we looked different, spoke differently, worshiped differently. Those who were most afraid shouted the loudest. They spread those old lies about us. They said we chose to come here, because we’re greedy, dangerous, criminals, here to threaten your way of life.
Fear crept in and some of you began to doubt us. Before long, borders and barriers, both physical and emotional, sprang up everywhere. Refugee was becoming an insult, a name to hurt and humiliate.
But there is no shame in being a refugee if we remember who we are. If we remember that being a refugee is not a choice. That our only choice was to die at home or risk death trying to escape. It was the choice between a bomb and drowning at sea.
So, who are we? We are still the doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, students we were back at home. We are still the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. It was violence that made us orphans. It was war that made us terrified parents, sacrificing everything to save our children from carnage. It was persecution that drove us from our homes in search of peace.
That is refugee. That is who I am. That is who we all are, that growing population of people without a country. This is my call for us all to take a stand now, together, under that name we share, refugee. I am Yusra. I am a refugee and I’m proud to stand for peace, for decency and dignity for all those fleeing violence. Join me. Stand with us.
ACTIVITY: create a mind map on Yusra Mardini
with illustrations and key quotes from what she wrote in her book and her blog but also what she said in the videos about
her story, what she went through
being a refugee and the refugee crisis
the role sport plays in her life and sports values
getting selected for the Olympic Games
being a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency
Food for Thought
TRAINING TIME FOR EXAMS > speak for 10 minutes > record your voice
How do wars and conflict zones affect sportspeople's careers?
Why is there an Olympic Refugee Team? What are its goals?
What does Yusra Mardini's story teach us?
What do you think about Yusra Mardini?
What role do Olympic athletes play in our society?
How do you feel about the Olympic Games in Japan being postponed to 2021 because of the coronavirus global health crisis?
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