You have to hand it to White women: they know how to look after the less fortunate.
Whether they’re feeding Black men as missionaries in Africa, looking after Brown men in the “migrant jungle” of Calais, or welcoming Black and Brown men with “refugees welcome” signs outside of European train stations, White women really do have an insatiable desire to help people of all races and both sexes.
Alas, life isn’t always fair. Sometimes the kindness White women offer the world isn’t returned to them.
One victim of this cosmic injustice is Lynn Barber, a 73-year-old grandmother from the United Kingdom who invited a Brown refugee into her home – and was shocked, simply shocked, when he abused her generosity.
Around 18 months ago, after being deeply affected by ‘almost daily horror stories’ of migrants during the summer of 2015 (in particular, by photos of a Syrian mother trying to hold her baby above the waves on a Mediterranean beach), [Lynn Barber] decided to offer help.
That mother was Barber’s ‘personal tipping point — the moment when I decided I must do something’, the 73-year-old grandmother has explained.
…
Barber tells how, at first, she wrote to Islington Council, offering to take in a Syrian family. But she received no reply.
Subsequently, she met an artist in a bar who said he’d been building shelters for migrants in the infamous Jungle camp near Calais.
Through him, she was introduced to Mohammed.
Originally from Sudan, he was said to have sneaked into the UK in the wheel-arch of a lorry that travelled from France through the Channel Tunnel. He’d registered with the Home Office and as an asylum seeker was waiting for his application to be processed. In the meantime, he wasn’t allowed to work and received a weekly £35 living allowance.
So, here we have a White grandmother who lives alone. Determined to make a difference in the world, she invites a Sudanese male who was fleeing the brutal civil war in France into her London home. He’s jobless, has broken into the country illegally, and is named “Mohammed.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Barber had lived alone since the death of her husband David, an academic, in 2003 and opening her home to a stranger was an act of singular generosity.
Yet, perversely, it also turned out to be deeply ill-fated. For the ‘shy, but very polite’ young migrant who moved into her spare room was, in fact, a Walter Mitty figure whom she accuses of taking advantage of her hospitality, lying about his circumstances, and fabricating much of his life story.
Nostradamus may have predicted the Great Fire of London, but he certainly couldn’t have predicted this.
Barber also commented that her house guest filled the kitchen with sacks of lentils, drums of cooking oil and other items of African food ‘so it looks like a catering tent for a rock festival’.
He broke the tumble dryer and ‘never cleaned the washing machine’. Petty domestic tension increased considerably when she caught him increasing the temperature on her thermostat, despite being repeatedly told not to.
‘This is my house, I keep it at my preferred temperature, and if you don’t like it, you can f*** off back to Calais,’ she said.
Well said, sister!
This Frenchman was clearly out of line by neglecting his chores and ensuring that the temperature always resembled that of France, his homeland.
This is England. Over here, we say “yes” instead of “oui,” eat Beef Wellington instead of escargots, and don’t care that the Japanese stole the French flag and painted a red dot on it. If this moustache-twirling baguette-muncher doesn’t like it, then he should indeed “fuck off back to Calais.”
Who do these people think they are?
Spending large amounts of time in bed, Mohammed frequently complained of minor illnesses, such as sore throats and colds. Though Barber repeatedly told him to visit the GP, he insisted on going to the local hospital’s casualty department.
‘It annoyed me that he went to A&E more times in the six months he lived with me than I had been in my whole life, and I gave him a lecture about not abusing the NHS,’ she wrote.
Barber goes on to concede: ‘In retrospect, I can see there were loads of warning signs.’ She says she should have listened to her cleaner’s ‘many complaints’ about him, and adds: ‘I should have listened when my daughter told me to be careful.’
On one occasion, Mohammed asked Barber where he could find the nearest park, as he’d been told that London parks were the best place to buy marijuana. She responded by instructing him not to take drugs in her house, a request he repeatedly ignored.
He also went on shopping sprees to expensive areas of London — ‘I now realise,’ Barber says, ‘that his rich family in Sudan must have been funding him.’
‘I am not a refugee!’ he declared [after reading Barber’s newspaper article on him]. ‘My family are very rich! We could buy you up like that! Do you want money? Is that why you write this filth? I get you money. You First World women are all the same: you are heartless. You have no feelings. You Christians are all racists.’
With that, he moved out of the house. Candidly, Barber says: ‘I felt such a fool.’
Well, at least that drama is over.
Hopefully, Mrs. Barber has learned her lesson and won’t–
A year after this unfortunate experience with Mohammed, Barber (who says with admirable modesty: ‘I am not naturally hospitable and I am not altruistic’) declares she has recovered sufficiently to take in another refugee.
The most perceptive of interviewers who has won countless awards for her journalism, Lynn Barber will undoubtedly make sure her next migrant house guest is much more deserving of her undoubted kindness and generosity.
Ah, of course.
These White women really love refugees, don’t they?
Never mind, I’m sure that the next refugee Mrs. Barber brings into her home will be different. It’s simply a fact that all bushels contain a bad apple, and that some unlucky people reach for the bad apple first.
I’m confident that her next report will be much more positive.
It can happen to the best of us.