The Storyteller of Casablanca

by Fiona Valpy

Can we really imagine how it must feel to be so afraid of what lies behind you that you are prepared to throw yourself headlong into an unknown that is going to be filled with danger and loneliness? Leaving behind your family and your culture and seeking something better in a land where you are not welcome and you are not understood?

‘We like to think we learned lessons from those wars and yet history continues to repeat itself, year after year.’

‘But if we leave out some of the important bits of the truth – or choose to ignore them – then surely we are living a lie? And that is no way to live at all, is it?’

even when the tangled web of life and love and loss and grief becomes too much to bear, it’s still possible to keep on living.