Through my eyes

March has marched on and the heat has made us realise just how important staying hydrated is, not just for our bodies but also for our overall good health.

He was an Iranian refugee who landed up in England with his family in 1981, the same year my family and I escaped Poland.

Like me, Sadri, whose full name is Sadredin Mirghavamedin, was a refugee and like me he was missing his roots. Our lives had been bundled and buried inside a box that was packed when our lives were tom apart from everything familiar. Everything that meant anything to us suddenly no longer existed. We were both just 11 years old.

Sadri was born to a blue blood Persian family whose ancestry enjoyed decades of political, religious and fundamental global influence. His mother is a jewellery designer, his father, a businessman, wealthy but distant. Sadri achieved all the trappings of success and even had an international career in fashion, working with corporate brands. He once told me that he would only wear Hugo Boss and his cupboards were filled with designer suits, I believed him.

He was private school educated, polished and refined and even though I only met him when he wore the same 70 baht flip-flops and tee shirts and shorts every day, he never felt the need to change, he was always super suave.
When we met Sadri has been living in Thailand, on the little island of Koh Samet, it was December 2004. Tomas and I and our two young boys had just survived the biggest tsunami disaster in Myanmar, and like thousands of people we were looking for shelter from the devastation. Sadri and his girlfriend Su had just opened a little pizzeria on the island, called Saphron. They were living a simple life and living the dream with their cool dog Ruby.
It was obvious to everyone what a big heart Sadri had. After speaking to my children and learning of our ordeal, he closed down the restaurant for 10 days and said to my boys: "And now we will have a proper Thai holiday."
And he was true to his word. We rented scooters and scooted around the island during the day and cooked in his massive pizza oven, talked about Iran and it's astonishing culture. Sadri taught my boys to make pizza from scratch, a skill they are proud of to this day.

For ten days we played, holidayed, and healed. Then we left for home, however our friendship continued for over 18 years always hoping and planning for a reunion.
Anyway during those ten days Sadri showed so much interest in our Newspaper Publishing formula that I felt obliged to show him how he too could publish his own newspaper on Koh Samet, called Samet Times. He was really sharp and got very far with his publication, having brands like Moet and Royce Rolls advertising in his pages.

But that did not last long, Sadri uncovered some strange dealings on the island and being a local newspaper owner investigated the story maybe too deeply and stepped on some very important toes and not long after that, he was literally forced out of Thailand, settling in neighbouring Cambodia.
It was Su who delivered the tragic news last week.
As I write this, Sadri's family is laying him to rest in Phnom Penh.
His broken hearted mother has not come for his send off, Su lamented, "Kasia, she still not believe." Her beloved son is no more.

I wish Sadri knew how amazingly talented he was and how extraordinarily empathic and kind he was to us when our lives were so badly shattered.
Being a refugee comes with a baggage that is sometimes too heavy to bare. Often we feel like we are the outsider, not fitting in to a structured world.
Sadri was a beautiful soul, stuck with refugee status. I fear and pray for a different outcome for all the refugees that are crossing borders. Whether its Ukrainian, Iranian, Syrian Cuban, wherever you come from I wish you may find the peace you are seeking.