A New Year's thought...

I'm in Australia. It's New Years Eve here already and the world is burning. Or at least, parts of Australia are.

I ought to be in Woodford, at the Festival. I'm not. I'm in Melbourne, convalescing from flu and bronchitis. The last time I got sick like this was three years ago, landing in Queensland, on my way to the Woodford Festival. Which I also missed, because I was ill. I'm starting to suspect it's actually long haul plane flights I'm not good at.

I've written so many New Year's wishes here...

(This is a link to a New Year's Post from the last time I was sick in Australia, where I collected them all together: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/12/another-year.html.)

I think today I'll put something else up instead. Here in Australia bush fires are forcing people into the sea, forcing towns to be evacuated. There's loss of life, human and animal. Loss of property, too.

Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere, it's winter. And it's going to be a hard winter for a lot of people.

A month ago I wrote a poem.

This poem began with asking people on Twitter what “warmth” made them think of. Thousands of people replied. I was planning to write a story, but a poem felt a better way of including all the different thoughts and points of view and memories.

And I read their responses, and then wrote this:

What You Need to be Warm.

A baked potato of a winter's night to wrap your hands around or burn your mouth.

A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers. Or your grandmother's.

A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow

or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.

The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed, burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,

the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, and you think

just one more minute snuggled here before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: they warm us in the memory.

We travel to an inside from the outside. To the orange flames of the fireplace

or the wood burning in the stove. Breath-ice on the inside of windows,

to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.

Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. A tumble of dogs,

a kindle of cats and kittens. Come inside. You're safe now.

A kettle boiling at the stove. Your family or friends are there. They smile.

Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, soup or toddy, what you know you need.

A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug

and start to thaw. While outside, for some of us, the journey began

as we walked away from our grandparents' houses

away from the places we knew as children: changes of state and state and state,

to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,

while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,

to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, to say

we have the right to be here, to make us warm in the coldest season.

You have the right to be here.

I wrote it for UNHCR, who had it made into a scarf. We did it to raise awareness of the plight of Syrian refugees who are facing winter and need help. For UNHCR's Winter Emergency Appeal. There's a website: https://www.unhcr.org/belowzero/  Go and look.

It's a warm scarf, too.

And I hope in the year to come you won't burn. And I hope you won't freeze. I hope you and your family will be safe, and walk freely in the world and that the place you live, if you have one, will  be there when you get back. I hope that, for all of us, in the year ahead, kindness will prevail and that gentleness and humanity and forgiveness will be there for us if and when we need them.

And may your New Year be happy, and may you be happy in it.

I hope you make something in the year to come you've always dreamed of making, and didn't know if you could or not. But I bet you can. And I'm sure you will.

Labels: A Poem, A scarf, Happy New Year, Refugees, UNHCR

A huge thank you

The Humble Bundle finished yesterday, at a little over $394,000, from almost 25,000 people. 

Some of that goes to Refugees. Some to the CBLDF. Some goes to the Publisher, which in this case is basically me, and all my share goes straight to the Gaiman Foundation (and my agent, who dealt with all the contracts, is passing on her share to the Gaiman Foundation too). Some of the artists of the work asked for their share to go to specific charities, most wanted it tossed into the general charity pot, and two are using their share of the money to pay rent and buy food.

The last time we did the Humble Bundle, 15 months ago, it raised $633,000. Which means that old and out of print books, comics, and things I was embarrassed to let out in public, have now raised over $1,000,000. I wish I could go back in time and tell the 23-year old me writing his Duran Duran book that it would be the best thing he could be doing with his time. 

Thank you to everybody who bought it. Thank you to everybody who helped, or who agreed to have their work go into the bundle, to Charles from the CBLDF and Cat from Neverwear who worked their bottoms off to assemble everything and make it work, and to the people at Humble Bundle for having a wonderful platform that does good.

You can donate directly to UNHCR through this link:

https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/neil-gaiman/

Donate, or become a member of the CBLDF through this link:

http://cbldf.org/contribute/donate/

I'm going to be mostly offline for the next week, in places where there isn't a lot of internet. I hope I get a lot of writing done.

Happy holidays. Here's a link to a piece I wrote 8 years ago about being a small Jewish boy who wanted a Christmas tree. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.html

Labels: CBLDF, Humble Bundle, UNHCR, whew

Where do you run?

I just woke from a dream in which my film agent (the redoubtable Jon Levin) was upset because a movie company had bought the rights to the 1972 Steptoe and Son movie and were convinced that by redubbing it to change the plot and adding special effects, they would have a science fiction blockbuster on their hands, and he was calling me in the hopes that I could persuade them that it was a bad idea. I'm not quite sure what I am trying to tell myself about Hollywood here.

I'm on my own for a few days to write, while Amanda and Ash are in Havana. Amanda will be doing a gig there, and Ash will be squeezing people's noses and continuing to learn how to walk. His hair is getting darker as my hair gets greyer.

Reading about what's happening in Aleppo is soul-numbing. I look at Ash and wonder what I'd do if the normal world I lived in became a war zone, how I'd cope, and the only thing I'm certain of is that I'd want to get him somewhere safe.

I supported refugees before Ash came along, but having him here makes it feel so real and immediate: I remember the people I saw entering the camps in Jordan who had carried their own babies and small children for hundreds of miles to get them to safety.

The Humble Bundle has four days left to go. You get over a thousand pages of ridiculously rare stuff by me, comics and books and more. There's new audio and video material, even posters for those who got it before (and you can gift a bundle to a friend or enemy for the holidays). The money goes to two charities -- to the CBLDF, and to refugees, and you can adjust the slider however you wish on who gets what. Please support it, and spread the word on social media.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/neil-gaiman-book-bundle is the link.

And https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/neil-gaiman/ is a direct page with a video from me in the camps, and ways to donate. Also, especially in these dark times, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/.

...

I drove up the coast yesterday and listened to the BBC production of STARDUST. I think it's my favourite adaptation of any of my books or stories. It's broadcast in two parts, tomorrow and Sunday, and you can hear it over the internet anywhere in the world for a month after broadcast free, because the BBC is still a wonderful thing. There's a page of Stardust clips, art and other goodies for you here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xs1fd

And one more Ash photo, taken by Amanda on a chilly beach a few days ago, because I miss him.

Labels: Ash, baby photo, Dreams, Hollywood, Humble Bundle, jon levin, UNHCR

How to help your family and save lives.

It's very safe here: we're in Tennessee, in a perfect little house we are borrowing from a midwife who has gone out west to her son's wedding. We are cooking, eating,  catching up on our sleep. Amanda's due in a week and her Nesting Instinct seems to be manifesting chiefly in trying to clean out her email inbox. She's also cleaning, washing and folding baby clothes and clean towels. I'm writing a lot, enjoying the lack of cell-phone connection, and the lack of internet connection, and getting things written without distraction. (I wrapped the first draft of a script on Thursday, wrote a preface to SANDMAN:OVERTURE on Friday.) We've felt like a couple for a long time. We're starting to feel like a family.

And the safety feels very fragile, and like something to be treasured.

There's a photo I'm not going to post. You've probably seen it already: it shows Aylan Kurdi, a three year old Syrian refugee, dead on a beach in Turkey after his family tried to get to Greece. It made me cry, but I know I'm overly sensitive to bad things happening to small children right now. I'm reacting as if he's family.

In May of last year I was in a refugee camp in Jordan. I was talking to a 26 year old woman who had miscarried her babies in Syria when the bombs started falling. She had made it out of Syria, but her husband had left her for another woman he hoped would give him babies. We spoke to women eight months' pregnant who had just walked through the desert for days, past the dead and dismembered bodies of people fleeing the war, like themselves, who had been betrayed by the smugglers who had promised them a way to freedom.

I gained a new appreciation for the civilisation I usually take for granted. The idea that you could wake in the morning to a world in which nobody was trying to hurt you or kill you, in which there would be food for your children and a safe place for your baby to be born became something unusual.

I wrote about my time in the Syrian refugee camps here, in the Guardian. (You can read it here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/many-ways-die-syria-neil-gaiman-refugee-camp-syria and you should, if you have time. I'll be here when you get back. And here are some photos from my time there: http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/may/21/neil-gaiman-syria-refugees-jordan-in-pictures)

Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon have, between them, taken in millions of Syrian refugees. People who fled, as you or I would flee, when remaining in the places they loved was no longer possible or safe.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has made a plea to Europe that you should read (and insist that whoever represents you also read)  at http://www.unhcr.org/55e9459f6.html

The only ones who benefit from the lack of a common European response are the smugglers and traffickers who are making profit from people's desperation to reach safety. More effective international cooperation is required to crack down on smugglers, including those operating inside the EU, but in ways that allow for the victims to be protected. But none of these efforts will be effective without opening up more opportunities for people to come legally to Europe and find safety upon arrival. Thousands of refugee parents are risking the lives of their children on unsafe smuggling boats primarily because they have no other choice. 

The UN Refugees Agency wrote about words, and how they matter. In this case, the word migrants and refugees: they don't mean the same thing, and have very different meanings in terms of what a government's obligations are to them.  http://www.unhcr.org/55df0e556.html

 One of the most fundamental principles laid down in international law is that refugees should not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom would be under threat...

Politics has a way of intervening in such debates. Conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before. We need to treat all human beings with respect and dignity. We need to ensure that the human rights of migrants are respected. At the same time, we also need to provide an appropriate legal response for refugees, because of their particular predicament.

It's worth making sure that people are using the right words. A lot of the time they don't realise there's a difference between the two things, or that refugees have real rights -- the rights you would want, if you were forced to leave home.

A lot of people have been asking me about ways that we as individuals can change things for the better for refugees: there's an excellent article in the Independent about practical things you can do to help or make a difference.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is feeding and housing and housing and helping literally millions of refugees around the world, always with the eventual goal of getting them safely home one day. Their funding comes from governments and private individuals all over the world. But this crisis has stretched them thin. You can help.

Donate to them at http://rfg.ee/RN3uy​ -- and please, share the donation link:

With your support, UNHCR will provide assistance such as:

• Deliver rescue kits containing a thermal blanket, towel, water, high nutrient energy bar, dry clothes and shoes, to every survivor;

• Set up reception centres where refugees can be registered and receive vital medical care;

• Provide temporary emergency shelter to especially vulnerable refugees;

• Help children travelling alone by providing specialist support and care.

As I said on this blog when I came back from visiting the camps:

I came away from Jordan ashamed to be part of a race that treats its members so very badly, and simultaneously proud to be part of the same human race as it does its best to help the people who are hurt, who need refuge, safety and dignity. We are all part of a huge family, the family of humanity, and we look after our family.  

(I'd love it you would spread this post around, and spread the links inside it. People who know that I'm involved in Refugee issues have been asking me about places to donate and what to do and what to read, so I put this together for them, and now, for you. http://rfg.ee/RN3uy​ was the donation link.)

Labels: Europe, Jordan, photos I won't post, Refugees, safety, Syria, UNHCR

Why I am Smiling In This Picture

One of the reasons I'm smiling so widely in this picture is I'd just been talking to the people in Azraq camp who run the child friendly space it was taken in. They were mostly from UNICEF.

They had explained that when the kids arrived in the camp, only the previous week, they didn't talk or make noise. They were subdued. When they drew pictures, the pictures were of explosions, of severed body parts, of weapons and dead people.

The camp had only been open two weeks. The kids I saw and spoke to were kids – noisy, happy, curious, hilarious, and they showed us their drawings, of butterflies and children and mountains and animals and hearts.

That's what I'm smiling about. That room full of noisy kids was the best place in the world.

I spoke to some of these children, who told me about their lives in Syria during the troubles, about their escape (“there were rocks in the desert, and we had to turn on the headlights to see, but when they turned on the headlights of the car people would shoot at us, and my parents were frightened, but I wasn't...”). For some of them it had been three years since they last went to school.

I made the mistake of reading some of the comments in the Guardian article, and on Twitter, who seemed convinced that me talking about the kids in the camps was a sentimental attempt to take their attention from the real business at hand, which was supporting whichever side in the conflict you already supported loudly and vocally. Obviously, a political crisis that's bad enough to produce refugees is only going to be sorted out politically. But pretending that people hurt, displaced and fleeing are just a vague sort of irritant, that lives wasted or destroyed don't matter, in order to prove your ideological point, whatever it happens to be, is, to my mind, both lazy and foolish and very, very wrong.

(The Guardian article is at http://rfg.ee/x6Kon and the pictures and some extra material at http://rfg.ee/x6Kef)

Labels: Azraq Camp, Refugees, Syria, UNHCR

Important. Please read this now.

I haven't blogged for a while. I suspect that's partly because I'm back on Twitter, and I seem either to blog or to tweet, and partly because I've been exhausted. Tweeting time comes out of dead time, usually – time in taxis, or waiting in corridors. Blogging time usually comes out of sleeping time.

I should be writing, now, writing things people are waiting for. But I need to blog as well...

It's foggy where I am today, and I can't tell where the sky ends and the sea begins. In a few days I go to Norway, to Sweden and to Spain, for a slew of appearances and interviews. Looking over the schedule, I suspect that some of the signings may be hard, as very limited amounts of time are scheduled for them, and immediately afterwards I'm due at the next event or interview or thing.

Last week I was in Jordan, and then landed, still shaken up, and went straight to the British Library, where I talked about Sandman and Art and Life with Tori Amos, then got up on the stage and read some stories to an audience, then collapsed.

I went to Jordan, as I reported here, for the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, to visit the Syrian Refugee Camps and report on what I found.

Last year I wrote a short film for Georgina Chapman to direct, and we really liked each other, and she said yes when I asked if she'd like to come with me to Jordan. We had both planned to bring our spouses – I had expected that Amanda would be there but that Harvey Weinstein (to whom Georgina is married) would just get too busy, because Harvey is always busy. Instead, Amanda found herself dealing with a perfect storm of things, including health issues and, most importantly, an unfinished book, and could not come, and Harvey was there, showing a side I've not seen in the 20-odd years I've known him.

No Amanda made the Jordan trip easier, as I didn't have any attention on anyone else at any time I was in the camps, and much harder, as I really would have given the earth for a hand to squeeze at some points in the camps, or for someone to hold.

I would write about the Jordan trip here, but I wrote what would have been my blog already.

This is the link to the main article, which I wrote for the Guardian.

This is the link to the Guardianpictures – I wrote captions to the images, or UNHCR took them from my end of day video diary.

Here's a Buzzfeed article, following refugees into Azraq camp. http://www.buzzfeed.com/richardhjames/neil-gaiman-in-jordan (Yes, the headline is clickbait, but it's a good article nonetheless.)

And here's an interview I did with the BBC World Service, while I was out there. If I sound a little shaken, I am.

Everything is going to be collected at http://donate.unhcr.org/neilandgeorgina, which also gives information on the project and also on how to donate to UNHCR.

I came away from Jordan ashamed to be part of a race that treats its members so very badly, and simultaneously proud to be part of the same human race as it does its best to help the people who are hurt, who need refuge, safety and dignity. We are all part of a huge family, the family of humanity, and we look after our family.

Please share the links, especially the link to the main Guardian article at http://rfg.ee/x6Kon. Share them aggressively. Make people read them. It's important, and I'll be grateful. Thank you.

Labels: Jordan, Refugees, UNHCR

In Jordan

I landed in Jordan late this afternoon. I'm in my hotel right now. I'll be up for a 6 am pick-up -- I need to be at the camp for bread distribution, first thing in the morning.

Since the start of the Syrian warfare, over two and a half million people have fled the fighting and gone somewhere else. Half a million of them have come to Jordan. The population of Jordan is a little over 6 million. By percentage of the population, that's what would happen if twenty five million people arrived as refugees in the US over a couple of years, or five million people sought refuge in the UK. It means lots and lots of people here have Syrian families living with them. It means that there are refugee camps -- small cities built in the desert, all temporary structures.

I was invited to come out here by UNHCR - the United Nations Refugee Agency - with the purpose of making one or more short films, telling stories and writing articles that draw attention to what's going on in refugee camps.

They've created a web page at http://donate.unhcr.org/neilgaiman so that people can follow on and see what's happening.

I packed for myself on this trip and, for various reasons, did a terrible job of packing and remembering what to bring. And every time I start getting grumpy for not having something, it occurs to me that the people I'm seeing tomorrow brought with only what they could carry for often hundreds of miles - and that included carrying children...

Labels: Jordan, Numbers, Refugees, UNHCR