As a child refugee, I fell in love with comics – now I write for Marvel

Last summer, I received an email that was the comic creator’s equivalent of a letter from Hogwarts – Marvel Comics wanted me to pitch a story for their huge ‘Edge of Spider-verse’ comic series.

My pitch was eventually approved and I got to co-create the new Spider-UK, a British national Spider-Man who is a young Black Muslim woman, swinging through the streets solving paranormal mysteries.

The previous Spider-UK was Brian Braddock – an English aristocrat – but with this character, I wanted to create an inner-city, working-class hero that showed a different side of the British experience and one where I can share my perspective as a Black British Muslim. It was so much fun to write.

This was all a far cry from where my life began as a child refugee.

My family and I travelled to the UK from Somalia in 1989 to escape the civil war that was raging there. I was only two years old so I don’t remember much about home beyond snapshot images, the confusion and constantly being on the move.

Arriving in the UK in the middle of winter felt like entering another planet. The snow was something I’d only seen in cartoons and the mix of stony, ancient and tall glass new buildings were just as wondrous. A double decker bus blew my toddler mind.

I remember the kids from school being welcoming and a Turkish neighbour who had lent us kitchenware.

It wasn’t a total lovefest though, there were a few cankerous old geezers in our building who made rude comments about the ‘smells’ of my mum’s cooking and white van men who yelled horribly racist slurs at me out their window as they drove off. Fortunately, for me, those incidents were few and far between.

I fell in love with comics before I could read English. I used to borrow TinTin books from the school library, which really helped me learn to read.

I was making my own comics soon after, which boosted my writing skills. I’d conjure elaborate stories where I was a globetrotting adventurer or a knight in a fantasy world besieged by dragons.

Besides the educational benefits, comics also helped me escape a lot of the grim realities of living on a rough council estate. I carried on making comics to the point where I made it my career.

In fact, I recently signed a book deal to write and illustrate a series of books very loosely based on my childhood experiences.

On top of that, in June last year, I was emailed by an editor at Scholastic, who had read a piece that I wrote in The Bookseller about the impact that reading stories had on me as an child refugee in helping me learn English, as well as to help provide escapism and connection. They asked if I would be interested in writing a short story for an anthology about refugees called ‘The Power of Welcome’.

At the time, I had read a bunch of very stereotypical stories about the refugee experience written by non-refugees so I saw this project as my chance to highlight the importance of us telling our own stories. 

In this graphic novel, you will not only read of refugees enduring hardship, but also see how many newly-arrived asylum seekers feel alone and isolated after losing the support networks they once had. It’s not all bad though because a neighbour, classmate, or even a friendly person on the bus might perform an act of kindness and suddenly that refugee is now part of a community.

I had to take a bit of a leap of faith in entrusting my story to be drawn by an illustrator other than myself though.

I was lucky that the artist I collaborated with shared a similar background to me and could imbue the major scenes of my childhood flight to the UK with the serious tragic tension it required – instead of overloading it with a mawkish sentiment.

Getting to be a part of this book was so important to me because it’s a fantastic demonstration of the variety of refugee stories other than the typical illegal boat or truck journeys that we see on the news.

As my story and many others collected in this anthology illustrate, the British public are a lot more big-hearted and welcoming than some would lead you to believe.

Have your say in the comments belowComment Now

Britain has a rich heritage of welcoming migrants and refugees who have all made a massive cultural, social and economic contribution. From Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Mo Farah and Dua Lipa’s parents, to the Windrush generation and all the other immigrants that helped rejuvenate Britain after the second World War.

But most refugees come to the UK and live what a lot of us take for granted – an ordinary life safe from danger.

I think it’s important to share the stories of immigrants in the UK because they enrich our country by contributing fresh perspectives and cuisine.

There is so much to be gained by welcoming others. The biggest lesson of all is that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.

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