I met Sophia and Mariam a couple years ago in a cramped second-floor apartment in a run-down neighbourhood in East Baltimore, where a local NGO had placed the two women together with their children. As a newly christened volunteer for the local refugee agency, I’d been handed a pile of folders about each refugee family in need of help. Instructed to pick one, I’d chosen them. We talked through a local translator, patched in through a cell phone. Mariam, who had fled Eritrea on foot, made it to a refugee camp just over the border in Ethiopia. Freed from the persecution of Eritrea’s military regime, she spent most of her time hanging around, somewhat aimlessly. She is lithe, playful, and quick to smile. But living in a refugee camp had excluded her from the productive activities of society. She did not go to school. She did not have a job. Her main memory of her time in the camp, when I ask her, is of playing pickup games of soccer.
Sophia’s track out of Eritrea curled toward the north. From Sudan she made her way to Cairo, where she scraped by along the margins. The small cross she wore dangling on a chain around her neck marked her as an outsider, excluding her from mainstream Egyptian society. She took a job cleaning hotel rooms. But the heavy lifting damaged her back, and the botched surgery that followed left her incapacitated and unable to work. In yet another stroke of bad luck, doctors diagnosed her little boy, fathered by a fellow Eritrean on the run whom she’d met in Cairo, with a cancerous tumor in his left kidney.
This story is from the August 2020 edition of GQ India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 2020 edition of GQ India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Finally, Women Are Breaking Up One of Luxury's Stuffiest Boys' Clubs
Dimepiece founder Brynn Wallner hosts a round table of leaders in the watch world to unpack the ascendant power of the female collector.
Can The Saudis Buy Soccerr?
Saudi Arabia is spending an unfathomable fortune to lure the biggest stars of global football (Ronaldo! Benzema! Neymar!) to its upstart league. So GQ ventured to the kingdom to discover what the gambit represents. Is this the future of the world's most popular sport? The vanguard of sportswashing? Or something way bigger?
CRACKING THE PERO CODE
Delhi-based label Péro is available in over 350 stores across the world. Shweta Shiware meets the reclusive founder and creative mastermind Aneeth Arora, arguably the Indian fashion industry's best storyteller.
Captain Mbappé
We met him as a teenage prodigy. Now, with his PSG teammates Messi and Neymar gone, and a new job as French national team captain, Kylian Mbappé is reckoning with the responsibilities and privileges that come with being the man.
The Full Ricky
Twenty-five years after becoming one of the most staggeringly famous men on the planet, a wiser, more assured Ricky Martin is taking another run at being a star. While also being himself, this time.
THE BOND
What does it mean to be a parent in this day and age? In GQ's annual series dedicated to fatherhood, we take a peek at the intimate relationships that some of the coolest dads share with their kids.
THE RATIONAL ACTOR
With a stream of critical and commercial successes under his belt, Vicky Kaushal is buoyant about what lies ahead in terms of work. Yet it is in his personal life that he has experienced the most transformation.
Standing TALL
Comedian and actor Vir Das speaks to GQ about winning an International Emmy for his Netflix special, codirecting his first movie, and the future of stand-up comedy in India.
Das Holistic
New York's desi rap star Heems's new album re-imagines the diasporic experience not as a site of endless ambivalence, but a place to be whole.
The Return of the Opulent '80s
The all-gold Piaget Polo, Hublot Classic Original, and Rolex GMT were kings during the '80s. Now they're coming back for their crown.