Refugee women's personal photos on show

Five women who resettled as refugees to the UK share largely unseen, personal photos revealing lives before war and conflict and how they coped during journeys of upheaval and forced displacement.

The women carried their photographic collections across borders, stored loosely in holdalls, kept pristine in decorative photo albums or held on digital devices.

Here are a selection of the pictures on show.

Arafa left Sudan in the early 1990s to follow her husband, and father of her son and daughter, to Libya. They lived there as a family and had four more children together. He is now missing, presumed dead.

When the 2011 uprising erupted in Libya, she fled as a single mother with six children to the Salloum refugee camp, in Egypt, where, for four years, they lived in a tent.

Before leaving Libya, Arafa photographed her favourite places, knowing she would never see them again.

“This is my personal bag,” she says, “my special personal bag. I kept every beautiful moment inside the bag, my photos, 20-year-old letters from my best friends and from my childhood. This is like the proof of my life.”

“I see that photographs are very important and I respect photographers.

“I say that the moment you take this photo cannot come again. So capturing the photo keeps the memory alive forever.”

Arafa photographed the water being delivered to the camp

“I made sure not to show my children that I weakened or got defeated by what we were going through,” she says.

“And I made sure to encourage them not to be defeated as well, to stay strong, to remain strong.

“Sometimes at night, when they went to sleep, I would just pray to myself. I would cry – but I would never let them know. I did the impossible, to keep them away from feeling defeated, to keep them occupied.”

Arafa’s family was one of the last in the camp before it was dismantled.

“Without humans, it is like a place with no soul,” she says. “It is just like the war.”

Arafa’s daughter was aged four when they left for Libya.

“I had been in the camp two years and I started work as a nurse in the pharmacy and clinic because I wanted to overcome the depression I was going through,” Gaida says.

“That depression was very bad, too deep, and took me to a very hard place. I thought I would lose my mind.

“I thought, ‘I need to stand for myself.’ I thought, ‘What can I do? Maybe I have ability and skills I can use to help others.’

“I asked the doctor at the clinic and [said] that I want to learn first aid so I can help others in the camp.

“Towards the end of the fours years there, I became the main medical provider in the camp.”

Gaida keeps a box of photos, from before, during and in resettlement, including some recording her role as a visiting refugee ambassador at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

“I didn’t appear from nothing,” she says. “We carried our heritage with us.”

Faisa calls herself a “twice refugee”.

She first fled war in Somalia in 1992, as a young girl, and again in 2006 to Syria, as a single mother with four children, where she built a new life in a country they loved and made home.

In 2011, when war broke out in Syria and bombs began raining down on her street, the family fled again, moving to a number of refugee camps within the country.

In one of them, Faisa’s daughter Sabrina took this picture.

“When it was Mother’s Day in the camp, all the women, mothers and children were in the big hall,” Faisa says.

“It’s the war – but sometimes we dance.

“We are dancing because we don’t want stress.

“It was war – but we don’t stop.

Faisa is photographed wearing the dirac, one of the traditional Somali dresses she has worn throughout her life and journey, determinedly keeping her culture alive in resettlement.

Nisreen was the driving force behind her family’s decision to flee the Syrian civil war, in 2011.

She used her energy and determination to keep them out of danger and seek medical treatment for her son, Abudi, who has cerebral atrophy and has had more than 16 operations.

The family fled to Lebanon and Egypt, where Nisreen gave birth to their third child.

Five years later, in 2018, Nisreen’s husband, Nadal, and their three children were resettled to the UK.

Nisreen rescued numerous photo albums from Syria.

“After the war began in Syria, I collected all the photos in one bag,” she says. “So when the war started, the first thing I carried after my children was our photo bag and our memories. They were more important than my clothes and everything else.

“My pictures will live with my children – and when they grow up they will see the pictures of them, and their families and their children.”

One of the photos in the album shows Nisreen in Syria on her wedding day.

Another is the view from the rooftops of their former home in Syria.

When Abudi was born, doctors told Nisreen he would not survive.

“I didn’t believe him,” she says.

“He wanted to live and I saw that in him. So I tried my best to make him survive – and still, he loves life.

“I always try to record any moment in my life. Every minute of my life I would like to keep as a memory.

“I thought one day he needs to see all this. Even photos of the hard times will remind me where we have been and where we are now.”

Shuke, an elder of the Borana people of Ethiopia, fled conflict in 1998 and sought refuge in the Kakuma refugee camp, in north-western Kenya, where she remained for 13 years, marrying Haji and giving birth to their daughter, Biftu.

But when she became severely ill, Shuke and her family were resettled to the UK.

One photograph shows her as a young mother and businesswoman running her own village shop in Ethiopia.

“I am selling clothes, perfume, food like pasta macaroni. It is a big shop,” Shuke says.

“Why do I put this picture for my story?

“When I die, my family will see these photos, after 10 years, 50 years…”

Shuke and Haji were photographed in their house in the camp.

Both trained as community health workers and Shuke became a traditional-birth attendant supervisor for the International Rescue Committee.

“I am working every month, house to house, door to door, in the camp,” she says.

“Thirteen years, I did not sit. At night, I did not sleep. It was a very hard life in the camp – but I helped many people, old people and children.

“I give immunisations, vitamins, antenatal care.”

In resettlement, Shuke keeps alive her traditional Oromo culture and give talks about the importance of the siinque (peace stick), an ancient symbol used by Oromo women to protect their rights. Biftu took this picture.

Tomorrow, an exhibition and exploration of ownership of representation and memory of forced displacement, can be seen at The Ferens, Hull, until 27 September, an IWM (Imperial War Museum) 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund commission, in partnership with Freedom Festival Arts Trust.