Two Blankets, Three Sheets by Rodaan Al Galidi (World Editions)

According to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commision for Refugees), at the end of 2022, there are currently over 108.4 forcibly displaced people worldwide. 62.5 million are internally displaced, 35.3 million are refugees, 5.4 million are asylum seekers, and another 5.2 million people are in need of international protection. (www.unhc.org)

Rodaan Al Galidi was an asylum seeker. He left his family, his job, his native homeland of Iraq to escape joing Saddam Hussein’s army. He is currently a Dutch national. Two Blankets, Three Sheets is a fictional account of a man named Samir Karim whose story is based on Galadi’s life. Galadi states in his introduction that “the narrator is not me”. In this way, he says he “can still be the writer and not the main character”. 

Galadi introduces us to a world that most of us have probably never heard of or experienced. He spent nine years in an ASC (Asylum Seeker’s Center) and before he made the decision to apply for asylum in a European country, he had spent seven years wandering the world. Before buying his way to Amsterdam he spent three years in Southeast Asia just scraping by. His alter-ego, Samir Karim then takes up the story. 

Samir describes his three years of living in Southeast Asia “was like searching through the wall of your cell only to find another cell on the other side, and then scratching through the next wall and ending up in yet another cell”. He would save up enough money to buy nearly expired passports of various different nationalities. He was Dutch, German, Czech, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, British, French, and Swedish. 

He was on his second Dutch passport and wanted to end his odyssey without official documents. He was living in Thailand at that time. He also bought a fake driver’s license with the same name as the passport for fifty dollars on Soi San Road, and then bought a Dutch student I.D. for another fifty dollars. He had decided to request asylum once he reached Amsterdam. 

I think it would be hard for any one of us to imagine what it must have been like to cross borders using a forged passport. Samir Karim’s biggest fear (and Galidi’s as well) was being deported back to his home country of Iraq. With Saddam Hussein as president, he would surely be punished severely or worse yet, put to death, for not joining Saddam’s army. 

Once Samir reached Amsterdam, the first thing he did was tear up his fake passport and anything that would leave a trail to show where he came from. He still did not know how he was going to get out of the airport. He looked so anxious that when a policeman approached him and asked if he needed any assistance, to which he replied, “I am Iraqi”.

Thus, starts his nine year odyssey of living in the ASC. His story is not only Galidi’s story, it is also the story of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people also seeking asylum away from their home country. In Samir Karim’s words, Galidi is able to convey how the asylum seeker system works and how long the process can take. For some people, it may take a few weeks or months, for others, it may take years. 

It is much to the reader’s relief when Samir Karim receives his residence permit to live in the Netherlands. We can only imagine what went through Galidi’s mind when he was living in the asylum center. Galidi writes with humor and passion as he explains his plight and of those others he came in contact with during his confinement. 

I think it would be difficult for anyone to imagine what Galidi or the hundreds of thousands of other asylum seekers go through. All they want is to live a normal life. One safe from persecution and war. This book sheds light on an ongoing problem that most of the world may not even be aware of. 

Galidi also states in his introduction, “This book is fiction for the reader who cannot believe it. But for anyone open to it, it is nonfiction. Or no: let this book be nonfiction, so that the world I had to inhabit for all those years will be transformed from fiction into fact”. ~Ernie Hoyt