"Bombs bombs bombs. Big problem."

In the UK, far-right and fascist mobs are setting fire to hotels housing asylum seekers. They’ve clashed with police and burned cars and buildings.

“This is not protest,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday, adding: “It is organized, violent thuggery and it has no place on our streets, or online.”

“People in this country have a right to be safe and yet, we’ve seen Muslim communities targeted, attacks on mosques, other minority communities singled out, Nazi salutes in the street, attacks on the police, wanton violence alongside racist rhetoric,” Starmer said at Downing Street, according to CNN.

“So no, I won’t shy away from calling it what it is: Far-right thuggery,” he added.

I mean … that reminds me of “Biden is really peeved with Netanyahu” framing.

Don’t set immigrants on fire, please, is not exactly a brave, let’s say Winstonian, defense of people who must be fucking terrified to their core right now.

There are children in those hotels.

Furthermore, a loser incel Nazi is still less scary than Bashar al-Assad, so they’re not going back. They’re there for good. Why make them hate and fear you?

***

Yesterday, I had the loveliest day, the kind of magical coincidence you don’t forget.

I went to a public pool in Sofia, Bulgaria. When I went through the gate I saw three young Arab guys. One of them shouted at me, “Harmanli! Harmanli! You remember?”

Last year, my friend Julie and I had gone to Harmanli, a small, economically gutted town next to the Turkish border, to interview refugees at a large camp.

We’d spoken to this guy and he remembered me. He was Iraqi, and his two friends were from Syria. I gave him a hug and then tried to pay their entry fee ($10 for a whole day at a beautiful pool complex) but they threw their bodies in front of me and my money and demanded to pay for me, even though God only knows how broke they are.

We trotted into the pool complex in high spirits. Within minutes, I had cigarettes and coffee shoved at me, as well as two marriage proposals. “You take me with you, back to New York?” the handsome 22-year-old with eyelashes of improbable length asked.

Sure, why not?

“No no!” A slightly older suitor, no less handsome, said he’d like to ask my mother for my hand in marriage.

Sure, it’s not like I’m busy.

Bachelor number one slyly took my phone and told me, over Google translate, that bachelor number two had a wife and kids in Istanbul.

Boys, boys! Don’t fight over me! 🤭

***

We raced in the pool (they won as they are men 20 years younger than me). We tried to communicate through a chaotic combination of the two Arabic words I know (Shukran! Murhaban!) the three Bulgarian words they know (Dobre, tuk!”), and some small English crossover, aided by Google Translate.

Still, we talked politics, sitting out in the sun. “Trump? Bad!” one of the guys said with a thumbs down sign. “Obama? Good!” “Bush? Bad. Big problem. Big problem.”

Indeed. I wish they worked for CNN.

Two of them temporarily lost their Muslim teachings and had beers. We swam some more. When it was clear that our brief engagements wouldn’t pan out into marriage, they drifted off to flirt with some Ukrainian girls, also refugees from one of the world’s barbaric wars, which I’d stupidly thought humans weren’t doing anymore.

***

“Where’s your family? Can they help you out?” I ask the young guy with the absurd eyelashes, awkwardly handing over my phone for Google translate. “Boom boom boom” he told me, then wrote on my phone that his father, mother, and siblings were all killed in Syria. “I’m all alone.”

***

I tell this anecdote to brag about the fact that young refugees think I’m hot (especially my US passport and NYC residency) and also point out that, pro-open borders, pro-asylum system ideas, sometimes seem like empty clueless lefty virtue signaling.

But, really, these guys are awesome. They’ve been through unfathomable trauma (“Bomb bomb bomb”) and are still so fucking exuberant and happy and open-minded that you definitely want them in your country.

One of my racist Twitter reply guys wrote me, “You REALLY think there’s no difference between a Swede and Syrian and a Somali?”

“Yes. The difference is that Syrians and Somalis have better cuisine,” I sassed.

“Well. That’s the kind of thinking that’ll get you in a Hijab, beaten and treated like chattell.”

Dear reader, you might be surprised to learn that I was not forced into a Hijab or beaten—just innocently flirted and swam with by some refugees.

This is what the Nazi assholes are burning shit over.