11 ushers quayTV Series

About

They live in an unremarkable apartment building: 11 Usher’s Quay on the River Liffey in Dublin.  

Yet that’s only one of the two things the residents have in common. Because they come from Albania and Zimbabwe, from Nigeria and Syria, from Afghanistan and the Congo. They are Pashtuns and Kurds, they are Luba and Yoruba. They are Shia and Sunni Muslim, they are Christian and Jewish, they practice Ancestral Worship. In addition to different levels of English, they speak Swahili and French, Urdu and Hindi, Kurmanji and Albanian. They are single and married, they are parents and they are children, they are straight and gay, they are black and they are white and all shades in between. They are impassioned and they are desperate. They are hopeful and they are hopeless.  

But despite their myriad differences in language, culture, religion and customs, there is one thing they have in common: they have all speak the language of shared pain. And, having fled their homes, these refugees from domestic abuse, terrorism, sex trafficking and religious persecution find themselves trapped in the Irish government-mandated program of Direct Provision. Proponents of DP might say that it provides housing and essentials for asylum seekers in what might otherwise be a harsh new land.  Yet human rights organizations characterize the program as inhuman and degrading.  

But whatever the lens through which it is viewed, Direct Provision is a purgatory that all who seek refuge must live in - for anywhere from a few months to many years - while their immigration status makes its way through overloaded government channels. And during the time that these refugees live in this – and other – DP buildings, they are prevented from working, they are denied basic rights of citizens, they are eternally strangers in a strange land.  

Waiting for the courts to review their cases, determining the rest of their lives’ journeys. Will they be allowed to stay in this, their dream country, or will they be sent home to the lands and the lives from which they fled? For now – and none of them know how long “now” might be -  they only have each other. Residents of a building that, cut off from the neighborhood in which it sits, must become its own neighborhood.   

They are sex-trafficking victim Saemira and her infant son from Albania. Prosper and his Zimbabwean farmer grandfather Ngoni. Teenaged Muslim Nigerian footballer Olumide and South African HIV-positive Jabulani, who has left his wife back home. Kurdish political refugees from Syria, Amira and her two young children. Daanesh and Yagana, Pashtuns fleeing the war in Afghanistan that has already killed their three sons. Pakistani Muslim Bisma protecting her gay brother Ibrahim. Rape victim Veronique and her teenaged daughter, brought from the D.R. Congo by her brave cousin Andre.  

And much of their fate lies in the hands of Nessa Whelan.