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Richard MacLeod was born in Lebanon.

He grew up in Saudi Arabia and spent a couple of years in the United States.

In 2001 he was living in Beirut but life was not easy. Up until 1998 he had been part of the political system and when it changed he was harassed by the new regime.

Richard had to leave Beirut

One day he received a phone call while driving to a restaurant. His life was in danger.

He returned home immediately and packed his files into boxes. Then he ran.

Safer place

Forced to leave his family and friends behind Richard arrived in Newcastle upon Tyne as an asylum seeker - although he says he really didn't want to have to claim asylum.

He was worried about being instantly stereotyped, having seen the often negative portrayal of asylum seekers in the media.

Richard has made a short film about his journey and experiences as an asylum seeker in Newcastle.

The documentary was part of a community video project run by Northumbria University in 2008 and supported by the Higher Education Funding Council.

Media Production students and graduates from the university worked with members of Newcastle's ethnic minority community to help them put their lives on film.

Richard decided to focus the film on his emotions and feelings about leaving Lebanon to counteract negative images of asylum seekers.Μύ

He wanted to show that asylum seekers are humans like everyone else so people "stop being afraid".

"You don't choose to become an asylum seeker," he says in the film. "You don't choose your destination.

"As an asylum seeker I've lost everything. I've lost my status, my humanity, I've lost my family, my dream. I just wanted to be in a safer place."

Richard says his suit is like a shield

In one shot Richard stands perfectly still in the middle of Northumberland Street in Newcastle, shoppers milling all around him.

He's wearing a suit - a symbolic outfit for him.

"[The suit] was my shield to a certain extent. It's a prestigious thing back home but it was a shield here," he explained.

"When I have my suit on people don't ask if I'm an asylum seeker. They don't question my good English. They actually start conversations with me and they're interested to know my story and where I come from."

Stuck between two worlds

Seven years since leaving Lebanon, Richard still feels a bit like he's in limbo.

Feelings of "home" are hard to define. You know, inside, when you're home, but what is it that makes us feel like that?

"I'm stuck between two worlds," he says at one point. "...It's a very funny thing when exile became home and home becomes a distant memory. How do you deal [with it] when the exile becomes home?"

Seeing him with his wife, Sue, at their house in Newcastle it seems that home for Richard is now more of a feeling than a physical place.

"I feel home with Sue," he said. "It's not the walls it's actually being with her.

"It feels home with my wife, it feels home with my daughter, but to be honest I have accustomed myself to feel this way - to go for a smaller version if you like of home.

Warkworth Castle features in the film

"I know from readings that you have to finish the circle, you have to go back to where you left to actually just let go finally. I can't go now so I won't be able to let go, but I'm preparing myself that eventually I will and then let go and this will be home."

He still calls friends and relatives in Lebanon all the time and craves things like Lebanese food and music which he says are part of his "DNA settings" and make him feel comfortable.

Emotional process

Richard was reluctant to put his story at the centre of the film, because he knew it would stir up difficult emotions, but other people on the project encouraged him to do it.

"I still have a certain block on the whole experience if you like. Sometimes I feel like I'm a lab rat who just keeps running because I don't want to look back. That film just made me stop and I had to look back.

"I've done it and I'm not sorry that I've done it, but it wasn't easy."

Tynemouth is an important place for him

"Richard had to relive everything that he'd been through which hadn't done really for four or five [years]," Sue added. "Those things had to come back and be made real again when they were sort of a buried memory."

It was a painful process but Richard is pleased with the finished film, which also used photographs he had taken around the North East over the years.

Now he's hoping to get funding to work on a longer film about asylum seekers in Newcastle, working with some of the same team and involving more viewpoints, fromΜύ both asylum seekers and local people.

Watch Richard's film and find out more about the others made for the Community Video Project on its website: