The life of an exile can never be made whole

There is a double guilt - not being home, and knowing that the powerful countries you live in cannot be depended on to do the right thing

Iraqi political exiles have been appropriated by both pro- and anti-war camps, as the moment of battle with Iraq moves closer. Tony Blair summons them up in his ever more trembling speeches; Jack Straw does the same with a painful stutter; and those of us on the other side also try to boost our arguments by holding up examples of tormented Iraqis who hate Saddam but do not want bombs and depleted uranium raining down on the innocent.

Both sides claim they have the more accurate version of what these exiles truly feel after long years of watching their country devastated by a murderous dictator and by policies implemented by the "civilised" West, of which they are now inextricably a part. The truth is that these exiles are as divided as the rest of the country, with some feeling Saddam is so evil that civilians may need to be sacrificed for a greater good and others appalled that any true Iraqi living in safety should even contemplate supporting such "collateral damage".

The politics of exile life are always strained and this is only one example of groups around the world who find themselves displaced and living in foreign lands while their own countries and countrymen go through tragic upheavals and cruelties that they can only watch on television screens or learn of from an irreconcilable distance. Our cities are full of them, people who have been in waiting, sometimes till they die, looking wistfully to the places they were forced to vacate. Some of those countries that disgorge refugees have gone from bad to infinitely worse in the interim years; others have experienced changed fortunes which herald hope. In either case, the exile, away somewhere else, inevitably finds it harder than he or she ever imagined to find a meaningful relationship with the homeland.

I often go to places where exiles gather. While politicians and tabloids carry on hysterically demonising asylum seekers, across our cities in sad cafes they sit and wait. They smoke, sip coffee, eat old-home food, talk in repetitive loops, complaining about disobedient children who have become too English and plot wild plots before wearily heading back to bed after another night when it didn't happen. In my early years here, a Scottish friend sent me a consoling ballad that described "the deep unutterable woe, which none save exiles feel".

They may be Yemenis, Kenyans, Iranians, Ugandans, Algerians, Serbs, Croats, Russians, Indonesians, Nigerians and every other sort, but they all suffer from incurable nostalgia, repressed anger which rises like bile, and powerlessness. You see small acts of valour, too, as futile as the tiny blows of a small child trying to bring down a strong adult. In an Iranian cafe I go to, for example, they insist they are "Persian" and that the Shah was the greatest ruler ever. In a Polish centre old exiles (bloody good dancers they are) say they can never trust the formerly communist Poland and that they are still waiting for the real old Poland to emerge. Vietnamese refugees I meet are vehemently anti-Viet Cong and reject the result of that long war. Two say they would fight to win back the country if only America had the guts to go back in. (I hope Bush is not reading this.) At the Colombian cantina, they feel there is no going back because the country and exiles no longer know each other.

"In this world without quiet corners," observed Salman Rushdie in his fine book Imaginary Homelands, "there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible unquiet fuss."

Nonetheless, these people and their unquiet stories are the yet unvalued treasures in our country. As long ago as 1854, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the revolutionary Italian soldier-politician, said England was "a great and powerful nation, enemy to despotism, the only safe refuge for the exile". Every major event of the 20th and 21st centuries walks our city streets. We are unique in this – not even the US has quite the vast array we have accumulated. Still alive (just) are people who can tell us what it felt to be ruled by the British, about the chaos of the partition of India, about hearing Stalin speak. Others remember in warm-blood detail the coup in Chile, torture in Argentina, the death squads of Cambodia, Somali tragedies and much more. If we used these people as a resource in our schools and universities, we might be able to create new generations of Britons who truly understand history, instead of wallowing in a feel-good and falsified version of how great this country always is.

But when it comes to political influence from a distance, both in terms of time and place, what useful role can political exiles play? Sometimes, maybe often, the fact that they cannot forget what was done to them becomes such an obstacle that their influence is destructive. I wonder what might have happened in Iran had the Ayatollah Khomeini not returned from exile. Would Iran have ended up in the grip of such a harsh doctrinal plutocracy? An internal revolt may have produced a state less paranoid. One thinks of some of the rabid Cubans in Miami or the small number of escapees from the killing sands of Algeria who live in the UK so maddened that all they can feel is a generic hatred which must be satisfied.

As an exile from Uganda 30 years ago, I know how many Ugandans, Asians and Africans are stuck in self-pity and fury for a lost home, understandable responses to the horrific history that followed independence. If you want to understand, go to the new exhibit Out of Blue, at Tate Britain, by Zarina Bhimji, who was forced to leave Uganda as a young child. She recreates the terror we felt then and the perpetual sense of grievance we carry.

Exiles can also become brilliant advocates for progress in their old countries – Edward Said and Wole Soyinka are two striking examples. They can exert influence on foreign policy and possibly a deeper understanding of nations that we often stereotype. The down side is – and that is certainly being experienced by Iraqi exiles – there is a double guilt, of not being there and of knowing that the powerful countries you live in cannot always be depended on to do the right thing.

Then there is the population that never left and suffered on. The mistrust of outsiders and their own exiles among these people remains even when a good outcome occurs. In South Africa activists still question the authority and authenticity of returnees, even though ANC exiles took great risks with their own lives, even going surreptitiously into southern Africa where several were arrested and faced terrible punishments. In Kampala, which I returned to once five years ago, they had excised Swahili from the culture. I was told by my old university friends that this was because the language was associated with the Tanzanians who helped to free Uganda from Idi Amin, and those soldiers had behaved with disrespect towards Ugandan civilians. Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan is obviously trying hard and even succeeding a little in uniting that volatile country but, so far, too much – including his stylish clothes – mark him out as an outsider with limited influence.

When Iraq has been done over, pro-war exiles will gain gratitude and a little more power. But let them not believe all will then be well for them or the people of Iraq. For exiles there is no going back, except in dreams.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk