Lazaro's grandparents and parents migrated from Burma to Leeds in the 1950s and 60s on the S.S. Salween whilst Crossing the Med, which took the Suez-Mediterranean route The passengers depicted in this painting are much like refugees that have become commonplace in the Mediterranean today that are caught between a world they leave behind and the world they seek. ‘Crossing the Ganga’ by Manaku (an 18th Century Miniaturist from Jammu) where an entire kingdom attempts to cross the river Ganges while their city is ablaze on the nearby shoreline, forms the understudy for this painting where real figures replace mythological ones in this allegory of imagined homelands.