The Ungrateful Refugee: gratefulness, dignity and complexity

I've recently finished reading 'The Ungrateful Refugee' by Dina Nayeri. It wasn't an easy, comforting read - but the best books, the ones that give rise to thoughts that you're still turning over in your mind months later, rarely are. I'm pretty sure I'll still be mulling over things from this book in the months to come.

The book is comprised of two different parts, interwoven: first, the story of the author's childhood experience of leaving Iran and arriving in the USA, via Dubai and Italy, and life as a former refugee; and second, the stories of different refugees.

What stood out to me after finishing the book was the complexity of refugees' lives, when often in the West we're looking for a simple story. Sometimes we just want to skip to the 'happy ending' - refugee endures unspeakable tragedies in home country, somehow arrives in a Western country, proves herself to be a 'deserving refugee', is granted asylum, effortlessly integrates into her new country and forever onwards declares her undying gratitude to her new country.

But life isn't like that and people aren't like that. People are human beings, each with an inherent dignity that comes from being human, and each person has a unique story that doesn't fit into the neat tick boxes that we'd like them to. And Dina Nayeri's writing reminded me of the complexity of refugees' lives and stories, of the paradoxes, of the humanity of refugees. She challenges the distinction between 'worthy' refugees and 'opportunistic' migrants. She points out the cost of gratitude - "[the volunteers] have come for that silent look of admiration that's free to most, but so costly if you're tapped for gratitude by everyone you meet" - and the complexity of assimilation - "in forcing assimilation, are we asking for performance? We want to see that newcomes are happy, grateful, that they're trying. But real gratitude doesn't present itself loudly, in lofty gestures. And learning to posture is a much quicker process than transforming...".

She also reminded me that cultures tell stories and process truths in different ways, and when countries expect asylum seekers to present a flawless account of why and how they left their home country, to cherry pick the parts that asylum officers want to hear out of their stories of pain, loss and injustice, to give their tale in a way that makes sense to Western ears but is so completely foreign to their own tongues, we ask an impossible task of them. And also of the asylum officers, who are assigned the unenviable task of being the "arbiters of complicated truth".

It's not always the easiest book to read - both in terms of subject matter, and in terms of writing as it can feel slightly repetitive at times, and due to the interwoven nature, jumps around quite a lot. But it's an important book that I'm glad I read.


"no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land"

(Warsan Shire, 'Home')

Kurban Bayramı, sacrificed meat and issues of conscience

Yesterday was the first day of Kurban Bayramı, which is more commonly known outside of Turkey as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice. It lasts four days here, all of which are public holidays. I wrote about it last year here, here and here but is is an annual remembrance of Abraham's willingness to submit to God and sacrifice his son. It's typically celebrated by a family sacrificing an animal (in Turkey, usually a sheep or cow) on the morning of the first day. Traditionally, the meat from the animal is divided into three parts: one third is given to the poor; one third to friends, wider family and neighbours; and the remaining third is kept for their own family. In cities, the animal can be ordered already sacrificed and cut from a shop or supermarket, or a family can go to a special sacrifice abattoir place and choose their animal and have it sacrificed then and there.

This is our first full Kurban Bayramı actually living in this city - we arrived part way through last year. In the run up, we received a promotional leaflet advertising different options for buying the meat of a cow or sheep, or part of it, when our shopping was delivered last week and then saw the sudden appearance of signs on the street giving the location of the nearest sacrifice places. And then there was the almost mass emptying of the city the night before, as people returned to their family villages for the day.

As might be expected, it's also something that comes up with the local believers every year. We've had teaching that we have no need to sacrifice an animal every year, because our Sacrifice was once for all. We had very new believers at our weekly gathering yesterday who for the first time in their lives were not celebrating Kurban Bayramı but who were singing of the power of that Sacrifice two thousand years ago. We had almost all of the young, single believers missing from our weekly gathering yesterday because they would have been required to be with their families.

And we've had various discussions about the eating of sacrificed meat. All meat in Turkey is considered halal - meaning that it conforms to Islamic law in that the animal is killed in a certain way and that a blessing is said while the animal is slaughtered. Eating halal meat isn't an issue I've ever heard raised here - and actually, from our point of view, it's not something to particularly worry about. There's a good chance that people in the UK have unknowingly eaten halal meat anyway (source). But meat from animals that have been killed as the integral part of a Muslim religious festival is different and it does come up as an issue.

Some Turkish believers have chosen to very clearly make a stand on this issue and do not eat meat that has been sacrificed as part of Kurban Bayramı. We understand their thinking, particularly as they are usually first generation believers, with unbelieving family, and feel the need to draw a very clear line in the sand between the practices of those around them and their new practices as believers. We do not come from the same background as them and don't feel so close to the issue.

But we've also been talking about how this is not a new issue for believers but one that is directly addressed in God's Word, in particular Romans chapter 14. So in conversation, believers do explain the conclusions they've come to and why they think that way - but it is also stressed that this is an issue of conscience, where mature believers can come to different conclusions. Our main responsibility is to maintain the unity of the believers and not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of fellow believers, but to deny our own preferences for the sake of our believing brothers and sisters.

So what has this practically looked like for us this year? It's meant respecting the convictions of our fellow believers and understanding that those from very different backgrounds to us experience Kurban Bayramı very differently from us. For L and I, it's also meant that when our neighbour rang our door bell earlier with a plastic bag full of meat for us, we accepted it graciously and thanked her. She will know that we are not Muslim, but to refuse her kind gift would have been incredibly rude and incomprehensible to her - she doesn't know anything about our beliefs so to refuse would just have offended her with no gain made whatsoever. However, if, for example, we had very close Turkish friends or family members who had made a sacrifice and we had the relationship with them, or the meat was offered in such a way that it would have been a stumbling block to a Turkish believer, we may have declined the meat with the explanation of why we don't celebrate Kurban Bayramı.

The caveat, as with all of these issues, is that we're still figuring out these things and I'm sure that our thinking will become deeper and more nuanced as we live here longer. Yet we can't just put off thinking about these things because we've only been here three years and not thirteen or thirty.

In the mean time, I now have a bag of meat in my freezer. I don't know what animal it's come from and have no idea what cut of meat it is, never mind what I'm going to do with it!

When a picture's worth a thousand words

Sometimes it's hard describing where we live to people in the UK because it doesn't really fit in any category of housing location that we're used to. You'd never find this kind of neighbourhood in the UK. We live in a flat in a 14 floor apartment building, surrounded by other apartment blocks. The ground floor of some apartment blocks is used as shop space. We live right on the edge of the city. We also live at the foot of a mountain. The streets are wide in this neighbourhood and there are small parks dotted regularly around, with grass and trees. It's hard to find a large grassy space, big enough for a game of football or ultimate frisbee though. Although the apartment blocks are well spaced out, there are no detached or semi detached houses as you might find in the UK. There are a few detached houses right on the outskirts of the apartment block forest, usually either rather basic houses with land attached, or villa-type houses (often used as summer houses).

Does that make any sense to you?!

If it's a little hard to imagine, some pictures might help.

Our apartment building, situated right next to (behind) a mosque

Our apartment building on the right, surrounded by other blocks and with the mountain in the distance

The view from our balcony. This is what we mean when we say we live at the foot of a mountain. L uses the mountain for his running routes.

Another angle from our balcony

And looking the other way from the balcony

Our neighbourhood, from one of the playparks

And again from the same park

Three cross-cultural amusing moments

Cross cultural differences can be amusing. We don't laugh at our Turkish friends but sometimes we laugh with them. Sometimes just the cultural differences make us laugh - what is so normal to us but is so foreign to them, and vice versa. Here's three cross-cultural moments that made me smile this week.

• While waiting to pay at the hospital for Z's two month check up, the lady next to me was giving her best shot to arguing for a discount for the cost of an X-ray. I've got used to paying when we go to a private hospital but the idea of bargaining for hospital services is so foreign to my British-ness, I couldn't help but smile - especially at the effort to which the lady was going to. Unfortunately for her though it was to no avail.

• After paying, I was sitting waiting to be called for Z's hip ultrasound (routine here and really not worth the effort of arguing that it's probably unnecessary for him!). J and S were sitting on the floor next to me colouring and I was holding Z. We'd already been at the hospital for nearly an hour at that point as we'd seen Z's paediatrician first, so the boys' patience was starting to wear thin. While trying to oversee the fair distribution of crayons and ensure they didn't end up all over the entire corridor, look after Z, and field questions about whether or not my husband was Turkish and where we were from, the older lady next to me was trying to tug the hem of my t-shirt down for me because in amongst getting Z out of the carrier that was strapped to my front and bending down to deal with said crayons and small children, the back of my t-shirt had ridden up and was showing maybe 1cm of bare flesh. At that point, I really wasn't too bothered (particularly as I had my back to a wall anyway) but the lady was obviously very concerned for my decency and was doing her best to help me out. I did my best to hide my smile and thanked her.

• And my personal favourite -  I was out walking with a Turkish friend one evening this week, pushing Z in the pushchair. It was nearly 8pm but the temperature must have been at least 25 degrees still and there was no breeze. Z was dressed in a sleepsuit, which I considered more than sufficient, but for a typical Turk that was definitely underdressed. As we passed one lady sitting on a bench, she tried to stop us while indicating to Z, ready to point out that he had no blanket and (in her opinion) would be getting cold. Without breaking a stride, my Turkish friend  - who is well aware that my children are almost always underdressed by Turkish standards, as most Turks worry about children getting ill from being cold, whereas I worry about them overheating - just waved to the woman and said 'she's English' - as if that was explanation enough and no further comment was needed. I laughed out loud and tried not to think what impression of British people I'm creating around here.