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')
