The Ungrateful Refugee. Dina Nayeri

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      “Filled with evocative prose, Nayeri reveals the indignities exiles suff er as they dodge danger and shed their identities and souls while attempting to find safety. This thought-provoking narrative is a moving look at the current immigrant experience.”

      —Publishers Weekly

      “In spare and delightfully direct prose, Nayeri interrogates how and why we allow ourselves to demand proof of fear and gratitude from those seeking the most basic human dignity; why we per-sist in the fantasy that their dignity comes at the expense of our own. Long after closing the book, I’m haunted by the question she threads carefully underneath all the others: what keeps us from believing in each other?”

      —MIRA JACOB, author of Good Talk

      “A remarkable book, whose evocative stories are deftly woven into a powerful tapestry with lessons for us all. Anybody interested in the refugee experience will learn from Dina Nayeri’s book. As for policymakers: The Ungrateful Refugee should be compulsory read-ing if they are to regain or retain a sense of humanity.”

      —STEVE CRAWSHAW, policy and advocacy director at Freedom from Torture

      “This is a humane and compelling book that seeks to make human those demonised by the media and governing bodies for so long. Nayeri is never sentimental and her accounts of refugee lives, in-cluding her own, are unflinching, complex, provocative and important.”

      —NIKESH SHUKIA, editor of The Good Immigrant

      “Dina Nayeri has written a vital book for our times. The Ungrateful Refugee gives voice to those whose stories are too often lost or sup-pressed. Braiding memoir, reportage, and essayism, Nayeri allows those fortunate enough never to have been stateless or displaced to glimpse something of the hardships and subtleties of refugee experience. Written with compassion, tenderness, and a burning anger, her book appears at the end of a decade in which division and dislocation have risen to a terrible pitch. It speaks powerfully from—and to—the heart. Please read it.”

      —ROBERT MACFARLANE, author of Underland

      “The Ungrateful Refugee is glorious, and beautifully written. The emotion is palpable off the page. I couldn’t put it down. I found so much that was not only moving, but relatable on a very deep level.”

      —PADMA LAKSHMI

      ALSO BY DINA NAYERI

       Refuge

       A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

      Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Please also see the Author’s Note in the back of this book.

      Copyright © 2019 by Dina Nayeri

      First published in the United Kingdom in May 2019 by Canongate

      First published in the United States in September 2019

      by Catapult (catapult.co)

      First paperback edition: 2020

      All rights reserved

      “Elegy for My Father” by Mark Strand. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 2007, Mark Strand, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited and Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN: 978-1-948226-42-4

      Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64622-021-2

       Cover design by Nicole Caputo

       Book design by Wah-Ming Chang

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965035

      Printed in the United States of America

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      For Sam and Elena.

      You make every country home.

      Why did you lie to me?

      I always thought I told the truth.

      Why did you lie to me?

      Because the truth lies like nothing else and I love the truth.

       —MARK STRAND, “Elegy for My Father”

      No way. You will not make the Netherlands home.

       —GEERT WILDERS, message to refugees, 2015

      To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power, “age-old pastime of humanity.”

       —ROLAND BARTHES

      Contents

Part One: Escape

Part Two: Camp

       Part Three: Asylum

       Part Four: Assimilation

       Part Five: Cultural Repatriation

       Author’s Note

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       PART ONE

       ESCAPE

      (on good faith, credible risk, and opportunism)

      I

      We became refugees. Somehow it felt more settled than what we had been for the past ten months, hiding out in the United Arab Emirates. There, we were illegal: all the same dizzying displacement, uncertainty, and need, but we had to find our own shelter. Without a state to say, “Yes, we will be responsible for you,” we were so unmoored it was hard to fathom a next step. Maybe that’s why every move had been last minute, someone’s kindness or a stroke of luck. Miracles. And so, when we landed in Rome in winter 1989, I bubbled with love for Italy and every Italian; it was unlike anything I had felt for Dubai or Sharjah. This airport was so European, so brimming with leisure; I wanted to run to every kiosk and smell the Western chocolate and touch the expensive fabrics. But a man in a black suit held a sign with Maman’s name, and we were led away to a car.

      My mother, younger brother, and I bundled in the backseat, cold, and dirty from the long flight. I tried to stay awake for the ride through the Italian countryside. Finally, after an hour, we spotted a house on a hill, breaking up the rolling valleys in the distance. We had been told that we’d be taken to “a good refugee camp,” a temporary safe space for transients seeking asylum outside Italy. It was called Barba, and it had once been a hotel. The Italian government had leased this building to house the likes of us, political and religious asylum seekers and passers-through with particular need: elderly family, children. It was exciting to watch Barba appear, and to know that, even though our clothes and bedding and daily routines would be those