The Ungrateful Refugee Page 18

  One day, when a clump of papier-mâché fell off my map, Miss White said, ‘Don’t be lazy. We work hard here, do you understand?’ I nodded.

  In that first year, I expected Maman to move mountains. She had set a high standard in Iran (‘seventeenth person, not percentile’) and I expected her to quickly start a medical practice, to buy a big house, where we could live, just the three of us, free from the whims of men. Maman had learned English in medical school, finishing at the top of her class, but with her thick accent and Iranian medical licence, no one took her seriously.

  She accepted a job in a pharmaceuticals factory, working alongside other immigrants, former doctors and PhDs, sorting pills into bottles late into the night. Every day her bosses questioned her intelligence, though they had a quarter of her education. They pretended not to understand her accent. If she took too long to articulate a thought, they stopped listening and wrote her off as stupid. They sped up their speech and, when she asked them to slow down, they sighed and rolled their eyes.

  On weekends, Maman struggled with the daily nothings of life: where the mail was delivered, how to buy groceries, where to wash our clothes. Our first visit to a supermarket lasted hours. Maman stood bewildered in every aisle, trying to decipher the dozens of options for bread, cheese, milk. It dwarfed Dubai markets. Who needed all this choice? In Iran, we had butchers and corner shops. We had messengers on bicycles who delivered one kind of milk, one kind of white cheese, one kind of fresh baked lavash bread and a variety of fresh vegetables from local farms.

  Maman took solace in the church, where she continued giving her testimony to some group or other every week, shilling the skeleton of our story for a few moments of acceptance. People loved hearing about the Three Miracles, about the moral police and Maman’s arrests, about the underground church and the brutal hijabi schoolteachers. They got bored or confused when we spoke of Hotel Koorosh schnitzels and sour cherries and hikes. Still, friendships didn’t come. Once, walking alone in a park, Maman found a friendship bracelet on the ground. She wore it home. When I asked what it was, she said it was a sign of friendship from God.

  Around that time, Maman met an Iranian man named Rahim. He was a convert and had friends in an Iranian church in Tulsa – exactly the sort of man Maman had wished for. Though he didn’t come from an educated family like hers, he was young and handsome. They had nothing in common beyond country, apostasy and age. He worked as a programmer, tinkered with his car until morning and was obsessed with Korean culture and cuisine, a strange fixation that accompanied his black belt in Taekwondo. To this day, the detail that baffles me is how much kimchi I ate in my first Oklahoma days, the glass bowls of bulgogi, the many intense reds, marinating in our fridge, how we perfected it by serving it on Persian rice.

  Jim and Jean forbade a friendship between Maman and Rahim.

  But Maman was done listening. She was tired of being told what to do by Americans who didn’t know her, who probably never would. (Would she ever be her old self again? Was that person lost?) She tried to explain to Jim and Jean that she valued their friendship, but she would make her own decisions, as she had always done. They advised her to be humbler, to show gratitude to her new country instead of isolating herself inside the Iranian community – why did she need him? She had them, Jim and Jean. She had the church. Besides, didn’t Iranian men treat women horribly?

  I sided with Jim and Jean – I didn’t need a new father; that wasn’t part of the dream. This man could never understand me, or my potential. He wouldn’t storm into a schoolyard for me, make a teacher cry and ask her where she went to college. I needed stubborn Maman to listen to the Americans with the big house, to learn the rules and how they managed to succeed here. Jim had published books! But, having settled into her job, Maman said goodbye to Jim and Jean, thanking them for their months of hospitality. Though we had grown to love the couple, we moved into a cheap apartment in a part of town we hoped drew other immigrants, the kind with busy hands, like in Hotel Barba. But it was a corner for the disenfranchised, drug addicts, welfare mothers, the ill-fated. On the school bus, children sneered at me for living there. When the church youth group paid a random visit, as they did with all newcomers, I burned with shame.

  Sometimes Maman complained of slights and insults from Americans, people at work telling her that she didn’t pay attention. ‘Maybe you didn’t listen hard enough,’ I said. ‘You have to learn English, listen hard.’

  She stopped confiding in me, or reminding me of her university days in Tehran, how she had breezed to the top of her classes. She enrolled in night classes at the University of Oklahoma and earned two Masters degrees in public health and health policy. She worked in factories and clinics and a hospital. Once or twice, I heard about technicians who harassed her, or blamed her for their mistakes, and I chastised her.

  ‘You probably made a mistake,’ I said.

  It took wilful blindness on my part, since the children of these same people teased me constantly in school. They called me cat-eater, terrorist, sand-nigger, camel-fucker. But I refused to believe that the world operated this way. The adult world was my sole hope for the future – it had to function as a pure meritocracy.

  ‘There are things you don’t see now,’ she said. ‘There are ways people communicate. Things they tell you, without words.’

  Maman married Rahim. Baba married the woman who had stretched Maman’s clothes. He stopped sending money. We moved into a smaller apartment, though we were now four. Sometimes Rahim’s daughter stayed in the room I shared with Daniel. I couldn’t breathe. On the day we moved in, I sat reading in the empty closet. Something glinted in a corner of a shelf. A first-place medal. I put it in my backpack. Maybe if I showed it to the girls at school, they would find me interesting. Maybe they’d want to be friends.

  The next day, Dawn grabbed the medal from me as I took it out of my backpack. ‘What is that?’ she said. ‘Oh my God, do you wrestle?’

  I didn’t know the meaning of the word, so I nodded.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she squealed again. What was happening? Was she impressed? All day, children asked me about the medal. After recess at the water fountain, Dawn’s best friend bounced toward me. She said, her voice kind, ‘Do you wrestle boys or girls?’

  Which was the correct answer? ‘Girls?’ I said. Yes, it must be girls.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s even grosser!’ She ran off to tell her friends.

  I looked closely at the medal, at the etching of the two figures intertwined. I knew now what wrestling was and it didn’t seem so gross or shameful to me – weren’t Americans into strength sports? Maybe the girls here didn’t do sports. Or maybe just certain ones?

  Fifth grade passed slowly. My accent changed. I failed geography. I daydreamed through math, waiting for a new lesson. I wrote a story about Cuji and won ‘most creative story’, only to learn later that I had imagined the same terrifying dog as Stephen King, because, let’s face it, Cuji was Cujo.

  Money was a constant worry. Rahim switched us to a discount grocery where sickly onions rolled underfoot. He regulated the air-conditioning. I was always sweaty and tired of having the toilet paper monitored. In Iran, it seemed that money didn’t exist. People just did things for each other – the butcher sent meat, Baba fixed teeth, I studied. That was my job. Here, though, I decided, I needed to find a way to make money.

  One day, in Sunday School, we learned how to embroider a coaster onto plastic canvas. The front read MUG RUG and it had a fringe, like a mini ghilim carpet. Soon after, during an Iranian church outing to Tulsa, a man saw me embroidering. He owned a Persian rug business. ‘That is clever,’ he said. ‘Mug Rug. I should give them as gifts to my customers.’

  ‘I can make you some,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes?’ he chuckled. ‘How much do you want for them?’ I considered it. Should I ask for ten dollars? Forty? ‘How about $2.50 each?’ he said. ‘I’ll take as many as you can make.’

  ‘Great!’ I started calculating: I co
uld make five dollars a day. More on weekends. ‘I’ll make a hundred.’ He laughed and wandered away.

  The next day in math class, I took out my sewing – this would be a way to keep busy while the others caught up with mixed fractions. My teacher gave me a strange look. The next day, I did it again. This time she said, ‘Dina, put your sewing away. In this country, girls have to learn math just like boys. You can do your sewing at home.’ I burned at that comment for days, wishing I could articulate all that she had wrong.

  I made about eighty Mug Rugs in two months, borrowing money for materials from Rahim. I took them to the next Iranian church meeting. The rug merchant was dumbstruck. He muttered about what a resourceful girl I was. I thought he was disappointed that I hadn’t reached the promised hundred. He took out his wallet and paid for the rugs, but said that his needs had been met. My first business was finished.

  I began looking forward again. Oklahoma wasn’t a promised land. It was hot and mediocre and lazy. And I could never satisfy these people.

  We went to work, to school, to church. Maman baked American cakes and replaced the rosewater in her pastries with vanilla. Some say, That’s the natural cycle of things. We learned what they wanted, the spoken and unspoken language that made them comfortable. We told our story the way they wanted to hear it, the China Cry way, full of melodrama and miracles and villains, but without the small beauties of Isfahan and Ardestoon. Without Baba’s jokes, the photos under his glass desktop. We started to understand that in America, you can choose your story and make it true.

  One day in late spring, I was in the Edmond Public Library stacks, looking for new fiction. Someone had left a book splayed open on a seat. It was a university entrance book, complete with profiles and rankings, average scores, acceptance rates and tips on writing a successful application. I flipped to the front, where the top fifty were ranked. I had heard the name that topped the list on television and in movies. Harvard. If I wanted to go there, the book told me, I’d have to win my own medals, earn perfect scores in every subject, be exceptional according to American standards. It said to choose sports wisely, maybe ones that aren’t so oversubscribed. I touched the cold, hard medal in my pocket. The odds were low, the Harvard page warned, and I’d have to begin at fourteen. Lucky for me, I came from the land of screaming dictées, from a school where there was no place to look but the blood mural or the class rankings, a mother who loved riddles, a father who thought every girl needs a worthy rival – I was itchy and angry and I was only eleven.

  II.

  KAWEH

  Before the police arrived, Kaweh stood in the town square, filthy and hungry and unshaven, and he watched the passersby. A young girl yelled to her brother, ‘Jack, hurry up.’ The boy sped up. Hurry up, Kaweh repeated to himself, its meaning apparent from the boy’s response. He stored it away as the first phrase in a long education.

  The police station was vast and clean. When two blond officers greeted them, Kaweh whispered, ‘My God, we’re at Buckingham Palace.’

  They were searched and questioned in separate rooms. The others chose Kurdish interpreters, but Kaweh asked for a Persian one. He spoke both languages and, fearing that the Home Office would claim he was an Iraqi Kurd, he opted for the translator who could verify his accent, his true country. Though he knew little of the asylum process, Kaweh had listened along the way. In Turkey, he had claimed asylum from UNHCR and had met more than a hundred refugees. All day in Kurdistan and Turkey, he read books and newspapers. He understood his party’s history, world politics, the aims and singular logic of European asylum. Like his Kurdish heroes, Ghassemlou and Sharafkandi, who read widely and spoke calmly and knowledgeably, Kaweh tried to know his adversary and the field of battle.

  After almost losing his precious documents in the water, Kaweh had entrusted them to a friend in Turkey. He had boarded the first lorry carrying nothing, reasoning that documents are useless for illegal border crossings. His friend would keep them safe and scan or mail them later.

  ‘You have entered the United Kingdom illegally,’ an officer told the group. ‘You may be prosecuted. Do you have any family in the United Kingdom? Do you have friends here?’ Kaweh didn’t know the addresses of anyone in the party, though some did live in the United Kingdom. He had a single phone number, which he kept to himself for now.

  Asked if he needed a lawyer, he said, ‘I only want to claim asylum.’

  That night he slept in a cell with another refugee. The next day, he met with a female officer and a Kurdish interpreter who would translate by phone. ‘Are you OK to speak Kurdish this time?’ the officer said into the phone, and passed it to Kaweh, who listened and nodded.

  ‘What is your name?’ said the man on the phone.

  ‘Kaweh Beheshtizadeh,’ said Kaweh.

  ‘No,’ said the interpreter, not bothering to interpret. ‘No, that’s not your real name. We need your real name.’ The man was an Iraqi Kurd and Iraqi Kurdistan has different naming conventions.

  ‘I assure you,’ said Kaweh, ‘this is my name.’

  ‘What’s your father’s name?’ said the man.

  ‘Mohammad Khaled,’ said Kaweh.

  ‘And your grandfather?’ said the man.

  ‘Mahmoud,’ said Kaweh.

  ‘Then your name is Kaweh Mohammad Khaled Mahmoud.’

  ‘If you call me by that name,’ said Kaweh, ‘I won’t recognise myself. I understand that in Iraqi Kurdistan this is the convention, but as you know, I’m an Iranian Kurd and in Iran our system is: first name, family name.’

  The man was unmoved. It seemed that on some level, he was eager to out Kaweh as an Iraqi Kurd. Casting doubt on his Iranian name wouldn’t help him, given his current lack of papers. What was his aim here?

  ‘Well, before all else, we must agree on your name,’ said the man.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ said Kaweh, struggling to remain calm.

  ‘We agree that your first name is Kaweh, yes?’

  What madness – on the first day of this new life, having given up his country, his language, he had to negotiate to keep his own name.

  The man thought for a moment. ‘How about . . . we cut the name in half. Your middle name can be Beheshti and your last name Zadeh?’

  Kaweh wanted to ask, What does this have to do with following Iraqi rules? Wasn’t Kurdish authenticity your purpose a moment ago? Now you’re just cutting up my name to fit the Western standard. And I’m neither Iraqi, nor Western. ‘But that’s still not my name,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but let’s write that for now and we can sort it out later.’

  Kaweh thought it unwise to object. For years after, his identity card would show his name cleaved in two, the beautiful Persian construction ‘heaven-born’ cut up so that his last name read simply as ‘born’. Hello, Mr Zadeh, people would say. But Zadeh is only a suffix. Alone, it is unrooted, having been shorn of a birthplace, a poetic reminder of home.

  The officer asked, ‘What is the basis of your asylum claim?’

  Instinct said, Clean hands won’t help you. Don’t hide anything. These things happened. Surely asylum decisions don’t involve moral judgments. He began telling his story. ‘I left Iran illegally. I was a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran for over three years. I was approached by Iranian authorities to be a spy and I refused. They gave me money that I accepted and used for my personal needs. I never repaid them. They found me in Turkey. My life is in danger in Iran and also in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Turkey, too.’ Now the officer chuckled. She didn’t believe – maybe it was the drama of his words, or the detour from the narrative to explain things that (fiction writers know) should be shown. Kaweh carried on. Sometimes in life, impossible things happen and they are nonetheless true.

  Kaweh and his fellow travellers were boarded onto a van. When they saw that they were headed to Dover, they dropped into collective despair. ‘I swear,’ said a Kurdish man, ‘if they deport me, I’ll kill myself.’

  Hours later, the van stopped
in front of an old building in Dover. Two interpreters emerged. The Kurdish one said, ‘You will be accommodated here, in temporary lodging, for, at most, twenty-eight days while the Home Office sorts out longer-term housing and considers your asylum claim.’

  The relief was palpable. ‘We were dying of anxiety,’ someone said.

  The interpreter laughed. ‘No one will be deported to France today.’

  Kaweh shared a four-bunk room with a father and son. They had a bathroom, towels, sheets. They took showers and headed for the dining hall full of refugees – Russians, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis. In this camp Kaweh decided to lie, for fear of Iranian intelligence still pursuing him. ‘I’m an Iraqi Kurd,’ he said, noting that he must disclose this tactic in his interview.

  An Iranian newspaper journalist said, ‘You speak very good Persian.’

  ‘I lived on the border,’ said Kaweh. ‘I watched Iranian cartoons.’

  ‘What’s your claim?’ asked the journalist.

  Kaweh became uncomfortable. He thought, better not to be taken seriously by this reporter, better to be thought an opportunist. ‘My claim,’ he said, ‘is that I’ve come here to drink alcohol and sleep with women.’

  ‘What a stupid person you are,’ said the journalist, his mouth curling with disdain. ‘There are people with lives in real danger.’

  In the hostel, Kaweh took English classes twice a week. He spent his days in the Dover Public Library, looking at words in English children’s books. He called his parents from a friend’s phone and told them he was safe in Switzerland. He borrowed a second pair of underwear from his roommate. Each night, he washed his clothes in the sink and hung them up to dry, since he couldn’t go to the laundromat naked.

  Kaweh hired a young solicitor, a trainee in immigration law, who told him he would be removed to Turkey, since he first claimed asylum there.