The Ungrateful Refugee Read online

  Parvis instructs his cook to make some omelettes and aubergine-whey. We sit around a long table and our talk turns to Houshiar’s latest asylum rejection. Why is this young man still floating?

  ‘They said I didn’t explain my apostasy from Islam well enough.’ Houshiar shrugs, sighs, then tells us that his mother is sick.

  The employer shakes his head and drops his bread. ‘Listen, son, when you fall into the water, no one will save you but you. In that interview, “My mom is sick, my aunt cut her hand, my sister’s earring is lost”, what is that? You have to shut it out. Focus. Pretend you’re in the sea.’

  The husband is nodding a lot. He leans in. ‘Look, here’s a small piece of advice for you: whatever lie you tell, you must first convince yourself. Give the story branches and leaves. You are the first who must believe.’

  Houshiar fidgets in his chair. ‘When you first leave Iran,’ he says, ‘your life is scattered, your dreams gone, your wife gone, your house gone, your mother in a coma, you haven’t seen your kid in a year and a half—’

  The husband has forgotten about his food. He raises both hands. ‘It’s the best moment to tell them your feelings!’ He looks at his wife, who nods.

  ‘You can’t in that moment,’ says Houshiar. I recall a rule: don’t write a story too soon. You need distance, perspective, to shed sentimentality.

  There is a bit of chatter, then Houshiar says, ‘I don’t understand. I told them, Islam is war. They say, we have no problem with your Christianity. We don’t believe your apostasy.’ But isn’t conversion by definition apostasy from the former religion? I pose this to the table.

  ‘You have to prove it!’ two of them say at once. Casual converts don’t present like church leaders. They’re not loud and feverish with devotion and they live in a mixed up culture, the Iranian and the Western all jumbled together. They celebrate Christmas with saffron pudding. They make pilgrimages on Easter and Ascension. Out of habit, they mutter to Muslim prophets as they haul their tired bodies off the ground. These are their specific, moving contradictions – the natural flaws that bring a story to life.

  This lunch has become a perverse workshop. Rejected asylum seekers are always refining their story, asking for advice; eventually they deplete it of joy and meaning, the orphan details that embed in memories. Remember, your audience is listening for contradiction, any contradiction, and life is full of those. A moving detail can get you rejected. So, forget about meaning. Meaning will hurt you. Complexity is compromising.

  Wijngaarden has told me that the IND has four lines of questioning for authenticating religious conversion: knowledge of the new religion, its daily practicalities, motivation for and process of conversion (beginning with apostasy). Some answers are no longer deemed good enough. My mother’s true conversion story is this: she believed in one night. She attributes it to miracles in her body and heart. She says she found peace. There was no period of apostasy. She went from feverish devotion to feverish devotion – because that is who she is. Perhaps she had a few numb weeks in between, but that would have been unconscious and short-lived. She was at a breaking point, ready to bolt and the runaway mother who had denied her love suddenly offered an escape. She was primed for it. But today, stories like that are flatly rejected. You can’t say, ‘I had a dream’ or ‘I saw a miracle’. Those stories stink of deception. A logical person goes through a process: first Islam fails to satisfy some fundamental need. Injustices become un-ignorable and the apostate rages privately, perhaps publicly. There is a period of falling away from faith, failing to do religious duties, then she feels a void and goes seeking. She isn’t satisfied without a god. She comes into contact with a new faith, becomes interested, reads up.

  For my mother, all this happened subconsciously, but it was no less real for going unexamined. She was an educated woman in sexist Iran; of course she had years of frustrations. She had to cover her body and surrender her parental and property rights to her husband. But if you ask her, she would say, ‘It was a miracle,’ like some superstitious village woman. Today, she would be rejected because doctors from Tehran University aren’t supposed to believe in miracles.

  Iranians give their hearts quickly and intensely. Educated ones indulge in magical thinking and rural ones submit to religions based purely on instinct, sometimes with no reading or knowledge. A devout Iranian farmer isn’t like the Dutch farmer with a Bible on his pillow. ‘They want book knowledge,’ says Houshiar, his voice strained, ‘but that’s not faith! If I’m an illiterate old villager and I decide there are things Islam hasn’t given me, but I recognise good and bad in my bones and I choose Christianity, that’s legitimate. Maybe I don’t know all the names and dates . . .’

  This class problem is, according to Marq Wijngaarden, a true flaw of the asylum process. Like the tax system and property and everything else, it’s biased against the poor and the uneducated, the very people most likely to be running out of fear. A villager who has never seen the borders of the next town doesn’t pick up and leave home lightly. That villager smells danger. And yet, he is the least likely to know the coded words that open the door to safety. Is his faith any less true? He lives his faith in other ways.

  Self-analysis is a problem for uneducated LGBTQ refugees, too. ‘If you never learned how to express development, a process, a way of changing,’ says Wijngaarden, ‘you express your feelings through sexual acts. You don’t speak of what you feel and how that feeling developed. The Dutch want more complexity.’ This is a problem, not just for the uneducated, but for trauma victims who have gaps in memory and rape victims who are ashamed. ‘People from a society that has more similarities with Western society get easier asylum than those from societies that are quite different. The asylum system in general is quite unfair.’

  About two hours into the lunch, the wife starts casting meaningful glances at me. Her glance flits back and forth between me and Houshiar and suddenly, I know that everyone except Houshiar is thinking the same thing. We know the missing part of Houshiar’s story, the wedge, the thing he is keeping from us and from the asylum officers and perhaps the reason he is rejected. But we can’t just blurt out this question; we need to say it without violating Iranian social rules, to cloak it in a second meaning.

  ‘Your case is important,’ says the husband. He speaks cautiously, choosing each word. ‘You can convince them, even if you’re lying, that your story is true . . .’ The ‘even if you’re lying’ is pointed and merciful – he wants Houshiar to know that this suggested story doesn’t have to be the truth, that we don’t believe it about him. The table hushes. We can’t be certain, but somehow, silently, we’ve agreed that this is a much more vital wedge of Houshiar’s story than his conversion. What strange collusion: outwardly we’re telling this man to lie. Really, we’re urging him to be honest with himself, to accept his truth and be at peace. Lie to them; not to yourself.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ says the husband, tiptoeing closer to the point, ‘the guy will smile and doubt you. There was a time they would give answers fast. Back when the students were getting killed, the Dutch answered fast. Then there were some programmes on television about . . . gays back home. After that every Iranian was gay. So many got papers.’

  I hold my breath and watch Houshiar’s face. He seems unmoved. The wife and I keep glancing at each other. She touches her face. We can’t just tell a closeted, married, Iranian man that he needs to face his sexuality. I know that it’s wrong: we could traumatise him; and how can we even be sure? We’re not in his mind – we only know that he is much more convincing as a gay man than as a convert and that is probably because it’s the truth. We say, ‘Gay is a better case,’ or, ‘It’s useful to be gay,’ when what we mean is, ‘It’s OK. You are allowed to be you.’ We want to tell Houshiar that Iran is long behind him and he can have an open life here, in this hamlet of scattered countrymen. Just tell them the fucking truth, we want to say, but instead we say, Just tell this more convincing lie.

  After a while, t
he wife speaks up. She has been watching the simmer and wants to stir the pot. ‘It wouldn’t work, anyway,’ she says, goading him. ‘It’s so easy to tell. Gay men can’t hide it.’

  Houshiar gives her an impatient look, ‘Of course they can hide it.’

  Again, we’re all silent. Houshiar, it seems, has no idea we suspect him.

  ‘Many are anonymous,’ says Parvis. ‘Not the ones with hormone problems, but the gay husbands, you can’t tell with them.’ I drop down in my seat. He thinks he’s helping and carries on. ‘There are some thick necks, it’s not obvious unless they wear an earring or shave their heads.’

  That these are liberal Iranians reminds me how brutal our culture is to the LGBTQ community, which remains underground in Iran. The outdated language and gender expectations are embedded in our national psyche: to be a man is to be strong and macho; a woman must be chic and dainty.

  ‘Some of them even do bodybuilding,’ says the husband – bless him, he is trying to be encouraging. ‘Of course, the second they say two words, you know they’re a match without danger.’ My hand flies to my mouth.

  ‘For women,’ his wife is quick to clarify. She’s the more progressive of the pair. She explains the safety-match metaphor to me and assures the table that those men have plenty of spark for other men and that’s just fine.

  Houshiar looks thoughtful. ‘I’ve seen it. So many young people out of Iran give a gay case. And then every day they go to church.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ says Parvis. ‘You can be gay and Christian.’

  Houshiar sits up. His voice is disdainful and angry. ‘What does a gay person know about religion and faith?’ It’s the first time he’s raised his voice and a current of alarm passes between the rest of us.

  ‘Oh, come now,’ says the wife. She’s tearing her napkin into strips. Houshiar has been raised on this homophobia for three decades. We can’t convince him in a single lunch that an accepting society exists.

  ‘Your Christianity is nothing,’ says Parvis. ‘Prove that your life is in danger.’ Everyone nods; whether Houshiar is a Christian or gay, his life is indeed in danger. Now Parvis grows bolder. ‘Bring your pastor here and ask him, can a gay person be a Christian? Want me to call him? Let me say to him that a gay man wants to come to church. Let’s see what he says.’

  The wife shreds another napkin. ‘Whatever your case,’ says the husband, ‘you must throw yourself in it, drown in it. Before you tell a story, you must first believe it yourself.’

  ‘Make it true,’ says Parvis. ‘I grew up in the Christian district. I know what Christians sound like . . . this is why none of us believe you . . .’

  Houshiar rubs his palm. ‘But when I entered Europe, I said I was Christian. If I wasn’t, I’d live at home, work for my father. Every day he begs me to come back. I could be with my son. My sister would make me tea.’

  ‘Didn’t I make you tea?’ says Parvis, and Houshiar tries to smile. The couple look at their plates. ‘Houshiar joon, I can see the veins in your neck. You’re under stress. The simpler you approach it, the better.’

  For three hours, we drag this sideways conversation along. We argue. We step out for smokes. We bring out more aubergine. Lunch takes another bizarre turn when Parvis telephones the pastor. Houshiar grumbles, ‘Leave the man alone.’ Parvis explains with great care, ‘Our friend is not gay himself, of course. He’s one of the new Christians. Just wants to prove to us gays can’t be Christian.’ Houshiar drops his face into his hands.

  If Houshiar is gay, he is years from admitting it. Shame keeps many true stories hidden. What matters is that this man presents as gay to other Iranians under a homophobic regime. That’s danger. Whether he applies with the Christian story or the gay story, the essential truth is this: his life in Iran would be entirely in the shadows, until the day he crosses paths with the wrong person and then he might be hanged. That would be his life. The truest thing is that he needs and deserves asylum.

  What we assign as our story, our compelling case, will shape all our future days. The whole of the arc, from birth to death, leads to and grows out from the wedge, that cluster of days when life was forever altered. Was it conversion over a dying baby? Or an unexpected desire?

  If he is gay, Houshiar must say so aloud. He must articulate that he was closeted, even from himself, mired in a hyper-masculine culture.

  I ask Wijngaarden, ‘What if the process happens subconsciously?’

  ‘Then you’re screwed,’ he says. I like his Dutch candour.

  One thing is clear: in a regime that murders religious minorities, a sudden conversion after some good luck in the hospital isn’t believable. Iranians may act on miracles and visits from jinns and prophetic dreams, but as in the case of the novice writer, ‘it happened’ isn’t enough.

  In an essay, ‘Against Epiphanies’, Charles Baxter says that epiphanies are by nature deceptive. Foundational shocks happen to children. For adults, they are, at least in part, posturing. Melodrama. In fiction workshop, we asked, ‘Have I written this truthfully?’ We didn’t mean ‘Are my facts correct?’ We meant, ‘Is the story believable?’ Often the facts are the least believable and it is fiction’s job to fix them in service of the truth. A fact, given disproportionate context and attention, can lie about a life, or a day, or a marriage, a war, a childhood. A fiction can be true, when it throws a light on the unseen, those unclaimed spectacles that occur again and again, but shame and trauma keep hidden from view.

  A truthful short story about my mother’s conversion wouldn’t rely on miracles as an explanation. It would show her sadness, her ache for a mother’s love, her painful marriage, her longing to have faith. But, even Baxter would agree, that the character can chalk it all up to miracle and that would only deepen our understanding of her. From her vantage point, she sees a miracle – fiction allows for that nuance. And yet, the asylum officer, who appropriates the rules of good storytelling, fails to realise, when sitting across a petitioning refugee, that you are speaking to a character in the story, not the author. If an Iranian character says, ‘It was a miracle,’ she is using cultural shorthand, labelling a long process that her upbringing hasn’t given her the tools to unpack.

  If Houshiar manages to evade detention long enough, perhaps he could try again in some years. Wijngaarden says that in past years, if a refugee didn’t declare themselves LGBTQ on arrival, they wouldn’t be believed in subsequent attempts, because it was assumed they were coached. But a recent court decision in Luxembourg established that coming out can take years. And sometimes people need time in a free country to come to terms with their sexual orientation. They may resist because of shame, trauma and fear. This understanding has changed Dutch jurisprudence – a bit. In practice, much still depends on what each asylum officer finds credible. For that, the refugee must take control of the story and behave as the storyteller, not just a character. As ever, the same timeless good advice applies. It is repeated by lawyers and former refugees and writers and book critics, each in their own way. It will be truer after you believe. After you do the long, slow work of believing.

  VII.

  In Amsterdam, I visit my mother’s childhood friend Forough and her son, Pooyan, a philosopher. Forough is Baba’s cousin. She introduced my parents to each other. She’s an activist and a scholar, progressive, feminist, well-read. Shortly after our escape, when life in Iran became unbearable for communists and intellectuals, she picked up toddler Pooyan and ran. The story goes that she went straight to the university in Amsterdam, locking Pooyan in a small philosophy library until he was old enough for school.

  During my final days of marriage, I befriended them and took solace in the notion that I come from a gifted, liberal family. Forough and Pooyan were unpretentious. They worked tirelessly. They were always learning. Meanwhile, after a decade, I was realising that I couldn’t care less about the shiny life I had built. I wanted to live and to think and to be useful. ‘I’m worth more than this,’ I thought. When I found Forough and
Pooyan, I allowed myself to believe that maybe my value doesn’t come from Philip or Princeton or a mastery of English – my love of words goes back centuries.

  Pooyan and his wife host dinner at their home. I’m eager to talk about my mother. Did she tell any lies? Did it all happen as I remember?

  I tell them about Houshiar and my mother’s reaction when I told her his story. ‘He won’t say he’s gay,’ she said, ‘because it goes against something more important to him than asylum.’

  Pooyan nods. ‘Everyone chooses something that’s most essential to their identity,’ he says. ‘We’re willing to lie around it, but not about it.’

  We can lie in service of our formative story, but not in opposition to it. Even the most open-minded struggle to accept a point of view that goes against their centre of identity. ‘It’s like recent critiques of Cartesian foundationalism. Scholars argue that you have a set of certainties that determine the place from which you head out. Those certainties cannot be touched. They form your worldview. Changing those means radically changing how you think. For example, my worldview is partly based on Darwinism. That functions as certainty. To change that means to restructure my entire web and that would cost too much. I’d be a different person. The core of the web cannot be touched. The further out from the core, the easier to change a thought without unravelling the whole thing.’

  The core of the web is existential.

  Pooyan tells me that the IND has approached him, asking if he and a colleague can help them understand and verify conversion among Iranians. They need sincerity tutors. The problem, says Pooyan, is that sincerity is culturally determined. The Dutch concept of belief is a Calvinist one. They believe that true faith comes from within: the invisible church of the heart. It comes from reading the Bible in vernacular. It comes from internalising doctrine. But plenty of clever unbelievers take Bible lessons. And plenty of poor farmers hear about Jesus on the radio and in one afternoon give their heart to this concept. ‘A Protestant believer isn’t the same as a sincere Orthodox Jew,’ says Pooyan. ‘If you ask them if they believe, the Jew might answer, “On Saturdays I hold Shabbat.” For a protestant that’s weird. Belief is in your heart. For the Orthodox Jew ritual is far more important.’