The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

“Once in an Oklahoma church, a woman said: ‘Well, I sure do get it. You came for a better life.’ I thought I’d pass out—a better life? In Isfahan, we had yellow spray roses, a pool. A glass enclosure shot up through my living room, and inside that was a tree. I had a tree inside my house; […] life in Iran was a fairytale. In Oklahoma, we lived in an apartment complex for the destitute and disenfranchised. Life was a big gray parking lot […] I dedicated my youth and every ounce of my magic to get out of there. A better life? The words lodged in my ear like grit.”

Nayeri wrote The Ungrateful Refugee to dispel assumptions about refugees and reveal refugees’ largely unexpressed sentiments. One of the biggest unjustified Western assumptions is that life in the West is inherently better than in the immigrant’s home country. Many refugees, like Nayeri’s family, are not only trading a high standard of living for a lower one, but they are also abandoning favorite foods, places, and loved ones. The alternative was certain death. Refugees must nevertheless humor and act gracious towards such ignorant Western statements despite the statement’s mistaken assumption that their lives weren’t in danger.

“‘You have disgraced the daughter of Mr. Mahmoodi.’

‘No, sir. I didn’t,’ he said to the table.

‘You are a communist operative.’

‘No, sir, I’m a tailor. I make shirts.’

‘You have been drinking.’

‘No, sir.’ He was so tired. It didn’t matter what he said. A guard entered, whispered with the Sepâh about drug trafficking. They intended for Darius to hear. He wanted to weep—they would never let him go. He would die on a crane, or facing a firing squad, before he turned thirty.

‘You’ve been drinking and you attacked Basiji officers in the street,’ said the guard.”

A common thread in Nayeri’s collected refugee asylum stories is their home nation’s corrupt law enforcement. First, the Basiji volunteer militia assault Darius on the street, then the Sepâh beat him into a months-long coma that leaves him with severe brain damage and forces him to escape Iran. Despite his real suffering, Darius struggles to prove his case to asylum officials, who assume he’s an economic migrant and that the Iranian authorities operate honestly.