The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

As a child, Dina Nayeri fled from Iran to the United Arab Emirates with her mother and brother. They arrived at a refugee camp in Italy in 1989 and stayed there before obtaining a sponsored asylum in the United States. Thirty years after these events, Nayeri feels that she can reveal aspects of the refugee experience that few are willing to.

Storytelling is vital to refugees, and their stories often break into five parts: The escape from danger, the waiting time at camps, the asylum application, the assimilation process in which they “perform” for native citizens (6), and a cultural repatriation in which the refugee reconciles with their past. Nayeri spends her early life re-telling the story of Madam’s Three Miracles as her refugee narrative. But she resents nativist assumptions that her life in Iran was terrible. Her refugee status defines her role in society.

In 2016, amid escalating nationalism and her post-childbirth anxieties, Nayeri visits refugee camps in Greece and tries to reconcile her past. She finds an asylum system that unfairly denies claims and ignores tyrannical regimes.