The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

Nayeri’s family members, both those who flee Iran and stay there, offer different perspectives of the refugee experience. Nayeri’s closest and most complicated relationship is with her Maman, Sima. Nayeri sees Maman as the source of her academic rigor—to be “not seventeenth percentile, seventeenth person”—and her feminism, though Maman is too conservative to be feminist herself (23). Instead, Maman turns to Christianity, crediting all actions to God and distributing religious materials even at her own risk. Maman believes that most practitioners—whether Muslims in Iran or Christians in the West—are not truly devout, and she is critical of other Christian refugees.

Maman plays a fundamental role in her children’s development as she educates them during the asylum process and teaches them activities that would help them pass as natives. Conflicts between her and Nayeri grow over time: Nayeri at first blames the family’s squalid conditions in America on her mother’s faults rather than systemic prejudice. Later in life, Maman observes characters in Nayeri’s writings who resemble her, and she considers them dishonest portrayals.

Maman renames Nayeri’s brother as Daniel to be more appealing to Western ears, and Nayeri sees him as the affable, hardworking immigrant whom natives like. Yet Nayeri recognizes that Daniel’s dark skin means he faces prejudices that she can avoid with her lighter skin and cosmetic surgery. Nayeri notes that Daniel jokes with the TSA agent as a way to confirm the agent’s bias, and she accepts his criticism that she shifts her personality to suit her needs.

Nayeri is nostalgic for her countryside visits to her paternal grandmother, Maman Masi, but has a tense relationship with Maman Moti, her maternal grandmother. Maman Moti left Iran before the revolution and refuses any connection to other refugees, even Nayeri’s family as they were fleeing Iran. Nayeri also sees Maman Moti as “addicted to waiting, to hope of rescue” as she longs for a man she briefly met years ago whom she believed would become her future husband (121). Maman Moti’s letter writing, though largely lost, may also foretell Nayeri’s own focus on writing.

Baba is a jovial man, but he lives with an opium use disorder and mood swings. Nayeri recognizes her father’s verbal and physical abuse of Maman, but still wants to see him as a progressive. Her perception of him changes after Baba remarries; he “was free to live unbothered in Iran, as is any straight, married man with money and open doors, a gentle, necessary profession, and a decorative Koran” (95). Nayeri feels embarrassed when he travels to America with his distinctly Iranian moustache, and when he participates in a baptism despite his atheist attitudes. Nayeri’s animosity extends to her half-sister, a potential version of Nayeri if she could have stayed in Iran. Nayeri believes her half-sister’s desire to enter Europe for education is insincere and ignorant of refugees’ suffering.

As Nayeri searches for her place in the world, she creates her own family. Nayeri considers her marriage with Philip, the type of White man Iranian refugees dream of, as pleasant but unfulfilling. Troubles with Philip include others prioritizing his career over hers and faux pas like his telling her she shouldn’t worry about Kambiz’s death because natives accept her. After marrying Sam and giving birth to Elena, Nayeri falls into a depression that she compares to the loss of self that many refugees feel while waiting for asylum. She interviews refugees partly because she wants better self-understanding as she raises Elena in an increasingly hostile world. Nayeri now considers Elena to be her repatriation to a place she lost, but Nayeri acknowledges that a time will come where they will drift apart the way she did with her Maman.