A refugee’s sting of shame in being foreign

WE had been asylum seekers for 16 months, living in hostels in the United Arab Emirates and Italy, when my family arrived in Oklahoma. In Iran, we had been part of a respected family of doctors and academics. Now, as refugees, the sharpest sting we endured wasn’t from hunger or cold, but from everyday shame: Over what little we now had, our useless Iranian educations, the color of our skin, our pungent food, our foreign habits.

We moved into a ramshackle apartment complex in the “bad” part of town. It was a hopeless place. In a parking lot full of rusted metal, cigarette butts baked in oil puddles. Unwashed children idled long past sundown in a meager ravine. In our new community, we expected to find fellow immigrants, other newcomers itching to study, to work. Instead we were surrounded by poor Americans, which made us suspicious. How did they end up here when they had every advantage – access to American passports, a lifetime of American education.