"They don't like the damaged, I want to say... Trust me, the American and the English, they like triumphant stories. They want to be a part of the stories... They want to congratulate themselves for something remarkable. Keep yourself undamaged."
It's a powerful and important book, and I was happy to get the chance to speak about it with Nayeri over the phone, recently. Below is our conversation about why she decided now was the time to tell her story, what it means to be a"chameleon" as an immigrant, and who she hopes reads this book. I had been focusing on my own road and my own life for so long, and it started to feel a little bit narcissistic. Because the fiction, funnily enough, while not about me, was also about me. And I wanted to talk about things that affect everyone, and I wanted to focus outward to other people's stories.
There's an interrogation within the book of the concept of being a"chameleon," which is something your brother calls you, somewhat accusatorially. There's one sense in which it's positive, because it means you're adaptable, and another in which it's negative, because your whole essence becomes slippery.
The refugee story shouldn't be a story of great success and achievement. It should actually be a story about humans not being so horrible that they shut the door on dying fellow humans. That's what the story is. If a country was burning, and all you could get was hundreds of grandmothers, then you should take them because lives matter.
We are not a hateful species. We do things because we follow leaders. When faced with one-on-one decisions, we would choose friendship. We would always choose love. And the funny thing is—the ironic thing is—the people who haven't really met refugees, they are the ones who would benefit the most from having them in their communities. They're the ones who haven't traveled, and who would benefit from seeing something of the rest of the world.
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