Refugees and The Lessons They Teach Us

I have always been a book fanatic and buy books, both new and used, and have a house in which every shelf is swimming with novels and tomes of non-fiction. Having a home full of books that I can pluck from a shelf at will has always made me feel measurably abundant. That is, it did until the day that I met a new refugee family.

In my job as a public health nurse I work with many refugee families, helping to ease the transition from years of life in a refugee camp into the startlingly different life as a resident of the United States. Working with these families and hearing their stories of their former lives has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

This day I walked into the tiny apartment of a new refugee family with an interpreter at my side to bridge the communication gap. I was no longer startled by the stark emptiness of the apartment, as I had been when I was new to working with those in poverty. As a direct contrast to the consumer society of America, refugees come here with nothing and are grateful for every simple pleasure- the roof over their head, food on their plate, the lack of gunshots outside their window- and often live in tiny, low-income apartments without a single piece of furniture. This apartment held only a single chair and a shelf proudly nailed into the opposite wall.

The solitary chair was immediately proffered to me, with reverence. I never fail to be humbled by the grace and kindness offered to me in these homes. I declined to sit on the chair and instead sat on the worn carpeting, the family and my interpreter and I forming a circle in which their preschool-aged daughter, born amidst gunfire in the middle of a military uprising in their home country, spun within as though we had made the circle for her joy alone.

They did not stop their daughter from her joyful dance as many American parents would have- cautioning their daughter to sit quietly and let the adults speak. Instead they grinned and laughed and we all watched her spin and giggle. The conversation came in stops and starts as it often does while communicating with an interpreter, as we discussed their health, doctor referrals, food supply and community resources. The daughter continued to spin and giggle and we smiled at her with each pause in conversation. The family seemed to light up at my apparent joy in watching their daughter and this shared joy created a kinship beyond the fragile bonds of a nurse on her first visit to their home. There was a moment of pause and the father met my eyes and gestured to his daughter, “There is nothing so beautiful as a child who has no fear, no?” he said as the interpreter scrambled to interpret into English. The world stood still for a moment as I measured the words in my heart and nodded yes, at a loss for words, imagining the life that she had lived in her first few years.

He stood on shaky legs from sitting cross-legged for so long and walked over to the solitary shelf tacked to the wall. On it sat a single book, one of the books made for toddlers learning to speak with one picture and its accompanying word on each page. He handled the book with a reverence that I had never seen someone hold a book, even though I surround myself with bibliophiles that love books with fervor.

He sat, again completing our circle, and opened the first page. On that page was a photo of a perfect apple and he pointed at the picture, saying in clumsy English, “apple”, and nodding for his daughter to do the same. She stopped her spinning for the moment and carefully annunciated the same word in beautiful English.  They completed each page of the short board book in the same way. When they were done, he replaced the lone book on the shelf and bowed to it as he walked away. I thought back to my shelves stacked with books and suddenly did not feel abundant, I felt gluttonous.

He somberly said, though the voice of the emotional interpreter, “My daughter will learn English and go to school and live the American dream. “ I watched her dancing with such joy, no longer encumbered by the violence in her homeland or the constriction of the refugee camp, and I knew that he was right, she would find her own version of the American dream.

I was humbled and inspired and reminded of the importance of literacy and vowed to stop hoarding books and share them with those who have few and to treat each and every book with the reverence that I saw that day. Even more importantly, I was reminded of the American dream and how it still lives today in the heart of every citizen, whether born on this sacred soil or across an ocean.

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