After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

  She looks at Saw Ku. He smiles at her, his eyes full of love, and reaches out to take her hand before turning: “Thank you all for coming tonight.” Mu Naw can hear the slight catch in his voice. “It means so much to us that you are here.” He pauses. She squeezes his hand. He nods once. “Let us pray.”

  AFTERWORD

  I met Mu Naw when she was pregnant with Saw Doh, six months after she first arrived in the United States, at a fall festival in Austin outside on the grounds of a church that doubled as the neighborhood community center. We struck up a quick, languageless friendship watching our children play—her girls were five and two; my daughter was ten months old, dressed in an overly hot plush octopus costume and wriggling in her stroller. Mu Naw indicated her belly to show me she was pregnant. I demonstrated for her daughters how to bob for apples and toss the rings and stood in line while they waited to jump in the bouncy castle.

  I made so many mistakes in the beginning of our friendship, it’s impossible to recount them all: I knew nothing about refugees. I did not understand that Mu Naw came from a no-person’s-land within Thai borders where her body, her clothes, her language, her mannerisms, everything about her marked her as a member of an ethnically distinct group—the Karen people—and therefore persecuted in her home country and reviled in Thailand. I blithely spoke my taxi-Thai, picked up from spending two summers in northern Thailand just hours from Mae La camp. Mu Naw responded with what Thai she knew—her capacity for language is really extraordinary—and we bumped along. Over months spent sitting together watching our daughters play, I got to know the extraordinary organizations scaffolding refugees’ lives in Austin. I became friends with several of the caseworkers at Refugee Services of Texas; it was small then, only around fifteen people in Austin, and I’ve stayed in touch with some of my first contacts as the nonprofit has grown into an agency that resettles close to 3 percent of all refugees accepted into the United States.

  We started a Tuesday night ESL class that turned into a women’s cooperative for Mu Naw and her friends, most of whom were weavers. Mu Naw asked my friend Caren George and me one day if we could sell their bags. First, we sold what they had, then we helped them order new yarn and, as we built trust with one another and as Mu Naw’s language skills exploded, it grew into a nonprofit. For seven years, as long as there were women who wanted to earn supplemental income with their weaving and sewing and jewelry making, Caren, my husband, Jonathan, Mu Naw, and I, along with more volunteers than I can name, partnered with Burmese refugee artisans, producing thousands of bags and earrings and scarves and dolls and bibs made of rice bags and other items. We sold their handmade goods at fair trade festivals before Christmas and produced wholesale orders for companies in Austin (including the one that eventually hired Mu Naw). There were more than thirty artisans who came and went; a handful stayed in Austin and we’re friends still. Mu Naw was the hub of it all.

  After the nonprofit successfully ended when the last artisan got a job, Mu Naw and I occasionally met in the summer for playdates with our kids. We were both now working full-time. We talked on the phone sometimes and caught up every few months. When I told her over lunch one day in 2016 at Cherrywood Café in East Austin that I was thinking about writing a book, she was excited. I knew she and others wanted their story to be told; we had talked about it some over the years. We had created artisan profiles on our website and I’d interviewed the women we were working with, often with Mu Naw as our translator, to tell the story of our nonprofit for some blogs and publications. We kept coming back to a recurring theme—the women were afraid the world had forgotten what happened to them in Myanmar and in the camps in Thailand.

  While the book was still a proposal, I began to interview Mu Naw more regularly. I thought, because I had been there almost from the beginning, that I understood quite a bit about her life after coming to the United States; I even thought I had a decent grasp on what had happened before. I learned almost immediately that I was drastically wrong. There were many things I had never known. I thought becoming a refugee was her greatest trauma; as it turned out, that was not the case. War and a refugee camp and resettlement in the US profoundly affected her, but it was only the situation in which she lived out her story. The story itself was one that only she could define.

  I tell you about our friendship first because that is the frame through which I’ve made every decision in writing this book. My relationships with Mu Naw and later with Hasna are the core of this narrative. If they are displeased with how this book is written, if I have done a disservice to their lived experiences, then I have failed.

  * * *

  —

  In 2015, with the rapid rise in antirefugee rhetoric in our political conversations, Mu Naw and I both felt—as many did living in our community, where an average of one thousand refugees a year had peacefully settled and become part of the fabric of Austin—an urgent and outsized need to correct the public understanding of what it meant to be a refugee. Before, in every interaction I had ever had with anyone in Texas, people were either like me when I first met Mu Naw—ignorant about what it meant to be a refugee—or happily supportive of them. Almost without warning, a term that had once inspired compassion and a program that quietly enjoyed bipartisan support for decades became hot-button political issues. “Refugee” became weirdly, wildly synonymous with “terrorist.”

  I realized as that shift happened almost overnight that we couldn’t wait for the years to pass before their children were old enough to pick up the narratives. To be clear: The writers who must lead these conversations and must be centered in any discussion are those who once identified as refugees. They must always speak first. But not every refugee today has the language capacity, time, or inclination to write down their stories. Our country also desperately needs to hear from refugees who came a few years or a few months or even a few weeks ago, whose lives have been permanently upended by current policies.

  I began offering the people I knew the opportunity to tell their stories in a way that hid their identities. I sent out a few texts and suddenly couldn’t pitch or write fast enough to keep up with requests I was receiving from friends of friends who wanted to make sure the world knew what they had gone through. That was when I met Hasna, in December 2016. I began working on an as-told-to piece with her; it was published by Vox days after the Trump administration’s executive order on January 27, 2017, restricting arrivals from seven different countries.

  That article settled my method for me. I realized what a writer who has had long-term relationships in the refugee community can do: My role is to hide what needs to be hidden and tell what needs to be told. By using a pseudonym and changing some of the identifying details of her life, Hasna could speak out without fear of repercussions. This is the delicate balance I’ve tried to achieve: to write in a way that tells their stories now, in all of their raw urgency, while still keeping everyone as safe as possible.

  As I did in that first piece with Hasna, throughout this book I have tried to use many of the tactics of a cowriter—allowing Hasna and Mu Naw to have as much narrative control as possible, privileging their viewpoints of events. Some of the characters, such as Mu Naw’s children, are not as fleshed out, because they are still young and a book like this, even with pseudonyms, can have a strong impact on a kid; that’s a decision we’ve made together. Instead of the first-person as-told-to format, I decided early on to use the third person because, no matter how many questions I’ve asked, no matter how deep we dive into any specific moment, I cannot write an entire book in their voice. I have never been a refugee and third person felt like the only appropriate way to acknowledge that distance for a longer narrative.

  Mu Naw and Hasna chose their pseudonyms and their family’s names in the book; Mu Naw picked hers because she liked the name and Hasna picked “al-Salam” because it means “peace.” We have given pseudonyms to the people I refer to who have not given us permission to use their stori
es (Jane I tried to find but could not, Bob I know how to get a hold of but never want to contact, for obvious reasons). Not one single person I interviewed for the narrative portions of the book wanted to use their real name—not the former refugees or the resettlement caseworkers or the translators or the Syrian American community members who serve as cultural liaisons. With my editor’s oversight, Mu Naw and Hasna worked closely with me to change some physical attributes or other characteristics of the people who are involved in this story so that this book does not put anyone at risk. Safety has been our highest narrative consideration.

  The Burmese junta is openly targeting Rohingya people and renewing attacks in the Kachin states and certainly keeps tabs on anyone who has had any ties to a dissenter; anyone who thinks there is peace in Myanmar has not heard the stories of those persecuted citizens. The Syrian government took back the city of Daraa during the summer of 2018, while I was working on this manuscript. The reach of the Assad regime is long and I have picked up a portion of the Syrian community’s fear that even small details could result in their loved ones disappearing or dying, on Syrian soil or in other countries in the world.

  As Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in the introduction to The Displaced, “True justice is creating a world of social, economic, cultural, and political opportunities” where refugees and displaced persons can “tell their stories and be heard, rather than be dependent on a writer or a representative of some kind.” I fervently hope someday for that kind of justice, for a time when Hasna and Mu Naw and their families will be able to speak out proudly without fear and tell the world exactly what happened to them. Until then, I have partnered with them to ensure that I accurately and ethically represent them well.

  This is very far from being the only, the best, or the most complete version of this story. Refugees’ stories are as diverse and individual as the tellers themselves. At the end of the book, you’ll find a short list of books that either were written by refugees or represent the story of refugees through methodical research and interviews; I hope you’ll read them as well.

  * * *

  —

  I cannot possibly describe the delight and joy of spending almost two years interviewing Mu Naw and essentially reliving our decade of friendship again, this time filling in the pertinent details, the life-altering shifts, the undercurrents I never understood. I think we made it through at least one or two interviews without crying, but those were rare. Neither of us can quite believe this is how the story ended.

  For Hasna’s side of the narrative, we used a translator, Amena, a friend of a friend who is from Syria but who has lived in the United States for several years. Amena’s story is also worthy of a book but, as with most of my Syrian American friends, can never be told because it would put people she loves in danger. Her natural empathy makes her one of the most gifted translators I have ever met. Translation is an almost impossible art—an app can bring words from one language to another, but a translator provides context, cultural equivalents, detailed descriptions. Amena brought Hasna’s story to life.

  My interviews with Hasna did not follow the well-organized trajectory of my sessions with Mu Naw. Instead, they were disjointed moments that sometimes connected and sometimes did not; often, she repeated the same events over and over, which gave me the chance to pick up new details every time. There were many reasons for the repetition—I did not know Hasna as well when we began and I found that, in letting her tell me things in her own time, I learned what was important to her. But also, Mu Naw’s trauma is a scar that she points to on occasion; Hasna’s trauma is real and continuing. These events just happened. That trauma is still wreaking havoc on her life and her mind.

  There are some caveats I have in writing Hasna’s narrative. The first is that I have never been to Syria or Jordan; I was with Mu Naw in most of the places she went in Austin and have been to both Thailand and—very briefly—Myanmar. I was not with Hasna for the bulk of her story. I have asked a thousand questions, watched dozens of videos that Hasna sent me, researched to the best of my ability, but my descriptions are limited to what I thought to ask. I am certain there are mistakes, and they are all mine; I’m incredibly grateful to Amena and the other Syrian American readers who have asked to remain anonymous in helping me make my settings and historical timelines as accurate as possible.

  Second, Hasna and Jebreel are both insistent about some details that I still cannot confirm are accurate—for example, she is adamant that the boys who wrote in chalk on the wall at the al-Banin school were young, fourth or fifth graders, and every source I’ve read has shown that they were older. In that and a few more situations in the text, I made note of the discrepancies. The source of her knowledge was often rumor on the ground, which gives a flavor for what the stories were as they spread but does not always equal definite truth.

  That leads to my third caveat: Researching the Syrian revolution is a difficult task because of the lack of a free press in the country. Many of the battles in the war are on YouTube and Reddit, so finding firsthand sources is easy in many ways, but verifying facts is almost impossible. I do not speak Arabic and I stopped asking my Arab-speaking friends to help me translate some of the video captions when I realized the depths of trauma I was triggering with my questions. During the months when I was fact-checking Hasna’s story within Syria, I watched video after video in which government forces shot children point-blank, tortured civilians, bombed houses. I don’t have the Teflon skin I associate with many of my journalist friends and their ability to move past trauma to the heart of the story. I will never get some of those images out of my head; I still dream often about the missiles I watched destroying houses in Aleppo. I will never be able to understand what it is like to have lived through that reality; the images alone were enough.

  Because of the trauma that Hasna endured, there are important gaps in her story. She is unsure of some of the timelines; the war and then bureaucratic tension made time move differently for her. She and Laila argued frequently over WhatsApp about when Hasna actually left Jordan and when her children and grandchildren came and went; in the details we could back up with visas and paperwork, Laila was almost always right. Ultimately, the gaps in Hasna’s story are consistent with what occurs under complex trauma. I have not always tried to fill them in with the narrative; the result reads, I think, disjointedly in some places. But those holes and fragments are as much a part of her journey as the hoopoe birds on the rooftop in Ramtha, or the scent of jasmine and coffee and the music of Fairuz in her beloved home in Daraa.

  * * *

  —

  When the narrative ends, Laila and Yusef had just made it to Greece. They had some hope that things would be better once they were in Europe. That has not turned out to be the case. Since we began our interviews, Laila has been in a WhatsApp group with Hasna, Amena, and me, and we have followed along with her journey. Greece is swamped by refugees; more than a thousand refugees on average arrived every day in 2017. Yusef and Laila and the boys spent some time in a small city in Greece and then moved to Athens. Despite the fact that Greece was struggling under more than 50 percent unemployment, Laila was able to get a job for a while as a waitress at a restaurant owned by a Syrian man; Yusef watched the boys while she worked. She could barely make enough money to cover rent in a hostel for refugees, called a “squat” in Greece, and food for the boys. She was mugged and lost her cell phone, which had all of her pictures of Malek on it. Their lives in Greece were incredibly stressful; there were almost constant fights outside the door of their squat. She video chatted with us sometimes—she looks and sounds very much like Rana. Laila would hold her camera up to show us the rooms they were living in, the concrete walls and sparse beds with not enough blankets. They left Greece when Laila lost her job.

  As of the writing of this Afterword, Laila has joined Yusef in another country in Europe and they are hoping to receive permission to work there. The boys are in school, but their sit
uation is tenuous. Because Laila and Yusef filed for resettlement in Europe, even without the travel ban, they would not be able to join their family in the United States. Had they stayed in Turkey and had the travel ban not been put in place, there is every reason to think they would be here by now.

  When I’ve told people what Laila has gone through, I often get a few surprised reactions, especially that Hasna and her family keep in such constant contact around the world. They talk multiple times a day. The world after social media is an incredibly small place—a battle takes place in Syria and I can watch the bombs fall moments later on YouTube and read in-depth analysis on Reddit by people all over the world. Hasna can talk to her grandchildren as soon as they’re home from school every day.

  But the immediacy of those interactions also outlines the difficulty Hasna and Jebreel have in being in the United States while most of their children are not. Hasna’s emotional health rises and falls with the dramatic events that Yusef and Laila endure, and with the deteriorating political situation in Syria. She and Jebreel do not sleep much still. They often stay up all night watching videos about what is happening in Syria. Their hearts and their bodies are not in the same place.

  * * *

  —

  One day, after she had been in Texas for almost two years, Hasna stepped in an ant pile. The dirt was soft and her foot, in the black ballet flats she always wore, sank into the mound. Small red ants swarmed, stinging her repeatedly. Later that week at an interview at my house, she propped her foot on my coffee table to show us the big red welts. Amena tsked sympathetically and we talked about how horrible fire ants are in Texas, especially during the hot months. Scorpions and snakes Hasna knew to look out for, but who would have guessed the ants in Texas would be this vicious?