We’ve been mostly focused on the “aftermath” of being an immigrant: programs like TPS, suspended visas, refugee aid and resettlement centers. The status of being in limbo. The status of being essentially without status. This week’s news stories were along the same lines, outlining the reinstatement of Syria into BAMF’s Return and Reintegration Assistance Program, in the aftermath of Assad’s fall from power, the fear of Syrian migrants living in Germany of potentially needing to return to Syria due to the same event, Syrian doctors’ deliberations over whether to stay in Germany or to return to Syria, having filled in critical gaps in the German health sector. All of this reinforces for us the reality that the process of migration continues long after a human being has physically moved across borders.
But Kingsley’s and Mikhail’s books were critical reminders that we, as journalists, cannot forget to attend to the process of becoming a refugee before reaching one’s destination: both of being persecuted in one’s home country, as The Beekeeper so vividly portrays in the Yazidis’ case, and the harrowing journeys captured in The New Odyssey. It struck me that those living in a country that typically receives immigrants, like many of us in the U.S., might be more inclined to follow the stories that impact migrants once they reach their destination. I find myself naturally hooked to news of Chicago ICE raids, the construction of new inhumane detention centers, the end of protections for certain migrant groups. But I appreciated how these books re-widened my lens on refugeehood into how the process begins with persecution in one’s country of origin and how a migrant might carry that forward: why people need protections in the first place.
The books took different approaches to trying to familiarize the reader with their subjects’ struggles and I think The Beekeeper was more successful. Kingsley was telling a story that had been told before, and he seemed to know it, and play it up. But I was a bit put off by his decision to lean on The Odyssey and classical Greek mythology to tell this modern story. Kingsley writes in the prologue, “Today’s Sirens are smugglers with their empty promises of safe passage; the violent border guard a contemporary Cyclops. Three millennia after their classical forebears created the founding myths of the European continent, today’s voyagers are writing a new narrative that will influence Europe, for better or worse, for years to come” (Kingsley, P. 10-11). But other than dramatic ocean journeys, the Odyssey references feel more like an appeal to Western audiences and classical values than a truly justified comparison. It’s the kind of fun context that usually makes a longer-form story more enjoyable, but this one didn’t do it for me. Is the clever war-hero Odysseus, who was trying to get home for so long, really comparable to the modern refugee? It’s not that I don’t see what Kingsley is getting at, it’s more that I feel stories like Hashem’s flight from Syria can speak for themselves. (And I say all this as someone who really does love the Odyssey).
Mikhail’s appeal worked much better for me. Part of it was that every sentence was a shock: I’d never before read about the Yazidi genocide and its treatment of women and children, so all was freshly egregious. The refrain of Mikhail’s role as a teacher, and whether she should tell her students stories like Nadia’s, really worked for me because even if she didn’t tell her students, she was telling us. And the reporting and storytelling reminded me of Asmat Khan’s in their meticulousness (the use of Google Maps to scope out areas of Syria and track how they’d changed, the commitment to Abdullah as a main character), but it was more gripping for its book-form. I think Siyeon also really got at the success of the book’s poetic qualities and the blurring of subject and narrator. This week’s readings reminded me to pay attention to the whole arc of migration and how best to narratively capture that arc when writing about it.
