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" As a child, she believed he was the kindest man she knew. But slowly over the years, Baba became a stranger and she feels nothing but a dull ache for the energetic, gleeful father she once knew. People change. Everyone. And all love ends. She knows this now. Only hardened exiles refuse to change; they dig their feet in and try to root everywhere they land, even if the soil poisons them. They hang on and on, afraid to move forward. They don't let go of dead things. They don't toss the lime juice. They hoard trinkets in ragged suitcases. They pile up photographs of long-ago days, begging their children for doubles. They build a fortress in the corner of a closet. Maybe Gui was right. You're still waiting, he said - it's true. She's so terrified of losing her every small advantage that now her own Baba poses a threat. If she had accepted Gui as her home, would she shield herself so zealously? Would she be a secure kind of woman with a dozen purses strewn everywhere, each containing an old ID or a document she once thought important - none of it vital enough to save, because her entitlement to her life isn't granted by these things, but intrinsic? No one can snatch it away. Maybe that's the difference between refugees and expats. The difference isn't Yale or naturalization papers, a fat bank account or invitations to native homes. In that way, she is the same as Mam'mad and Karim. When you learn to release that first great windfall after the long migration, when you trust that you'll still be you in a year or a decade, even without the treasures you've picked up along the way, always capable of more - when you stop carrying it all on your back - maybe that's when the refugee years end. "
― Dina Nayeri , Refuge
