Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [9]
I have more in common with my editor in New York and with psychologists in Europe than I have with some Nebraskans. And I belong to other cultures—the culture of women, of gardeners, of my neighborhood, of writers, of Piphers, and of my family of origin. After I lost my parents, I was for a while in what Renato Rosaldo calls "the invisible culture of the bereaved," a culture all of us belong to if we live long enough.
Each of these cultures is different from the others. I move among them, switching roles and rules as I move. My everyday life is crisscrossed by borders. It is at those borders between cultures that much of my most interesting experience occurs.
Garrison Keillor wrote that, "If we knew the stories of refugees, they would break our hearts." As I've worked on this book, I've heard stories of mythic scope—of grandparents carrying children across raging rivers, of families barefoot in the snow, trudging across mountain passes, and of a poet surviving torture in an Iraqi prison by remembering the beauty of a flower garden. I've met Vietnamese men who, while they were in reeducation camps, were sent on their hands and knees into fields to find land mines. I've met members of the Polish Solidarity movement, former slaves, and women abducted and raped by soldiers. I've heard children tell of bombs that they thought were fireworks until they saw bodies explode. I have seen the full scope of what human beings do to each other and for each other.
I've interviewed high school students in ELL classes and worked with an elementary school classroom where the kids spoke twenty-two different languages. I've consulted at summer camps for refugee kids and attended English classes for parents of students in the public schools. I've trained members of different cultural groups to be liaisons between the mental health community and their ethnic community, consulted with our community action program's staff, and been a member of the New Americans Task Force.
As both a therapist and interviewer, I came to the conclusion that a formal question-and-answer format is not the best way to learn about newcomers. Partly, that format is too similar to an interrogation. People are fearful they will say the wrong thing. Mainly, I noticed that all the really interesting experiences came before and after those formal sessions. A grandmother would offer me some fresh naan and a bottle of Pepsi. Then she would ask me if Americans ate blackbirds and cardinals. A woman would whisper as I left, "Can you help me get my son out of jail in Saudi Arabia?" A man would ask, "Do you know where I can get a used car for sixty dollars?" A dignified widower would shyly ask if I could help him find a wife. A teenager would show her father the Walkman she bought with wages from her after-school job. The father would shout, "In the Ukraine, my brother has no food and you bought a toy?"
I have lived, as much as a white person born in the Midwest can, in the world of refugees. I've tried to be what Rosaldo calls a "connected critic," not judgmental but involved and observant. I have tried to write about others with the respect that I would want for myself. In the face of so much tragedy, humility has been the only possible emotional stance. I didn't want to turn anyone's life into an anecdote. The only justification for writing these stories is to help others. As I've worked to understand the world of refugees, I've been aware that they were working to understand mine. We observed, analyzed, and changed each other.
The first time I met a family of Sudanese from the Kakuma Refugee Camp, I had to deal with my fear of the other. I was alone in a room with Nuer and Dinka men, tall blue-black Africans who spoke very little English. Some had gaar, facial scarring done in manhood ceremonies. I was anxious, mostly about making a fool of myself, but also that these men might somehow hurt me. I had to admit I harbored the rudiments of racism, an unconscious attitude that I fight daily, but that none of us can totally escape. As I sat with them, I