Sloan Talbot

“All my life was happy…You know maybe the media make Iraq a very bad Iraq…before 2003…It was a very beautiful life in Iraq…I had a very good life but it changed.”

This quote was taken from the first interview I conducted in Amman with a woman who had been in Jordan since 2003. Her family was extremely well-off and politically connected, and her life in Iraq as she describes it was beautiful, easy. She lives now in a small apartment, working illegally as a secretary, because refugees are not allowed work permits in Jordan. Her home provides clues to a life she once lived; the furniture imported from Turkey, the statues, and objects brought over from Iraq, all pointing to a life very different than the one she lives now in Jordan.

I had no idea what “kind” of refugees we would be interviewing. I knew the basics, that the media’s one-note image of young children and families, poor or starving could in fact be the people we were interviewing. I also thought that I was critical enough to see beyond that, to see refugees as people coming from all walks of life and backgrounds. I figured the reports I had read, the research I had done, the stories I had heard from classes and the local refugee tutoring I do in Durham meant that I understood that refugees were not all helpless and lacking agency. But these stereotypes were still present as soon as I opened the door to the woman’s apartment and saw her beautiful home, my mouth wide open, feeling dumbfounded.

As a low-income, first-generation college student attending a top school such as Duke, my idea of control, agency and independence has been tied to being financially stable. To obtain a degree at a prestigious school, and use that to obtain a well-paying job means to have agency. This assumption, carried over to how I perceived refugees. Can someone with a high education, financial prosperity, and prominent family connections come into the circumstance of being a refugee? Absolutely.

I don’t know why this never crossed my mind, but when I pictured who I would be interviewing, I did not have the imagination to picture someone who came from a comfortable life. Because doesn’t that inherently change the image of a refugee and their home country? If someone comes from a place of happiness and wealth, does that change our image of the “vulnerable refugee”? Does it make them less worthy of help? Listening to the woman’s story, her life turned upside down in a single night of terror and violence, fleeing to Jordan, and remaining here in Amman made me come face to face with my ignorance. Anyone can be a refugee, anyone can face persecution.

Upon hearing this woman and her story of the life she lived in Iraq, it became clear that she was absolutely right about the media’s false portrayal of Iraqis. Maybe her life was the exception to the rule, but even so, I have never seen the media portray Iraq as anything other than a war zone, a place that “needs” salvation, a place of danger, a place of poverty.

My very first interview with a refugee in Jordan was unlike anything I expected, and that was an important learning moment for me. Refugees are people from all walks of life. We can’t forget that refugees are not simply “vulnerable subjects”. Refugees lives before conflict were diverse and different, some coming from poverty, some not. The backgrounds of these refugees does not increase or lesson their “vulnerability” or their “need”, it does not make their refugee story more common or more unique. Their lives before are different than the lives they lead now. Iraq should not have to be described as a place of terror and sadness for a story to be believed. Iraq is complex, multi-faceted, and holds many different realities for people, besides the one we see on T.V. Iraq can be beautiful, and still be a place to flee from.

Whenever the group travels to an interview, our Iraqi translator explains the general location to us and then once we are in a cab, we call and put him on the phone with our driver so he can give them specific directions. Typically, after the cab drivers briefly interact with him over the phone, they will try and talk about the fact that he’s Iraqi, saying thing like, “Oh Iraqi? Iraqi Mish Kwayiss” which roughly translates with our limited Arabic to “Iraqi? Iraqi’s not good”.

This comment highlights a larger phenomenon that I have observed in Jordan — the tensions, assumptions and general discrimination amongst Iraqi’s, Syrians, and Jordanians about one other. These assumptions operate both informally with the day to day interactions and conversations heard, and then institutionally, with some programs restricted to certain groups, Syrians getting school fees waived, but Iraqi’s having to pay, a lower rate for health insurance for Syrians and higher for Iraqis, all getting more aid than the Sudanese, Somali and Yemeni refugees. How these tensions operate serve to highlight a larger question posed by those here in Jordan and external NGO’s and governments, regarding who needs help, and in a time of limited resources, who receives aid, and who does not?

On a surface level, the day to day assumptions mostly come from a place of misunderstanding. We have heard many people express the common assumption that Syrians receive the most aid in the form of food vouchers, access to work, and resettlement. The type of aid given to refugees varies largely due to factors of when displacement occurred, number of refugees in Jordan, and other unknown numbers and positions.

The institutional levels here in Jordan are also creating these tensions. The Jordanian government mandates that all NGO’s wishing to work with refugees’ reserve 30% of their assistance or aid, for Jordanians. The Iraqi’s, Syrians, and small organizations we have talked to, like the Collateral Repair Project (CRP) and MECI have told us the discontent many feel about Jordanians receiving air or a spot in a program, when the Jordanian government is supposed to help Jordanians more than the refugees, the organizations expressing tensions about how funding is awarded and the limits of refugees they can take into their programs because they must fulfill the Jordanian quota. Yet many Jordanians do in fact need this assistance, as they suffer from the same problems that refugees have in terms of inadequate schooling, and expensive rates of living in Amman and Jordan. The larger issue of Jordan formal schooling, and the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens, is not being addressed. As a result, NGO’s must work with both communities in order to receive funding, but this lessens the numbers of refugees able to receive this assistance.

There are constructed, man-made divisions specifically amongst Iraqi and Syrian refugee communities when it comes to funding allocation for groups that create hostilities towards the other, and discontent towards the UN, and the Jordanian government. Many organizations we have talked to have pointed to the announcement by the Jordanian government to allow a certain number of work visas for refugees in Jordan to be given. However, these work visas are specifically ear-marked to Syrian refugees, leaving out the ability to work for the numerous other nationalities of refugees in Jordan. With the inability to work being the main factor for economic hardship, and loss of agency, to limit this option to a specific nationality of people will create discontent from other populations not receiving this aid, Iraqis, Somalis, Sudanese, and even local Jordanians themselves. Talking to the U.S. embassy recently here in Amman, two field officers explained that the U.S government is one of the largest donors for UNHCR, and local non-profits, mentioning that the official U.S. policy is to give equal funding and resources to all refugees, regardless of nationalities. However, as the group, going to organizational meetings and speaking to both Iraqi and Syrian refugees in interviews, there is no equal funding being given, and a large population of refugees, like Yemenis, Somalians, and Sudanese are completely overlooked.

Ultimately, from general misunderstanding of different refugee populations, to limited resources or specific rules for NGO’s to abide by, and overall stereotyping of populations creates tensions between groups that leaves Jordan, and the people living here disjointed, and separated. With long term displacement being the reality for many refugees here in Amman, to avoid talking about these issues is out of the question, but how does one change the narrative of varying groups, when this narrative is given factual evidence by policies implemented by government and NGO’s? As seen from the examples above, the stereotypes and assumptions formed on the ground about refugees or Jordanians do not come from prejudice or stereotyping, but stem from the larger issue of unequal allocation of funding to all refugee groups in Jordan.

“Bring our stories back” “Share our stories with those in the States” “Tell the world about us”. At the end of almost every interview, these, among other sentiments are told to me when I ask, “Do you have anything else you’d like to tell us?”

Since my first interview here in Jordan to completing my 10^th interview yesterday, the idea of how to give back to someone who has given me so much by sharing their story is something I’ve struggled with.

Reciprocity is an idea that is talked about a lot in humanitarian work. When an individual or an organization gives someone a service, resources, or provides something, they also gain  experiences and insight, invaluable information, and memories from the people they are  “helping”. While this Duke Immerse: Deconstructing/Reconstructing the Refugee Experience is not meant as humanitarian aid or a service trip, the research we are conducting via these interviews leaves me thinking many times that I have gained a lot more than I can give back to these people. The Immerse itself is a way for us as students to understand migration and displacement in the world in the context of the refugee crisis, but also listen to and then share individual life stories from refugees to allow them to share their story, as they would like to tell it. During this Immerse, the interviews we conduct with Syrian and Iraqi refugees are providing me and my team information, insight, and to put it frankly “data” for our research papers, monologues and the group magazine we create together. But what am I providing the individuals who decide to share their stories, who put their emotions, life, stories of loss and pain all out on the table for me to write down and record?

Before every interview, we read our groups’ protocol to each interviewee, explaining that we don’t give anything, can’t provide assistance or support, or even lobby UN officials or resettlement agencies for their individual cases. Each person we interviews agrees to this protocol, most saying that by us simply listening to their story as they want to tell it, we are giving them something amazing, grateful that we are simply listening to what they have to say.

However, after each interview, I never feel like I am returning the immense gift the interviewee gives to me by sharing their story. There isn’t real reciprocity if I am able to gain so much through their stories, but I am not giving something of the same caliber back. The one thing I can try to give back, is to tell these stories in the most authentic and truthful way possible, share these interviews back in the States with as many as I can, to try and deconstruct the stereotypes Americans and our government have about refugees, showing the complexity and depth of not only the stories of displacement, but of the person behind that story.

The task that myself and my group face after returning home in less than a week, is to take what we have heard, seen, and been allowed access to in terms of these stories and these individuals lives, and share it in a way that humanizes refugees, and makes them more than their persecution, but also breaks down stereotypes that circulate American media of the middle east, conflict, Muslims, Arabs, and refugees. Upon our return to the States, the task at hand for the group will be to prepare individual monologues of two of the interviews we conducted, one Syrian, and one Iraqi, these will be presented publicly to the Duke community, but also with plans to present them to the local Durham community, via public schools or community centers. There will also be each team members’ individual papers that will be written using the interviews as data, pertaining to a larger theme or idea that we wished to analyze through the stories we head. Finally, the group will create a magazine that will be published and dispersed, with small op-eds from each team member, and pictures of Jordan showing the places and people we encountered.

Through these modes of sharing what we have learned during our time in Jordan, we can try to begin to get folks back home, at Duke, in Durham, and our own families and communities more engaged in the refugee crisis, deconstructing the universal refugee story and reconstructing it to show individual people. Refugee stories are more than their persecution, or their nationality, or their potential resettlement, and with the stories we have gathered, hopefully dispersing them to the general public will show that refugees’ lives and identities are incredibly different and unique from one another, not one story is the same, refugees were people before they became displaced, and are still individuals with their own story to tell. Hopefully when I answered, “Yes, I’ll try to share your story” to the people I have previously interviewed, I’ll be able to keep my promise, doing so in a way that perhaps helps to change American mentalities and public perception, even in our small Durham community, and thus giving back a little, to the refugees who have shared and given me, so much.

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days was the total amount of time that I, a Duke undergraduate participating in the Duke Immerse: Deconstructing/Reconstructing the Refugee Experience, was in Jordan, interviewing refugees from Iraq and Syria, and meeting with NGO’s and governmental organizations who have direct involvement with refugees on the ground to hear about what they are doing to help refugees. Does twenty-eight days abroad make me now some sort of expert on the refugee crisis and displacement of refugees in Jordan? Not in the slightest. Does my time in the city of Amman, and my experiences listening to families and people talk about their lives before and after their displacement make me responsible for sharing the information I learned to my communities back here in the States? I’m not sure.

Responsibility, at its most minimal state is being, “liable to be called on to answer” according to Merriam Webster dictionary. My experiences this past month has opened my eyes to the complexity of a refugees’ life in migration. I have seen families who came from great wealth and prosperity from big cities like Baghdad and Damascus, to people who worked on farms in rural areas of the same country, all there, in Amman, Jordan. Living their lives in the “in-between” not yet resettled, not in their country of origin, and not allowed to become citizens of Jordan. All the stories I heard and the people I met gave me a deeper understanding of the refugee experience, yet it is not a complete one. As I sit on Duke’s campus now and reflect back on my positionality as a student researcher, temporarily coming into the spaces of refugees, and then twenty-eight days later being able to leave and come back home is full of privileges that the families I talked with do not currently possess, the privilege of home, the privilege to travel, and the privilege to be born in a country that I do not have to flee from persecution from.

With these privileges that I possess, what am I to do with them? I don’t have the capacity to help every family I met with personally, or go back to Jordan and bring supplies and resources. But the stories I heard, the memories I have of my interactions with these people put me in a position to do something, to be “responsible”.  To do nothing with the information I gained and the stories I heard would be the greatest misuse of twenty-eight days of experiences that I could ever do. The question this then poses, is what would this responsibility be? Being back in the States for just two days, already friends, family, and peers have asked me about my time in Jordan, what I heard, and saw, and what my opinions are now of the refugee crisis as a whole. By talking and responding to a few of them, mentioning what I saw, and how it has impacted my views on displacement and the resettlement process, sharing tidbits of the stories I heard, I think now that, my “responsibility” is to share my experiences.

With this Immerse, our post-trip agenda is to prepare two monologues from the interviews we had, narrating the stories we heard in a public performance, and to curate a magazine that has our photos, and small features of topics that each of us individually focused on during our time in Jordan. With these two projects, the goal is to share with our communities and the greater public what we heard, and to dispel assumptions and stereotypes of refugees. These assumptions of refugees as one-dimensional, potential terrorist threats, stereotypes of the resettlement process as “easy” and a “flood gate waiting to open” when in fact it is one of the hardest processes to go through. With my and the groups’ positionality, Duke students with the ability to travel in and out of our country, US citizens, I do think we are responsible for sharing the stories we heard to the very best we can do, to be as authentic to the people’s lives as possible, showcasing them in a way that humanizes refugees, as individual people with complex stories and lives. I am held accountable to do my part, to be held responsible to these people, I am now in a position where others are asking me about my experiences, what I saw, my opinions on the crisis, and if I don’t share, or if I don’t accurately tell about my time in Jordan, I am allowing the stereotypes and negative images and unknown assumptions of refugees to prevail, a dangerous thing to do in our current political state. Twenty-eight days makes me no expert or authority figure on displacement and refugees, but it does put me in a position to try and change the perception of refugees in my social circles and communities, and for that, I am responsible.