After the Last Border Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Goudeau

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Goudeau, Jessica, author.

  Title: After the last border : two families and the story of refuge in America / Jessica Goudeau.

  Description: New York : Viking, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019033736 (print) | LCCN 2019033737 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525559139 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525559146 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women immigrants—Texas—Austin—History. | Immigrant families—Texas—Austin—History. | American Dream. | Emigration and immigration—Government policy—United States—History.

  Classification: LCC E184.A1 G66 2020 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 362.83/98120976431—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033736

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033737

  All names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

  Cover design and illustration by Colin Webber

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  To “Mu Naw,” “Hasna,” their family and friends scattered around the world, and the refugee resettlement community in Austin—with all my love.

  Where should we go after the last border? Where should birds fly after the last sky?

  Where should plants sleep after the last breath of air?

  —MAHMOUD DARWISH, “EARTH PRESSES AGAINST US” (TRANSLATED BY MUNIR AKASH AND CAROLYN FORCHÉ)

  The world has got very good—very skilled and very adept, really—at spotting these great mass abuses of populations. But only from a distance of about 40 years. Up close it’s different. . . . The thing about it is that it is happening—now, to real people. And the world—including and especially the world that could help—can’t quite get the thing in focus. . . . This is a question of moral right and international responsibility—and one from which neither the United States nor the rest of the industrial countries should be permitted to look away.

  —EDITORIAL ABOUT THE INDOCHINESE HUMANITARIAN CRISIS, “. . . AND REFUGEES,” THE WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 22, 1979

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Character Maps

  Prologue: MU NAW (MYANMAR/THAILAND BORDER, 1989)

  PART 1

  Chapter 1: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, APRIL 2007)

  Chapter 2: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 1945–1951

  Chapter 3: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH 2011)

  Chapter 4: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, APRIL 2007)

  Chapter 5: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH 2011)

  Chapter 6: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, APRIL 2007)

  Chapter 7: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH 2011)

  Chapter 8: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, MAY–AUGUST 2007)

  Chapter 9: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH 2011)

  Chapter 10: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 1880–1945

  Chapter 11: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH–APRIL 2011)

  Chapter 12: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, SEPTEMBER 2007)

  Chapter 13: HASNA (DARAA, SYRIA/RAMTHA, JORDAN, APRIL–JULY 2011)

  Chapter 14: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, OCTOBER 2007–APRIL 2008)

  PART 2

  Chapter 15: HASNA (RAMTHA, JORDAN, DECEMBER 2012–FEBRUARY 2013)

  Chapter 16: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 1950–1963

  Chapter 17: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, APRIL 2008–MARCH 2009)

  Chapter 18: HASNA (RAMTHA AND IRBED, JORDAN, FEBRUARY–DECEMBER 2013)

  Chapter 19: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 1965–1980

  Chapter 20: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, OCTOBER 2011)

  Chapter 21: HASNA (IRBED, JORDAN, DECEMBER 2013–JULY 2016)

  PART 3

  Chapter 22: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, AUGUST 2014, JANUARY 2015)

  Chapter 23: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 1980–2006

  Chapter 24: HASNA (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, JULY 2016)

  Chapter 25: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, MAY 2015)

  Chapter 26: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 2008–2015

  Chapter 27: HASNA (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 2016)

  Chapter 28: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, MARCH 2016)

  Chapter 29: US REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, 2015–2018

  Chapter 30: HASNA (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, JANUARY–JULY 2017)

  Epilogue: MU NAW (AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, JANUARY 2016)

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Further Reading

  Index

  Author’s Note

  This book tells the stories of two women resettled through the refugee resettlement program to the United States. Mu Naw arrived in 2007, at the beginning of the program for refugees from Myanmar, one of the most successful and widely supported resettlement initiatives in US history. Hasna al-Salam arrived in 2016, with the first wave of Syrian refugees, during one of the greatest moments of upheaval since the establishment of the federal resettlement program.

  I gathered the details of these stories through intensive interviews every two weeks or so over a period of two years; in addition, I had been friends with Mu Naw for almost a decade when I began writing the book. The Afterword provides a more in-depth look at our interview process and my methods in writing their narratives. At their request and with their direct input, some identifying details, including names, have been changed to protect Mu Naw, Hasna, and their relatives and friends, many of whom are still in danger currently.

  This book is also the story of the American resettlement program itself, from its roots in the immigration debates at the end of the nineteenth century to its dismantling in 2019 at the hands of the government branch that once promoted and protected it. Refugee policy is not a single, monolithic piece of legislation, but a series of programs and practices shaped by one of the most powerful forces in the American republic: the will of the people. Too often we focus on the opportunities the US provides immigrants in the land of the “American Dream,” and not on how our mercurial national moods lead to small and large policy shifts that radically affect real people. Americans’ national fight for identity—the wrangling about who we once were, how we will define ourselves for each generation, and who we want to become—is the single greatest determiner of who we accept for resettlement.

  After years of friendship with refugees and countless hours of research into one of the most remarkable, if imperfect, federal programs, I have come to believe that refugee resettlement is a bellwether of our country’s moral center—how we respond to the greatest humanitarian crises of our time reveals our nation’s soul.

  CHARACTER MAPS

  Prologue

  MU NAW

  MYANMAR/THAILAND BORDER, 1989

  Mu Naw is five and she is running. Thick wet grass rises higher than her chubby thighs and she lifts her legs as if she is marching, almost jumping to keep up with the frantic adults. Her mouth is silent, but her body makes noises because she hasn’t learned yet how to run and hide well in the woods. Her mother
is carrying her baby sister; her toddler brother is with her aunt. Mu Naw struggles valiantly, pushes back tall plants, breathes hard, but she cannot keep up. Her young uncle swings her up onto his shoulders and she wraps her arms under his neck, lays her cheek on his head to keep it out of the way of slapping branches, and holds on.

  They run for three days. On the back trails in the mountains, they encounter another family. They are wary at first, but soon realize they are prey hunted by the same predators. They run together. There is safety in numbers. They pool what knowledge they have. Someone heard there are openings at a refugee camp across the river in Thailand. They set off in that direction.

  At night, in the darkness, in hushed voices, they share their stories.

  Mu Naw overhears her young uncle whispering to another man about what happened; he had waited until his sister, Mu Naw’s beautiful aunt, was out of earshot to speak. Mu Naw’s beautiful aunt is married. She caught the eye of a soldier in the Tatmadaw; not just any soldier, a dangerous soldier with burnished stars on his green sleeve.

  Mu Naw remembers a man with stars on his sleeve. From her uncle’s whispers, she learns those stars probably mean he was a general in the Tatmadaw, the Myanmar Armed Forces. The villagers are Karen, one of the many ethnic minorities that the Burmese junta is targeting on a variety of fronts. All over the country, everyone who is Karen—or Kachin, Karenni, Rohingya, Chin, or many of the other groups of people who are not ethnically Burmese—will run. Or they will think about running. Or they will wish they had been able to run. They will pour into camps in Malaysia and India and Thailand, depending on how the vicious scythe of war cuts through their villages and cities. When the scythe sliced through Mu Naw’s village, that general held it.

  Mu Naw understands from her uncle’s tone that the stars on the general’s sleeve mean her aunt could not refuse. If she told him she loved her husband, if she said politely, with her eyes down respectfully and her teeth bared in an uncomfortable smile, that she would rather not—she and all of her relatives had better run the second he turned his back.

  Her aunt turned him down. Now Mu Naw and her family are running. They love Mu Naw’s beautiful young aunt more than they love their village. Leaving is safer for now, but true safety does not exist in Myanmar.

  Mu Naw’s country is in free fall, a state of bewildering, breathtaking conflict. It feels as if everyone is fighting everyone. Families like Mu Naw’s—a Buddhist woman married to a Christian man, neither of whom wanted to fight—are caught in the crossfire from every side.

  Fleeing is hard on the children; they must be carried and cajoled and whispered to. It is hard on Mu Naw’s aging female relatives, all referred to as “grandmother” with the deference and love she gives to all older women. It is hard on the young adults, jumping like rabbits at every sound in the forests, aching with fear for the children and the grandmothers, bearing the weight of packs bound in woven cloth with everything they can carry.

  It is hard on Mu Naw’s father. Years ago, his right leg was blown off by a land mine, and though his body has adjusted to the makeshift crutch he fashioned then from a branch, his back and arms ache as he pushes through the damp, sticky branches that cling to him and pull at him. Once, when they stop to rest, he tells Mu Naw that the forest where he walked into a land mine was the same as this one, that she should stay close to him. As they walk again, she can see that sameness wears on him, warns him. He speaks sharply to his wife all day, but not to Mu Naw. At night, he is silent.

  Mu Naw’s mother, terrified for her children and for herself, turns her anger on her husband. The sight of his blown-off leg depresses her. Her abrasive tone sets everyone else on edge. One of the grandmothers chides her gently, but Mu Naw’s mother only snaps back. The other grandmothers murmur among themselves—they do not approve of a woman who is so angry, who speaks her mind to her elders.

  Mu Naw is unaware of the whispered conversations curling through the camp. She tucks herself next to her father, who leans back against a tree with his amputated leg stretched out. He strokes her hair behind her ear, and she sleeps, mouth open, her small body weighed down with exhaustion.

  Her parents’ tension is her country’s war in miniature. Mu Naw does not know it yet, but her family has already shattered. Like broken glass in a frame, the cracks spread, deepen, divide, but the glass stays in place. For now.

  The next day, Mu Naw crossed her first border.

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  MU NAW

  AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA, APRIL 2007

  Mu Naw stood on the landing above the airport baggage claim–area at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and wished she had on different shoes. She shifted the plastic International Organization for Migration bag from her left shoulder to her right and grabbed her daughter’s hand. There were two escalators leading down; she and her husband, Saw Ku, had instinctively paused, not sure which one to take. People passed them on the right and left, confidently moving through space as Mu Naw never had. Mu Naw’s shoes, the black rubber slide-on sandals everyone used in Mae La camp, felt dusty, undignified. She was proud of her skirt and shirt—these were her nicest clothes. They were red and handwoven in the traditional Karen style, a long straight skirt with braided fringes brushing the top of her feet, a tunic with a diamond-shaped hole she slipped her head into. She looked at her daughter Naw Wah, who was two, in her pink Karen dress, and her other daughter, Pah Poe, who was five, in a turquoise one. Even Saw Ku, holding Pah Poe’s hand, had a green tunic that he wore with jeans. In the tiny airplane bathroom, Mu Naw had rebraided the girls’ hair, and Saw Ku had slicked his hair down with water from the tinny sink.

  She had heard from friends at the camp that she would get a black sweater and new shoes on the bus to Bangkok. There had been no shoes and no sweaters, though Mu Naw had looked behind the bus seats to make sure. She was too shy to ask the UN workers at the time, but she had not stopped worrying about her rubber sandals in every airport, afraid they seemed shameful to the IOM worker guiding them, that the lack of new shoes meant that she had missed some important step everyone else knew that she did not.

  Now the IOM worker was gone. That was another piece of information they had heard in the camp, this one accurate: They would know they were boarding their last flight because the IOM worker would not go with them. Mu Naw had barely known the woman, but now felt bereft without her.

  That woman had been certain and knowledgeable, guiding them through their travels by reading the long lists of names on huge signs overhead in each airport and then translating them into their native dialect, Karen, from Bangkok to Los Angeles. Mu Naw could read several things in English already, but she could not understand why the large A22 meant you were on a flight to Dubai, and A23 meant you were going to Hong Kong, but A24 meant Los Angeles. It was one of thousands of things Mu Naw did not grasp.

  Mu Naw’s entire life had been spent with people who looked like her. Occasionally, a white UN worker or volunteer came to the camp, but that was it. Everywhere she turned were people with different eyes, ears, hair, noses, clothes, skin, mouths, purses, hats, hijabs, necklaces, bracelets, wallets, suitcases, books, food, water bottles, headphones, scarves, pillows, sweaters, shoes. Even when her eyes were down to shield her from the onslaught of strange sights, the languages assaulted her ears, snatches in tones she had never heard, musical, guttural, loving, rude. The smells of perfume, food, sweat, air-conditioning kept her from breathing in deeply.

  Now, in Austin, standing in her last airport at the top of two escalators going down, she wished desperately for one brief minute that they were back in Mae La camp. She wished the IOM woman were still with them. She wished she had her new sweater and shoes.

  They had only seen an escalator a handful of times, most of them in airports within the last twenty-four hours. She turned and gazed blankly at her husband for a minute. Saw Ku walked to the escalator on the left, almost running
into a white businessman pulling a suitcase behind him. Mu Naw fell into place behind him. She stumbled for a minute, eyes down to keep her balance, clutching the rail that made her hand move slightly faster than the stairs on which she stood. She made sure Naw Wah’s tiny feet were centered in the metal striped step. When she finally reached the bottom of the stairs, anxiously avoiding the steps submerging into each other, Mu Naw took a firm step with Naw Wah over the line that ended the escalator, then looked up. She didn’t have time to worry; a man was already greeting them in Karen, standing beside a tall white woman with a wide smile.

  “Are you Saw Ku and Mu Naw? We’re here to take you to your new home! Welcome to Texas!”

  Mu Naw’s face broke into a relieved grin.

  The white woman and Karen man helped Mu Naw and Saw Ku get their bags from the revolving circle that spewed luggage out of a large metal mouth. Their bags were easy to spot: multicolored plastic zip-up bags they had purchased from a store in the refugee camp. Just a few days before, Mu Naw had approached a hut where the owner had opened the front wall to form a makeshift storefront. Rusted shelves held snacks and sodas, soap and toothbrushes and combs, rubber sandals in dusty plastic sacks, and a rotating inventory of whatever items he could sell. The store owner’s children watched, squatting in the front of the store, their cheeks white with thanaka to protect them from the sun. Mu Naw tried not to smile too broadly when she walked up and asked the store owner respectfully for the Western bags. He turned and rummaged through the back of his hut, his children looking on solemnly. He handed her two, asking her where she was going.

  “Taxi! We are going to go live in Taxi!” He nodded in response, as if he knew exactly where Taxi was. It would be years before she would realize the difference between the yellow cars you could hail on the street and the state where she lived, or laugh at the fact that she had confused the two.