The thin child with the big sad eyes and a braid hanging down her back, the one holding a bag containing all her worldly possessions with one hand, and with the other she clutches her baby brother: that refugee girl was once me.
Most people escaping communism really wanted to go to the great land of capitalism — America — but Sweden was at the time known as one of the most hospitable countries to refugees. (America was by then already pretty sick of the tired, poor and huddled masses.)
The Swedish government would provide us with an apartment, my parents with jobs, and eventually the education to pull themselves up from the original menial crap jobs to highly paid and socially rewarding work.
No one went hungry or sick or homeless in Sweden, even if you arrived that way.
On my first day of school a little boy caught up with me in the hallway. He kept asking me something. He looked insistent rather than friendly, and I tried to make him understand that I “speak no Swedish so good” with lots of smiles and gestures. Obviously frustrated, he finally blurted words I understood despite the language barrier: communist idiot.
As my tears started up, a little girl with freckles shot out from somewhere behind me and punched him right in the face. Her name was Malin, and she became my best friend.
This duality shrouded the rest of my childhood in Sweden.
On one hand, we had everything we had aspired to, everything my parents had risked their lives for: shelter, food, education, freedom, and most importantly, a future for them and their kids. On the other, I was called a dirty communist every day. “Go back where you belong, quit taking our hard-won Swedish money, go back to your commie country you damn commie.”
It was like arriving at a dinner party of your dreams, only to be told to sit in a corner with the dog while everyone laughs at you.
As my Swedish language skills grew, I was anxious to overhaul my position in this new world. I tried to explain that I couldn’t possibly be a communist since I fled the communists. If I was, in fact, a communist, why would I leave? But this was one of the many instances were the sword was mightier than the word, and no amount of semantics was going to rescue me. Only Malin with her fists could do that.
I couldn’t understand why I caused such offense. I wasn’t a communist, both my parents worked so hard for their money they never had time for us, and although I wore second hand clothes, I did bathe every single day! But I was an “Utlanning,”an outlander. As a child, I never considered the motivation or reasoning of my peers, I just accepted it was my fault.
I suppose refugees represent a grab on precious commodities, the ones that should rightfully be yours. This makes sense if you are in a refugee camp standing in line for food for your kids, and someone cuts ahead of you and gets the last bowl. Hey, I was here before you! Me first!
I can certainly understand this; it’ll always be “my kids before yours”. But what if there is plenty to go around?
What if your portion doesn’t diminish because someone else shows up at dinner, but it only makes the table a more varied one?
My parents loved Sweden, but all my mom’s friends were from other countries. I don’t believe she ever found a close Swedish friend. My father, however, married a Swede.
I couldn’t go back to where I felt I belonged, so my only choice was to try and fit in. But no matter how hard I tried, it seemed like I trailed a vaporous stink of “damned commie.” Was it my second hand clothing? Was it my home styled haircuts? Or was it my lack of cultural history; the little things every little Swede knew and I didn’t?
The Christmas songs, the Anthem, the popular toys all the kids grew up with. The folk tales. The fairy tales. The kid’s rhymes. I learned them all. I forced myself to eat and like fish-paste, cheese and jam sandwiches and lingonberries on everything. Lutfisk (a rotted kind of a fish delicacy) I had to pretend to like, but then, so did everyone else.
The taunts in school were in large part making my childhood in Sweden feel like purgatory. My parents were too busy with bettering themselves to pay me any attention. I felt unloved, displaced, and lonely. My entertainment of choice became planning my suicide.
But someone cared. I had a friend. Malin punched a few other nasty kids on my behalf before we grew apart. Then three other girls, Charlotte, Christine and Petra, also outcasts – but for different reasons – took her place. These girls, quite literally, saved my life.
By the time I reached the United States at the age of eighteen, my refugee past was seen as a spicy little story to enliven interviews that mostly wanted my diet and beauty secrets.
As a model I was making more money a day than my parents made in a year. (And paid taxes to my new country accordingly — albeit a lot less then if I had stayed in Sweden.) Having been a political refugee set me apart once again, but this time like a rarity: an exotic object of value. If anything, my career profited on the idea that I had been a refugee.
My life was enchanted; I was one lucky girl.
But never was I luckier then when I met the four girls in Sweden.
The girls who looked past prejudices. The ones who looked for commonalities instead of differences. The ones with enough empathy to find me a chair at their table.
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