Commentary: A refugee's sting of shame in being foreign
We had been asylum seekers for 16 months, living in hostels in the United Arab Emirates and Italy, when my family arrived in Oklahoma. In Iran, we had been part of a respected family of doctors and academics. Now, as refugees, the sharpest sting we endured wasn't from hunger or cold, but from everyday shame: Over what little we now had, our useless Iranian educations, the color of our skin, our pungent food, our foreign habits.
We moved into a ramshackle apartment complex in the "bad" part of
