Here’s a Harsh Reality Most People Don’t Understand

A refugee never really finds a new home

What We Owe

By Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde

This book is a reflection on the lives of refugees, especially displaced women. It examines how their lives are disrupted by events and how they are transported to another culture in a new country, leaving their touchstones behind.

This passage captures this feeling for me.

“Sand streams down to the earth because that’s where it belongs. We can lift it, capture it, transport it. But even after oceans of time pass by, even after we’ve carried it across thousands of miles, sand will seek the earth again when the opportunity arises. So we are all bound to our origins.”

This short read caught my attention and held me close until I was finished. I read the entire book in a single day, immersed in the raw honesty of one woman’s story.

It’s a powerful exploration of loss and survival, in a life that ended too quickly. What We Owe reveals some difficult truths about being a woman in some cultures in the world today. It’s an important book in light of recent decisions that limit the freedoms and autonomy of women in the US today.

We need to remember what it is like for women and girls in other cultures, so we realize what is at stake for women in the West.

Nahid was young and idealistic, with high hopes for a changed future in Iran. She belonged to a group that hoped for a better future for their homeland and suffered an unbearable loss that affects her entire life.

Nahid and Masood are young lovers in Tehran in the late 70s. They’re part of the Iranian revolution and are forced to escape and find a new life.

They escape to Sweden as refugees and settle there, making a new life in a new country. But she can’t escape the pain of her past or her culture. Nahid never feels like she belongs in her new life.

Mothers and daughters carry a burden that holds us together but this relationship comes at a cost. The protagonist doesn’t hold anything back in her description of the war, domestic abuse, and her experience as a refugee.

I was left feeling hollowed out and a little bit surprised at how similar our lives and relationships can be, despite our differences.

“What We Owe is a novel of love, guilt and dreams for a better future, vibrating with both sorrow and an unquenchable joie de vivre.”