When applying for political asylum, should you wail, emote, and be purely raw with your emotions as you recount the horrors that led you to apply for asylum in the first place? Or should you take the stoic approach, reciting dates, facts, names of torturers, names of rapists, etc., with as little emotional overlay as possible?
It’s a trick question.
It all depends on the asylum intake officer on the other side of the desk. Some officers will connect with the emotional appeal, others will shrug it off as an act that is being overplayed. Conversely, some officers will interpret a bullet-point listing of transgressions as lacking in human emotion. If it were really that bad, wouldn’t there be more of an outward expression of trauma? And vice versa.
If — lawd forbid — you are ever in need of pain medications to get through your day, at a certain point, you’re going to have to convince a doctor that you’re truly in pain and not just seeking pills. After speaking with a number of doctors and pain specialists, Nayeri settles on this as the ideal approach for those seeking pain relief: I know I’ve had pain medications before, doc — some worked better than others — but I don’t care what it is you give me, I just want to not deal with this pain. This approach sidesteps the issues of appearing to be hooked on a particular medication (Just give me the Oxy, Doc!) and it hands the control of the “what” and the “how” of the pain treatment over to the professional. Not too demanding, not too specific. But a patient in need of pain management also walks a line akin to applying for asylum in that the decision comes down to the particular doctor in charge of making that decision on that particular day. Okay, good to know.
I went into this book thinking that I was going to be led to some deep insight that would allow me to crack the cult of Trump and break down the conspiratorial mindset. This was a good read but, unfortunately, Nayeri didn’t get me there. It’s not her fault as it’s a big ask of an author to intuit the wants of this particular reader before she hit the “send” button to her publisher.
As it turns out, the author’s brother-in-law had lifelong struggles with mental health issues. About 2/3rds of the way through the book, it becomes clear that while the author does a good job of pulling together multiple threads to weave together a book about belief and believing (asylum seekers, pain patients, religion, etc.), it’s really a reckoning of her relationship with her husband’s brother.
My takeaway? Err on the side of “innocent until proven guilty”, especially when it comes to issues of the powerless beseeching the powerful to believe their stories.
If you wanna check this out for yourself, go track down a copy here: https://worldcat.org/en/title/1371040417
ReMarkable 