Transcriber: Yazan Kenjrawi Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
When someone says, "Life is hard,"
I respond by asking, "Compared to what?"
For 68 million displaced refugees,
most of whom are children,
life is not only hard but unsafe, uncertain, and extremely violent.
Unlike immigrants who can choose to leave their home country
and seek a better life of opportunity in another country,
refugees have no choice.
War, genocide, and natural disasters force them out of their homes
as their lives are in immediate danger.
My earliest life memory
is playing on the beach of the Caspian Sea,
sweeping my hands through the sand and hearing the waves
and the laughter of family.
My childhood was pleasant, full of innocence
and the safety that every child deserves.
Our life in Baku, Azerbaijan, was perfect.
My parents made good money,
and we had everything we needed for a comfortable life.
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan,
is a multi-cultural mosaic
and the dynamic business center of the region.
We loved the life we lived there.
We had no reason to leave this life or live anywhere else in the world.
At age seven,
my family and I were hunted,
hunted like animals.
While the West was celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the dismantling of the Soviet Union,
on the other side of this wall,
was my family
and 290 million people
surviving the real-time collapse of an empire.
One of the world's most diverse countries,
the Soviet Union had over 100 distinct ethnicities
living within its borders.
With independence and nationalism on the rise,
ethnic tensions increased
throughout some of the former Soviet republics.
Armenians were the Christian minority in a predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan.
Politicians echoed xenophobic and anti-Armenian sentiment.
To be an Armenian in Azerbaijan during this time
was a death sentence.
On February 28, 1988,
ethnic killings of Armenians began in the city of Sungai,
just 18 miles away from the capital, where I lived.
Then the ethnic campaign, the killing campaign,
began in Baku,
forcing my family and 300,000 Armenians
to flee to neighboring countries for safety.
The killing mobs were provided with weapons,
with maps of Armenian neighborhoods.
Phone lines were cut,
the police disarmed and ordered not to intervene in the killings.
This was the scariest time of my life:
hiding, escaping from people who wanted to kill us.
Not all of my loved ones survived this genocide.
I compare our refugee experience to running out of a burning house.
The only choice my family had
was stay and die
or run to stay alive.
Parents do not see borders
when they are faced with the life or death of their children.
My parents, my brother, and I escaped to the bordering country of Armenia
where we endured four harsh years of homelessness.
Between 1988 and 1990,
Armenia, the country the size of the state of Maryland,
received nearly 100,000 refugees escaping the violence in Azerbaijan.
Then, less than a year after the ethnic killings began,
Armenia was further devastated by another humanitarian crisis.
This time, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake,
leaving 25,000 people dead
and shutting down its only nuclear plant
in the dead of winter.
Life was hard, even unbearable.
We struggled to eat,
to stay warm,
to stay alive.
All we could do was wait,
wait for our refugee status to be vetted,
our lives at the mercy of the international community.
On September fourth, 1992,
we touched the soil of the United States of America,
land of opportunity and the American Dream.
Our two-day journey began in Armenia,
then to Russia,
to Germany,
to New York,
to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Then, on the tiniest airplane,
we landed in a place called Twin Falls, Idaho.
(Laughter)
The American Dream is one of prosperity,
the belief that with hard work and determination,
anyone can make it.
This country is a feast of opportunities,
a banquet for self-determination,
with the freedom to live your life as you choose.
But refugees do not experience the American Dream that way.
Equal opportunity for refugees is a false positive.
Our life dreams and aspirations are quickly replaced
with the daily struggle of surviving, once again,
this time in a new country.
Our airplane tickets are pre-purchased for us
by the resettlement program.
And upon arrival, we have to pay them back.
What many don't realize is refugees begin their life in America with debt
before we have any income coming in.
Refugees are struggling with culture shock,
with the effects of PTSD and trauma
and the struggle of learning a new language.
We begin our lives in America outside the margins of society,
far from access, information, or opportunities.
Still, we rebuild our entire lives
from the crumbs of the American Dream.
How did my family
and so many like us across this globe
create a new life out of absolutely nothing?
The answer lies in three universal keys:
hunger, interdependence, and unconditional gratitude.
Many Americans are conditioned
by an inherited culture of comfort, of plenty, of safety -
a life most people in the world can only dream of.
The first key to success is hunger.
Refugees have the advantage of knowing hunger.
Yes, there is food insecurity in the US,
and many families live paycheck to paycheck,
struggling to feed their children.
I acknowledge this reality.
I'm talking about a different type of hunger,
the hunger that is felt in the human spirit.
The hunger for a life without fear,
persecution, violence.
The hunger for a life of safety, stability,
for peace.
Once you experience this type of hunger,
you notice and appreciate the smallest crumbs of opportunity around you.
When my family was homeless,
my father saw the opportunity of creating a shelter for us
inside a school utility closet.
The abandoned space was infested with rats.
My father found scraps of metal to patch up the floors and the walls.
We had a small sink, a kerosene stove,
a bench, a table, two makeshift beds,
but most importantly, we now had a roof over our head.
There was no bathroom, and we had no place to shower.
It was the most dehumanizing of life conditions.
With a collapsed economy, a refugee crisis,
and a catastrophic earthquake,
everyone in Armenia was struggling to stay alive.
People were freezing to death.
We cannot control what life gives or takes away from us.
Sometimes we wait for life to deliver us a big break,
overlooking and dismissing
all the small but valuable chances
to improve our current condition.
Refugees teach us not to take any resource for self-improvement for granted,
not to wait for doors of opportunities to be open,
but to build them yourself out of the scraps that life has to offer.
There is only one thing you can control in life:
effort.
Our effort to living our best life begins with our hunger for opportunity.
To rebuild or succeed in life,
one must break the habit of overlooking
the perfectly timed opportunities in everyday moments and interactions.
My refugee experience depended on a lot of people.
Interdependence is the second key to success.
In America, rugged individualism and independence are glorified.
But extreme independence is unnatural,
unrealistic, and lonely.
Disconnection from family can lead to isolation,
to depression, and exhaustion from the lack of support.
Unlike refugees who are forced out of their homes,
most people have a choice to stay connected
to family, to relatives, to their roots,
to their shared story, their shared identity.
For refugees,
family is more than just a word;
it is about interdependence.
Family for refugees is about the sharing of roles and responsibilities
and the interaction between generations.
When my family arrived here,
everyone contributed to the well-being of the family.
Our elders contributed by helping raise the next generation
while our parents worked to provide for our everyday needs.
We knew that when our parents were exhausted,
we could go to our grandparents
for the attention, the patience, and the wisdom that we were seeking.
Our grandparents depended on us for their elderly care.
This created a structure of dependability and security for the entire family.
Interdependence is financially efficient,
and emotionally fulfilling.
Refugees rely on interdependence
to maximize their opportunities and improve their quality of life.
It is easier to take a risk on your dreams
when you have a community you can fall back on.
Individually, we might only have one crumb to offer,
but when we bring our crumbs together,
share our resources, our energy, and our experience,
together we can actualize a much bigger goal.
The third key to success you can learn from refugees
is unconditional gratitude.
It is easy to feel grateful when life is pleasant.
Unconditional gratitude is different.
It is not the feeling we feel inside when life is good.
It is the action we express outward
when life hurts most.
My family lost everything in Baku:
our home, our belongings,
our sentimental family photographs.
Still, I feel so lucky to have both my parents alive
when some children lost a father or a mother.
But how could I feel grateful to have my momma alive
when my cousin was grieving ...
(Breathing heavily)
But how could I feel grateful to have my momma alive,
when my cousin was grieving the killing of hers.
Expressing empathy and compassion
is a form of gratitude.
It is the giving of our care,
it is the giving of ourself
to share in the pain and the suffering of others.
Homelessness is the most dehumanizing experience of my life.
Having nothing to give made us feel like we had no value.
Sharing what little we did have
reminded us of our dignity
and our human worth.
Life creates conditions conducive to success.
Refugees can teach all of us what it means to truly succeed
through their hunger, their interdependence,
and their unconditional gratitude.
Refugees can teach us to trust life more.
If we are willing to learn, they will inspire us
to find that place inside ourself where nothing is impossible.
Thank you.
(Applause)