Seeking asylum…

Ron Patterson is living in a city by a bay. America has had a second civil war and many Americans are dispersed across the world as refugees, including Ron. He is fed and has a job, but is segregated from the society of the country that is hosting him and lonely, until he meets Marlise, a young American woman, also a refugee, with whom he becomes friends and then lovers. But the host country’s policy towards refugees changes and they are expelled, each having to go to any country that will have them, and so they are separated. Fast forward ten years or so, and Ron is now living in Little America, an enclave within another host country. Ron starts seeing people he believes came from his own town in America, and also women that he thinks are Marlise. And he discovers that Little America has inherited the political divisions that led to war in their home country.

As a huge fan of Kalfus, it saddens me to say that this one didn’t work for me to any great degree. It is all left deliberately vague. The host countries and cities are not only unnamed but unrecognisable – they are clearly amalgamations of various cultures. This certainly gives the feeling of dislocation that many refugees must feel, but it means there’s too much playing with words and concepts – ‘local caffeinated brew’ instead of ‘coffee’ and so on – which I found both distracting and annoying, since they’re usually irrelevant to the story and yet break the flow. But what I found even more irritating is that Ron is afflicted with the inability to distinguish faces, so that he constantly mistakes people for other people. I’m sure this is also intended to emphasise that dislocation and perhaps to show that people in this state of unsettled flux somehow lose their definition as distinct individuals. But for me it simply meant that the fairly simple story was buried under layers of symbolic confusion and obfuscation.

The thing is that the simple story could have been enough without all that added confusion. It’s an intriguing thought, that the tables should be turned and citizens of a once rich and powerful country should be seeking refuge in countries that they once looked down on. What would happen if a mass influx of Americans sought refuge in Central America, say, or millions of Brits turned up on the shores of Africa and the Middle East in small boats? How would those countries react? Would they repay the favour of the many refugees the rich countries had helped in the past? Or would they resent the privilege and power that had enabled the rich countries to exploit them for centuries, and repay that favour instead? But Kalfus doesn’t really address those questions in any depth.

The book is much stronger on another aspect of the refugee dilemma that all host nations grapple with (or try to ignore and futilely hope will go away). That is, that when large numbers of refugees or immigrants from both sides of a conflict end up in the same host country, they tend to bring the conflict with them. So, in the UK, we have recently had flare-ups between British Hindu and British Muslim communities over political issues in South-East Asia; and we are all aware of the simultaneous rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in all Western countries in recent months in response to the conflict in Gaza, often driven by the strong feelings among immigrant communities. Kalfus doesn’t directly address what led to the civil war in the US, though it’s clear his story reflects the current political divisions. But his refugees stay in the factions they were in, and fight the same battles again in the hopes that somehow their actions can still help their side back in the US, until the host countries decide they’ve had enough and reject them.

He also shows how host nations are often generous in providing for basic needs, like food and accommodation, but are not so good at allowing refugees to become full members of the society. Ron is allowed to work but the jobs he is given are menial, and he has no workers’ rights to speak of. Unlike full citizens, he knows that any transgression, however minor, can result in his expulsion, when he will have to go through the whole long process again of finding another country willing to take him in.

So there are some interesting ideas in here – Kalfus is never less than thought-provoking. But on this occasion, I felt that the deliberate vagueness and confusion he creates obscures the issues and unfortunately makes the book a rather unsatisfactory read.

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