5 “I Live Here; I Have a Right to Be Here” An Afghan Refugee’s Disorientations and Insistence on Inclusion through Theater

Abstract

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.In a book devoted to the Middle Eastern refugee crisis, we must begin by thanking the many refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria who made this book possible by sharing their lives and stories with us. Many of them have faced incredible hardships and unmitigated human suffering. We dedicate this book to them-hoping that they achieve the safety and settled futures to which they ardently aspire. This book emerged from a meeting that took place at Yale University in September 2019. The meeting brought together for the fi rst time anthropologists studying Middle Eastern refugee populations in various Middle Eastern, European, and North American settings. Here, anthropologists were able to discuss the ways in which war has led to refugee fl ight from the Middle East, and how resettlement in various host countries has unfolded. Their work, now published in this volume, speaks to the cultural, political, and legal challenges that lead to regimes of exclusion in some settings, and regimes of inclusion in others. We are proud of and grateful to these dedicated anthropologists, who are seeking to humanize the vitriolic discourses and political debates surrounding Middle Eastern refugee resettlement in Europe and North America.