How Author Dina Nayeri's Refugee Experience Shaped the Way She Travels

When we caught up with Dina Nayeri over the phone last week, she was, quite aptly, rushing through the streets of Paris. If she had her way, the writer and author would probably never stop moving, she tells us, thanks to a constant itch for travel that has taken her all over the world. But that urgency to cross borders is deeply rooted in her personal history as a refugee: At the age of eight, she fled Iran with her mother and brother to Dubai, and then on to a refugee camp in Italy, before eventually settling in the U.S. "My formative years were about getting out of a place, and so the feeling of being stuck to a land, to a country, is one of my most deeply instilled fears," she says. "I have a French passport and an American one, and I carry them everywhere I go." 

We chat to Dina about how she chronicled her refugee journey in her most recent book, Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You. Plus, we learn about the present-day refugees she met while researching it, the travels that have shifted her perspective, and how she stays connected to Iranian culture decades after leaving her home.

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