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To assimilate is to please other people’s senses. It is submission, but also a powerful act of love, unity, brotherhood. It is a complicated and misunderstood metamorphosis. So often, we ask refugees to perform an open mimicry of our culture. This we call assimilation. It is theater. In return, we try to show our good faith by displaying enjoyment of palatable segments of their culture: sushi and curry, bubble tea and baklava. But assimilation isn’t like tourism. You don’t get to dabble for a day. Refugees resign themselves to deep-tissue change from the day their feet touch new soil, when the shape and sound of it is still unimaginable. They commit to changing their senses, to making a practice of their new culture—it happens only by repetition. As a teenager, when I thought it useless to treat myself to a single fancy coffee, valuing only what came regularly, this was assimilation instinct. I didn’t want to play the outsider to yet another life. I wanted to alter my senses, so that I could trust them again.
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