Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Refugee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Coming of Age
Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
Hope vs. Despair
Family, Displacement, and Culture
Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
Summary
Analysis
One week after the boat to Greece was originally supposed to arrive, the smuggler tells Mahmoud and his family the same thing he has been saying for the past week: the boat will come tomorrow. Mahmoud screams, Fatima starts to cry, and Youssef is in shock. Each time they are given a different excuse as to why they can’t leave. Mahmoud yells in “pathetic, toddler-like frustration” that he wishes he could go back to Syria. He knows that he should be more mature than that, since he is “almost a man,” but he can’t help himself.
As the idea of tomorrow is repeated over and over again, Gratz shows how it transforms from being an opportunity for hope into something that causes more and more despair when Mahmoud and his family’s journeys are delayed even further. Additionally, Mahmoud again shows the added maturity he has developed in the midst of his difficult situation. He wants to be able to be a normal kid—to whine about the truly frustrating experience he is having—and yet he recognizes that he has to be more adult than that.
Themes
Mahmoud and his family return to the mall. There, two Turkish men demand that they start paying rent to stay there: 5,000 thousand pounds a night, each. Youssef refuses to give in to this bullying. They then try to sleep in the doorway of a travel agency, but the police throw them out. Mahmoud is so tired that he starts to cry.
Mahmoud and his family continue to experience a lack of empathy, both from individuals and from society as a whole. Rather than helping refugees at the most vulnerable time in their lives, these two men try to take advantage of them further, and the police—who are supposed to help people—only make their lives more difficult.
Themes
Mahmoud then begins to stop cars on the street, asking for help. One driver rolls the window down, and Mahmoud tells the man that the family has nowhere to go, and that his sister Hana is only a baby. Luckily, the man speaks Arabic, and says that he has a small car dealership in which the family can stay. Youssef starts to apologize for bothering the man, but Mahmoud accepts the offer and thanks the man profusely.
Mahmoud further illustrates how he is taking on the responsibility of an adult here. While Youssef is embarrassed at their situation, Mahmoud is the only one who is able to reach out for help and find a place for them to stay that evening.
Themes
As the man drives Mahmoud and his family to the car dealership, he explains that his name is Samih Nasseer and that he is a Palestinian refugee. He says that he was forced to leave his home in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war. Then, Youssef gets a text from the smuggler, saying that the boat is ready. Nasseer offers to drive them to the boat and take them back to the dealership if it isn’t there. But this time, the boat is finally there.
Nasseer shows compassion and empathy to Mahmoud’s family because he, too, knows what it means to be a refugee, and he feels a social responsibility to help others. Nasseer’s story hints at the circular and interconnected nature of the novel’s storylines that becomes clearer by the book’s end. Many Jews fleeing Germany immigrated to Israel, but this in turn displaced many people in Palestine.
Themes
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