It was a hot, dry afternoon, sometime in the spring of 2009. I was wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of shorts twice the size of my waist, held up with a piece of wire. I sat beneath a tree across from the bamboo office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), waiting.

My heart pounded as sweat rolled down my face. Every few minutes I looked toward the dirt road, hoping to see the white van. Finally the blue IOM logo came into view, and within seconds, dozens of people were running toward it.

A man wearing a white shirt with the blue UN emblem stepped out carrying a stack of papers. Without saying much, he pinned the pages to the wall outside the office.

The crowd surged forward. Everyone searched for the same thing: a nine-digit case number that would determine their family’s future and fate. Some people burst out with joy. Others wept. A few walked away in silence. Years of waiting, interviews, background checks, and rumors had all come down to a few sheets of paper taped to a bamboo wall.

I squeezed through the crowd until I found our number.

Destination: Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

That was the first time I realized my life was about to change.

I ran as fast as I could across dense forest, over the narrow canals, and through the dusty paths of the refugee camp until I reached our hut, sector A, number 63.

My mother was inside, putting away the dishes and preparing dinner from whatever we had leftover from early morning.

“Mama,” I shouted before I could catch my breath. “We’re going to Umerica.”

I didn’t even know how to pronounce America. But the word already felt like it belonged to me. For the first time in my life, it wasn’t just the name of a distant country. It was something I could claim as my own, something I could say without lowering my voice or wondering whether I belonged.

I was born in a refugee camp in Nepal after my family was driven from Bhutan during the campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced more than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis from the country.

Growing up, I belonged nowhere, both logistically and legally. To the Bhutanese government, I was a child born in exile. To Nepal, I was a refugee confined behind the boundaries of a camp even though I spoke the same language. The barbed wire........

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