Summary

“Round and Round We Go” (6) opens in the first-person narration of a doctor named Mina, who had arrived at an airport in Lesbos, where she intended to volunteer to help refugees. Lesbos was as close to her home of Lebanon as she had been in decades, and her brother Mazen, the only member of her family with whom she was still in contact, would soon be joining her from Beirut. A Palestinian man offered her a ride and introduced himself as Rasheed. The two developed a rapport, and Rasheed encouraged her to call him, saying that his group of nurses and aid workers could use her help, as she understood Arabic and “the culture” (11).

In “You Made Me Do It” (12), Mina addresses an unnamed writer in the second person. She says that the writer tried writing “the refugee story” (13) but failed, and thought...