The Importance of Being Dishonest

There is a question which every immigrant will get asked eventually by the beaming natives, and that question is: 'So how do you like it here?' And if you want the natives to keep beaming sympathetically at you, it's important not to answer this question honestly when you're going through that awkward patch when the novelty has entirely worn off but the familiarity has not yet worn in. (For my mother - not the most successful of expatriates - that awkward patch seemed to last all of twenty years, and she always, always answered that question with blinding honesty.)

You can say: 'Well, I miss my family.' Nobody minds that, and it just suggests what a nice person you must be. Missing your mother! Bless!

You can also venture a tentative criticism of your new surroundings, always provided you have managed to calculate what the natives' favourite pet grumble is. In England, you can probably get away with an adorably startled 'I wasn't expecting all this rain!' Or perhaps you could say 'I'm a bit worried about the parcel I sent via Royal Mail' or 'Do you know how to get an intelligent human being when ringing BT's helpline?' or 'So, I got on a train the other day to take a half an hour journey to London and they stopped the train and made me go by bus via Wales...' which should be good for an hour's worth of sympathetic ranting from your audience. Here in Northern Virginia, the pet grumble seems to be the traffic. People talk about the nightmare of their daily commute the way that my granny complains about her favourite health problems - with an immense, all-consuming fondness.

What you shouldn't say is what's probably on your mind - how everything looks wrong, and also, tastes wrong, and also, smells wrong, and the way that the locals talk funny makes it hard to understand them, and also, they don't look right either. (I remember my American husband looking around central Swindon in horror, and saying in carrying tones: 'D'you think it's poor nutrition or inbreeding which makes them look like THAT?') Nor do the birds, or the stars in the sky. The American and Australian Rhodes scholars at Oxford were particularly bad for vociferously listing all the things that they hated about Oxford, and England, and Britain - at the top of their lungs. The WEATHER and the FOOD and the PEOPLE, LIKE OH MY GOD, and I'd want to take them aside and gently point out that the English could understand them as (astonishing, this) they all spoke English too. And eventually most of them got over their initial homesickness, and grew accustomed to the lack of sunlight and real, proper beer and NORMAL football played the way we play it at home, but I imagine they spent the rest of their time there wondering why the English were so cold and standoffish.

It is very important to be dishonest at this point, because immigrants are expected to be grateful, especially immigrants to prosperous and powerful nations. You have been kindly let inside the hallowed portals. You are not really supposed to be hankering for whatever uncouth homeland you fled in the first place, and also, nobody asked you to come over here, did they? (But we hanker all the same. There is decided hankering over here.) This is perhaps especially true of America, where a sizeable proportion of the population seems to honestly believe that their nation's prosperity isn't so much a matter of their geopolitical fortunes aligning in the recent past as a matter of God selecting their nation out especially for extra blessings. (Nb: I'm not precisely sure where the rising fortunes of China and India - respectively godless and overly-godded from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint - fit within this thesis.) Failing to respond with sufficient enthusiasm not only marks you out as a surly cur of the serpent's-tooth model of ingratitude, it also suggests that you're an unbeliever in this key doctrine as well.

They do keep asking: 'So how do you like it here?' And I say, with an appropriately astounded smile: 'Ask me later, when the shock's worn off!'

And if that doesn't work to deflect the friendly natives, there's always the traffic.