bobdina
10-12-2009, 03:14 PM
Iraqis face tough times starting over in U.S.
By Lisa Orkin Emmanuel and Sharon Cohen - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Oct 12, 2009 7:28:44 EDT
Her mansion in Iraq was bombed, her medical career and future in her beloved country dashed the day she found a white envelope on her car windshield. Inside was a single bullet. Wassan Yassin was marked for death.
She knew she had to flee. She eventually landed in America, far from where her life was threatened, her sister was shot and her co-worker kidnapped. Her new Florida surroundings offered a haven from the horrors of war.
But there is no happy ending. Not yet, at least.
Yassin’s first year here has been marked by frustrating — even humiliating — experiences: A small apartment in a crime-scarred area of Jacksonville. Food stamps. And no job, even though she’s a gynecologist who also morphed into a construction company executive during the war.
Saif Alnasseri, a 31-year-old wartime translator and journalist, has fared better. A former pharmacist at a large Iraq hospital, he now is a pharmacist’s assistant in a New Jersey drug store. Life in America has been a trade-off: His job supervising dozens of workers, his comfortable home and lush garden in Baghdad are now gone, but in exchange, he has something intangible — security.
“We are safe here and this is very important to us,” Alnasseri says. “But there are a lot of things I spent years building in Baghdad. ... I was very well-known in my neighborhood. They called me doctor. I had a lot of people who respected me. Here I’m starting from the beginning. From zero.”
“Every day I say, ‘OK, I made the right decision,’“ he adds. “After two hours, I say, ‘Did I really?’“
For thousands of Iraqis, resettling in America has been an agonizing transition filled with questions, doubts — and, sometimes, despair.
Many Iraqis have discovered that advanced degrees and gold-plated resumes have opened few doors in a nation reeling from its worst economic decline since the Depression. Stories abound of Iraqi professionals doing menial jobs — a doctor flipping burgers, a pharmacist washing dishes.
Iraqis also have struggled to navigate a confusing bureaucracy and an overburdened social service system that has sometimes run of out money to help provide refugees’ basic needs.
“Everything is kind of conspiring to make it a particularly difficult time for them,” says Bob Carey, a vice president of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee assistance agency. “There’s the declining economy, the conditions from which they come, the conditions in which they arrive, the fact they’re often highly skilled professionals with sometimes high expectations.”
“It is,” he says, “the perfect storm.”
———
Only a trickle of some 2 million Iraqi refugees have resettled in America since the war began. Most have poured into Syria, Jordan or other neighboring countries.
About 38,000 Iraqis have come to the United States in the last three fiscal years, compared with just hundreds in the three prior years. The overwhelming majority are refugees; others received special immigrant visas, awarded to translators or those who’ve worked with the U.S. government or contractors.
The State Department says the mass exodus of Iraqis didn’t start until 2006, after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra ignited sectarian violence.
Advocacy groups and some lawmakers — including the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — have long accused the U.S. government of being too slow to respond to the Iraqi refugee crisis, imperiling those who’d been targeted because they’d worked with Americans. Some of the delays were blamed on the many layers of security clearance.
But things have improved. After Capitol Hill hearings, a new law making it easier for American-affiliated Iraqis to move here and the appointment of a State Department adviser to deal with the issue, the pace of admissions has picked up dramatically since 2007. The Obama administration this summer also named a coordinator of Iraqi refugee efforts.
Even so, only 20 percent of at least 20,000 Iraqis with American ties who’ve applied have arrived in the United States since 2003, according to an April report by Human Rights First. Some wait more than a year in other countries, unable to work or plan a future. “It has the potential to put them in this cruel psychological limbo,” says Ruthie Epstein, the report’s chief author.
Once Iraqis do arrive, they face another set of problems.
Many Iraqi refugees interviewed in Atlanta and Phoenix had exhausted government and social service aid, according to a recent report by the rescue committee. In some cases, case workers have negotiated with landlords to forestall evictions.
“We really do have a moral obligation as a country to help them start over with basic tools in a dignified way,” Carey says. “Right now, that’s not happening.”
Almost every refugee has a story of terror in Iraq, followed by struggle in America.
Consider Sameer Oro, a food and beverage manager for a U.S. Army contractor who later opened a store selling liquor near a Baghdad hotel. In 2005, he says, he was kidnapped, blindfolded, stuffed in a car trunk, a knife held to his throat. He was freed after seven days when his wife raised $35,000, selling their car and gold.
Last year, Oro moved with his wife and two children to California, home to his brother. At first, he says, his $1,350 monthly government aid (along with food stamps) was enough, but then the payments shrunk so they don’t even cover his rent.
He gets by borrowing about $400 a month from his niece in California.
“We are not coming here to start suffering again,” laments the 57-year-old former airline flight service director, who is unemployed. His wife is a part-time translator.
Oro’s story illustrates both the growing frustrations with job prospects and what the rescue committee report calls a “dangerously underfunded” resettlement program.
The State Department gives resettlement groups $900 for each arriving refugee; about half goes to immediate needs such as rent; the other half is for services, such as picking up families at the airport.
Refugees also are eligible for up to eight months of cash aid that varies by state, Carey says. His group found the average monthly assistance for a family of four (in states where the agency had offices) ranged from $309 to $575 — far too little, he says, for living expenses.
Iraqis can, instead, choose matching federal and private agency funds for four or five months while they look for jobs. But Carey says only about 30 percent of refugees have been able to take advantage of it because of limited funds.
“The system’s a mess,” he says. “One refugee told me it’s like playing a lottery (determining) where you end up and what you get.”
———
Iraqis who arrive with Hollywood-inspired visions of their new homeland quickly face a sobering reality.
“I was told when you go to America, there are organizations that will ... cover your rent until you find a job ... that it would be like a dream, it will be a paradise,” says Mohammed Yousuf, a 39-year-old former translator living in a Washington, D.C., suburb.
Like many Iraqi refugees, Yousuf endured a harrowing ordeal before ever stepping foot on U.S. soil: death threats, the murder of friends and colleagues, almost two years of limbo in Syria.
Then, finally, a second chance.
“I thought it would be a great country,” he says. “America is No. 1 in everything.”
Instead, he says, the resettlement agency placed him in an unaffordable $1,700-a-month apartment (dictated, in part, by the expensive real estate market.) He moved, but says he now has bed bugs in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and their four children, three of whom are in school.
“They need bags, pencils, all this is expensive,” says Yousuf, who receives $885-a-month in temporary cash assistance while in job training.
Media friends and others have generously helped out, but having worked in a wide range of jobs — veterinarian, merchant, TV producer — he expected to be drawing his own paycheck by now.
“I thought someone would help me find a job,” he says. “That’s what I need. I want to work to survive.”
Mustafa Al Waeli, who lives in Louisville, Ky., understands.
His advanced degree in software engineering hasn’t provided steady work, though he does occasional language and culture training for companies.
As a newcomer, Al Waeli has no cash reserves and recently couldn’t pay a $48 phone bill. “That would not happen to an American,” he declares. “At least they would have $50 in savings.”
But it’s not just the lack of money that troubles him.
It’s the “cultural shock,” he says. “We’re used to seeing America through Hollywood movies. It’s nothing like that. It’s very tough. It’s a hard life.”
In Iraq, he says, he could always turn to a relative or a friend in times of need.
Not in America.
“Here we have nobody to depend on, even if it’s a neighbor next door,” says Al Waeli, the father of a 17-month-old girl. “People are a little tougher than I expected. Nobody — and excuse my language — gives a damn if you have a place to live or become homeless.”
And yet, Al Waeli — as is the case with many Iraqi refugees — doesn’t regret moving here.
“I know the American dream is available,” he says. “I know I need to work hard to get it. This is my country now. I will never leave it. It’s the land of opportunity. I don’t care where I was born. I care where I can live in peace, where I can feel safe. ... I love this country. I sacrifice my life for it. Why shouldn’t I live here?”
———
There are, of course, Iraqis who’ve overcome the obstacles.
For some, it’s luck or perseverance. For others, it’s support from family in America, an established Iraqi community — two of the largest are around San Diego and Dearborn, Mich. — or friendships forged in the line of fire.
Many Americans, including former soldiers and others who worked for the U.S. government in Iraq, have stepped up with money, guidance or a spare bedroom or couch.
The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies has helped more than 500 Iraqis with U.S. ties make it to America. It has a team of lawyers (who donate their services) and volunteers who guide them through the resettlement. The work begins before they even arrive in this country.
“We’ve had Iraqis write to us within days of receiving death threats,” says Kirk Johnson, the founder and a former worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “We explain how the process works and ... once they get there, we try to help them make a go if it.”
When Mohammed al-Mumayiz arrived in Nashville last year from Jordan, the former translator leaned on a wide network of soldiers from Iraq.
The wife of a Green Zone colleague in Baghdad stopped by every day to take him and his wife shopping. The father of another friend complained to the resettlement agency it had placed the Iraqi newcomers in a dirty, smelly apartment (they moved). The soldier he translated for provided tips on accomplishing routine tasks, such as getting a driver’s license.
“It was scary in a way,” he acknowledges. “But you have to learn the system. You have to know the way things are done.”
Al-Mumayiz’ fluent English is an advantage. But attitude, he says, is critical. “You have to say, ‘This is our new home.’ ... You have to dig your heels in and say, ‘This is going to work. We have to adapt. We have to forget the past and look to the future.’ “
Al-Mumayiz devoted six straight months to a job search, eventually landing a position as a contract translator for the State Department.
“You have to be patient,” he says.
But some don’t have the luxury of time.
Hathefa Mohamed recently took a dramatic step: He signed a U.S. Army contract to be an Arabic linguist — a move that could send the former translator back to Iraq, the place he fled in fear of his life.
“I don’t have another choice — that’s the problem,” he says. “I’m not going back to work in factories, or picking up trash ... that’s humiliating.”
As a young man in Iraq, Mohamed dreamed of studying literature in America. He loved Hemingway and Steinbeck.
His master’s degree in literature meant little here, so he ended up working at a Costco store and a door and window factory — the latter job, he says, left him with a pinched nerve and an emergency room visit that cost several hundred dollars.
He recently was hired to teach world literature part-time at a Texas community college, but it’s not enough to support a growing family. His wife is having their second child in November.
“I’m really embarrassed,” he says. “I told my wife we will live a better life. That’s why I want to go into the military. ... They will pay my housing, college, everything.”
While Mohamed is joining the military, Raid Shawket, a 46-year-old Iraqi living in a tiny studio apartment in Kent, Wash., has returned to school.
Shawket, who owned a gallery and gift shop in Baghdad — his wife was a wedding planner — made that decision when he could find work only in a Target stock room. He was laid off after three weeks. He’s now taking business classes in a community college.
It’s not what he expected.
Many times, he says, he asked officials processing him in Cairo about work. “They assured me, ‘Yes ... It’s going to be very easy to find a job,’ “ he says.
Suhama Mansour, who owned a pharmacy for 22 years in Baghdad, had few options, too.
Her English is limited and it would take years to get recertified as a pharmacist, so she now washes dishes at a restaurant inside a Detroit-area Macy’s store. The transition, she says, is “very hard in my mind.”
“There, everyone called her, ‘doctor, doctor,’“ says her 24-year-old daughter, Nadeen Oro, who shares a one-bedroom apartment in Sterling Heights, Mich., with her mother and 16-year-old brother.
As Chaldeans, or Iraqi Christians, family members say they were harassed, threatened and accused of working with the Americans in Iraq. They felt they had to run.
They landed in Michigan, home to Mansour’s three sisters as well as one of the nation’s largest Iraqi populations. They’re waiting for the rest of the family to join them from Egypt; for now, they talk an hour each day on the Internet, often reminiscing.
“We used to live good,” Oro says. “We didn’t think about money there. ... Now we have to worry.”
In Florida, the Yassin sisters worry, too, as they rebuild shattered lives.
Wassan, who worked for an Iraqi construction company that contracted with U.S. forces, slept in different homes every night to evade insurgents. She hobnobbed with generals and traveled with security — for good reason.
In the summer of 2005, the brother of the company’s chairman was kidnapped. The following day, another brother received an anonymous call saying the doctor would be next. Wassan believed this meant she was going to be killed.
Then came the bullet on her windshield, a bomb at her house and her company office, the latter explosion killing two guards.
She escaped to Jordan.
Her sister, Areej, who had an antiques shop at the Baghdad Airport, followed later, after a chaotic incident in which her car was rammed, she got out and was shot by unknown assailants, two bullets piercing her leg.
After a year in an apartment, the sisters recently moved to public housing. They’re still looking for full-time work; both have held temporary jobs.
Wassan was fired from one job as a medical assistant. (Her case worker says she took too many sick days too soon; she insists the pediatrician told her she was overqualified.) She’s now taking an online course, hoping to eventually be certified to practice medicine.
Her sister lost out on a position because she didn’t understand drug testing rules.
“We expected more job opportunities,” Areej says. “I think my future, ‘Inshallah’ (God willing), that he will guide us to a good way ... not perfect — but very good.”
Meanwhile, Alnasseri, the New Jersey pharmacist’s assistant, is planning his future.
He’s studying for his pharmacist’s license and has been embraced by a new set of American friends — including a List Project volunteer — who invite him to dinners, graduations and other social gatherings.
That has made life easier, though he admits he once considered returning to Iraq, and even priced an airline ticket.
“Right now I have reached a decision: Let me take my chance here,” he says.
Al-Mumayiz — the translator — is doing the same. He says the hardships Iraqis encounter are no different from those endured by earlier generations of refugees.
“Life is about building blocks,” he says. “It’s like being a baby. First you crawl, then you walk, then you run. Life here is the same. At the end, it’s all worthwhile.”
By Lisa Orkin Emmanuel and Sharon Cohen - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Oct 12, 2009 7:28:44 EDT
Her mansion in Iraq was bombed, her medical career and future in her beloved country dashed the day she found a white envelope on her car windshield. Inside was a single bullet. Wassan Yassin was marked for death.
She knew she had to flee. She eventually landed in America, far from where her life was threatened, her sister was shot and her co-worker kidnapped. Her new Florida surroundings offered a haven from the horrors of war.
But there is no happy ending. Not yet, at least.
Yassin’s first year here has been marked by frustrating — even humiliating — experiences: A small apartment in a crime-scarred area of Jacksonville. Food stamps. And no job, even though she’s a gynecologist who also morphed into a construction company executive during the war.
Saif Alnasseri, a 31-year-old wartime translator and journalist, has fared better. A former pharmacist at a large Iraq hospital, he now is a pharmacist’s assistant in a New Jersey drug store. Life in America has been a trade-off: His job supervising dozens of workers, his comfortable home and lush garden in Baghdad are now gone, but in exchange, he has something intangible — security.
“We are safe here and this is very important to us,” Alnasseri says. “But there are a lot of things I spent years building in Baghdad. ... I was very well-known in my neighborhood. They called me doctor. I had a lot of people who respected me. Here I’m starting from the beginning. From zero.”
“Every day I say, ‘OK, I made the right decision,’“ he adds. “After two hours, I say, ‘Did I really?’“
For thousands of Iraqis, resettling in America has been an agonizing transition filled with questions, doubts — and, sometimes, despair.
Many Iraqis have discovered that advanced degrees and gold-plated resumes have opened few doors in a nation reeling from its worst economic decline since the Depression. Stories abound of Iraqi professionals doing menial jobs — a doctor flipping burgers, a pharmacist washing dishes.
Iraqis also have struggled to navigate a confusing bureaucracy and an overburdened social service system that has sometimes run of out money to help provide refugees’ basic needs.
“Everything is kind of conspiring to make it a particularly difficult time for them,” says Bob Carey, a vice president of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee assistance agency. “There’s the declining economy, the conditions from which they come, the conditions in which they arrive, the fact they’re often highly skilled professionals with sometimes high expectations.”
“It is,” he says, “the perfect storm.”
———
Only a trickle of some 2 million Iraqi refugees have resettled in America since the war began. Most have poured into Syria, Jordan or other neighboring countries.
About 38,000 Iraqis have come to the United States in the last three fiscal years, compared with just hundreds in the three prior years. The overwhelming majority are refugees; others received special immigrant visas, awarded to translators or those who’ve worked with the U.S. government or contractors.
The State Department says the mass exodus of Iraqis didn’t start until 2006, after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra ignited sectarian violence.
Advocacy groups and some lawmakers — including the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — have long accused the U.S. government of being too slow to respond to the Iraqi refugee crisis, imperiling those who’d been targeted because they’d worked with Americans. Some of the delays were blamed on the many layers of security clearance.
But things have improved. After Capitol Hill hearings, a new law making it easier for American-affiliated Iraqis to move here and the appointment of a State Department adviser to deal with the issue, the pace of admissions has picked up dramatically since 2007. The Obama administration this summer also named a coordinator of Iraqi refugee efforts.
Even so, only 20 percent of at least 20,000 Iraqis with American ties who’ve applied have arrived in the United States since 2003, according to an April report by Human Rights First. Some wait more than a year in other countries, unable to work or plan a future. “It has the potential to put them in this cruel psychological limbo,” says Ruthie Epstein, the report’s chief author.
Once Iraqis do arrive, they face another set of problems.
Many Iraqi refugees interviewed in Atlanta and Phoenix had exhausted government and social service aid, according to a recent report by the rescue committee. In some cases, case workers have negotiated with landlords to forestall evictions.
“We really do have a moral obligation as a country to help them start over with basic tools in a dignified way,” Carey says. “Right now, that’s not happening.”
Almost every refugee has a story of terror in Iraq, followed by struggle in America.
Consider Sameer Oro, a food and beverage manager for a U.S. Army contractor who later opened a store selling liquor near a Baghdad hotel. In 2005, he says, he was kidnapped, blindfolded, stuffed in a car trunk, a knife held to his throat. He was freed after seven days when his wife raised $35,000, selling their car and gold.
Last year, Oro moved with his wife and two children to California, home to his brother. At first, he says, his $1,350 monthly government aid (along with food stamps) was enough, but then the payments shrunk so they don’t even cover his rent.
He gets by borrowing about $400 a month from his niece in California.
“We are not coming here to start suffering again,” laments the 57-year-old former airline flight service director, who is unemployed. His wife is a part-time translator.
Oro’s story illustrates both the growing frustrations with job prospects and what the rescue committee report calls a “dangerously underfunded” resettlement program.
The State Department gives resettlement groups $900 for each arriving refugee; about half goes to immediate needs such as rent; the other half is for services, such as picking up families at the airport.
Refugees also are eligible for up to eight months of cash aid that varies by state, Carey says. His group found the average monthly assistance for a family of four (in states where the agency had offices) ranged from $309 to $575 — far too little, he says, for living expenses.
Iraqis can, instead, choose matching federal and private agency funds for four or five months while they look for jobs. But Carey says only about 30 percent of refugees have been able to take advantage of it because of limited funds.
“The system’s a mess,” he says. “One refugee told me it’s like playing a lottery (determining) where you end up and what you get.”
———
Iraqis who arrive with Hollywood-inspired visions of their new homeland quickly face a sobering reality.
“I was told when you go to America, there are organizations that will ... cover your rent until you find a job ... that it would be like a dream, it will be a paradise,” says Mohammed Yousuf, a 39-year-old former translator living in a Washington, D.C., suburb.
Like many Iraqi refugees, Yousuf endured a harrowing ordeal before ever stepping foot on U.S. soil: death threats, the murder of friends and colleagues, almost two years of limbo in Syria.
Then, finally, a second chance.
“I thought it would be a great country,” he says. “America is No. 1 in everything.”
Instead, he says, the resettlement agency placed him in an unaffordable $1,700-a-month apartment (dictated, in part, by the expensive real estate market.) He moved, but says he now has bed bugs in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and their four children, three of whom are in school.
“They need bags, pencils, all this is expensive,” says Yousuf, who receives $885-a-month in temporary cash assistance while in job training.
Media friends and others have generously helped out, but having worked in a wide range of jobs — veterinarian, merchant, TV producer — he expected to be drawing his own paycheck by now.
“I thought someone would help me find a job,” he says. “That’s what I need. I want to work to survive.”
Mustafa Al Waeli, who lives in Louisville, Ky., understands.
His advanced degree in software engineering hasn’t provided steady work, though he does occasional language and culture training for companies.
As a newcomer, Al Waeli has no cash reserves and recently couldn’t pay a $48 phone bill. “That would not happen to an American,” he declares. “At least they would have $50 in savings.”
But it’s not just the lack of money that troubles him.
It’s the “cultural shock,” he says. “We’re used to seeing America through Hollywood movies. It’s nothing like that. It’s very tough. It’s a hard life.”
In Iraq, he says, he could always turn to a relative or a friend in times of need.
Not in America.
“Here we have nobody to depend on, even if it’s a neighbor next door,” says Al Waeli, the father of a 17-month-old girl. “People are a little tougher than I expected. Nobody — and excuse my language — gives a damn if you have a place to live or become homeless.”
And yet, Al Waeli — as is the case with many Iraqi refugees — doesn’t regret moving here.
“I know the American dream is available,” he says. “I know I need to work hard to get it. This is my country now. I will never leave it. It’s the land of opportunity. I don’t care where I was born. I care where I can live in peace, where I can feel safe. ... I love this country. I sacrifice my life for it. Why shouldn’t I live here?”
———
There are, of course, Iraqis who’ve overcome the obstacles.
For some, it’s luck or perseverance. For others, it’s support from family in America, an established Iraqi community — two of the largest are around San Diego and Dearborn, Mich. — or friendships forged in the line of fire.
Many Americans, including former soldiers and others who worked for the U.S. government in Iraq, have stepped up with money, guidance or a spare bedroom or couch.
The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies has helped more than 500 Iraqis with U.S. ties make it to America. It has a team of lawyers (who donate their services) and volunteers who guide them through the resettlement. The work begins before they even arrive in this country.
“We’ve had Iraqis write to us within days of receiving death threats,” says Kirk Johnson, the founder and a former worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “We explain how the process works and ... once they get there, we try to help them make a go if it.”
When Mohammed al-Mumayiz arrived in Nashville last year from Jordan, the former translator leaned on a wide network of soldiers from Iraq.
The wife of a Green Zone colleague in Baghdad stopped by every day to take him and his wife shopping. The father of another friend complained to the resettlement agency it had placed the Iraqi newcomers in a dirty, smelly apartment (they moved). The soldier he translated for provided tips on accomplishing routine tasks, such as getting a driver’s license.
“It was scary in a way,” he acknowledges. “But you have to learn the system. You have to know the way things are done.”
Al-Mumayiz’ fluent English is an advantage. But attitude, he says, is critical. “You have to say, ‘This is our new home.’ ... You have to dig your heels in and say, ‘This is going to work. We have to adapt. We have to forget the past and look to the future.’ “
Al-Mumayiz devoted six straight months to a job search, eventually landing a position as a contract translator for the State Department.
“You have to be patient,” he says.
But some don’t have the luxury of time.
Hathefa Mohamed recently took a dramatic step: He signed a U.S. Army contract to be an Arabic linguist — a move that could send the former translator back to Iraq, the place he fled in fear of his life.
“I don’t have another choice — that’s the problem,” he says. “I’m not going back to work in factories, or picking up trash ... that’s humiliating.”
As a young man in Iraq, Mohamed dreamed of studying literature in America. He loved Hemingway and Steinbeck.
His master’s degree in literature meant little here, so he ended up working at a Costco store and a door and window factory — the latter job, he says, left him with a pinched nerve and an emergency room visit that cost several hundred dollars.
He recently was hired to teach world literature part-time at a Texas community college, but it’s not enough to support a growing family. His wife is having their second child in November.
“I’m really embarrassed,” he says. “I told my wife we will live a better life. That’s why I want to go into the military. ... They will pay my housing, college, everything.”
While Mohamed is joining the military, Raid Shawket, a 46-year-old Iraqi living in a tiny studio apartment in Kent, Wash., has returned to school.
Shawket, who owned a gallery and gift shop in Baghdad — his wife was a wedding planner — made that decision when he could find work only in a Target stock room. He was laid off after three weeks. He’s now taking business classes in a community college.
It’s not what he expected.
Many times, he says, he asked officials processing him in Cairo about work. “They assured me, ‘Yes ... It’s going to be very easy to find a job,’ “ he says.
Suhama Mansour, who owned a pharmacy for 22 years in Baghdad, had few options, too.
Her English is limited and it would take years to get recertified as a pharmacist, so she now washes dishes at a restaurant inside a Detroit-area Macy’s store. The transition, she says, is “very hard in my mind.”
“There, everyone called her, ‘doctor, doctor,’“ says her 24-year-old daughter, Nadeen Oro, who shares a one-bedroom apartment in Sterling Heights, Mich., with her mother and 16-year-old brother.
As Chaldeans, or Iraqi Christians, family members say they were harassed, threatened and accused of working with the Americans in Iraq. They felt they had to run.
They landed in Michigan, home to Mansour’s three sisters as well as one of the nation’s largest Iraqi populations. They’re waiting for the rest of the family to join them from Egypt; for now, they talk an hour each day on the Internet, often reminiscing.
“We used to live good,” Oro says. “We didn’t think about money there. ... Now we have to worry.”
In Florida, the Yassin sisters worry, too, as they rebuild shattered lives.
Wassan, who worked for an Iraqi construction company that contracted with U.S. forces, slept in different homes every night to evade insurgents. She hobnobbed with generals and traveled with security — for good reason.
In the summer of 2005, the brother of the company’s chairman was kidnapped. The following day, another brother received an anonymous call saying the doctor would be next. Wassan believed this meant she was going to be killed.
Then came the bullet on her windshield, a bomb at her house and her company office, the latter explosion killing two guards.
She escaped to Jordan.
Her sister, Areej, who had an antiques shop at the Baghdad Airport, followed later, after a chaotic incident in which her car was rammed, she got out and was shot by unknown assailants, two bullets piercing her leg.
After a year in an apartment, the sisters recently moved to public housing. They’re still looking for full-time work; both have held temporary jobs.
Wassan was fired from one job as a medical assistant. (Her case worker says she took too many sick days too soon; she insists the pediatrician told her she was overqualified.) She’s now taking an online course, hoping to eventually be certified to practice medicine.
Her sister lost out on a position because she didn’t understand drug testing rules.
“We expected more job opportunities,” Areej says. “I think my future, ‘Inshallah’ (God willing), that he will guide us to a good way ... not perfect — but very good.”
Meanwhile, Alnasseri, the New Jersey pharmacist’s assistant, is planning his future.
He’s studying for his pharmacist’s license and has been embraced by a new set of American friends — including a List Project volunteer — who invite him to dinners, graduations and other social gatherings.
That has made life easier, though he admits he once considered returning to Iraq, and even priced an airline ticket.
“Right now I have reached a decision: Let me take my chance here,” he says.
Al-Mumayiz — the translator — is doing the same. He says the hardships Iraqis encounter are no different from those endured by earlier generations of refugees.
“Life is about building blocks,” he says. “It’s like being a baby. First you crawl, then you walk, then you run. Life here is the same. At the end, it’s all worthwhile.”