In looking for a refugee story from popular media, I found many that
were of refugees still overseas, however, I searched farther for one that shared
a refugee’s trip to America, one like those shown in Of Beetles and Angels and God
Grew Tired of Us. I have found these stories so much more impactful on my
learning of refugees than any other text we have researched in class. It not
only shows their struggle in settings we as American college students can
barely imagine, but also shows their struggle in a place we are more than
familiar with, our own homes. I found an article, a very recent one actually
having just been published today, titled “Iraqi Refugees Find A Complicated New
Home in Mass.” The article begins with explaining the event that started a
massive influx of Iraqi refugees to America exactly ten years ago today, the
toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. While this
seemed like a promising end to the dictator’s regime, it in fact was the
beginning to a long era of violence and civil war in Iraq. Since then,
thousands of Iraqis have fled to America in search of peace, with many of them
landing in the greater Boston Area. The article tells the story of 3 very
different Iraqi refugees and their new lives living in Massachusetts.
The first refugee that the article covers is Anas al-Hamdani, who
has found a job washing dishes at MIT. While he is looking to achieve more now
as an American citizen, al-Hamdani is thankful that he was able to escape the
violence of Iraq. “His life in America hasn’t been easy. But he’s safe, and he
says that counts for a lot when you know how it feels to be kidnapped, beaten
up by insurgents, and stuffed into a trunk” described the author. The next
refugee, Iman Shati, after leaving a three-car garage, garden, and spacious
house in Baghdad for the safety of Massachusetts, created the Iraqi and Arab Community
Association in Lynn, MA. After seeing that her son, who held a profession as an
engineer in Iraq, now worked a kitchen job just to pay the rent, Shati knew the
Iraqi refugees needed somewhere to help with job training as well as English
language learning to assist in their assimilation to American culture. The
final refugee covered in the article is Muna Al-Hamood, an ESL student in
Shati’s classes. After militants in Iraq killed her son three months ago, she
brought the rest of her family to America. From a clothing designer in Iraq to
teetering on the edge of homelessness in America, Al-Hamood is thankful for all
that Shati is doing to help her fellow Iraqi refugees.
I found each story in this article extremely interesting to read
about and saw many similarities to the stories of Mawi and the Lost Boys. While
Mawi’s father was an extremely successful and talented doctor back in Africa,
he could only get a job as a janitor at Wheaton College in America. And while
many of the Lost Boys were very intelligent, they were all subjected to very
high labor intensive and low pay jobs. While all of these refugees either had
better jobs back in the country they left, or had the skill sets to apply for
one, none of them were given the opportunity to show this skill set when they
came to America. They were only given the chance to apply for jobs well below
their abilities and well below the pay required to pay rent, let alone raise a
family in many of their situations. However, while many Americans searching for
work put down these jobs, they are welcome in open arms by the refugees.
Panther, one of the lost Boys who came to America to live in what I remember as
Syracuse, held a job bussing tables at a hotel restaurant. While seen as a
menial job by many in American society, Panther could not be happier doing it.
The size of the smile on his face when the camera crew interviewed him about
his job told it all. He was genuinely happy about what he did and that he was
making money not only to support himself but also his fellow Lost Boys back in Africa.
I also saw that as a theme stretching across the refugees of all countries and
backgrounds, their need to help others like themselves, no matter how much
extra work it takes. John Buhl, one of the Lost Boys, described how hard it was
to make enough money to send to his brothers back in Africa, as if it was a
necessity. He was in no way bound to send back money, but it was a promise he
had made, and he kept it no matter how little that left him to actually live on
in New York. A similar scene could be seen with Shati’s Iraqi and Arab
Community Association. While not sending back to those in Iraq, she helped
those out who were struggling in America. What I have come to learn from refugees
is that no matter how much struggle and pain they have gone through, is that
they are always wanting to help those even worse off than themselves, and this
is something that I think everyone, refugee or not, can learn from in their
lives.
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