Something we can all learn from

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.