Celebrating Refugees

Yesterday I was visiting a friend of mine who just graduated from the local community college as a certified Dental Assistant. I have walked through life with this woman for the past 8 years, since her arrival in this country a few months before I returned from living overseas. She arrived as a refugee, and today she is a citizen who owns her own home and car, with a personalized license plate saying her name.

When I first met her in 2011, she had been here about a year. She and her family fled Iraq after they received death threats from a local militia, because she and her husband have a mixed marriage–Sunni and Shia. This is not uncommon amongst Iraqis. She told me of a bullet left on their doorstep, wrapped in paper which said, “The next bullet is for you.” She also told of being outside in her own garden after curfew in a town where there was fighting between Iraqi and American forces. She was carrying her one-year-old and walking through the garden at dusk, when she became aware of a red sniper’s mark wobbling on the child’s back. She rushed inside to relative safety. They have many family members who were not so lucky.

The family went to Egypt, where they hung on for the 5 years it took the UN to process their case. This amount of time is not unusual. Refugees are severely vetted, and there were a lot of them even 10 years ago. But as refugees, they could not legally work. My friend sold the gold she’d received as a bride bit by bit, just to help the family survive. When they were approved, they were told they would be coming to America. They were assigned a state, a city, and a receiving organization, and they arrived to begin a new life in a place where they didn’t know the people, the language, the culture, or even the climate.

I walked with this friend through years at the local community college. She took only one term off, a summer class to deliver her youngest child. We got her through 8 levels of ESOL, which was cause for a party! Then she took other classes towards her Associate’s degree. She took medical terminology and passed with a high A, learning words I’d never heard of. She took zumba, and for her final produced a dance using the bellydance moves of her own culture. Every class she took, she found a way to somehow feed everyone in that class at least once. Meanwhile, I was often invited to parties hosted at her house–for birthdays, or Ramadan, or for her twins’ high school graduation. Every milestone was celebrated with lots of food and dancing.

Her husband got turned down for job after job, due to a lack of English skills. He was too impatient to stay in school; he wanted to work. So, in the time-honored tradition of immigrants, he started his own business.

They bought a house. They gained their citizenship. Her elderly in-laws were not granted a visa to visit them here because her father-in-law could not remember the name of the suburb listed as their address; he only knew the state. This was deemed suspicious. So the in-laws traveled to Jordan, and the family traveled from here to Amman to meet with them in a safe place.

Through hardship after hardship, I watched their perseverance and resilience. She used to shriek at fireworks because of PTSD from surviving war after war; now she buys small ones for her kids, and travels downtown to see the big ones set off over the water. She used to cook delicious food with lots of oil and deep frying, but after a class on nutrition she has learned to change that, although her food is still delicious. She is so generous to me that I can’t come close to keeping up. She lavishes her friends with gifts, celebrations, and joy, but I have also seen the pain and sorrow she carries.

I admire her deeply. And her story is just one of many that I know. In some ways she is exceptional, but in other ways, she typifies the determination and tenacity of new arrivals who struggle through their culture shock and PTSD and get up every morning to go to class, or to work, or to care for their families; who just keep going.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the number of refugees worldwide is the highest ever–70 million. That number is so high that it’s nearly meaningless, it’s so hard to wrap our minds around it. But I can tell you that number represents stories and people like this family I’ve been telling you about. Refugees in general are people who were living normal lives, mid-career, with houses and cars, only to have that taken away from them. By definition, they are ones who are the victims of war, not its perpetrators.

And so on World Refugee Day 2019, I want to celebrate the courage I see in my friends, who have come through unimaginable trauma and yet who take every opportunity to gather and celebrate life. I’m honored to be their friend. And I want to call out to the stable countries of the world. There is so much more we could be doing to relieve suffering and bring hope. There is so much room at our table. Won’t we open the door?

 

Christmas Parties

Every year, we have a Christmas party for our Iraqi refugee friends. Every year, it’s pretty much a success. Every year, in the weeks leading up to it, my husband announces that this is it, this is the last year we are doing this, how did he get talked into doing this again, this is too much work and stress and do people really even enjoy it? Giving is down, it’s hard every year to find people who want to help, what’s the point, etc etc etc.

This year was no exception. The stress, the last-minute planning (or lack thereof), the undeniable fact that no one came to help us set up, which made me very grateful indeed for my two teenage sons, who did far too much work. As usual, we had no idea who would actually come and who would snub the party. As usual, we had a good turn-out, so much so that we actually ran out of chairs and some people had to stand. The kids ran around, fueled as much by excitement as by sugar.

No chairs meant no high heels after a few hours!

My husband gave a short message, focusing on the promises of God fulfilled by Jesus. He talked about what it’s like to wait for a gift. When he solicited examples from the audience, adults gave examples of waiting years for husbands to join them, or for their papers granting them refugee status and admittance to America, but one girl talked about the bike she was getting for her birthday next week.

At these gatherings, the people closest to the speaker will mostly listen, but those even one or two tables away have no qualms about just carrying on their conversations full voice. It’s very frustrating for Americans. We are raised to sit still and listen when someone is speaking to us. We are raised to wait our turn, stand patiently in line. When Iraqi kids first arrive, this is hard for them. At schools, other kids yell at them and teachers are firm. You have to wait in line. The other day in my English class, we were doing the past perfect tense and I wrote on the board, “Before I came to America I had never…” and one student answered “stood in a line.”

But I had a small revelation as I watched the women in their hijabs chatting animatedly while my husband and a friend to translate stood at the other end of the room and tried to convey timeless truths. I’m sure that it was like this in Jesus’ time. I pictured the Sermon on the Mount, or the time just before the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus speaking out over the Galilean hills crowded with men and women and children, whiny and hungry and hot all of them. The children no doubt ran around chasing each other, the women stood comfortably gossiping with babies on hips, and up front a few heard and fewer still let the word of God enter their hearts. And yet many lives were changed forever.

Why are we here? Why are we left on this broken and hurting earth that so desperately needs the hope of Immanuel, God with us? I believe with all my heart that it’s to bear witness, to shine light, to share hope with those around us. This often means crossing various barriers–of culture, language, personality. It’s easy to see cultural differences between Iraqi refugees who arrived last week and Americans, but sometimes the cultural differences are more subtle–maybe it’s just someone whose upbringing was radically different than ours, or someone who’s a staunch member of the “wrong” political party, or someone whose outward appearance or lifestyle choices shock or offend.  As we reflect on and celebrate the coming of our Saviour to earth 2000+ years ago, let’s also reflect on how we are doing at intentionally reaching out, letting our light shine, sharing the reason for the hope that we have.