New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘WE PUT DOWN ROOTS’
Syrian extended family finds safety in city
NEW HAVEN — The pandemic safety precaution was clear: Practice social distancing.
For this moment, however, that protocol was out. “I haven’t seen my mother in five years. I am going to hug my mother,” Issa told his friend Jean Silk.
Silk is the coordinator of the Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement, a group of six synagogues in Greater New Haven, which recently welcomed its sixth refugee family to New Haven.
The new arrivals included Issa’s mother, Shaha, 66; his sister Hameeda, 46, and his brother, Ahmad, 35. The family asked that their last names not be used for security reasons.
Issa, his wife Aminah, and their three children emigrated as refugees from Syria almost five years ago on Nov. 8, 2016, the day Donald Trump was elected president.
“He stopped having more refugees in the beginning. Then he made this new law: the Muslim ban,” Issa, 36,said.
“After that, we had no hopes for my mom to come here. She texted me and said ‘I’ll not see you again,’” Issa recalled.
He said he was happy with the turnaround under the Biden administration that saw longstanding applications for refugee status and in this case, family reunification, move forward.
Issa said when his siblings and mother arrived about a month ago, they suffered from the same culture shock he said every immigrant experiences, including himself.
You don’t speak the language, you are not familiar with the mores, Issa said.
“They said they felt like children,” Issa said as the family gathered in the living room of his mother’s apartment, where JCARR helped them settle.
It is better now, Issa said, as they learn to adjust with the help of JCARR, which works as a co-sponsor with Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, the largest such group in the state.
The new arrivals spent 10 days at his home in Hamden, a house Issa and Aminah were able to purchase this year from his savings working in security and Aminah’s, who is the supervisor at the Sanctuary Kitchen, where immigrant women sell a range of baked goods, soups and appetizers.
“She is an excellent cook,” Silk said, learning to prepare meals in quantity at the multi-generational family home back in Syria before the devastating civil war.
Issa said the recent move-in was smoother than in 2016 when their anxiety levels were high and his family needed reassurance from Silk that they would be safe here, given Trump’s stance on refugees and immigration.
The large family lived together when they were in Syria and together, and at a meeting called by his mother, decided to leave in 2012 after Issa and two of his brothers were sent to prison for a time by President Bashar alAssad, whom they opposed politically.
“After we survived, we decided to leave because they take people again and again. Either way: 50 percent we will die, 50 per cent survive. Let’s do it,” Issa said. “It was a risk, but worth it.”
Issa said he continues to have back problems and had two disk surgeries after he re-injured it while working in the U.S.
He said the damage to his back and kidneys is due to the torture he received in the grim prison system in Syria. Ahmad still has scars from cigarette burns. News reports and those from humanitarian agencies have estimated thousands died from torture or the horrific conditions in those prisons.
“I saw my friend die in prison. They didn’t care,” Issa said.
Some 25 members of the family, from babies, to children and adults, drove part of the way to the border with Jordan before proceeding on foot in the dark, Issa said.
“We walked in the valley in the middle of the night, no lights, no talking,” Issa said, so as to avoid the checkpoints.
“My sister is almost blind. She and I were the last two persons across the border because I helped her to walk,” a journey that took them six hours. “It was very dangerous.”
When they reached Jordan, it was chaotic with people searching for relatives, some of whom were picked up by Syrian police and were never seen again, he said.
His mother spent 8 years in Jordan, while Issa, his wife and children were there for four years before getting permission to enter the U.S..
“We were glad Jordan welcomed us to a safe place,” Issa said. But you could not work legally and would be deported when caught, he said. Also, the schools were second-rate for the refugees.
Issa said Silk was right, that he would not encounter hostility in New Haven. The first day they walked their children to the school bus stop, they met a new neighbor who promised to look after them if the family was ever late in picking them up.
“We all felt so good that she did that, the neighborliness of America,” Silk said.
Listening to the conversation in her apartment, as Issa translated it from English to Arabic, Shaha summed up her reaction to the continuing fighting in her homeland.
“When I pray, I thank God that none of my (seven) children have been killed,” she said. Issa said 90 percent of families have lost someone. Some have had 4, 5, 6 children taken to prison.
Issa said he is grateful to all the volunteers who help IRIS and JCARR, one of numerous groups throughout the state that have stepped up to meet the need. The number of refugees is expected to reach 1,000 coming to Connecticut this year and next, particularly people leaving Afghanistan.
JCARR is now guiding its sixth family by finding an apartment for them, furnishing it, enrolling children in school, helping the adults find work and engaging the public transportation system. They help them manage their household budget and connect them with healthcare.
Issa and his family are set to become citizens this year and he told Silk he is glad it will happen when there is a president who welcomes refugees.
In Syria, Issa installed HVAC systems in large developments, such as shopping malls and hospitals, a job he loved.
He is disappointed that experience alone is not enough to land a job in that field in the U.S.. Aminah has been with Sanctuary Kitchen since it opened three years ago.
“She knew one word of English when she arrived here,”
Silk said. She said the couple are both very motivated and are proud to be independent.
“Everybody knows Issa and Aminah are the poster children,” for successful integration, Silk said..
When his back limited the work he could take, Issa planned to go to Gateway Community College.
Right now, however, since they couldn’t find daycare for their 10-month-old, the newest addition to the household, Issa is babysitting him, as well as his
13-, 12- and 7-year-old siblings.
He said that would be considered a shameful occupation for a man in Syria, but the supervisor position is an opportunity for Aminah.
“She loves her job. I didn’t find the job I love, but here she has this chance. I don’t want to tell her to stop,” Issa said.
Issa has his GED and continues to work on improving his English. At Gateway, he wants to study business administration and accounting and get a job as an interpreter in the meantime.
He said Ahmad, Hameeda and his mother went to the New Haven Adult Education offices, where they saw a picture of him at his graduation.
“Tell your mother, I cried for her. I cried for all of you the day of your graduation,” Silk said.
Ahmad is starting to study English on his own and is waiting for a wifi connection to listen to YouTube instruction, something that helped other refugees.
Aminah will plan a party for her mother-in-law and sister-inlaw once they have their second COVID vaccines.
Silk said it is customary for Syrian women to have parties where they get dressed up, wear makeup, let their hair loose and dance. It will be another gesture that the family is returning to a sense of normalcy.
Issa said they came to America to rebuild their lives. “We put down roots in this country for the kids. We make sure the kids are OK.”
He said when he meets people, he finds out many have grandparents who also were immigrants.
“When I see their children and how they are doing, that gives me hope in the future, that my kids will be like this, that they will have successful lives, safe lives,” he said.
Issa said it was a good time to leave Jordan as they start sending refugees back to Syria, declaring it is safe.
“You send someone back to Syria, that means you are sending them to their deaths,” Issa said.
Silk said there is a kind of symbolism to the fact that JCARR, as a group of synagogues, is willing to help anybody.
They have resettled a family from the Democratic Republic of Congo who were Seventh Day Adventists; now three Syrian families and an Iraqi couple who are Muslim and an asylum-seeking family from Angola who are Christian.
She has spent a career bringing people from different cultures and countries together starting with the Experiment in International Living where she would take students and adults aboard to live with families.
“I feel Americans really need to be able to see the world outside the rigid lens that we grew up with,” Silk said in a recent interview.
In a talk she gave at her synagogue, Temple Emanuel, Silk said: “Through living together, we come to acknowledge our differences, but even more, we recognize all that we have in common. Strangers are no longer strangers, they are individuals, they are people.”
A convert to Judaism 40 years ago, Silk is moved by the concept of caring for the stranger.
“Welcoming refugees is intrinsically connected to our Jewish tradition. The Torah instructs us 36 times to care for the stranger - far more than it commands us to observe the Sabbath or any other law. For those involved in JCARR, the core Jewish value of Tikkun Olam, “repair the world,” compels us to take responsibility to address social injustice and to care for the other,” she wrote.