Iraqis begin new lives in Idaho

In the past year, more than 9,000 of the 56,000 refugees who came to the U.S. came from Iraq. Iraqis now represent one of the largest groups of refugees in Idaho.

In the past five years, 912 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the state — 93 in the last year. Thousands more Iraqi men and women who worked for the U.S. military are in the country on special immigrant visas.

According to the Idaho Office for Refugees, the number of refugees from the Near East/South Asia (Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan) will continue to grow as post-war resettlement efforts continue.

Like any population, immigrants are mobile, moving for job opportunities or to be closer to family members in other cities. Officials don’t know how many Iraqis have stayed in Idaho over the years, said Kara Fink, communications specialist with the IOR.

But many have stayed. Three men who told their stories to the Idaho Statesman share a concern for the chaos and uncertainty in their home country after the departure of U.S. troops.

HAYDER ALRUBAYE: RETURNING TO SCHOOL

Before the war began, Hayder Alrubaye, 27, was in school in Baghdad. He was studying English and planning to become a basketball coach.

“But war is war. College stops. School stops. Everything stops,” he said.

A little more than a year after arriving in the U.S., the Baghdad native is living in a Boise apartment. He translates for local refugee resettlement agencies. He also works nights, from10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., at a food processing plant.

He’ll start at Boise State University this semester. He wants to study criminal justice. He’s still figuring out how he’s going to juggle school, work and helping his family.

During the war, Alrubaye worked as a translator in Iraq for the U.S. military. He, his sister and nephew came to Idaho as refugees.

In 2005, assassins killed Alrubaye’s mother because of her position as a head mistress at a school and because she was a member of one branch of Islam — Shia — in an area where the Sunni branch was the majority.

Alrubaye said his mother’s death was just one example of the unrest in his home country. He never left his house in Baghdad, not even to buy cigarettes on the corner, without saying a prayer and telling his relatives he loved them in case he didn’t come home.

Alrubaye laughs at the suggestion that the war in Iraq is over. Life remains impossible there, he said, with broken infrastructure, frequent power outages and the constant threat of violence.

“In recent days there have been 12 bombings in Baghdad alone,” he said. “Officers are being assassinated, hospitals are calling for blood donations.”

There is hope, he said. His country has endured hard times in the past. And people are waking up, becoming intolerant of government corruption. Still, he believes it will take at least another decade before life returns to something close to normal in Iraq.

Like others who worked for the U.S. government, he would be in danger were he to return, he said. Some Iraqis use an Arabic term, “jasus,” double agent, to describe him.

Luckily, he and his family are integrating into American life. They’ve made friends. The plant where he works hires many refugees and immigrants. He laughs about how his manager sits by the doorway and greets workers in 14 different languages.

Alrubaye worried about how Americans would react when they learned his nationality.

“But people don’t care,” he said. “They just want to know how I learned to speak English and how I got here.”

MICHAEL PAUL: A CHANCETO STUDY THE BIBLE

Iraqi immigrant Michael Paul doesn’t call the war in Iraq a war.

“For me, it is the revolution of American love in Iraq,” he said.

Paul, 41, who took a westernized name upon his baptism at an American base in Iraq, worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Army and Navy for more than two years.

He arrived in the U.S. nine months ago on a special immigrant visa.

He lives in Post Falls. He opened a barbershop, calling on training he got at the French embassy in Baghdad when he was a teenager.

“I also gave haircuts on the base. It was a natural thing to open a shop here. God had prepared me 25 years ago,” he said.

Lately he’s become an uncle-like figure for homesick Arabic-speaking students studying at local universities. He counsels them as he cuts their hair.

Paul is unlike many of his fellow immigrants. For him, work with the U.S. military had as much to do with spirituality as with politics.

“My goal was serving the American military in Iraq because I believe it was a kind of ministry,” Paul said.

He converted from Islam to Christianity in 1993.

He practiced his new religion quietly for a decade, waiting for the day he could practice in the open. His first goal after walking onto a U.S. base in 2003 was to meet the American chaplain and get baptized.

He wanted to come to the U.S. to study with biblical scholars. And he could not stay in Iraq; his religion and his work put him in double jeopardy.

His family rejected him because of his conversion.

“The government knows the names of everyone who has worked for the Americans,” Paul said. Their lives are in danger.

He was kidnapped three times while working for the Americans. He describes his kidnappers as “masked militia men” whom he heard say, “We caught that traitor. He has no loyalty to his country.”

American soldiers rescued him after each kidnapping. He saw their humanity in other ways, such as when an army medic found an injured donkey in the street and dressed its wounds.

“I received a lot from Americans in Iraq. I want to give back in the way God allows me,” Paul said.

That included attending the funeral of Coeur d’Alene Army Spc. Nicholas Newby, killed in Baghdad by an improvised explosive device in July.

Some of Paul’s friends warned him away from the funeral, worried about how he’d be received. He went anyway. When the pastor asked if anyone wanted to speak, Paul stood. Everyone in the church turned to look at him.

“I told them that I was working for Americans, and that I knew what Americans did to sacrifice. I’m here, and he gave me his life,” said Paul.

Newby’s mother came over to Paul and held him for several minutes.

“I told her that her son wasn’t gone with the wind. We were fighting evil,” Paul said.

As much as he believes in the sacrifices made by Americans, he says it will be a long time before life is better in Iraq.

He listens to Iraqi radio online, and knows Christians must still hide their beliefs. He wishes America could keep a heavy presence in Iraq: Iraqis will need guidance to learn the tenets of democracy after decades under a dictator.

“I wish more than anything that one day Iraq will be like any state in America,” he said.

ALAA SAYAH: A FOOTIN TWO WORLDS

Alaa Sayah’s two young daughters are thriving in school in Boise. He recently attended his older daughter’s holiday music program. She plays the viola.

Though he is proud of his daughters, Sayah worries they will forget their Arabic. His youngest daughter has become so fluent in English, he uses it to explain the meaning of Arabic words.

He insists the girls speak their native tongue at home.

“It’s nothing against English. I got all of my jobs because of English,” Sayah said, “but having two languages will be better for them than having one.”

In a couple weeks, Sayah will return to Iraq and to his work on an American base. He has been a translator, working with reporters from U.S. newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun. He now works for a “logistic support company,” managing a fleet of 200 buses on the base.

He’s uncertain what his employment future holds — whether he’ll continue traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Iraq, or move to Boise to stay.

Long separations aren’t new for the family. When they were in Iraq, Sayah lived on the base and his family lived outside. But Sayah’s work for the U.S. military inevitably made it too dangerous for them to stay.

Even with the war officially over, violence continues. In just the last week, the Baghdad apartment house where his mother and sister live was bombed and destroyed.

“But they are still living in the apartment. People are living daily. They don’t think about tomorrow,” he said.

Everyone he meets in Iraq or the U.S. asks him the same question: What will happen next in Iraq?

“Nobody knows what the plan is now, what it used to be, and what it will be,” Sayah said.

Anna Webb: 377-6431