finding-refuge

Nearly six months after my arrival in the U.S., most of my family has finally joined me in Arizona. Making the trip from Baghdad was my father, who turned 63 in October; my mother, who is 50; and my 16-year-old brother, Anas, who is very eager to discover this big country.

Most of the Iraqi refugees who recently arrived in America were shocked by the economic situation here. I was prepared. I knew about the difficulties of finding a job in America, and I knew I could count on assistance from the American government through my status as a journalist with The New York Times. Even so, it was surprising to find how hard life could be here.

It's been more than three months since I realized one of my most important dreams by coming to the United States. Still, I never thought that I would come here as a refugee, maybe because my Iraqi dignity and pride simply wouldn't accept such an idea. 

As a child, I never thought about becoming a journalist. I never really felt pulled toward any particular field. I just loved to feel free and try new things, especially when it came to hard work.

On a cold winter evening--Jan. 29, 2004--I was getting ready to start my first night shift as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in Baghdad. It wasn't really that cold, but my whole body was chilled. It was around 6 p.m. but already dark. I was an 18-year-old freshman in the College of Arts studying my favorite language through the English literature program at Baghdad University.

I couldn't say anything. I didn't want to blink and waste a single moment of looking at the beach and the Pacific. I had never seen an ocean. If I could set up a tent on the sand, I thought, I could stay there forever. I have loved the seas, rivers, and oceans since I studied them when I was a child. Now here I was standing on the beach at Santa Monica, watching the waves of the biggest ocean shattering on the California coast.    

It's been almost a month since I arrived in the United States. Oddly, I haven't felt homesick or strange here even though this is my first time ever outside Iraq. I was born in Baghdad in 1986. I never lived anywhere else. Baghdad is where my father and mother were born, fell in love, and married. It's the city where I grew up and got my university degree. It's the city that holds all of the memories of my 23 years. I'm trying to understand why I don't miss it, and I keep coming back to this: Maybe it's because I never felt comfortable there, whether in my childhood under the dictatorship of Saddam or my adulthood under the American war against terrorism. 

I'm finally in America. I lived all of my 23 years in Baghdad, never even traveling outside Iraq, but now I am in Tucson, Arizona, to begin a new life. I'm still trying to understand my feelings--missing the streets of Baghdad and the comfort of my family, but enjoying the sense that I can go about my day without being stopped and questioned for no particular reason.