‘We’re definitely scared’: A refugee family contemplates President Trump
By Justin Wm. Moyer
The Washington Post
The Jbawi family arrived in Baltimore in July after fleeing war in Syria, carrying four suitcases into a nearly empty apartment.
Nadia Jbawi, 35, didn’t get to choose the art on the walls — two pictures of garden scenes and one of seashells — but she likes them.
“I had a small garden,” she said through an interpreter. “I’m hoping to do the same here.”
But the America the Jbawis are living in seems less hospitable to the family than it did before the election of Donald Trump, who has said he supports a Muslim registry and called for “extreme vetting” of immigrants. The Jbawis already have endured their share of extremes.
In Daraa, Syria, their home town about 70 miles south of Damascus, they huddled in a makeshift shelter as the city exploded around them. Their infant daughter, sick with a virus and smoke inhalation, had to be hospitalized. Even after horror upon horror — trigger-happy soldiers at checkpoints, barrel bombs — they tried to convince themselves that they could stay until they fled in 2013.
“The hardest thing we ever had to do was leave,” Jbawi said.
Then came purgatory: a month in a refugee camp followed by three years in Jordan as they waited for placement. There were background checks and interviews with U.S. officials before the relocation application was approved.
“This is your chance to make your life better,” Jamal Jbawi, Nadia’s husband, recalled being told.
Now comes Trump. Jamal Jbawi, 39, said the family has experienced no racism since their arrival. Not everything can change on Inauguration Day. Can it?
“We’re definitely scared,” he said. “But this is the U.S.A. The president does not make all the decisions.”
No one is sure what will happen to refugees under President Trump. Ruben Chandrasekar, executive director of the Baltimore branch of the International Rescue Committee, which sponsored the Jbawi family, said vetting of the 1,300 refugees it brings to Maryland each year is “very, very rigorous.”
“We have no idea as to what the Trump administration will do,” he said. “We presume the U.S. will continue to honor its commitment to providing protection to those fleeing persecution.”
For refugees, getting into the country is the first hurdle. They also have to live and work here.
Four years ago, Jamal Jbawi was teaching English literature to teenagers in Syria. Shakespeare was his favorite, particularly “King Lear” and “Hamlet” — the latter for its depiction of the “conflict between good and evil,” he said.
After surviving a civil war, he makes a living in quality control for Danko Arlington, a 97-year-old aluminum sand foundry. Without a car, he wakes at 4:30 a.m. and takes a 90-minute bus ride to the factory in Baltimore’s rugged Arlington neighborhood.
“Public transportation is very bad,” he said.
Jamal Jbawi inspects airplane parts for $11 per hour, working four, 10-hour shifts per week. Just getting back to work — any kind of work — after years in Jordan is a blessing.
“The factory is very kind,” he said.
He arrived with advantages that many refugees lack. He is educated and can speak English, albeit with a heavy accent that co-workers sometimes struggle to understand. Some refugees can’t read or write in Arabic.
“The ability to learn English if they don’t already speak it and speak it well — that’s usually the biggest contributor to an immigrant’s success,” Chandrasekar said. “They can get a well-paying job that leads to other things.”
John D. Danko, the president of Danko Arlington and grandson of its founder, has five refugees on the payroll and said he has trouble recruiting qualified workers in the neighborhood. His grandfather hired Germans after World War II, he said — why shouldn’t he hire people fleeing war?
“Refugees come to our country because they want to make money, they want to work,” he said. “It’s a good fit for employers with jobs that are hard to fill, matching with candidates that are eager to start.” He added: “It’s a big thrill to be able to see people starting over.”
The Jbawis’ two sons and daughter are also hitting the reset button. They’re growing up safe from air raids and the Islamic State, but they have to learn to live in a society their parents are also adjusting to.
Their older son, 10-year-old Khaled, is in third grade and wants to be an engineer but is having a hard time learning English. Five-year-old Abdulrahman can kick a soccer ball around their two-bedroom apartment like the Brazilian pros his father roots for, but he is afraid of loud noises after dodging explosions as a toddler. And 4-year-old Cham is doing well after her hospitalization, but she and her mother are stranded at home until she’s old enough for school.
“I would love to have a job where I can bring value,” said Nadia, who taught elementary school and was one class short of a degree in English literature before the war. “Not just survive.”
With a new administration in Washington, the Jbawis aren’t sure how far beyond survival they dare dream.
“We had the hope in the U.S. that we would do more than survive,” Jamal Jbawi said. “If racism rose up against our children, all would be lost.”
The mosque the Jbawis attend near Interstate 95 in White Marsh looks like a Chrysler dealership, because it used to be one. Instead of housing Pacificas and PT Cruisers, the former showroom is covered with wall-to-wall carpet, with lines for worshipers marked on the floor with black duct tape.
Mohamed Mughal, a board member of the An-Nur Foundation of Maryland, which runs the mosque, said about 15 refugee families from Syria and Iraq are among its 300 members. He helps them get furniture and clothing, and he appeals to other members of the mosque to hire them.
“I think they’re making out okay,” he said of the families. “They like it much better than where they came from.”
Greeting hundreds of worshipers outside the mosque on the first Friday of the year, Mughal also shrugged off the threat a Trump presidency might mean for his community.
“Nobody is scared of Trump,” he said. “He can’t do anything.”
Back home after Friday prayers, Jamal Jbawi contemplates what message he might send the president-elect if he could. He knows people hear about refugees and think about terrorism, but terrorism is the reason that families like his fled Syria, he said.
“Rest assured, we are a peaceful people, and we don’t want terrorism,” he said. “In fact, we are willing to fight it. . . . We would be grateful to Trump if he would help us build our children’s future.”
