New Haven Independent

The family arrived in town less than a week ago, making them among our area’s — and the state of Connecticut’s — very first Iraqi refugees.

Many members of the family have been killed in the Iraq war. Dr. Abtan was threatened with death unless he left his Baghdad clinic. When he did leave, the family spent a year and a half in refugee facilities in Jordan.

They expressed their gratitudeSaturday — and smiled despite exhaustion, jet lag, and culture shock — with dozens of other refugees and their sponsors at the third annual Thanksgiving supper of IRIS, aka Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services. IRIS is the former Interfaith Refugee Ministry, located on Nicoll Street.

In the United Church’s parish house on Temple Street, New Haven volunteers who purchased the food started cooking at 8 a.m. They sang Thanksgiving songs for the Abtans and two dozen other refugee families from Burundi, Cuba, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Chad, and Sudan among others.

Although the Bush administration has pledged to resettle 7,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007, by the end of last year barely 2,000 had arrived. And with some two million fled to Syria, Jordan, and other countries and another two million internally displaced, the number seems awfully small, especially in light of the many translators and others who have been working with American forces.

Abtan said that many doctors in his clinic had already been killed, and that the threat to him, delivered in a letter, said he would be beheaded if he did not leave. “So many doctors and lawyers in my country,” he said with exhausted sadness, “have fled. And it continues.

“My nephew Amar Ali was killed two months ago on Sept. 13, and he was my sister’s only child. My brother, a technology expert, is in Syria. His son Omar has just fled there too. With that name, a Sunni name, Omar, he was at great risk.” (Click here for an article CNN did on Abtan in March.)

The Abtans are fortunate enough to be among the only 25 percent of the refugee families coming into IRIS’s orbit in Connecticut fully sponsored by a group or institution — in this case the Brookfield Congregational Church. Gordon and Sally Markiewicz (pictured with the Abtans) represented a congregational committee of some 30 or 35 people helping to acclimate the Abtans. “They’re living in a small house, a cottage on the church grounds,” said Gordon Markiewicz, “and we’re working to help them process Social Security, Medicaid. We’ve got some committee members deployed to get them the transportation they need, step by step.”

Dr. Abtan said their needs are met; only transporation remains difficult out in Brookfield. IRIS provides sponsors technical support, such as manuals, advice on how to negotiate various agencies, legal assistance and advice on a range of other issues like cultural sensitivities. IRIS assists about 30 families or about 100 people a year. It is one of only four Connecticut non-profits licensed by the federal government to do so.

Markiewicz said that although the congregation had expected an Iraqi family for some time, it did not know until a week ago that it would be this one. The Abtans arrived from Jordan after 30 hours of flying, Tuesday night in Newark. Connecticut Limo brought them to New Haven, where the congregation’s representatives met them.

This bright afternoon, Dr. Abtan, who is an oncologist, appeared exhausted. He spoke English well, several times saying ‘“nshallah,” or “God bless/thank God.” He said he did indeed know of Thanksgiving in Iraq, as Iraqi Christians celebrate it, calling it “Eid Al Shukor.”

Suhair Mutaz said she was enjoying the turkey, although it is a highly unusual food for her family. Mutaz was not into the turkey, but he was clearly adept at making friends with the dozens of children who circulated around the festive parish hall, where the universal giggling lingo was the shared language of young childhood.

The hall was filled with refugees in America for periods ranging from the Abtans’ three days to up to three years. This remarkable family — Naim Muhammad Daud, his wife Karima, and daughters Naeeda (on the right) and Bahara (another girl and two boys were working) — came to New Haven and IRIS from Kabul, Afghanistan, two years ago after escaping from the Taliban. A commercial pilot in his home country, Daud is working in the food business in Clinton, where he now lives. Why Clinton? His two boys, age 21 and 19, have jobs there, and Naeeda will be starting work at Dunkin’ Donuts tomorrow. She and a sibling also attend Gateway Community College. They are all pulling together. Sound like a familiar American story?

“I have a car with 75,000 miles on it,” he said. “I go from place to place to plan a grocery store that I hope to open up in Milford next year. I drive so much because I don’t know things. I bought a sink for the store, but then I discover it has to be a commercial sink, not a residence. It’s my fault I don’t know. I want to buy a certain kind of paper cup for the store, and I think I have to go to New York to get it, when I discover it is in Clinton.”

He said all this with a smile on his face but wistfulness as well. “I’m very sad for my country. We will never return to Afghanistan. We will buy a house here, make a life here. What we lose in Afghanistan, we find in America, where we are safe and independent. But we must work hard.”

Chris George, the executive director of IRIS, was circulating with great pleasure. Here he was serving turkey and the proverbial fixins to Salah Arale, arrived at IRIS just six weeks ago from Somalia. “Habash,” George said, “and no chanzir” — that is “turkey, but no pork,” he reassured Arale.

After a Peace Corps stint in Oman, George spent 20 years in Lebanon, Gaza, and other locales in the Middle East, with various organizations such as Save the Children. He speaks workable Arabic. He clearly loves this assignment the best.

“You know it’s absolutely wonderful how courageous these people are, and how IRIS attracts so many volunteers to help in so many ways,” he said. He explained that each refugee receives a one-time $850 grant for resettlement purposes. After that IRIS helps them obtain Medicaid or Husky, which they are all eligible for. “We try, of course to find housing and jobs.” And a food pantry, provided by the Connecticut Food Bank, saves, according to George, about $70 per week for each family.

Yet it’s unlikely that Dr. Abtan will be able to practice as an oncologist. “We have one man,” George said, “a Somali who worked as an attorney in the ministry of foreign affairs. Now he’s working in a factory putting parts of some kind together. Most of the people earn minimum wage, have the whole family pitch in, but they are deeply grateful to be able to raise their kids in safety. And what’s remarkable, although they earn minimum wage often, they find the means to send money to their relatives back in the refugee camps. In Dr. Abtan’s case, we will try to find him work closer to his medical training.”

If a family does not have an institutional sponsor as the Abtans did (a large family from Burundi was sitting at a nearby table to celebrate, along with their sponsors, the Guilford Episcopal Church), IRIS settles them close to the Nicoll Street offices so the adults can attend the ESL classes and the kids the local school. Groups, congregations and individuals contribute funds or pieces of the resettlement puzzle. To take on an entire family as the Brookfield Congregation has done — the ideal arrangement — happens only with one in four. For the kids settled around IRIS offices, younger ones up to the eighth grade attend the remarkable classes at East Rock Magnet School, and high school age children go to the ESL programs at either Hilllhouse or Wilbur Cross.

Muhammud Saleh, on the far right, for example, arrived two years ago from Somalia with his mom, Harima, standing beside him. They live in the area with an unrelated Somali family who arrived two months ago after a 15-year sojourn in refugee camps in Kenya (with whom they are posing in this picture along with volunteer Donna Golden and Chris George hoisting up a young pal, Muhammad Rashid).

Twelve-year-old Muhammad’s English is slow but steady. He especially likes the science he is learning at East Rock and doesn’t know yet what he’s going to do when he grows up. In the meantime he already has a job, as the unofficial family English translator.

“Let’s not forget,” said Chris George, “how much people in Greater New Haven benefit from these people. Just look around. When the kids from Burundi go to high school out in Guilford, the American kids in their classes learn geography firsthand, learn to grasp the world in this new and important way. These people are helping to globalize New Haven, and they attract so many volunteers. The $850 that the government gives per refugee, it’s leveraged a gazillion times over by the contributions people make in time and money. People love being around our families. We should quadruple the size of the national refugee program, from the 50,000 allowed in now to 200,000, and a state like Connecticut should have far more than 400 refugees total per year.”

For those wanting to learn more about IRIS or to pitch in, email here or phone 562-2095

After one of the volunteers sang and taught a rousing version of “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, the Abtans and their sponsors realized they had to leave. They were driving back to Brookfield. Dr. Abtan needed several adapters because Iraqi voltage runs at 220, not the American 110. On the way home, the Markiewicz were going to bring them to Radio Shack.