Allan Appel Photo
Aminah, Kutti, and Azhar
Aminah and her family fled from the violence of the Syrian civil war. Azhar and her family fled when her father was targeted in Sudan for helping internal refugees there.
Herman Bershtein wouldn’t be alive today and, at age 92, still running 5K races if his mother had not found an American sponsor to permit her to emigrate to the U.S. from Poland back in 1913.
They all told their inspiring stories in the, er, run-up to the Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services’s (IRIS) annual Run for Refugees, which commences this Sunday, Feb. 3, at Wilbur Cross High School.
Bershtein with Aminah and Issa.
The race is in its 12th year. This is the second year that organizers are calling it a “Banniversary,” to mark the time in January 2017 when President Trump’s travel ban against refugees from seven mostly-Muslim countries went into effect.
It just so happens that the ban began to be implemented around the annual date of IRIS’s fundraising race, said IRIS Director of Community Engagement Ann O’Brien.
So the organizers have seized the opportunity to re-moniker the event a “banniversary” so that the ban, which was upheld by the Supreme Court and is still in effect, “will not fade into the fabric of American life,” O’Brien said.
“Remember! It’s still in effect.”
There was no need to remind Azhar, or Aminah (last names are not being used for the refugees) and their families. They were on hand for a press reception Tuesday held to preview the race. It featured samples of Syrian shawarma and other foods that Aminah, Azhar, and other refugee chefs will be preparing for the post-race party for the 3,500 runners expected on Sunday.
Aminah and her husband Issa immigrated to the U.S. after a stay in Jordan. They fled from their native Homs when the militias and the warring sides started making a safe, secure life impossible for their family, they said. Issa also was injured during time he spent time in a Syrian jail.
Syrian fast food, shawarma for a post-race party.
Theirs, however, is an ongoing success story. After being featured in New Haven writer Jake Halpern’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic work Welcome to the New World, Aminah has started a successful catering business.
As we spoke, Aminah was planning on buying the 50 pounds of chicken breasts, the ten pounds of cucumbers, 320 pitas, and other supplies, including some secret spices of Syria, to feed Sunday’s runners.
As she went down her shopping list, her husband Issa received the news, via his smart phone, that he has aced his GED prep test. He is now ready to move on to get his degree, and become an accountant.
Aminah, who arrived on the day President Trump was elected — all the immigrants spoken to arrived before the travel ban went into effect — spoke no English at the time. Her only English word, she said, was a smile. Today, thanks to a one-hour-a-week one-on-one language lesson through an IRIS-provided service, she speaks English well.
Azhar attended the event with her 13-month old son Kutti. She said she plans to make a Sudanese eggplant-based salad called “aswad.”
She fled from the Nuba Mountains during the Nubian civil war in Sudan and earned a law degree at a university in Cairo. Now she’s learning English, with a dream to become a lawyer in America. The dream of a dream would be to do that via the Yale Law School.
For now she’s learning more English and taking pride in her daughter, an 11-year-old at Engineering Science University Magnet School, who is learning French, loves science, and wants to be an astronaut.
Aminah, Issa, and the shawarma.
Herman Bershtein said he never learned the identity of the relative who sponsored his mother’s immigration from Poland in the second decade of the 20th century.
Of the 19 marathons and many other races in which he has participated, IRIS’s Run for Refugees strikes a particularly personal and meaningful chord. It reminds him of how lucky he is simply to be there himself.
“If my parents from the old country did not have a sponsor,” he said, “I would not be here.”
O’Brien said the goal this year is to raise $100,000 in support of IRIS. The “banniversary” goes beyond that critical support as well, she added. Since IRIS’s race is the only one of its kind on the East Coast and one of the largest in the country, coming to this year’s event are at least 20 settlement staffers from around the U.S. and some foreign countries. Their aim is to take a look at how IRIS has mobilized community support and brought refugee issues front and center.
A workshop or seminar will follow the race, along with, of course, the party of shawarma, Sudanese eggplant salad, and other treats prepared by refugee chefs as well as chefs from local supporting restaurants.
IRIS this year has settled only 200 people, limited by Trump administration restrictions; 350 were settled in 2017 and 530 in 2016.
Because Syria is one of the banned countries, only 60 Syrians have come to the United States in the past year. Of those, five have been settled by IRIS, said O’Brien. They came on a humanitarian waiver, an unpublicized facet of the Muslim ban executive order, which feature was the device used to permit the Supreme Court to uphold the ban, O’Brien added.
O’Brien said IRIS will continue calling the race the “banniversary” until the rule is retracted.
“We want to show the nation and the world how strong we are,” she said, which is why visibility is as important as the funds raised.
To date 2,200 people have registered for the race. It costs $35 to register and then you are directed to a page where you can raise more on your own as your friends support you. The race has room for 3,500 runners. You start at Wilbur Cross High School and finish there, feeling good in between.Here’s the page for info and sign-up.
“I want to run the ban right out of town,” Bershtein said.
