Word: phoenixes
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There are moments when Faeza Jaber wants to pick up Khattab, her 7-year-old son, and flee back to Baghdad. Life in Phoenix is proving harder than she had expected. She needs a job that will pay her rent--not easy for a 48 year-old single mother with basic English and little local experience. Then there are a number of smaller challenges that, taken together, can seem insurmountable for a woman who has never previously lived away from her homeland--where to find day care for Khattab, how to decipher utility bills, what to do about...
...International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the nonprofit organizations tasked with helping resettle Iraqis in the U.S. (By contrast, Sweden has taken in some 31,300 asylum seekers since March 2003.) Charles Shipman, who runs refugee programs for the state of Arizona, says growing U.S. cities like Phoenix can handle more Iraqi refugees than are coming in at the moment. Housing in Phoenix is relatively inexpensive, says Shipman, and the local job market can still absorb entry-level workers. Of the 600 refugees who pass annually through the IRC's Phoenix program, 91% find jobs and go off state...
...Faeza and Khattab landed at Phoenix International Airport. It was 111°F (44°C) outside--hotter than in Baghdad that day. "Is this America?" she asked the IRC guide who picked her up, a fellow Iraqi named Hazem Olwan. "We all know the Americans have high technology," Olwan told her, "but they can't do anything about the weather." The heat was just the first in a series of disappointments. "Many refugees have an idea of America without any negatives," says Robin Dunn Marcos, head of the Phoenix office of the IRC. "Their expectations are not exactly met." Faeza noticed...
...month after deductions. Her monthly rent in the new apartment is $750. Eventually, she hopes she'll be hired to do data entry or computer programming in an office, as she did in Iraq. She's taking classes in English speech and grammar at the University of Phoenix. For many refugees, the language barrier can be the hardest to overcome. Marwan, another Iraqi, who arrived in Phoenix with his wife and infant son just a week after Faeza, remains unemployed. A furniture salesman in Baghdad, his English is even more rudimentary than Faeza's. "It's close to impossible...
Though the war is no longer at the forefront of the U.S. political debate, it has upended the lives of a generation of Iraqis, in ways both hopeful and tragic. In Phoenix, Khattab brings home new English phrases he learns every day in second grade at Sahuaro Elementary School. "Khattab is showing great progress and learning the language very quickly," his teacher wrote on his midterm report last month. After his first week of school, he figured out that to fit in, he would need an Arizona Cardinals hat. When I saw him recently, he was asking "What...