Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [28]
Here in Lincoln, most refugees are met at the airport by people from their homeland and by someone from church services. An interesting thing happens at the airports. When the newcomers and their hosts meet, they all burst into tears. The moment of arrival has an intensity and poignancy that sweeps everyone away.
From the airport, refugees are driven to a furnished apartment stocked with food and used furniture. Their first day in town they get their social security cards and their immunizations. They enroll their kids in school, and, if needed, they receive emergency doctors' appointments. Sometimes refugees get off the plane with life-threatening illnesses and go directly to a hospital.
Each adult is given fifty dollars per week, plus food, rent, and temporary medical insurance. They go through an orientation that explains everything from how to use the city bus and library to marriage laws and taxes. Adults are encouraged to get jobs quickly. The goal of our resettlement agencies is self-sufficiency in four months. In feet, within a few weeks, refugees are often working. In addition to their other financial burdens, all refugees must repay their airfares from the country they fled.
A woman from Kazakhstan arrived in Lincoln with her father. She waited three hours at the airport for her sponsor who was at a party and had forgotten her. Later that night her father had a heart attack from the stress of the journey. From television, she knew she could call 911. Yet even when the translation service finally kicked in, she could give no address. Amazingly, her father lived through this attack.
Zainab arrived at JFK Airport in New York City. Before arriving she and her husband had spent years in a camp in the Saudi Arabian desert. They had two children in the camp and Zainab was again pregnant. She walked off the plane, looked at all the electric lights and the people who were walking fast and talking loudly, and she said to her husband, "Let's go back to the camp. At least there we had friends and family." He said, "I don't own the plane. I don't own anything."
Telling me this later, Zainab laughed. She said, "All he had was money for a Pepsi, so he bought me one. Drinking that cheered me up."
Zainab and her husband had hoped they would be assigned Lincoln, where they knew a few families, but an official sent them to Fargo, North Dakota. They boarded another plane and arrived in Fargo late at night. They were picked up and taken to a hotel room. Too tired to clean up or eat, they fell into deep sleep. In the morning they awoke and looked out the window. They saw green trees, grass, a squirrel, and two dogs. Zainab said, "We had spent years in a place with no plants or animals. My husband asked me if we were in heaven."
They had never seen people in shorts or with dyed green hair. They didn't know how to use a phone. A homeless guy gave them thirty-five cents and dialed for them.
Soon they managed to move to Lincoln. Zainab had trouble with our foods. In Iraq there were not many kinds of vegetables, mostly just tomatoes and cucumbers, but they were fresh and delicious. Zainab said Nebraskans had a huge variety, but nothing tasted flavorful.
Zainab came from an area where men and women did not touch each other except in families. The American handshake was a problem. When a man held out his hand to her, she had to explain that Iraqi women do not shake hands. She learned to hug American women and say, "Hug your husband for me."
FIRST BIG SHOCKS
When I was in college, I remember reading about a tribe in Central