Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / A brother and his family resettle in Madison Heights
A brother and his family resettle in Madison Heights
Life after Iraq — separate lives
by Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO of The Michigan Catholic
Published December 12, 2008
Nazar Shamoun and his sister Dahlia J. Shamoun were always close growing up in Baghdad. He remembers her love of stray cats and the time he saved her from a big rooster who knocked her down. She remembers sharing a walkie-talkie set, running out of sight of each other to talk.
These days, they share something else. Both are Iraqi refugees, having fled their country when violence touched their lives. He and his family now live in Madison Heights. She and her family are in Damascus, Syria, awaiting resettlement. Here is his story.
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Marylynn G. Hewitt; SFO | The Michigan Catholic
At left, Nazar Shamoun, his wife Yasmeen Addoby and two of their children, Sadeem (far left) and Beanka (far right) watch a slide show of pictures of Nazar's sister's family in Damascus. Their son Baseem did not want to be photographed. |
Madison Heights — Nazar Shamoun and his family took the death threats seriously. A flyer left on the garage of his family's Baghdad home and intimidating messages on the cell phone were likely the result of his work with a foreign trading company, he says. And the other factor, he adds, is "We were living in Sunni area and Shia come to live on our street. They do not like Christians," he explains. "They come to Christian homes and tell them to leave the house." "We had two choices," his wife, Yasmeen Addoby, says. "To leave or be killed. We left."
On Aug. 25, 2006, Shamoun locked the door to the house he'd finished building 10 months before, after three years of work. He, his wife and their three children fled to his sister-in-law's house in a safer area.
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Marylynn G. Hewitt; SFO | The Michigan Catholic
Sadeem plays with the chess set his father had as a child, one of the few things they have from their home in Baghdad. |
The intimidating notes were not to be taken lightly, they knew. Someone left bullets in an envelope for a friend shortly before he was murdered. Their pastor, Fr. Gabriel Shamammy, was kidnapped after refusing to take the large cross off the top of St. Joseph Catholic Church. He was released after a ransom was paid and is now working in Arizona. Four of Shamoun's friends who lived on their block were killed. And Addoby's niece's son was shown on TV after "terrorists cut his head off and put it over his body. So when they threaten us, I was thinking of what happened to my niece," she says.
Changing times
The area where they built their new house, with pretty much their life savings, "had been good. Then it was bad for Christians. Bad for everything," Addoby says.
The turning point was the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the al-Askari Mosque, one of holiest sites for Shiites.
Shamoun said he then took different routes to and from work "in case someone will follow us." Addoby said that "even though I am Christian," she and her daughter, Beanka, now 12, wore the hijab, the head scarf, in public at the advice of the men she worked with. For their oldest son, Bassam, now 18, it meant no longer wearing shorts in public.
Holed up at Addoby's sister's house, the family decided to head to Turkey. Shamoun's sister, Dahlia, had already fled to Syria with her family. His other sister would be the last member of his immediate family left in Iraq.
Since Shamoun had Turkish visas in the past, it was not difficult to get them for the rest of the family.
Syria, where many head, was not an option because at the time there were no visa restrictions as there are now and "if someone threatens you in Iraq, they can go to Syria," Addoby says.
A trip back to their house to get anything would be too dangerous for them. But Addoby's sister ventured back to fulfill a request from her nephew, Shaleem, then 5, for the chess set his father got at the age of 9. That is the only thing they have from their home in Iraq. No dishes passed down for generations, no momentos – nothing but each other, important documents, a few photos, the chess set and their faith.
Only family members were told they were leaving. Shamoun says if anyone asks, they are to say he "has a job in the north. If they know I am in the United States, they will take the house."
Shamoun was an electrical engineer, and Addoby taught communications, electronic circuits and math for 18 years at the university. They and their children left behind the life they'd built in the place where generations of their families lived.
Life in Turkey
"You can't imagine," Addoby says, "you reach a country and they don't understand English and you can't speak Turkish. You can't imagine how we manage ourselves. It is very hard."
After two nights in a hotel, they moved to an apartment in Istanbul Shamoun found "walking with a dictionary" by pointing to words he didn't know how to say. They were frustrated to find "there are no churches in Istanbul, only mosques," which meant long and expensive bus rides to San Antonio Church in Taksim. But it was there that they found a community of 500 Iraqis and found out about International Catholic Migration Commission, which helped them find out about seeking refugee status. In December 2006 they began the paperwork to be declared refugees.
In the meantime, without residency and with expired visas, neither adult was permitted to work. Without residency, none of the children were allowed to go to school.
"For a year I ache for my children to go to school and no one would accept them," says Addoby. "And they told me if you went to United States, your children have all rights. You are legally there."
Though her mother, sister and cousin live in the States, the main reason she wanted to move here was for the education offered. She also knew there was no guarantee she'd be resettled anywhere near the Detroit-area homes where her family members resettled years before.
A new life
Addoby says she'll never forget the moment her family landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. "The 24th of October 2007 – at 10 o'clock at night!" she exclaims.
They moved in with her mother in Hazel Park and set about looking for a home "and they tell me I need an address for my children to go to school." Shamoun and Addoby set out from her mother's house on an icy day, armed with a map from Mapquest and walked more than five miles to a house they found for rent on the Internet. "My legs became ice," she says, adding it was very different from their homeland where even nighttime temperatures sizzled at 115-120 degrees.
They rented the home that day from a woman who 30 years prior had been a refugee from Taiwan. Understanding of their situation, she and her friends helped with used furniture as did the Refugee Services Office of the Archdiocese of Detroit and Bassam's teacher.
Shamoun walked, took a bus, or rode his bike for months looking for a job. Fluent in English, he's now landed a job as a case worker for the archdiocesan Refugee Services Office.
It's now been just more than a year since they've resettled in the United States. It's been a hard year, Addoby says, her eyes brimming with tears when speaking about the life she left behind and the fact that her children won't have those same kind of memories.
They look forward to their five-year anniversary in the U.S. when they can seek citizenship.
They are proud of how their children are adapting to life in the United States. Bassam is on his school's soccer team and aims to be a surgeon. Beanka misses being able to walk everywhere but looks forward to becoming a dentist. And Sadeem, now 7, speaks English and Arabic "but never even learned to write his name in Arabic," his mother says with a sigh. "I think the thing that makes me most happy here is when I see my children happy in school."
She adds, "Of course. I thank God that He is with us step by step from when we leave Baghdad until we arrive here. He is still with us. Always He helps us and finds better for us."
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