The Newcomers

by Helen Thorpe

  Ebtisam wanted very much to give her daughters a middle-class life in America, and it was painful to her that this was not possible right away. Hence, the Plymouth—it was a step in the right direction. I found myself wondering whether Jakleen and Mariam would feel obliged to find jobs themselves, once the housing voucher expired. If Jakleen and Mariam started working, it was hard for me to envision the two sisters staying in school. But if they did not finish their degree, they would be stuck in low-paying jobs for the rest of their lives. I was rooting for them to remain at South.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, we decided to celebrate the fact that Ebtisam had gotten a job and a semifunctional car and her driver’s license by having dinner together. I brought takeout food from a Middle Eastern restaurant. Nabiha and I found Mariam sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a mirror that was leaning against the living room wall. Her mother was out running errands, she said. Jakleen helped us unpack the food, while Mariam applied black eyeliner, then put her hair into a ponytail on the top of her head so that it cascaded down either side of her face. She had changed into a red minidress.

  “Are you getting dressed up for us, or do you have plans later?” I asked.

  Mariam said through Nabiha that she was going out.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I am going to check the mailboxes,” Nabiha-as-Mariam announced.

  “Oh, you’re getting dressed up to check the mail?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you meet exciting people when you check the mail?”

  “I hope so!”

  Mariam was waiting for a package because her face had broken out, and a friend had mailed acne medication from Iraq. Nabiha began to Google acne remedies on her cell phone, to show Mariam she could buy ointment for pimples here in the United States. But Mariam was keyed up about leaving the apartment and departed on her much-anticipated walk because—who knew?—she might meet someone interesting along the way.

  Jakleen entertained me and Nabiha by announcing that she had just found an enormous earthworm. She took us outside to see it, ushering us onto a tiny concrete patio off the living room. Old furniture—a fabric love seat and a wooden coffee table whose finish was peeling—stood exposed to the elements. The family had strung up a piece of blue twine across the patio as a makeshift clothesline; socks, dresses, and dish towels hung up to dry. Against the building, an oversized dresser covered with a plastic tarp served as an outdoor storage area, holding extra pots and pans. They were making the best of what they had, using even outdoor space thriftily.

  Jakleen decided that we should sit on the living room floor for dinner, because that was the traditional way. Nabiha and I helped pull the coffee table to one side, and then Mariam returned, and the sisters spread out a green plastic tablecloth. We transported the food there and the girls arranged a festive spread on the floor. Ebtisam arrived home, feeling triumphant because she had had a good day at work. Looking delighted to see that somebody else had provided dinner, she took off her jacket to reveal a gray tank top, which she wore with black leggings. It was springlike outside and Ebtisam asked one of the girls to open the sliding doors to let in some evening air.

  We sat down cross-legged. I copied the girls and used pieces of Iraqi flatbread to scoop up hummus and baba ghanoush. We passed around plates of beef kebabs, lamb chops, and chicken shawarma. Ebtisam hopped up to get cans of Coca-Cola and Sprite, then told us about her recent adventures at the DMV. She confessed that she had made a few mistakes, but had passed her driving test anyway.

  “Oh, did you get somebody who was nice?” I asked.

  “Nice? No!” Ebtisam said, making a face. “Turn left! Turn right!” she barked, imitating the gruff manner of the person who had given her the test. The girls enjoyed her show.

  I told Ebtisam she was doing incredibly well, if she had managed to get both a job and a driver’s license. She was a real American! We asked if she had secured insurance and registration, and Ebtisam said yes, she had taken care of those things. Then she bent her right arm and showed us her large biceps. I am very strong, she meant.

  Because she had started working, Ebtisam’s benefits had just been cut. She had been getting $600 a month in food stamps, but the amount had dropped to $435. She had not yet received a second paycheck, and she was worried about money. She did not get stuck worrying, though. Nabiha assured Ebtisam that she would get raises in the future, and that she would find other jobs—work that she would like better. Nabiha said that had been her own trajectory: She had done unskilled work, and then she had built a better life. Ebtisam seemed reassured.

  After we ate, Mariam handed her mother an envelope. The family-run business where she worked had mailed Ebtisam a greeting card, because the day before had been her birthday. She was so preoccupied with her new job, she had not even noticed. Getting up early and figuring out the routine at the factory and learning to drive seemed to have expelled any other thoughts from her mind. We marked Ebtisam’s forgotten birthday by lighting a large white candle and holding it over the baklava that I had brought for dessert, wax dripping onto the pastry. We all sang “Happy Birthday” in English, and Ebtisam muttered a prayer in Arabic before she blew out the candle.

  Ebtisam’s daughters were in a playful mood. We reclined on the big green sofas feeling replete, as Ebtisam washed the dishes. Then Lulu took over because it was her mother’s birthday. Somehow Nabiha and I wound up talking about sounds that exist in Arabic but not in English. Nabiha made a series of throaty noises, which I failed to emulate, to the great delight of Jakleen and Mariam. The sisters invented a new game, which they found sidesplitting: They would say the name of someone famous in Iraq—a movie star or a musician, well known to everybody else in the room—and demand that I pronounce the name, too. I would do a splendid job, by my own estimation, yet when they heard my version, the girls toppled over.

  “Kadhim Al-Sahir!” Jakleen cried.

  “Kadhim Al-Sahir,” I repeated—perfectly, to my ears.

  The girls shrieked. Mariam laughed until she started crying and then began pounding the green leather sofa with both hands.

  “What’s so funny?” I wanted to know.

  “It just sounds a little strange when you try to say it,” Nabiha said in a comforting tone of voice. “It’s hard for you, you don’t know these sounds.”

  “Fairuz!” cried Mariam.

  “Fairuz,” I said carefully.

  Nobody laughed.

  “Okay, that one was easy,” said Nabiha.

  “Nazem Al-Ghazali!” cried Jakleen.

  “Nazem Al-Ghazali,” I said, in absolute imitation.

  The girls howled again; Mariam clutched her stomach, then doubled over with her head between her knees. Jakleen fell over sideways.

  Nabiha looked up the Middle Eastern celebrities on her phone and showed me their biographies. It was an education; I learned a new repertoire of heartthrobs. During this exchange, Jakleen and Mariam were sitting with their knees tucked under their bodies and their feet sticking out to one side, positioned so that their feet were touching. The girls had pressed their soles together, and they were pushing back and forth on each other’s toes. I had never seen anybody do this before. It was such a sisterly gesture, the kind of thing you don’t see anymore, once people leave childhood. I was still having a hard time imagining Mariam getting married. I hoped Abdullah would be kind, if the marriage proceeded.

  Ebtisam turned on the television and we caught the tail end of a news report in Spanish. The family didn’t pay much attention to what language they got the news in—they just tried to make sense of the images. After winning enough primaries to seem like a shoo-in as the Republican nominee, Donald Trump was attempting to forge alliances with Republican Party leaders. Ebtisam wanted to know when the election would be decided; she was baffled by the incessant stories of results. I tried to explain about primaries and said the final decision would happen in six months.

  The consta
nt media coverage of Donald Trump unnerved Ebtisam. She had been living in the United States for only a short time when he had made his famous campaign promise to ban Muslims. “How do you think things will change if Trump is elected?” Ebtisam asked, via Nabiha. She was rooting for Hillary Clinton. Like most journalists, I voted Democratic most of the time (although I occasionally voted Republican), and I was just as out of touch with the state of the American electorate as everybody else in my profession. Trump had gotten further than I had imagined possible, but I still felt confident that this country would not elect someone who was making what I considered to be false statements about important matters such as refugee resettlement. I told Ebtisam that she did not have to worry about Trump becoming president—it would never happen. If he became the Republican nominee, then Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide.

  The family had been paying much closer attention to the news from the Middle East, which they consumed via Arabic-language news shows. The big news from that region was that in Aleppo, Syria, bomb strikes had just demolished a hospital, killing perhaps the last pediatrician in that city. Politics and war proved subjects too heavy for us that evening; the girls were still in a celebratory mood. They asked if I would like to see their favorite YouTube videos. Jakleen connected her cell phone to the TV and we watched a series of belly-dancing clips, which proved far more entertaining than the news. The first video featured a veiled woman in a green bikini top and a long green skirt, who thrust her hips from side to side with astonishing rapidity and then did a serpentine move that involved slithering back to front for a while and then abruptly making her chest jut out. This routine had attracted 4.3 million views.

  Next we watched a very young girl dancing alone in her bedroom, wearing a modest black skirt and white blouse. Despite her tiny stature and demure attire, the girl had mastered some mature-looking hip movements. A third video featured an older woman wearing a gold-studded bra, harem pants, and a belt of gold medallions that flew back and forth with her sashays. Jakleen and Mariam confided that they secretly practiced these moves in the privacy of their bedroom. I found the videos unintentionally hilarious. One buxom woman wearing another zany outfit—a red bikini top and a red skirt split up the side to reveal a fair amount of leg—enacted a routine that mostly involved standing still and jiggling everything that would jiggle. Ebtisam said in all seriousness as she watched this woman dance, “Very, very beautiful.”

  During a lull in the conversation, I told Jakleen that I was grateful she had shared with me the letter she had written to her father. It was a beautiful piece of writing, I said. The translation read like this:

  My father,

  After your departure, my heart went into a terrible silence that created fears and sadness inside me forever. I am overwhelmed by missing you. The longing to hear your voice is my only desire in life.

  I feel that the whole world has compressed into a speck and all its colors have been drained. All my days are mixed with sorrow and sadness. I wish so much that I could see you again. I never imagined that I would lose you one day. Oh, Allah, it is too hard that I lost you.

  I miss you, and life is loneliness, sadness, and sorrow when you are not here anymore. I have lost my smile and my dreams have disappeared and my future has evaporated. It burns me that I will never be able to return home and see you again, that I will never wake up and find you back, that I will never hear your voice echoing around our house.

  I always pretend to smile, to keep busy so I can live like all those who have also lost loved ones, but this has all been in vain because my heart is too sad and always longs to meet you, my ears long to hear my name from your lips, my eyes long to see you, smiling or angry. I wish that you could see me in my wedding dress, and I wish you could see the outcome of all the effort and help that you offered me, the results of your care and your interest in my future. I wish you could celebrate what I have become. My tears have not stopped since your leaving. I feel like I am sick, but it is just sadness. The world is very empty. Yearning is all that I feel inside.

  We didn’t talk a lot about the letter. I just told Jakleen that her writing was eloquent and I had loved hearing her voice in Arabic. In response, she showed me a video she had put up on YouTube—it was another version of the same testament, adapted for social media. But mostly that evening, we watched silly things, because that was easier than getting lost in tragedy. After a slew of belly-dancing videos, the girls put on the Turkish version of American Idol, and then we watched a startling Russian talent show featuring gymnasts who did a lot of risqué moves that required extraordinary strength. It was nice to feel part of the family, with everybody snuggled down on the sofas, commenting on the various TV shows from far-flung parts of the world.

  Later, as I was driving home, I thought about how cozy the evening had been. Our initial visit had been formal, but over time the family had incorporated me and Nabiha into their daily routines. It struck me that certain aspects of life were universal (the whole world over, teenagers longed to find the right acne medication), even while other aspects of life seemed more culturally mediated (Mariam dreamt of getting married halfway through high school). And I was moved by the fact that Ebtisam had forgotten her own birthday. The oversight constituted an apt measure of what the first year in the United States was like for a full-fledged refugee: an experience so overwhelming, she had forgotten to mark even the most basic milestones of time’s passage.

  Nabiha called later to say that Ebtisam wanted to thank us for our kindness. All we had done was show up with some food, ask about her new job, commiserate with her challenges, and light one candle, but it had meant the world to her. From the outside, the constant domestic activity taking place inside their all-female apartment made it seem as though Ebtisam were part of a convivial household, but in fact she was the only adult. Her girls were wrapped up in teenage dramas; she was the only person who worried about the rent. Nabiha and I seemed heaven-sent, because as adults ourselves we could see the full weight of all she carried. She was trying to gain a foothold in a new country, a new language, and a new economy, all at once, and it was hard and frightening. Simply being seen made a huge difference. Someone had witnessed her struggle.

  The next time we got together, Ebtisam cooked an enormous meal, and a few weeks after that, I took the family out to Jerusalem. I had been working too many hours and had neglected to clean my car; on our way to the restaurant, Ebtisam looked around my untidy vehicle and said, in a half-scolding tone, “Busy, busy, busy!” I liked that we had reached the point where she felt comfortable teasing me. Recently, I had gone to the gold-domed statehouse, where a group of nonprofit organizations that worked with refugees had held a symposium. The state official in charge of resettlement in Colorado said the most important thing the rest of us had to offer refugees was our time. Companionship—spending meals with these families, getting to know them personally—meant more than anything else. It meant more than money and more than material aid and more than donations of furniture. They were far from home and achingly lonely, and they wanted to feel recognized. When I spoke with a member of the clergy who attended the same gathering, the word he used for this was “accompaniment.”

  Without consciously intending for this to happen, accompaniment was exactly what Nabiha and I had been providing for Ebtisam. We sensed her isolation, and we wanted to make her feel less alone. Because it was hard, what she was trying to do, and we both empathized, even as I was jotting down notes in my ubiquitous notebook. The relationship between us amounted to more than just reporter and subject, at least in my mind. I admired Ebtisam and cared about her well-being and suspected that if our roles had been reversed, I would have been besieged by waves of anxiety also. Nabiha felt at least as much compassion for Ebtisam as I did, and I liked Nabiha for being so big-hearted. The three of us had established bonds that mattered in just the way the state official had described. It mattered more than anything else—to be known.

  Both Nabiha and I were p
ained, therefore, when we heard from Ebtisam that her life was starting to unravel. With her next paycheck, she bought a better car, a red Ford focus. Then it was stolen. Confusingly, one of the Iraqi men in the apartment complex—the security guard whose comments had bothered Ebtisam—seemed to know where to find the stolen car. The man told Ebtisam she should call a certain towing company, and that towing company proved to have her car. How had her neighbor known where to find the missing vehicle? Had he participated in its theft? When Nabiha and I visited, we found Ebtisam half frozen with paranoia. The apartment complex wasn’t safe, her neighbor was persecuting her, the United States hadn’t been a good choice, her factory job started too early, she earned too little money.

  I’d brought her yet another pineapple, thinking maybe some fruit might help. As a journalist, I was always trying to make sure I did not give too much—I was always trying to keep my gifts proportional to what I was being given. Nabiha, who did not feel the same constraints, had shown up with her SUV stuffed with items she had been planning to sell in a garage sale. Nabiha brought seven black trash bags filled with clothing her daughters no longer wore, a clock, a lamp, a desk, an unused paper towel dispenser, and half-filled cans of air freshener. Basically, if it had been sitting in Nabiha’s garage for a while, now it was here. Nabiha had also prepared an elaborate meal of dolmas—tomatoes, onions, zucchini, and eggplant stuffed with rice and lamb. I felt put to shame by her generosity. The girls had a field day going through the bags of clothes, and even Ebtisam cheered up a little, distracted by all the bounty. But the theft of the second car was just a precursor. Ultimately, that crime would set in motion a whole series of events, and after several more months passed, when I would look back on all that befell Ebtisam, I would think of the red Ford being stolen as the moment when things started to get really rough.