Refugee’s road from Iraq to U.S. eased by adapting to culture

Milad Yusuf Ibrahim Al Najjar gestured across the empty expanse of lawn and picnic tables that is his neighborhood park.

“Sometimes you would say I had more fun there in Iraq,” Ibrahim Al Najjar said, speaking about his early days as a refugee in Rohnert Park, where he still lives.

“Here it’s different, you don’t see anyone. There you see people walking, you hear the neighbors, because you are close to them, you smell their food, you sit with them,” he said. “You’re close, you’re like a family. Here it’s like, everyone is far away, you feel bad, you feel depressed.”

Ibrahim Al Najjar is an animated 33-year-old from Mosul, in the north of Iraq. The city now is occupied by the Islamic State, a driving factor in the exodus of refugees fleeing for Europe and other destinations from the deadly violence in Syria and Iraq.

In 2008, though, Mosul was reeling from the almost unabated internecine violence that followed the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.

“After the war, we thought things would be getting better, but no, they got worse. After a few months, they started shooting, kidnapping, threatening each other, it went on and on every day,” he said. “You go outside and you ask yourself, ‘Am I going to come back or not?’ This is how you live there.”

Ibrahim Al Najjar became one of about 12,000 Assyrian Christian refugees who fled Mosul. He arrived in New York City - after spending 10 months in Turkey - on Tax Day, April 15, 2009.

The next day, he flew into San Francisco International Airport on a Delta Air Lines flight, and was picked up by his sister and brother-in-law, who had made the journey to Rohnert Park in 1998 and 1982, respectively. Ibrahim Al Najjar is one of 11 Iraqi refugees to have been resettled in Sonoma County since 2002, according to federal records.

“I saw San Francisco for the first time and said, ‘Whoa, now is the movie I watched before,’?” he said. “When we got to the Golden Gate, my brother-in-law told me, ‘Close your eyes and open when I tell you.’ I opened my eyes and saw the Golden Gate, and I said, ‘What is this, is this real?’?”

From the vista point at the bridge’s north end, “We watched the city, and watched the ocean, and watched the ships. And the air was like really cold. Ah, real America.”

It was a dislocating experience, though, life as a non-English-speaking refugee. He was friendless but for his sister and brother-in-law, who had their own lives to lead.

“I used to go here,” he said, gesturing again to a nearby baseball diamond, “to the baseball kids. And I say to myself, ‘If someone asks me, are you watching us, are you enjoying the show or what? What do I say?’ You don’t know how to answer, how to understand. It’s hard.”

Six years on, he still struggles at times with that sense of isolation, Ibrahim Al Najjar said. But much of it has been eased as he - and his good nature - plunged head first into a new country and life.

First came English classes. He joined a church choir and volunteered at a Goodwill store. Nine months after his arrival, he got a job at the Rohnert Park Safeway on Commerce Boulevard, bagging groceries and collecting shopping carts.

“What is a checkstand?” he would say when asked to clean one. “What does restock mean?” he would ask when told to do that.

“I forced them to teach me a new word every day. You motivate them to teach you. This is my way,” he said.

His English improved. Co-workers started to ask him to join them after work. He made friends who helped him learn the ways of his new land.

“It helps you to know life in a different way, like different windows to the world,” he said of his friends. “You see a lot of different types of people. I see my friends are very unique. I learn from them not to be judgmental, to adapt to this culture.

“If you don’t adapt to this culture, you won’t be accepted here. And so that’s what I started doing. And I think I’m doing pretty good,” he said.

In August 2014, he became a United States citizen, a transformative event. “I’m an American,” he said. “An American.”

Still, he is also Iraqi, he said.

“You got to be both. You have to,” he said.

Ibrahim Al Najjar, who has worked as a checker and in Safeway’s produce department, now manages the in-store Starbucks. He moved from his sister’s home to a house with a roommate this year.

He studied to be a dental technician at Santa Rosa Junior College and interned with a Rohnert Park practitioner, but is unsure whether he will pursue that field. He doesn’t know whether he likes working with teeth, he said.

“I’m a people person. I like to see a lot of people,” he said. “Like thousands of people a day, I see, here and there and talk, and be loud and laugh loud. This is how I am.”

Even as he moves forward, his past stays with him, reflected in the world’s present turmoil.

“In my school I was the Christian one among them; do you know how we loved each other? Until now, I think of them. Are they with ISIS, are they with good people, what happened to them?” he said.

“Are they now with the terrorists, or have they been killed? I don’t know. I just want to know. I hope someday I know.”