My husband and I met our Iraqi son for the first time outside Immigration at JFK Airport in New York, a couple of days after his 16th birthday. It felt like a happy ending to a year’s worth of efforts, navigating the red tape entailed in getting Marwan a student visa so he could come from war-torn Iraq to live with our family in New Canaan. What I could not see yet was that this meeting was, in fact, a beginning.
It was Day One of a journey and a relationship with a person who made us a better family and became a beloved member of his community. In fact, I would bet that this musical, funny, brilliant young man has had a positive effect on most of the people whose lives he has touched.
So it’s not surprising that I’m thankful Donald Trump was not President in late 2007. I’m grateful that no one blocked Iraqis like Marwan and people from other Muslim nations from entering the United States. We might never have known how deprived we would have been of what Marwan brought to our family.
Times reporter
Our experience began in late 2006 when I read a New York Times article by Iraq correspondent Sabrina Tavernise. It described the depression of young men and women in Baghdad who could not go to school because of ubiquitous sectarian violence. I emailed the reporter and asked if anything was being done by any organization to help these kids. There was not, and she replied, “We need to talk.”
When we did, Ms. Tavernise put me in touch with Ansam, Marwan’s mother, who was working with the United Nations in Baghdad. Marwan was already well-versed at age 14 in the traumas of war, including the horror of having friends shot dead in front of him by Shiite militias. Ansam and her businessman husband, Samir, had sent him north to Kurdistan to live with his grandmother and attend an English-speaking school. However, Marwan had been living alone since his grandmother had fallen ill.
I don’t even recall consulting my husband, Warren Lancaster, when I decided to try to get Marwan over to live with us. My motivation was manifold, but the driving force behind it was to keep another mother’s son safe from harm.
St. Luke’s School reached out
That the effort ultimately succeeded was due not just to my determination but the help of St. Luke’s School here. Mark Davis, who would later give Marwan the Headmaster’s Award when he graduated in 2010, offered him a full scholarship and hastened to help complete the paperwork that would help give Marwan the green light for a student visa.
Friends suggested I should write a book about our three years with Marwan, but, honestly, there was not enough inherent conflict to make a riveting story. After Marwan first arrived, our fraternal twin sons, Cameron and Lachlan, then 13, would go downstairs to the finished basement, where we’d created a room for Marwan, and just linger quietly, fascinated. I’d ask them not to bother Marwan because he had to study, and Marwan would insist they stay.
From upstairs, I not only heard Marwan’s amazing piano compositions but the racket of his Skype sessions with friends and relatives in Iraq. When I marveled at the hysterical laughter I could hear from both sides, Marwan explained that Iraqis tended to laugh when their safety was tenuous.
The laughter stopped
Yet there were times when the laughter stopped because a relative had been kidnapped (fortunately none were killed) or when Marwan became depressed. While he liked us and was happy at St. Luke’s, he naturally missed his family, his culture, and his country, as bad as conditions in that country had become.
While Marwan’s English was good, there were times in early days at St. Luke’s when helping him with his homework got tricky. (“Okay, I’ve got all that,” Marwan would say. “But what’s an Archbishop of Canterbury?”) But my husband also remembers Marwan’s first day at St. Luke’s when they were in the library looking at a map of the Middle East. Marwan pointed to Syria and Jordan and remarked that he had a couple of friends in those countries. “The rest,” he said, “are dead.”
After St. Luke’s, Marwan went on to graduate from the Elliott School of Foreign Affairs at The George Washington University. (Fittingly, he was awarded the Dirk S. Brady Scholarship, whose donor had escaped from Nazi Germany and gone to GW.) He got a Green Card via a job with the Middle East Broadcasting Network, which is run by the State Department, then went back to school to become a web developer. He is currently working for a company in Brooklyn.
In the immediate wake of President Trump’s executive order, I heard that there were two Iraqis being detained at JFK, behind the very doors where Marwan walked into our lives. Back then, I remember being worried that Marwan was being detained for some reason because he was late coming out. As it turned out, after an exhausting voyage and an already lengthy wait to be granted admission into the country, Marwan had chosen to stay behind and help translate the Arabic spoken by his fellow Iraqis for U.S. officials.
This is one of the reasons why, when people remark that Marwan is lucky to have come here, I tell them that Marwan creates his own “good karma.” In truth, it is we who feel lucky to have Marwan a part of our lives, for he has given so much back to us.
‘I’m afraid’
Marwan recently posted on FaceBook an “Open Letter to My Friends Who Voted for Donald Trump.” It read:
I’d like to let you know that I’m afraid.
I’m afraid that in one afternoon, my American Dream was taken away.
I’m afraid that my Mom can’t come visit me anymore and I would really like her to make me good food.
I’m afraid that I can’t visit her either.
I’m afraid that I need you now more than ever.
I’m afraid that you will not stand up for me.
I’m particularly afraid of what would happen to me if another San Bernardino takes place under this administration.
I’m afraid that this was only Week One.
I’m afraid that the country we both pour our hearts and souls into is descending into chaos.
A country that I have more love for than you can guess.
So will you help me make your America great? Or should I think about Canada? It’s really damn cold there.
That my Iraqi son is afraid makes me angry. Because our immigration system once worked the way it is supposed to, Marwan has already helped keep our country great. But what of those people we may never know if President Trump manages to get his executive order reinstated? We are not being “protected;” we are being robbed.
Debbie Seaman is a resident of New Canaan.
My husband Warren Lancaster and I with Marwan at his St. Luke’s graduation in 2010.
The post The gift of an Iraqi to a New Canaan family appeared first on New Canaan Advertiser.