Iraqi refugees start life all over

The former school principal is still learning English.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Khwater Nayef has two college degrees and was a school principal in Iraq. Her next job will likely be washing dishes or cleaning hotel rooms.

She and her three children are among the first Iraq war refugees to settle in Ohio.

As she tries to start over, she constantly thinks about the husband she left behind.

“I miss him,” she said, not knowing if he is already dead.

Nayef and her children left Baghdad a year ago, fearing for their lives.

Her husband, Saad Khalil Yousef, was an accountant for Iraq’s ministry of electricity. He was called a traitor by some because he helped in the repair of the power supply.

Death threats came after he saw executions at his job. He soon began planning the family’s escape to northern Iraq, but he disappeared while scouting a route last September.

Nayef has not heard from him since that day.

She went to the morgue twice a day until armed men nearly forced her into a car trunk. That’s when she and her boys fled, staying with her sister in Syria.

From there, a refugee worker contacted the U.S. Embassy, which offered U.S. visas and seats on a plane.

She told the officials she thought an uncle might live in Cleveland. It turned out that he didn’t, but she ended up in Ohio anyway.

Over the past year, the United States took in about 1,600 refugees from a war that has displaced millions.

There are 14 Iraqi refugees in Ohio, said Dennis Evans, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Most of those have settled in the Columbus area, he said.

The government provides refugees with six months of basic assistance that pays for housing, food and English classes.

Catholic Charities set the Nayef family up in an apartment in Cleveland, where the children have adjusted faster than their mother.

Alhasan, 11, and Eisa, 9, like school and are asking for books written in English.

A teacher told Nayef that Muhammed, 14, was thriving in math class after just one week.

Farid Sadsi, a volunteer from a mosque who gave the family a prepaid cell phone for emergency calls, told Nayef that her two degrees would not help get a job because her English is too poor. She is taking an English class for immigrants.

“You have to start all over again,” Sadsi said.

“That’s how I started,” he said. “I know it’s hard. You are here. You are safe. Look at the people behind you.”

The 1,608 Iraqi refugees allowed into the in the United States between last September and this October is short of its goal for the year, according to State Department figures.

Officials said in February that they hoped to process about 7,000 Iraqi refugees for resettlement in the United States over the next year. At that than 500 had been allowed into the country since the war began in March 2003.

The target was reduced to 2,000 over the summer when it became clear the 7,000 figure could not be met.