Sunday, November 23, 2008
Iraqi refugee: An unlikely patriot
He lost a leg while working for U.S. troops in Iraq. Now, Haidar Khairallah helps other Iraqi refugees resettle in Roanoke.
The plane was leaving for America, and the flight was packed. Haidar Khairallah sat next to another exile from his war-splintered country, another refugee from Iraq. It was the man's first time on a plane.
"Nothing to it," Haidar reassured him in Arabic.
"Allah Akbar," the man said, bowing his head. God is great.
To the Americans seated nearby, it looked like a suicide bombing. One passenger stood up and shouted: "Please ... don't do it!"
Haidar, 34, stepped in to explain, translate and, ultimately, calm everyone down. By the time they landed in Miami, the Americans were joking with the olive-skinned "terrorist," and e-mail addresses were exchanged.
Haidar (rhymes with "rider") has that effect on people. In the war zones of Baghdad, troops from the 82nd Airborne Division liked him so much they nicknamed him "Homeboy" and put him to work. He translated for them and fought alongside them and even lost a leg trying to save one of them.
In Roanoke since March, Homeboy is still the ultimate go-between. But now the outsiders are his own people, part of the city's growing Iraqi refugee community.
He helps some 15 families -- translating, negotiating with their landlords, scolding them when he thinks they're acting uppity.
He's teaching the new Americans the fine art of Wal-Mart shopping, barbecuing and how to say "Whassup?!"
For the first time since the bombs fell on Baghdad, Homeboy is finally home.
An American fixation
From his Grandin Village apartment window, Haidar stares at the courtyard. Wife Dina and 5-year-old son Ali are still asleep, but Haidar awakens early to catch the morning news: "Triple blasts kill 28 in Northern Baghdad."
Why wasn't I born here? Every day he asks himself that question.
He's been wondering it since childhood, when his family lived in England while his father went to graduate school. They returned to their native Iraq in 1986 -- but not before their oldest son had learned to break dance and knew the lineage of the characters from "Dynasty," including who shot J.R.
Back in Baghdad, Haidar's friends made fun of him when he wore shorts and sang early Madonna, acquired from listening to the BBC version of "America's Top 40."
With a Sunni father and Shiite mother, he avoided sectarian squabbles. To him, education outranked religion.
In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Haidar predicted a short conflict, like the first Gulf War. Americans would kill Saddam Hussein, rebuild what they destroyed and get out.
He didn't count on the guerilla-style fighting, didn't bank on violence extending beyond the battle zones to neighborhoods and family homes. "We were afraid," Haidar recalls. "We were out of food."
Miles away from his home, from the safety of a relative's house, he watched via satellite -- on Fox News -- as the war entered his Baghdad neighborhood. Two days later, he returned to find his windows smashed and holes in his roof. His wife was pregnant. There was no more computer job for Haidar to go to, no more work for a college-educated linguist. They were hungry.
That afternoon, five American soldiers knocked on his door. They were checking for unexploded bombs.
The young Iraqi stunned them when he opened the door and, in a slight British accent, said: "Hello, gentlemen, how can I help you?"
Haidar invited them inside for tea. But the soldiers stalled, afraid he might poison them.
"Please, it is my pleasure," Haidar said, and took the first sip.
Risking it all
The Americans offered him work; the official title was linguist. His job was to talk to neighbors, sussing out hidden bombs, weapons and insurgent groups.
The risk was tremendous. Anonymous fliers were posted: "Anyone who speaks to an American will be killed." A nearby mosque issued warnings over a loudspeaker: "Anyone who gives the Americans water will be punished."
The young son of a fellow Iraqi translator was kidnapped and tortured, his charred remains returned to the family as a warning to others.
Dina was hidden at a relative's home in a safer neighborhood. The military paid Haidar $5 a day and, as he earned the soldiers' trust, issued him a pistol.
The remarkable friendship was documented in a 2004 Los Angeles Times newspaper article.
"He got along great with the guys," Lt. Matt Adamczyk, a commander with the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, told the Times. "He believed, like we did, in what we were doing."
Adamczyk assured Haidar he would keep his family safe. In return, Haidar looked after his soldiers, explaining U.S. intentions to rebuild Iraq at neighborhood meetings and calming the angry crowds that swarmed the troops.
During house patrols, it was Haidar's face at the front door, asking permission to enter. It was Haidar who explained Iraqi customs so the troops knew to approach families respectfully. He advised Army superiors: Fix the electricity. Don't store your military tanks on Iraqi farms. Change your police uniforms from dark green -- a reminder of Saddam's government -- to blue.
Together, they kicked in the doors of suspected insurgent hideouts, dozens of them, every day.
On breaks, the soldiers listened to rap at Haidar's home, which they jokingly called their "pimp house." They invited him to play basketball at the base and feast on grilled burgers.
"What kind of s--- name is Haidar anyway?" one sergeant asked. "Let me call you Homeboy!" The name stuck.
"I was in heaven, honestly," Haidar says. He was helping his country and learning about freedom, living a life he had only before seen on TV.
"They were brothers to me," he says, pointing to a picture of a soldier holding baby Ali. "They protected me before they protected even themselves."
'For the boys of the 82nd'
To understand why Haidar is so hell-bent on adapting to his prosthetic leg in America -- why he wants to run before he's mastered walking -- you first have to understand the events of Aug. 6, 2003.
Picture Haidar and his band of brothers patrolling at midnight, enforcing a new curfew in south Baghdad, training the Iraqi police:
The soldiers stop an old man who's out after curfew. Haidar has just begun questioning him when gunshots erupt.
It's an ambush. Haidar ducks behind a civilian sport utility vehicle as shots zoom from three directions.
Then, a sergeant shooting behind a nearby Land Cruiser is struck -- the same guy Haidar played video games with an hour before. Haidar runs to the sergeant, pulls him into the vehicle for safety.
A bullet rips into his leg.
Haidar thinks he hears rain pinging on the metal roof. No, insurgents are still shooting at him in the truck. He begins to faint.
Haidar falls backward, his eyes on the stars, as warm blood puddles around him. He sees his father's face flash before him, his mother's smile, his wedding to Dina, the birth of their month-old son. He is dying, he's sure of it.
Someone smacks him -- shouts, "Stay with me, Homeboy!" -- and carries him away.
It's Lt. Terry Brown. He has sprinted through the gunfire and chaos to rescue Haidar from the burning truck.
The sergeant is dead. A Blackhawk helicopter flies Haidar to a military hospital, where his leg is sewn and placed in a cast.
Within 48 hours, a doctor confirmed the worst: gangrene. "Don't worry, we're going to do it fast for you," he told Haidar.
First, Haidar asked the surgeon to write on his cast: "This is for the boys of the 82nd."
Throngs of soldiers visited Haidar at the hospital. When a nurse needed help talking to another Iraqi patient, Haidar translated from his bed.
Administrative commander Maj. Eric Newland had never seen anything like it. "Not only did he get wounded, but he was in the act of actually trying to save an American soldier's life in the middle of a firefight," Newland recalled by phone from his command in Fort Hood, Texas. "And he was still helping Americans, even as a hospital patient.
"I know he will make an incredible American."
Five years and many hurdles later, Haidar would finally have the chance.
Holy Mick-or-Mack
In the crowded conference room of Roanoke's Refugee and Immigration Services, Haidar has been asked to broker a sit-down with his fellow refugees. Resettlement coordinator Jasminka Traylor has heard complaints about some of them turning down manual-labor jobs. She's asked for help from Haidar, now working as a part-time translator for the office while he looks for full-time work.
Unlike most refugees who come to America from harsh refugee-camp conditions, these immigrants were professionals in Iraq -- engineers, teachers and the like. They lived in metropolitan cities in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria while awaiting security clearance and refugee status.
That process took Haidar, waiting in Amman, a frustrating four-plus years -- a situation that baffled him and the Army officers who wrote letters on his behalf. (This spring, "60 Minutes" featured Haidar and other translators in a story on America's debt to them and why they deserve speedy resettlement.)
Unlike Haidar, most of the new Iraqis in Roanoke aren't yet fluent in English and don't qualify for white-collar work here -- which Traylor explains repeatedly in the meeting.
"We don't want cleaning job," one man gripes. "You can't find job in Wal-Mart instead? How about another mart?"
Growing frustrated, Traylor asks: "Who cleans in Iraq?"
"People from Sudan."
"No," Haidar interjects. "Iraqi people clean in Iraq."
Traylor asks the question again. The men and women whisper among themselves but say nothing.
She throws up her hands. "You have to find something to do here to pay your bills until you're ready to find something you want to do!"
Reluctantly, Haidar has come to that same conclusion. With dreams of working again as a linguist for the U.S. government, he says he must wait a year to apply for his green card before qualifying for such work.
In the meantime, he'll probably have to clean, too. But he's been too busy helping the refugee office to look for work.
"Haidar is sad," his wife said recently. "For America, he lost his leg. He deserves good job, computer job."
The day before the meeting, Haidar worked in the apartment of another new arrival, wiring it for the Internet, negotiating staggered deposit payments with Cox Communications.
He doesn't mind teaching refugees to ride the bus, sending out mass e-mails to the group: "If you want to go to Wal-Mart, meet me at Campbell Court in 15 minutes."
He doesn't mind helping Haitian-born caseworker D.J. Pierre deliver and arrange furniture, painting apartments and translating at doctor's appointments. He even offers decorating tips, teaching them to hang pictures and tack afghan quilts on their walls.
What bothers him is when people struggle to come to America and then maintain the rules imposed upon them by extremists in Iraq -- insisting on hijabs to cover women's hair, refusing anything but blessed "halal" meat.
Haidar has befriended a Jewish couple from Kosovo and a Christian refugee from Iraq. He buys his food at the neighborhood grocery.
"I tell the Iraqis, 'Mick-or-Mack is holy!'" Haidar says. " 'Mick-or-Mack is the best!' "
He is more American than Iraqi, he swears.
Melting in
It's Sunday afternoon at cousin Haitham's house, and Haidar has invited everyone he knows to a barbecue: his wife's English teacher, caseworker Pierre; friends black, white and brown.
Like the GIs taught him at the base, Haidar grills chicken and burgers in Haitham's front yard -- on a broken gas grill he's converted to charcoal. The folks who crafted his new leg at Virginia Prosthetics have said he needs to rest more until his muscles are trained, but there he is standing at the grill, beer in one hand, spatula in the other.
"You're turning the meat too much," Pierre cajoles. "You don't know what you're doing, man!"
"Lighten up," Haidar says, playfully. "I'm learning the American way. Dude, I'm melting in!"
That had been the goal all along, of course. It's why he hung an American flag in his son's bedroom; why he caved when the boy asked for holey-on-purpose jeans, like his buddies wear to school.
It's why Haidar volunteered to talk to local Iraq war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome; why he's planning a charity run in the spring -- using his second prosthetic leg, designed especially for running.
Proceeds from the run will benefit families of American soldiers killed in the war.
"Their beloveds won't come back, but I want their families to know I'm still thinking about them," he says.
Pierre was right: The chicken is undercooked. In a neighbor's yard, the Iraqi kids are schooling the Americans in a game of pickup soccer. When the ball is kicked into the street -- and popped by a passing car -- Haitham says, "Sounds just like Baghdad!"
At the grill, Haidar looks up, eyes ablaze, heady from his first American party. He watches Dina, her friends and cousins dance Middle Eastern-style on the front porch, hips and bellies undulating.
No one telling them what to do or what to wear. No war.
Haidar and Haitham high-five. Haitham's still perfecting his English, so when the next guest arrives, Haidar takes him aside:
"Don't say 'Hello,'" he tells his cousin. "Say 'Whasssssup?!'"
