This Iraqi family is having trouble assimilating. They are safe, but homesick and trying to adjust to this new life. Especially the wife, who was a lawyer and now is a stay at home mom. DP
IRAQI TRANSLATOR AND FAMILY STRUGGLE TO COPE AS NEW REFUGEES IN SAN JOSE
By Lisa Fernandez, Mercury News
mercurynews.com: The Sept. 11 attacks seven years ago today were life-changing — and not just for Americans.
They also led an Iraqi engineer and his lawyer wife on an improbable journey that landed them in a San Jose apartment — 7,500 miles from home. Just weeks after arriving in July, they're still trying to adjust to life in a strange land and find work.
Today, on the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, while much of America remembers and mourns the loss of nearly 3,000 everyday people killed by the terrorists, the Jasim family will continue with their struggle to adjust to life in Silicon Valley.
"I never thought I'd be living here,'' said Haitham Jasim, whose resettlement experiences have been chronicled in the Mercury News. "All I knew when I watched Sept. 11 on TV was that this day would not pass easily. If this could happen to a nation as strong as America, then this means no one has any power against God.''
It's with mixed feelings of gratitude and grief that the family left their home.
Jasim was one of thousands of Iraqis who went to work for the United States, turning them into prime targets for insurgents. The American government promised to resettle many of them.
Jasim's wife, Jamila Sabah Ghanm, 32, describes her new, "deathly quiet" life in a modest two-bedroom San Jose apartment off the San Tomas Expressway "in the middle of nowhere."
On one hand, no longer being employed as a high-profile human rights attorney allows her more time to spend with her children, Ahmed, 3, and Fadak, 8, a second-grader at Anderson Village Elementary School. On the other hand, she misses Baghdad.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
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