War leaves St. Michael's students in exile
COLCHESTER – Ali Jumaah was way out of his depth, and he knew it.
The young Iraqi interpreter was trying to figure out how to explain to a gathering of Iraqi army and police officials why their counterparts — American Army officers — wanted them to count their chickens, or not.
Jumaah had taught himself English by watching old American movies and chatting up coalition soldiers in his native Mosul during the Iraq War. He was drafted for the "big meeting" in 2007 between the coalition and Iraqis at the home of a sheik near Tikrit, because the experienced interpreter who normally would have attended such a high-level meeting was unavailable.
"The coalition said, 'OK, you're coming with us; we need you today,' " Jumaah said. "The sheik speaks no English. Some of the Iraqi army and police leaders can say, 'Yes,' 'Thank you,' very basic. I was the best over there. Can you imagine that?"
The translation Jumaah was struggling with was the well-worn cliche, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched." An American captain had asked him to say that to the Iraqis. Jumaah had no clue what he meant.
"I looked at him, the Iraqis looked at me — I'm on the spot," Jumaah said. "In my mind I'm thinking, 'Is it a live chicken? Is it a dead chicken?' "
Finally, Jumaah spoke to the Iraqis: "I have a question before I tell you what he said. Are there any chickens? Have you talked about chickens? Just tell me something related to chickens."
The Iraqis looked at Jumaah like he was crazy.
"They told me, 'What's wrong with you? Are you OK?' " Jumaah said.
After a few more moments of struggle, the American captain could see there was a problem with translation and moved on.
"He knew I was stumbling," Jumaah said. "I was so embarrassed. I translated into something completely not related. I took him literally, word for word."
Jumaah, 27, told the chicken story to an auditorium full of students, faculty, friends and family when he graduated May 10 from St. Michael's College in Colchester with a master's degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages. The program known as TESOL at St. Michael's College draws students from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa, along with North America.
Like several of his fellow students in the TESOL program, Jumaah is effectively exiled from his home country, especially after the Islamic State group took over Mosul last year. These students would be risking their lives if they returned to their countries — yet they are unable to stay in the United States for the long term.
'Things were more hopeful'
Jumaah used the chicken story to illustrate how far his English had come as a result of his training at the college. He attended St. Michael's on a full-ride grant from the Iraqi government, under the leadership of Nouri al-Malaki at the time. The former prime minister established a Higher Committee of Educational Development, which offered the scholarships to Iraq's best and brightest.
"I don't know that it's continuing any more," said Elizabeth O'Dowd, director of graduate TESOL programs at St. Michael's. "It was the al-Malaki government, and he's not there any more. The purpose was to develop the professional infrastructure of the country. Things were more hopeful than than they are now, I guess."
In September 2013, O'Dowd attended a conference in Baghdad where al-Malaki spoke with an optimism that turned out to be unjustified.
"He was there at the conference saying this was the beginning of a new Iraq," O'Dowd remembered. "Terrorism would not survive, and the enemies of Iraq would not flourish. Within a year that government had fallen."
Related: St. Mike's commencement speaker urges peace and justice
Nevertheless, the idea to support education for young Iraqis was a good one, O'Dowd said, having met many of the students who were selected, like Jumaah, to be sent abroad to study.
"They were brilliant young men and women, the top of their country, because they'd won these scholarships," O'Dowd said.
About one-third of the graduate students in St. Michael's TESOL program are international students, O'Dowd said.
"Several come on scholarships from the State Department," she said. "We've got more Fulbright students here than many bigger colleges. At any one time we could have about five. Five Fulbright students for a TESOL degree in a small department like ours is pretty unusual."
The Fulbright Program, named after Sen. J. William Fulbright, was started in 1946 by Congress to promote "international good will through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture and science."
A single date
In his short graduation speech, Jumaah covered topics far more serious than the chicken story. He told a rapt audience that after economic sanctions and the Gulf War in 1991, when he was 3 years old, Iraq was poverty-stricken.
"I remember my mother used to give us one date for lunch, and I was afraid to finish mine in case I had nothing left," Jumaah said.
Then there was the takeover of Mosul by Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — in June 2014 in a complete collapse of the Iraqi army. A Mosul businessman who fled the city ahead of ISIS told The Guardian that Mosul "fell like an airplane without an engine." Jumaah was left without any way to communicate with his family, without knowing their fate beyond a few scraps of information.
"So St. Michael's has helped me accomplish my dream, but it has been so hard to focus, because now my family is living in the time of ISIS and their barbaric occupation," Jumaah said. "I have heard my family has lost its home, and one of my cousins has been kidnapped and executed. Yes, it has been very hard."
Jumaah shared the stage with Nazgul Kabylbaeva of Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, who also earned a master's degree in the TESOL program.
Jumaah told his fellow graduates he had a simple wish.
"You know what I wish today?" he said. "I wish my parents, like yours, could know that I'm graduating and be here now, but I cannot communicate with them. I don't even know if they are alive."
Despite his sobering message, and the fact that he was unable to return to Iraq without risking his life, Jumaah's demeanor was upbeat.
"Class of 2015, never give up on your dreams," he said. "I have another dream now, to go back to my country one day. You will also have dreams that seem impossible now, but always remember to hold on and believe. You can do it."
Jumaah and Kabylbaeva received a standing ovation.
"It was very moving, and the contrast between the chicken thing, which got them all laughing, then there was this hush when he said, 'I wish my family, like yours, could know I was graduating.' " TESOL director Elizabeth O'Dowd said. "You could have heard a pin drop."
No free speech
Ali Jumaah has company among O'Dowd's students in similar predicaments. The turmoil, upheaval and downright bloodletting around the world, and particularly in the Middle East and central Asia, has left many TESOL graduates and undergraduates stranded, men and women without countries to return to. This despite the fact that all of them, like Jumaah, want to go home.
"We've got two Yemenese, one who just graduated, one who will graduate next year. They can't go back to Yemen at all," O'Dowd said. "There's no functioning airport."
Two Afghans are unsure they'll be able to go back, along with a Palestinian and another Iraqi.
"One of the Afghan students was telling me the other day it would be dangerous for him," O'Dowd said. "He comes from Jalalabad. He was telling me about a student who went to India, came back, and he was killed for being a collaborator with the West or something."
Despite the fact that India is not the West.
"So it's very hard for them," O'Dowd said. "One of our students went back to Baghdad, but her family had to move to an area they weren't so known, because word got out that she had been here. They'd been keeping it secret."
Neither do TESOL students have a path to citizenship in the United States. They are here on J-1 visas for students and others participating in cultural exchange programs and can stay in the country only for 30 days beyond the end of their programs, unless they apply for a yearlong professional extension.
Unless, like Ashraf Alamatouri, a Druze from Suyida in southern Syria and a 2013 graduate of St. Michael's TESOL program, they receive refugee status.
"I would really like to go back, but I can't," Alamatouri said. "So I miss my family. Now I cannot go back because of things happening in Syria."
Alamatouri said he would be "personally targeted" if he returned to Syria, because he already was under surveillance by the Assad government before he left in 2011 to attend St. Michael's on a Fulbright scholarship. Alamatouri was teaching English in two schools in Syria and was openly expressing his support for freedom of speech.
Alamatouri said after years of brainwashing that President Bashar al-Assad was infallible and magnanimous, his mind was opened when he had the opportunity to visit the United States in 2007 for a teacher training course in Delaware.
"That started to shape my thinking about freedom of speech," Alamatouri said. "Here people are free to think whatever they want. You cannot tell a student, 'You have freedom to think in this way but you don't have the freedom to think in the other way.' Freedom is a concept you cannot divide. You have to accept it or not.
"In Syria, you really need to be careful in expressing your mind, because the security is very high. They want to make sure they're targeting people of different opinion and putting them to jail. Growing up in Syria, free speech is not a concept we have."
Exodus
Since 2011, Syria has descended into chaos. The United Nations reported earlier this month that more than 4 million Syrians have fled the country, mostly to Turkey, where there are an estimated 1.8 million Syrian refugees. The total number of 4 million represents one-sixth of Syria's population, and is the biggest exodus resulting from a single conflict in a quarter century, according to the U.N.
Alamatouri was able to get his wife and children out of the country in 2014 to join him in Colchester, where he is coordinator of English language learning at the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.
"It's a proxy war now in Syria," Alamatouri said. "One part of it is a civil war, but it's more complicated than any war in the world now."
Alamatouri said he estimates there are 33 parties participating in the war, from ISIS to al-Qaeda to the Assad regime.
"The losers are the Syrian people," said Alamatouri, who believes 10 million people have been "displaced" from his country. "Half the population is out of Syria, because it's a hell. Imagine New York City with no citizens there."
Even though he longs to return to his country, Alamatouri is finding great satisfaction in the work he is doing now, helping immigrants from around the world who have landed in Chittenden County.
"I try to help them speak English, because English in this country is very important for any person," Alamatouri said. "It's not just important, it's a survival skill."
A good life
Two weeks after he graduated in May, Ali Jumaah sat down at a picnic table on the St. Michael's campus to talk about his situation. Wearing jeans, a gray hoodie and blue boat shoes, Jumaah smiled often and easily and looked as carefree as any recent college graduate.
He spoke first, without a trace of self-pity, about his brother.
"I lost my brother in 2004," he said. "He was a policeman. Some gunmen in masks took him. After a few months we heard from other people that my brother has been kidnapped. They didn't return his body to us. We didn't know from that time if he is dead or not, but we think he's dead, because we don't hear from him from 2004 until now."
While walking home one day from school, Jumaah saw his first dead body. He thinks he was 15 years old, so it would have been 2003, the first year of the Iraq War. The body lay at the side of the road, surrounded by trash.
"I can remember his hair, his skin, his clothes, everything, until this moment," Jumaah said. "I saw the blood, the bullets. There was an I.D. on his body. They killed him, and they put his I.D. I don't even know him. It turned out he's from another city or something. He was 30 or 35."
After that, seeing bodies became commonplace.
"It's becoming something you see every day, a daily routine of life, but the first impression, the first picture, was the most shocking," he said.
Jumaah worked as an interpreter for coalition forces for one year and seven months. He made good friends among the Americans, who urged him to return with them to the United States.
"They told me, 'There's a special visa, you come here, you have a good life, forget about this, your life is in danger,' " Jumaah remembered. "I told them, 'I definitely agree with you. What you said is totally right. But if I go, and others go, who's going to take care of the country? I'm staying here.' "
Ali Jumaah did go to the United States — but not to stay. He still wants to help his country, and now the magnitude of risk is so great he finds himself unable to return home.
"I have to go back one day, but for me, I just want to go back, not that I have to," Jumaah said. "It's my country. I want to help my country. I still have my friends. I still have my people."
Near the end of June, Jumaah left the United States for Kanazawa, Japan, where he will teach English at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology. O'Dowd said the Japanese school recruits regularly from the TESOL program, and has a contingent visiting St. Michael's this coming week.
"We have a whole colony at Kanazawa. We must have about 20 graduates there," O'Dowd said. "They come every year and recruit one or two. Ali is one of them. It's amazing. You think Japan is pretty homogenous, but this place is really progressive. They pick off our international students, especially the Fulbrights, one by one."
In an email last week, Jumaah said he was settling in to his new life, at least temporarily.
"Life here is amazing," he said. "Every day I learn something new."
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This story was first posted online on July 12, 2015. Contact Dan D'Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosio@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DanDambrosioVT.
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