Amman, Jordan––Maria* and her family stayed in Baghdad as long as they could after the United States declared war on Iraq in 2003. It’s not that things had always been easy––as Christians, there was always a measure of tension with Muslim neighbors. But her husband owned a successful window installation shop in the city, her pre-school-age son Rani* enjoyed PlayStation at home, and her 11-year-old daughter Samiya* loved grade school. Maria had lived in Iraq since she was born, family was nearby, and 35 years had made it home.

But when the war began, life as they knew it disappeared. Violence among various groups increased. Neighbors and friends were abducted or killed. Maria’s family, caught between deaths and disappearances, hung on for a few months, even as her parents and siblings scattered to northern Iraq, Australia and Syria.

“After Saddam [Hussein] was gone, things became much worse,” Maria says. “When the war broke out, even my neighbors wouldn’t say hi to us. They would say, ‘You’re Christians, George Bush is Christian, why don’t you talk to him, why is he doing this to us?’ When I used to take my mother-in-law and go out in the market, they would say, ‘Shame on you, why are you not covered?’ So for sure I was scared. And we were expecting more bad things to happen.”

Her husband’s kidnapping was the tipping point.

It was 2003; bandits had begun abductions for income, asking ransoms like the $10,000 they wanted for Maria’s husband. The family got him back for $4,000 after four days (plus a broken nose, minus parts of several fingers and toes); nowadays, she says, it’s worse: kidnappers ask for $100,000––“and they’re just killing people.”

It’s a familiar story. Among the Christian Iraqi community in Amman, everyone seems to be missing someone—disappeared, whereabouts unknown. In Maria’s family, it’s a brother-in-law, a 24-year-old agricultural engineer who was killed in a town south of Baghdad. As with her husband’s kidnapping, there’s no one specific to blame.

Jordan
The family left Baghdad in a taxi, paying $200 to get to Amman, where Maria’s mother and siblings had waited to immigrate to Australia. In one sense, the timing was fortunate––nowadays, with the same trip running $1,000 and the borders closed, few make it.

Like many refugees, they landed in Ashrafiyah, the low-rent Christian neighborhood in Jordan’s capital. With no money to pay for furniture or heating, the family slept on the floor of their apartment, where the damp and cold got to both Maria and her son: she developed arthritis, he a persistent cough. Her husband couldn’t find steady work, so Maria took a job at a convent, hand-washing clothing for 500 people a day, beginning at 5 a.m. She was paid in rice and sugar.

They pieced together living quarters slowly: from the nuns, a freezer, two blankets and a double mattress that the whole family shared. “The owner of the house gave me a carpet,” Maria says. “It was in the trash but I thought, ‘OK, I’ll take it, it’s better than nothing.’”

When their visas expired, the family avoided going out for fear of being caught. They couldn’t enroll the children in school, and their money was going toward medical bills, so even buying food was difficult.

“All the time I was crying, because I would see girls going to school, and I like school,” says Samiya. “So I was kind of depressed all the time.”

“One time we wanted to buy some tomatoes, and a civilian man beside [my husband] asked if he was Iraqi, and he said yes,” Maria says. “He asked for his passport, and we were over our visa, and they said, ‘Take him to the car.’ He told them, ‘I am a Christian, I am buying food for my kids, why do you want to take me back to Iraq?’ He said, ‘If I go back to Iraq they will kill me on the way, and it’s tough for my kids.’ So he kept talking to them and eventually they let him go."

Maria’s husband finally found work making tea and coffee. Laundering was exhausting, so she tried babysitting, then was offered housecleaning jobs for several people in the Ashrafiyah Church of the Nazarene.

That’s when Rod Green, who coordinates Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM) for the Eastern Mediterranean Field, asked if her kids were in school. She admitted it had been two years, and before long, both were enrolled in the local Nazarene school. NCM was also able to provide School Pal Paks, used winter clothes, crisis care kits, and covered dental work.

“I visit with Iraqi families,” says Green, “and all the children I’ve met, they were Samiya’s age, and I just thought, ‘There’s no future.’ And what I’ve heard some parents say is that ‘it may be too late for us, but we want a future for our kids.’”

School
Rani was terrified on his first day. At 8 years old, he had never been to school before. He was older than the rest of the students his year and scared that the teachers would hit or punish him. But a few weeks later, a sense of normalcy set in. Now finishing his second year, Rani is diligent and well-behaved; his favorite course is English language.

For his sister, the sight of her parents leaving on the first day was the worst part.

“Even here I feel weird, strange,” she says, “because my language is different from their language, so I was scared as well. It’s been awhile since I left school so I forgot a lot of things.”

But her outlook has changed over time. Samiya loves seventh grade, especially Arabic grammar and poetry––she sings in the choir, acts in skits, is involved in the student council, loves to make speeches. She doesn’t like weekends, she says––she wants to go to school all the time.

“Because we had a lot of vacation before school,” she says, shrugging.
Children gather at the Nazarene school in Amman, Jordan.

They come home in the afternoons, finish their homework and eat. He has a nap, she watches TV. Superstar Academy (similar to American Idol) is Samiya’s current favorite. The family has been given a gas heater and blankets from NCM, couches from relatives who left, an old set of cupboards, a new washing machine.

Sometimes they visit friends or go to church––Ashrafiyah Nazarene holds a special service for Iraqis once a week, and despite the turnover rate, it continues to grow.

“It’s true we don’t have lots of things, but we are happy,” says Maria. “I’m happy because we met Jesus here. We used to know about Jesus in Iraq, but not in the same way as here… A week ago, Rani said, ‘Mommy I have crayons and I would like to give them to my friend because he doesn’t have any.’ So I’m happy about that. He feels with others. And he likes to help others. If somebody needs help from my son, I would like my son to help him.”

In June, the family received their visas for Australia, where several of Maria’s relatives now live; plans fell into place to immigrate at the end of the month. Still, when she finishes high school, Samiya hopes to return to Iraq for university to become a pharmacist.

For her, 11 years was enough to make it home.

*Names have been changed to protect the family