A warrior in the Army Of Good sent me a new RCA Superadio III and asked me to bring it to Saad, an Iraqi refugee, this week when I go to see him in his new apartment.
We are bringing a number of things for him, and arranging to get him a cellphone, cable service, a 32 inch screen TV, some additional groceries and some watercolors donated by an artist in Vermont.
The person who sent the radio asked me in advance if it was okay to get it for Saad (thank you for asking) and since she didn’t give me permission to use her name yet, I will protect her anonymity.
Thanks to another generous person, we will be able to support the monthly cable and phone fees for a year. I think that will help get Saad stabilized and acclimated,and there are some other refugees with urgent problems that need our help. I bought the television.
Maria is donating a beautiful linen map of Arabia for one of Saad’s walls. We’re looking into buying him a bus pass. Thanks so much for your generosity and support. We are keeping good alive and affecting people’s lives. Refugees suffer enough before they get here, they don’t need to suffer here.
I believe we are saving lives and also keeping hope alive. Thanks for your support.
I was taking photos at RISSE one afternoon, talking to the kids who are students there in the after school program and admiring the great dedication and gentleness of the teachers there. One of the students, a very young woman from Afghanistan, came up to me and pulled at my shirtsleeve. “Why are you here?,” she asked me.
RISSE, like many refugee centers and communities, is not always an easy place for strangers to be. It was a long and hard road to get in the door, and to stay there.
The people there have been through a lot, are justifiably wary, especially as their new country struggles once more to come to terms with its refugee and immigrant history.
It is an eternal struggle, really, this business of the other coming into our world, and growing up the grandson of Jewish refugees, I felt it acutely at RISSE. This immigrant thing will never go away, will never be fully resolved. It swings from one side to the other and back.
I think no one except my friend Ali really understood why I was there, and was so preoccupied with this new and bitter conflict, and jumped into it so completely.
I think it began when I realized that so many Americans had come to hate and fear the immigrant idea, they felt these people had come to take something away from them, their jobs, their culture, even their lives. I think I became a patriot the day our President attacked the immigrants, suggesting many were criminals, rapists and murders. That they were not the best people.
I am not a hater, I don’t live in the world of left and the right, but my heart is with the refugees, my idea was not to hate our new President or his supporters – we must be friends, not enemies if we are to survive together – but to work for what I saw was the soul of my country.
My better angels were calling out to me. When I look at this photo of Saad, sitting alone in his apartment, I hear the call. I want to help save the soul of America, and in so doing, save my own.
This was the first time I really thought about patriotism in my life, I had no reason to consider it, really, much before 2016, I had always been free to do what I wished with my life and taken this freedom for granted, even though my grandparents never did.
I don’t take it for granted any more. Of all of our Presidents, I’ve always thought of Lincoln as being the strongest moral leader, so it was no surprise that they had to kill him. Moral leaders are the dread of ideologues and fanatics, their morality is unbearable and threatening, and they must be struck down.
When he spoke to the veterans from Ohio returning from battle in the Civil War, Lincoln was direct: “It is in order,” he said, “that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field, and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all its desirable human aspirations – it is for this that the struggle should be maintained..”
I didn’t tell the girl this, because I think she was too young to grasp it, but i got involved in this business of doing good because I love that idea of the open field where everyone has a fair chance to be what they most wish to be. That was a new idea in the world when America embraced it, and it is still a rare thing. This is why the refugees and immigrants fight to hard to get here, and in so many cases, thrive here. They are here because they want to be here, not because they want to hurt what “here” is.
So that’s why i got involved with the Army Of good and the Mansion residents and the refugees and with Saad.
He always loved America, he risked his life to work for Americans during the Iraq war, the only place he ever wanted to come was here. And for all his misery and struggle and isolation, he is content to be here, he is without complaint or bitterness or resentment of any kind.
“For all of our darker impulses,” writes historian and biographer Jon Beacham in his powerful new book “The Soul Of America,”for all of our shortcomings and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”
So that’s why I was in Saad’s important today, determined to hell him, an old man suddenly thrust to the other side of the world alone, to get to the Open Field that my family were so lucky to have in America. And just run.
I’m betting on the better angels, they have the better idea.
Saad moved into his new apartment in a huge senior citizen apartment complex just outside fo Albany last week, he likes his apartment very much – it is his first real home since fleeing religious extremists in Baghdad more than a year ago. He has lost every single thing but his own life, and he nearly lost that.
Saad has endured a lot on his journey to America from Baghdad.
He lived in a one room apartment in Los Angeles with two other refugees, and had to leave Los Angeles, it was too expensive and his apartment was being turned into condos. He came to Albany and slept on the floor of another one room apartment until it too, was sold, and he was desperate to find another apartment. .
Saad now receives a stipend every month from Albany.
He has enough money each month to pay for his apartment – the rent is $244, – but not for too much else. In this work, we think small and keep our expectations low, but I recognize that Saad will need some help for some time. He has absolutely nothing of his own.
Our own resources are limited, but we can help him gradually and thoughtfully to fill out some of the gaping holes in his life.
I was interested to see 15 different prescriptions lined up in plastic pill containers and also struck by the spareness of his apartment and the sense of loneliness and isolation in his life. He has no friends here, no family.
Saad has heart disease, diabetes and low blood pressure, yet he still talks of finding a job.
His believes he suffers greatly stress and the uncertainty of his life, and the loss of his family. His days are empty, there is nothing to do in his apartment. He left eight children and a wife behind in Badhdad, it is unlikely he will see them again any time soon.
We paid for the deposit on the apartment so Saad could move in.
There is absolutely nothing on the walls, and he has no car, cellphone, TV or Internet. We did collect some furniture from the churches – a bed, a sofa, a wooden table, a second small table for groceries and personal effects. There is nothing decorative of any kind on any of the walls.
But it feels bare and cold.
More and more, Ali and I are seeing refugees who suffered horribly in their home countries, somehow made it to America, and have been almost completely abandoned by our government.
The aid to refugees and immigrants is being slashed and eliminated almost continuously. Many refugees are trapped in this cycle of poverty and assimilation. They have no money, so they can’t buy a car, they have no car, so they can’t go to work or find work. Some have small children, and can’t afford day care, so they can’t go to work. Many families are run by single mothers, the fathers were killed or imprisoned or denied admission to the U.S.
They can’t compile good credit ratings, so they are denied access to many of the things they need.
Ali and I stopped at a grocery store in Albany today and bought Saad fruit, towel paper, toilet paper, toothpaste and a brush, some cereal and frozen fish. Last week, we gave him $400 for security despots.
So here is the plan Ali and I worked out.
We have to put something on the walls. One friend, a member of the Army Of Good, is going to buy some wall posters and send them to me. Maria came up with a linen map of Arabia which I will bring him for one of the walls. Another friend, an artist, is offering two of her water colors. He will need some floor lamps.
Saad’s new apartment
This afternoon, I ordered a 32 inch Samsung TV for under $200.
We are paying a one month deposit for cable and Wi-Fit to be installed in the apartment. Saad can pay the monthly fees, he just has nothing left over for the deposit. Ali can install the TV and show him how to find the Arabic channels.
Then, he can watch television programming and perhaps re-connect with his culture and country. In Iraq, we know he was successful and prosperous.
I noticed his hands shaking severely every time he tried to lift or move something.
He said he thinks this is low blood pressure, but I don’t think that. We are going to get Saad to a doctor. I have never seen anyone as alone as Saad is right now.
My mind keeps going back to the loneliiness. There are communities of refugees around Albany, Ali will help to connect Saad with them.
There is no one in his huge apartment complex who speaks Arabic, and the only way he can get out the apartment is to take a bus. We are looking into getting him a free pass for senior citizens, Saad is in his 60’s.
He is taking English lessons at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support group.
A former U.S. Embassy worker during the war, Saad had to flee Iraq recently when he was targeted by religious extremists for helping the United States. He fled to a UN refugee camp and was brought to the United States. He was given no assistance when he arrived, and has not heard from the federal government since.
He spends all day alone his apartment, sometimes taking the bus to visit RISSE and get some food. The staff used to find him standing outside in the cold in the morning, trembling.
Saad asked me today if I thought he could get a job driving a car for Uber, he proudly showed me his driver’s license. But I told him since he spoke no English, and has no car, I didn’t see how it could happen. He could not afford the car, let alone the insurance.
He is eager to work, and is intent on looking. His doctors have told him he should not work. The easiest thing to do is to get some color into the apartment – paintings, posters, some color and warmth. I can arrange that by next week.
Then the TV, which is coming on May 15 and which will give him something to do and watch in his apartment, which is safe and comfortable but far from his world.
Then, we will try to get him a cell phone, hook up the new TV and set him up on the Internet, where he can access the Arabic speaking channels. He has to get his tremors checked out, they are severe. That is all doable and relatively inexpensive. Technology can help connect and reconnect him to people.
Then we’ll stop and reassess. We have to be deliberate, even ruthless, about what we can do. There is a long list of people waiting for help. Ali constantly reminds me of the limits, he has a great feel for the boundaries around this work.
If you want to help us get Saad acclimated and settled in America, that would be great.
He was loyal to the United States, and has paid dearly for it. There is virtually no chance his family – his eight children – will be admitted into America under this administration. Officials reported last week that the United States has accepted fewer than 17 Syrian refugees in the past year, out of 5.5 million refugees living in camps due to the civil war there.
Saad must completely rebuild his life here with little support or resources.
We can help him, though, to get stable and off to a good start. We can help in small ways, fill some of the holes. Then we have to move on. . He says he is grateful to be alive, and grateful for what he has. I understand boundaries only too well.
Saad is independent and doesn’t want anyone to run his life for him. He is a sweet and gentle man caught in many ugly storms of other people’s makings.
If you wish to help with this refugee work, you can send a contribution to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz, Post office box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816., or via Paypal, [email protected]. Please mark it “refugees.”
On one of my sudden impulses, I ordered 18 T-shirts for the soccer team. I decided to get one for Ali, who is the Coach. He will love this, he has a used Ipad 2 he uses to keep track of each player’s scoring and play (thanks, Susan Popper), and a used but loud megaphone I found online, and he deserves a shirt that says “coach.”
Ali brings both an old-fashioned and scientific approach to coaching – he hugs, yells and exhorts, but also looks for modern tools to enhance performance and skills.
The front of the shirt says “Albany Warriors,” the former name was “Bedlam Farm Warriors,” and I encouraged Ali to change it as soon as it was possible. One reason is that the team is not sponsored or officially affiliated with RiSSE, the Army Of Good is the primary sponsor, and while the affiliation with RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support group might change one day, Ali agreed that the team should reflect a local interest.
Few people in Albany have heard of Bedlam Farm, and I didn’t like my role with the team being personalized. I like being a shadowy figure in the background, and many more people than I contribute to the soccer team.
The team overrode my objections, so this time we didn’t ask them.
The team will keep on playing in the black-and-white uniforms that say “RISSE” on the back and “Bedlam Farm Warriors” on the front, it cost nearly $900 for those uniforms (the Army Of Good paid for them) and we’re not about to throw them away.
The T-shirts are for practice games and warm-ups. I’m bringing them to Albany tomorrow along with some multi-colored headbands. The soccer leagues are rough, and well financed, we have to hold our own. Maybe we can dazzle them with color.
We had one miracle recently, we found a van in great shape for $2,500. That was my gift to the team. Last week, we landed another, I found a former surgeon and English As Second Language ESL tutor, a former Army surgeon named Suzanne, she will be meeting with the soccer players who need tutoring starting a week from next Wednesday.
She has worked with refugees and their families for several years. I tried doing this through RISSE, but we couldn’t agree on how to do it. I am not good with bureaucracies.
Saad
We have signed up with a inner city branch of the Albany Public Library system, we have a private conference room as long as we need it, and as often as we want to use it.
This is a major development I think. At least six of the soccer team players are in urgent need of English language lessons, and it took me nearly a month to find Suzanne. I told Ali she was our newest miracle. The soccer plays are no longer in the RISSE school program, they are too old. Ali is working on that.
Tomorrow, I’m going to Albany to see Ali and SAAD, the Iraqi man I wrote about last week. Last week, we gave him a $400 deposit so he could move into his new apartment at a senior housing project. He has lost his family, and all of his money in the transition to America, rushed because he had been targeted by religious extremists. He has absolutely nothing left.
This week, we scoured churches and thrift shops and brought him chairs and sofas and tables, enough to fill his apartment.
Wednesday, Ali and I are going to meet at an Albany grocery store and bring Saad a months’ worth of groceries. We’ll see how he is doing and what he needs and keep an eye on him for the next month or two.
Then, he is on his own. Almost all of the refugee aid programs are being slashed or dropped by the federal government, the needs among these people are just bottomless. We have no hope of filling them all, just helping where it is important and makes a difference.
The next person I’d like to help is a Syrian refugee mother with two children. Her husband had an accident soon after they arrived here, and he is a paraplegic, confined to a wheel chair. Because she is alone, she can’t get out to look for a job. In the midst of these, she has been threatened with eviction because she is $75 short of the monthly rent.
We are helping her to get the children into a day care program and give her several hundred dollars to pay her rental for the next few months, until she finds work. She is looking every day for a job she can get to without a car.
I’ve been working hard for months to meet the refugees and immigrants in need, and am now meeting a lot of people. They are good, hard working people who want only to give their children better and safer lives than they had. They love this country, and want very much to be good citizens and learn what they need to learn. They also struggle daily for survival, a grueling balancing act.
I’ll report back on our visit with Saad on Wednesday.
Next Tuesday, I’m going to visit Saad in his new apartment. We’re bringing groceries and some clothes. And we’re going to have a talk with him.
I wrote about meeting him two days ago. The Army of Good is responding.
A lot of people have messaged me hundreds of dollars in donations for him via Paypal, and I have pledges of more coming through the mail to my post office box, P.O. Box 25, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. I have good use for all of these contributions regarding Saad and more.
I’m keeping them in a special account to keep track of them and so we can plan a long -term program to help Saad. Last week, we gave him $400 so he could rent an apartment in a senior housing project, the first place of his since fleeing Baghdad several years ago. He was nearly in tears, he was so relieved.
His story is a heartbreaker. He is in his 60’s, has heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, and small wonder. He worked for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during and after the outbreak of our invasion there.
After the war, he started a successful business which was seized by the government there to support its civil war with the Islamic State. He lost his business and was target by religious extremists and had to flee the country immediately and leave his wife and eight children behind.
He was able to gain entry into the United States, but due to current immigration restrictions, the family has not.
Saad was in a UN. refugee camp in Los Angeles and then was brought to America in the final days of the Obama administration.
He lived in a crowded one-room apartment with other Iraqi refugees for more than a year, until the apartment was sold for development. He had nowhere to go – no job, no family, no friends. Because of his health, no employer will hire him, even if he could do the work.
He came to Albany because he heard it was more affordable than LA and there was a sizeable refugee community there.
He has been living in a one-room apartment with one other man, and that apartment has been sold for development. Sometimes, the refugee workers at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center, found him shaking with cold and hunger outside of their office buildings on winter mornings.
Under our new immigration laws, families are not permitted to come here unless the head of household has a job and income larger enough to support them all. Even then, few people are being admitted now. A Catch-22.
So my plans for Raad.
First, to stay small and move slowly. The Army Of Good is not rich, and neither am I.
As a steward of other people’s money and am tight-fisted and careful about it. But this is perfect opportunity for us to help a deserving and very needy man – and friend of our country – in a thoughtful and proportionate way.
I’m putting him in touch with an immigration lawyer so he can see if there is any legal way to bring his family here. The lawyer is also exploring whether the state can add to the small subsidy Saad is receiving.
Saad was not precise on how much money he has left after rent – we heard it was very little, we’ll find out.
Then, Ali (Amjad Abdullah) and I will purchase several hundred dollars worth of groceries, enough to last at least a month and bring them to Saad’s apartment. We will replace the groceries as often as needed.
Saad may need a small amount of help obtaining the medications he is supposed to be taking – eight pills a day. It seems he cannot afford them all.
We will make sure Saad receives intensive English language speaking and writing training, perhaps even tutoring under the new program Ali and I are trying to set up.
We will check to see what clothes he might need, and also whether or not to get him a cell phone so he can begin to manage some of his own affairs and communicate with his family and build a life in Albany.
We’ll check on lamps, towels, clothes, soap, etc. I don’t yet know how much money has been raised to help Saad, his story has definitely touched a nerve.
Saad drove in Iraq and he has a New York State driver’s license. One day, it would be a great leap for him to have a car and drive.
I’ll report back regularly on what I am doing, how much it costs, and will take photographs to show you what you have done. I am mindful of the many limits on resources, and the many people in need. We’ll take problems and people one at a time. We’ll do the best that we can for as long as we can.
This is important work to me, just what I had in mind when I started. More than anything, I wanted to humanize the refugees and immigrants who are now being demonized. They are no danger to use. There are 55.5 million refugees in the world today, according to the United Stations.
Getting Saad his apartment was a huge step for him, and for us. He’s on a good path now.
As a nation, we have slammed the door on almost all of them and turned our backs on one of the great humanitarian crises of modern times. We are now a heartless nation. I could not live with my own soul if I did not try to help some of them. That’s why we started the Army of Good – people like Saad, good people caught in other people’s storms.
Your help is most welcome. You can contribute by sending a check to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 23826, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Every penny will go precisely where it’s supposed to go, you’ll get to see it.
i’m not sure how much we will need for this, or how much we will end up having. I’ll know these things soon. We can’t take over Saad’s new life, but we can help get him started on it.
Thanks so much. With your help, we will help Saad get back on his feet. He has always taken care of himself and his family and is mortified to be in need. At the moment, he has nothing but us.
He wanted me to thank all of you for the support he received to get his first place to live in America. He is a good man and a sweet man. So thanks.
