The glaring sun almost makes a Minnesota October afternoon seem warm. It is one of the last Saturdays when the swings will be alive with children, one of the last weekends when the community barbeque pits never entirely cool, one of the last weekends men can drink beer straddling a cooler and talking college football. We are a bunch of strangers picnicking.
It is the first annual Iraqi refugee picnic here in Rochester. There are 4 million Iraqis displaced, half within their ravaged nation and the other half wandering about the world. The United States has agreed to receive 6,000.
Twenty are gathered here at Soldier’s Field Veteran Memorial Park. One came after Desert Storm and is proud of her long-standing status in America. The others came two months ago, two weeks ago. They are trying to understand why everyone here is in their house by 9:00, so unlike Amman, so unlike home. They are trying to get used to hamburgers and tikka, kosher pickles and their pickled artichokes, ketchup and kebabs, chocolate cake and hummus. They are also getting used to each other.
In Rochester, Minnesota, the women wearing designer hijabs are laughing as they help make a chicken dinner with Iraqi Christians and American Catholics. Back in Iraq, the women wearing the trendy hijabs wouldn’t associate with the girls wearing all black garb, and would certainly not associate with anyone who followed the Jew named Jesus. Here, as they struggle to learn English and acquire their first American jobs, they are all banded together as so many immigrants before.
One is a professional upholsterer hoping to get a job as a concierge. Another was the first-place winner of the national Lebanon competition for mosaic washbowls who can’t speak English and is eager to do anything to make that first American dollar. Some have lived for the past few years in Jordan, waiting for their opportunity to come to the U.S., others just left a country changed beyond recognition. All are amazed at the rural America so unlike the movies. Each of them is intrigued by the fact that American high-school teachers seem to care, that classes are easier but more fun here, that the buses are new and the lawns are bigger. This is America, immigrants coming to it thinking they’ve discovered something new and little realizing that they are making it new every day.
Smart Borders 