Iraqi Refugee Stories: "Ali", Age 40

"We are not asking for much. Just recognition of our service, and a place where our children can grow up the right way, without fear."

In Baghdad, I was a medical technician, a translator for the Coalition forces, and a television journalist. Now I am an Iraqi refugee.

Leaving the homeland, your childhood and history, your parents, relatives, and friends, is extremely hard. It is particularly hard when, like me, a person is forced to leave in search of peace. Fleeing my bleeding country was the only way to save my small family: a wife, an eight-year-old-son, and a four-year-old daughter, all traumatized by constant threats of kidnapping and killing.

"Ali" was awarded these two medals for excellence during his work with the 2-70th Armour Battalion. He asked that we not post his photograph, due to concerns about his safety.

In January 2007, we took the first step in our long journey towards peace, and boarded a plane for Amman, Jordan. We were worried, because the Jordanians had been turning away all Iraqis at the borders. But I had prepared myself for such a situation. An American friend of mine arranged a visa and a Jordanian gentleman was waiting in the airport to receive us. He took measures with the airport officials, and so we were able to enter the city of Amman. I don't know if any other Iraqis were even allowed to get off the plane.

My brother, a doctor, tried to join us in Jordan a month ago. He traveled by land across Anbar province. He, his wife, and their three children slept in the desert for two days, but in the end they were sent back to Iraq. I lost the chance to see him, and I don't know if I will ever have the chance again.

In Jordan we began a new kind of difficult life, with different sorts of challenges, some of them linked to the dangers we thought we had left behind in our homeland.

The Jordanians have developed a prejudice against Iraqis in the four years following the U.S. invasion. Already overwhelmed by a Palestinian refugee population, they fear and distrust Iraqi refugees. Even worse for me, a pro-American Shiite, the Jordanian community is overwhelmingly Sunni and sympathetic to Saddam and the Baathist regime.

I live in fear, taking precautions to prevent anyone from discovering my secrets. I am a former translator who supported the United States military. I am a Shiite now living among the Jordanian Sunni majority. And I am an illegal resident in Amman. 

I have never put the title of "translator" in the dozens of Jordanian forms I have filled looking for a job- someone might guess that I had worked for the United States. I write "English teacher" instead. In spite of all this, it's been four months in Amman and I haven't found a job.

I am lucky, because my name does not bear the sign of being a Shiite name, so I hide my true doctrine and belief. We have taught our eight-year-old son that we are Sunnis, just in case he is asked by his friends or teachers, which has happened already. I do not pray in the mosques, as I can clearly hear each Friday's sermon in the mosque close to my house over the loudspeakers. Every week the cleric condemns our Shiite beliefs and the current Iraqi government.

We concentrate on surviving in Jordan. I did not get an extension of my temporary residency permit. Now, like several hundred thousand other Iraqi refugees, we are illegal residents in Jordan. I may face the worst: if I happen to g