A journey that began in an Iraqi torture cell and wound its way through Houston hospitals, the White House and back through the bombed-out streets of Baghdad ended last week, quietly, outside a sprawling apartment complex in Hyattsville.
“Today is like a dream,” said Nazar Joodi, standing in the rain outside his new home.
Joodi, 45, and his family of five are the most recent Iraqi refugees to arrive in the United States. They moved in Friday, laden with welcome balloons and American flags.
Tucked under his right arm, Joodi carried a broken prosthetic hand in need of new batteries and slight adjustments.
The hand was a gift from Americans and worked well for a time. It replaced a healthy one cut off by Iraqi authorities after a 1994 conviction for dealing in foreign currency, a felony under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
In 2004, a Fairfax-based journalist, Don North, along with a surgeon and a news anchor from Houston, arranged for Joodi and six other victims of Saddam’s torture to receive $50,000 state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs at a Houston hospital.
The men were invited to Washington and met with President Bush, who hailed them as symbols of a new Iraq.
But when Joodi returned to Baghdad, insurgents targeted his family as allies of the United States. After a rocket struck their home a year ago, injuring Joodi’s 2-month-old son, the family fled the country.
“We sold everything” and flew to Turkey with duffle bags, Joodi said.
North lobbied the U.S. Embassy in Ankara to grant the family refugee status, and with the help of New York-based International Rescue Committee, the family arrived in D.C. on Tuesday.
Jet-lagged, cold and wet, Joodi laid his prosthetic hand on the gray-blue carpet while his wife, Shayma, 33, set down their sleepy son. Three daughters, ages 16, 13 and 10, explored the empty rooms, chattering about who would sleep where.
The dark-eyed girls wore new shoes like their mother’s, white, pink and silver, decorated with sequins.
“I’m here to see my children happy and laughing,” Joodi said through an interpreter. “I want them to drink orange juice in the morning. In Baghdad they smelled and drank smoke and rockets.”
With his left hand, he reached inside his suit coat and pulled out two laminated, dog-eared photos of him shaking hands with President Bush, pictures he said were like his ID card.
“It’s like I had a diamond but I needed to bury it,” Joodi said. “Now I can share it.”
Finding refuge
According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 4.5 million Iraqis fled their homes before reduced levels of violence enabled many to return. Here’s where they went:
» Other locations in Iraq: 2.3 million
» Syria: 1.4 million
» Jordan: 750,000
» Gulf states: 200,000
» Egypt: 70,000
» Iran: 57,000
» According to the International Rescue Committee, the United States pledged to accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal 2007, but took only 1,608. For fiscal 2008, officials promised 12,000 visas, and have so far issued 1,432.
