One of a series that we hope to initiate, profiling some of the staff and community members at St. Andrew’s.
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“With all the loss that people have, money will be the least that you care about,” he advised me as we discussed the extortionist fees charged by local banks. I was surprised by such a blasé attitude towards personal finance from someone who had been forced to flee his country and with it his lucrative future as a doctor. By the end of our conversation it made more sense.
He had seen his father die in his own arms. A soldier had held a gun to his head and told him to revive a fallen comrade who was clearly dead. His aunt was dying of a brain tumor. The woman who had raised his parents had died of heart failure. His own mother was showing signs of mental unease. An Iraqi doctor working in an Iraqi hospital, he had seen more unnecessary death during his residency than many doctors see in their entire careers. Dead bodies peppered his commute to work; sectarian expenditures tossed to the roadside like spent bottles. The body of a coworker was amongst them; a doctor shot dead on his morning commute. If there was one thing he learned during this time, it was that “there is nothing that will be with you forever.” A sad truth from a man who seemed only to want happiness.
Here he was in Egypt, being told that his medical residency in Iraq would not be recognized for the purposes of a license to practice medicine in Egypt. A qualified medical doctor from the top medical school in Iraq—with the unparalleled depth of experience that war brings to the surgical theatre—was now being met with the sad reality that his expensive application for a medical license in Egypt was to be rejected without appeal and without an official letter explaining the reason.
His residency was proceeding swimmingly until bombings and armies put a stop to it. The commute to the hospital became too dangerous; his mother implored that he—the only man left in the family—stop putting his life at risk. Their support networks had dissolved; he was the lone man in a house of women. A home with one man is a vulnerable one when strength is measured in guns and manpower; roaming militias based their targeted killings on last names and a panoply of affiliations. Leaving the women alone all day was a deadly gamble. For a man who had spent most of his life amongst the safety of bookshelves and academia, this new and violent anarchy was particularly unmanageable.
When working at the hospital became impossible, he presented his services to a local Red Crescent clinic. But even humanitarian aid groups were not immune to the targeted violence; the clinic he worked at had to be closed when a militia paid visit with guns lax at their hips, explaining that it would be best for everyone if the clinic ceased its operations. The clinic, which had been delivering food and medicine to a destitute population, was shuttered because of the unspoken but deadly ultimatum: close or be killed. It seemed that our determined doctor was unable to realize his dream of healing others everywhere he tried.
Shakir and his family fled to Egypt in an effort to escape the long arm of sectarian violence; funding their flight through selling a home for but thirty percent of its actual value. The money was put in Egyptian and Jordanian accounts out of fear that if put in Iraqi banks it would disappear. In Iraq he was compensated for the medical residency that conflict prevented him from finishing, but in Egypt this residency was not only officially unrecognized, but its equivalent was a twelve-month at-cost internship running into the thousands of U.S. Dollars. He paid for this, unaware that even after his medical degree was certified by Egyptian authorities he would be denied a license to practice medicine in Egypt.
It seemed every attempt to change his life for the better was met with another disappointment. But then he discovered St. Andrew’s and with it a community of refugees who understood his sense of desperation. Having entered the medical profession with the aim of relieving what ails people, it was sickening to observe helplessly as the people of his country died in his care. More sickening still was the notion that outside of Iraq he would be prevented from fulfilling his professional goals. At St. Andrew’s, he has once again chartered a path towards satisfaction and fulfillment through counseling other refugees while pressing forward with his own petition for resettlement to another country where he will be able to work and live a normal life. But this petition is time-consuming and requires specialized knowledge of the procedures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as international human rights law.
Expecting refugees to simultaneously fend off the ever-encroaching jaws of penury and the smog of listlessness that accompanies such great upheaval, all while acquainting themselves with the intricacies of UNHCR policy and international refugee law is as unrealistic as it is cruel. Shakir’s story demonstrates the overwhelming string of cataclysmic loss that typifies the strife of refugees; a seemingly endless avalanche of tragedies. While their status continues to deprive them of basic human dignities—the right of a doctor to work as a doctor, the right of their children to attend schools—it is this precise lack of opportunity that makes them appealing cases for resettlement through the UNHCR. That is where St. Andrew’s and the Resettlement Legal Aid Project (RLAP) come in; giving this persecuted and impoverished population the tools to build a new future for themselves.
“You can’t be yourself and you can’t just be human,” reflects Shakir on his time as a refugee. But he smiles while recounting the good work he is doing to improve the lives of others through the St. Andrew’s community. Deprived of basic rights and dignities for so long, it is encouraging to see the tired grin of satisfaction creep across his face.
This profile was contributed by Brendan Rigby, St. Andrew’s volunteer since June ’09.
