Refugee: My 1,531 Hours Hosting a Disabled Arabic-Speaking Syrian Refugee

By Maureen Riggs

It’s a rainy Monday afternoon when I receive this text from my husband:
My coworker, Nadia, who works for IRCO (Immigrant Refugee Community Organization), needs to find temporary emergency housing for a 54-year old disabled, Arabic-speaking Syrian refugee. I told her we have a spare bedroom this man can use until they find him permanent housing. He’s living in a fraternity house with college students who do drugs and abuse him. He has PTSD from the war in Aleppo. They need to get him out of there as soon as possible. He may move in with us as soon as tomorrow. I hope this is okay with you.

This is how my journey started. From the moment I stared into the dark eyes of the stranger folded like a cricket on our sidewalk, I learned. While I stared at his polio-ravaged legs, I learned. I learned to relish the silence of our bomb-free neighborhood, to drink Arabian coffee with unfiltered grounds and just to sit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maureen Riggs
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463410295

Book preview

REFUGEE

My 1,531 Hours hosting a disabled Arabic-speaking Syrian Stranger

By Maureen Riggs

Cover Art photo by Maureen Riggs

Copyright © 2019 Maureen Riggs

Smashwords Edition

It’s a rainy Monday afternoon when I receive this text from my husband:

My coworker, Nadia, who works for IRCO (Immigrant Refugee Community Organization), needs to find temporary emergency housing for a 54-year old disabled, Arabic-speaking Syrian refugee. I told her we have a spare bedroom this man can use until they find him permanent housing. He’s living in a fraternity house with college students who do drugs and abuse him. He has PTSD from the war in Aleppo. They need to get him out of there as soon as possible. He may move in with us as soon as tomorrow. I hope this is okay with you.

Of course! My fingers press into the phone. My heart thumps in my chest. I jog through my house like a pinball. I vacuum, change the sheets, put out clean towels. I love my husband profoundly and with the eagerness of a newlywed. One of the facets of his personality I adore the most is his desire to help people without any reservations. ALL people.

It’s raining and has rained relentlessly for days; weeks even, leaving Portland soggy and dark. Our visitor shuffles up to our front door sandwiched between Nadia and her husband, Nick. They are from Morocco and speak Arabic with enough fluency to translate for us. My 5’4" body towers over this black-haired, dark-skinned foreigner folded like a cricket on our sidewalk. He lifts and moves his feet with arms that graze the ground like a gorilla. We learn that he contracted Polio as a child and has not stood upright since he was seven. The five of us sit awkwardly in a semi-circle in our living room as Nadia and Nick relay a short bio. of this man from the desert dressed in ill-fitting American thrift store clothing. His entire family was killed in the bombs in Aleppo, Syria, including his wife who was blown up in front of him. His name is Ahmad.

The weight of whiteness, luck and privilege sits on me like ten layers of extra skin. I don’t look away. I’m mesmerized by the face of our new guest. He nods and smiles at us, though I know he doesn’t understand the English we sling around the room. His onyx-black eyes stare out our sliding glass doors to the field where our neighborhood high school plays soccer and baseball. I think of the terror his eyes hold and their inability to blink it away. He holds his arms up and out as if he is presenting a large invisible object. A smile spreads across his whole face and he says something to Nadia. This is the first time we see his teeth, rotten and black from years of smoking and neglect. His voice is soft and deep like a storyteller. He looks directly at my husband and me and waits for Nadia to translate his Arabic. She presses her hand over her heart and closes her eyes for longer than a blink. He says it looks like Paradise.

I pace around my bedroom nervously. It’s odd with my door shut, but that’s what you do when there is a guest; you shut your bedroom door. Sleep is such a private thing. I wonder if Ahmad is awake and also wonder when he’ll creep out of his room. I dress in my early March-in-Portland uniform--thick leggings, sweater, scarf. We keep the house cool. It’s cheaper and we’re used to the cold.

There’s a knock at the front door. Someone is actually using our iron woodpecker door knocker I bought in an antique shop in Lake Placid, New York close to where I grew up. I shuffle to the front of the house in my slippers and look out the window to see who’s there. I open the door to let two strangers into my living room just as Ahmad pads out of the guest bedroom in bare feet. His thick brown toes look like meatballs and stick out from beneath his dress pants. I learn later that these

Reviews for Refugee

[Emily Hackett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a well written and surprisingly fun read. By turns humorous and poignant, Maureen Riggs shares a deeply personal account of opening her home and heart to an entirely different world. However, where the book really shines is in what it reveals about the "refugee" of the title. Far from being a shadowy other, Ahmad is a fully realized adult with his own personality, virtues, quirks, and vices. This is an eye-opening story about humanity.