After a two-year wait, a three-day trip and a two-hour delay, a family of Iraqi refugees landed at Albany International Airport where they were reunited with the Saffar family of Clifton Park.
Haithem Alsaffar, his wife, Hala, and their two children, Hiba, 20 and Mustafa, 8, arrived in Clifton Park Thursday, June 5.
May Saffar, Haithem’s sister, anxiously awaited the family’s arrival after a two-hour delay, where the family sat on a plane at Newark International Airport in New Jersey.
Saffar said she could have driven to pick up her brother and his family if she had only known the family’s flight to Albany was going to be delayed two hours.
Saffar is serving as the family’s anchor, a term used to refer to someone who is settled in an area and offers support to the family resettling in the United States.
The Alsaffar family, who fled to Jordan in 2005, after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, lived in Jordan for two years before the United States granted permission for the family to resettle.
Breaking himself into the system is the challenge he is currently facing, said Saffar of her brother.
She said although the family is working hard to find jobs and housing, they are faced with several difficulties, including language barriers and navigating the system.
Saffar helped the Alsaffars apply for social security cards and assistance from the state and federal government, but, she said, there is still a long way to go for the family.
`Haithem lived a good life back in Baghdad,` Saffar said, questioning how the United States got to this point in the war.
She said he ran his father’s business before fleeing to Jordan in 2005, where he was briefly employed before he lost his residency and could no longer work.
Both Haithem and Hala are professional electrical engineers, Saffar said.
According to Saffar, Hala would like to work as a teacher’s aide before seeking her math certification to become a math teacher.
Haithem and Hala’s daughter, Hiba, has taken the resettlement very hard, Saffar said.
`She is the one very much affected by this,` Saffar said.
Hiba left college in Jordan to resettle in the United States with her family after two years of dentistry study, according to Saffar.
`It has been one trauma after another,` Saffar said.
`Everything is new to them,` she said. Even the light switch is confusing to the family, who is accustomed to pushing the switch down to turn the light on, Saffar said.
Although the American light switch causes a bit of confusion, the family is quickly learning English, which both Haithem and Hala studied English in college, according to Saffar.
`We do value education in our culture, and it’s just so painful to hear the stereotypes against us,` Saffar said of Iraqis.
Saffar said safety is a big concern for the family, and they often check to ensure that all the doors are locked, even though Saffar assures them they are safe in her home.
Despite the difficulty of breaking into the American way, the family has received an outpouring of support from Saffar’s friends.
She said one of her friends offered to lend Haithem a car at no cost for as long as he needs.
`I was very much touched by the thoughtfulness of my friend,` Saffar said.
While Saffar is enjoying the time spent with her brother and his family, she continues to worry about her parents who left Baghdad in 2006 for Syria, where they joined the more than 2.5 million Iraqi refugees who have fled to Syria since the 2003 invasion.
Saffar moved to the United States more than 15 years ago with her then-husband-husband-to-be, who was seeking physician board certification and planned to complete a residency at Albany Medical Center.
Saffar said she supported the initial invasion of Iraq because she knew that it was impossible to tolerate Sadaam Hussein’s dictatorship, but as time went on, she said, she started to hear stories out of Baghdad that showed another side of the war.
`It has been a roller coaster ride,` Saffar said.
She said the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, which was uncovered in 2004, was the turning point in her support.
`We lost our country,` she said of Iraq. `It has just been a big slap in the face for Iraqis.`
Saffar had planned to purchase a second home in Baghdad, so that she can keep ties with her native country, but the bombing of the United Nations in Iraq in 2003 made it clear it would not be safe to return to her native country.
`Since I don’t have the freedom to go back, I figured it was best to bring them back,` Saffar said of her family. She began looking into the refugee issue and works with the Women Against War to promote peace and help victims of the Iraq War.
`A piece of our heart still belongs in Baghdad,` Saffar said. “