Sarfean’s tendency to gravitate towards the intellectually stimulating is what dominated his former life in Iraq. It is this very tendency that makes his new life in America so very frustrating.

A few people enter the small, one-room house, speaking several different languages. Darfurian refugee Abdulkarim Lazim tries to understand everything…

Crying, and clutching her stomach to keep herself from succumbing to overwhelming panic, Ahlam made up her mind. “From that second, I swore to God I would never leave any Iraqis to suffer what I suffered, to feel when I first came.”

Kira immigrated to Skokie from Moscow only a few months earlier, on Sept. 1, with her parents… The move was nearly 14 years in the making and just in time, for by Sept. 30, the U.S. would no longer process Russians claiming refugee status.

For Mariya, discrimination based on her Christian faith is a topic that often lurked close to home, especially after her two cousins, Remon and Admon, were kidnapped and presumably killed by Muslim terrorists.

“And when I came here my eyes were amazed, there were lights in the streets and everything was clean. But now, even if they give me tons of money I would refuse it! I just want to go back to my family,” she exclaims, playfully pounding her fist on the desk.

The letter she received was typed and anonymous, and contained personal information about her that no one at her university would know, because she says she had no close friends at school.