Eugene Peba made it to America. Now he’s waiting to hear if he can stay.

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

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.

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.

“How can his brain allow him to believe we are still in Burma?” Salimah wonders softly. “We left Burma for a reason. I do not wish to remember Burma. Why should his mind take him back to that place?”

Nobody who has cradled the bodies of child soldiers no older than her own son could smile as bright as Okot. But for Okot, resilience is inherent.

Last summer I had the opportunity to visit the home my grandparents had shared in Manchester before immigrating to America. It meant little to me until after my experience on the uncomfortable park bench in Caen.