A Syrian refugee women spent hours to prepare a generous smorgasbord for their bearded and tattooed guests. Inside the Clarkston Community Center, a pair of long white tables are laid out with dishes of fragrant tabbouleh, zucchini stuffed with lamb and long rice sprinkled with the cashews. Their young children colored the homemade cards decorated with bright miniature flowers and U.S. flags and declaring that “America is our new home. Thank you for welcoming us.” Then they and their parents played the traditional Syrian-Kurdish music and also danced hand in hand in a widening circle with their guests, the U.S. military veterans.
The event was organized by a Syrian-American doctor who came to U.S. as a refugee and a decorated U.S. veteran who fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan, the event was aimed at bringing the two groups together and fostering understanding amid a particularly fraught time for the refugees and also for immigrants. The get-together took on added significance following the Tuesday’s deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria and also the U.S. military’s retaliatory Tomahawk missile strike days later.
Those unsettling developments were in the mind of Araz Mousa, who was one among the scores of people who showed up for the festivities on Sunday. She arrived in Georgia in the year 2015 after fleeing Syria with her husband and two young children. Their home outside of Aleppo was destroyed in the Syria’s six-year-old civil war, that has killed hundreds and thousands of people and displacing millions of others. Mousa supported the Trump administration’s missile strike on the President Bashar al-Assad’s regime but said that more needs to be done to protect the civilians remaining there, including her parents and siblings. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is fighting in several other federal courts to save its proposed travel ban, which would temporarily bar all the refugees like Mousa from coming to the U.S. The government said that the pause is needed so it can tighten its security screening process for newcomers. Advocates for refugees said the new violence in Syria highlights the urgent need to continue the welcoming of refugees fleeing that country’s humanitarian crisis.
Mousa is overwhelmed by knowing that how welcoming her adoptive country has been. Guessing that she has already made “a thousand friends” in U.S., she said that she is learning English and hopes to soon get a job working as a cashier.
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Patrick Griffith of the Kennesaw took a seat at one of the round tables inside the community center with a pair of young boys, both are recent arrivals from Syria. Griffith had one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. Army: destroying the improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. He now works at a nonprofit group that assists the veterans.
Yaser and Barwin Musa, Kurdish-Syrians who came to U.S. as refugees in the last year with their five young children, they grew emotional when talked about the chemical weapons attack, that reportedly killed as many as 80 men, women and children in a rebel-held part of the northern Syria. Their eyes filled with tears, the couple said that they want to see more U.S. military intervention in Syria.
Watching for the responses from Syrian and Russian troops, the U.S. forces have reportedly reduced their attacks on the Islamic State in Syria as a precautionary step since the Tomahawk missile strike. Meanwhile, the Syrian government forces have resumed their bombing campaign since the U.S. attack, without any chemical weapons.
Garrett Cathcart, a West Point graduate, and also U.S. Army veteran and three-time recipient of the Bronze Star for the combat leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan has organized the event with Dr. Heval Kelli, who is a cardiology fellow at the Emory University School of Medicine. Kelli and his Kurdish family came to the U.S. as refugees in the year 2001, fleeing persecution in the Syria. The two formed a friendship after Kelli treated Cathcart for the kidney stones at Atlanta VA Medical Center. Cathcart, who works at the nonprofit veterans aid group with Griffith, said that the event stemmed from something that U.S. combat veterans and Syrian refugees share, the love for this country.
Marshall Brown of the Atlanta served with the 82nd Airborne Division in the Afghanistan, manning a machine gun atop a Humvee. Sunday’s event reminded him of the hospitality the people there showed him whenever he and his fellow U.S. troops visited their homes.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
