November 14, 2007, Amman, Jordan  The sun sets early in Jordan at the onset of winter but there is one building on a quiet road in East Amman that is full of light and life.It’s a small center that was launched several years ago by two former school administrators who wanted to create a warm and welcoming place for at-risk Jordanian youth.  With help from the International Rescue Committee and one of our partners, QuestScope, the center’s doors are now open to Iraqi refugee children too.

Today the place is packed and bustling. There is an energetic game of foosball underway in one room, while in another, some 30 wide-eyed boys are transfixed to a video. In a corner, a group of kids are learning how to use a dozen new computers donated by the IRC. I sneak into the third room, where animated girls had formed huddles, competing to be the first to solve a puzzle presented by their cheery instructor. 

I strike up a conversation with Ayat, a 15-year-old Jordanian girl who seems to have the run of the place.  She’s tall, lanky and sports a bright blue hijab.   She tells me that the Iraqi kids have funny names and accents but that she is happy to be making new friends. “We try to make them feel like they are our brothers and sisters,” says Ayat, who has 10 siblings of her own and a father who has cancer and can no longer work. 

Her side kick, Hiam, 14, has taken a liking to me. She follows me around repeating my name and the one phrase she knows in English, “I love you.”  I tell her that I love her too, at least three times.

At the end of the day, the children excitedly stuff into one of the rooms to celebrate the birthdays of three Iraqi girls.  Platters of Iraqi and Jordanian food are brought out, along with a beautifully decorated chocolate cake.  One of the Iraqi girls tells me that it’s her first birthday party in years.  I didn’t want to spoil the happy occasion by asking her why.

My colleague Michael volunteers to the group that it is also my birthday, which naturally leads to a new round of multi-lingual birthday songs in my honor and several teachers feeding me spoonfuls of food –a sign of respect.

Everyone in the room is asked to make a birthday wish about what they want to be when they grow up.  “A poet”, shouts out one girl.  “A doctor,” say at least three others. A little boy wishes to become an astronaut. I wish for all of them that their dreams come true.

You can learn more about how the IRC is assisting Iraqi refugees here

November, 11, 2007. Amman, Jordan As Ibrahim begins his afternoon prayers in the bare room where his family sleeps, his precocious two year old daughter Raim curls up on the edge of his rug.Adra, Ibrahim’s wife, looks on laughing from the small adjacent room where we are sitting. “This has become Raim’s little ritual,” she tells me.  Ibrahim tries to concentrate, eventually breaking into a smile at the squirming giggling girl at his feet.Raim was a year old when her family fled to Jordan.  Her little brother, Salim, was born in a poor neighborhood in Amman that has become home to tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees.  They are beautiful and affectionate children, and thankfully, unaware of their parents’ suffering.

Ibrahim and Adra were still newlyweds when the bitter and bloody sectarian violence in Iraq began turning their lives upside down.  Ibrahim became a Sunni when he married Adra.  Such conversions were very common at the time.  Suddenly the practice had become a death sentence.

To make matters worse, Ibrahim started receiving threats from a local militia because of his political views. “I told a few too many people that confrontation isn’t the answer and that we must be willing to talk to and learn from our enemies,” Ibrahim explains, adding that several of his close friends had been killed for promoting negotiation.

When he discovered that his family was on a hit list, he made a fast and painful decision to leave.  The couple quickly said good-bye to their families and headed to Jordan.

Since then, Adra’s father and younger brother have been murdered.  The rest of her family fled to a Sunni neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad.  They can no longer visit Ibrahim’s family, who remain in a Shia district.

“I hate these words Shia and Sunni. They mean nothing to me other than the reason why innocent people are killed,” Adra says.  “My brother, he had a job selling ice-cream to children from his bicycle.  They gunned him down while he was selling ice-cream.”

Salim crawls into his mother’s lap–a welcome but fleeting distraction from this terrible story.  “It hurts my heart so much, the death of my little brother,” she continues after Salim scurries away. “I have lost the one I loved the most.”

Ibrahim says he and Adra feel alone in Amman, with few friends, no family and no rights.   Ibrahim suffers from asthma, but because he cannot get a viable job, he cannot afford medical treatment.  In fact, he says any money he manages to make with odd jobs goes to rent and diapers. They can barely afford food.

“We want to start a new life somewhere else – some place where my children can grow up in peace,” Ibrahim tells me. “We can’t go home.  And there is no future for us here.”

Learn how the International Rescue Committee is assisting Iraqi refugees here 

November 9, 2007, Zarqa, Jordan The first time Isara and her three boys fled was after her husband was shot dead in his car while driving home from work in Baghdad. They packed up a few belongings and moved to the house of a relative in a Sunni district on the outskirts of the city.  She thought it would be safer there.

But in the coming months, the area near her boys’ new school became a battleground between U.S. troops and suspected insurgents.  The intense bouts of fighting would force the closure of the school and litter the neighborhood with unexploded ordnances. During periods of calm, the school would reopen and her children would return to class.

“The bombs they throw look like toys to our children,” Isara told me, shaking her head.  She almost didn’t need to continue the story. I knew what was coming.

“One afternoon,” she went on to say, “my sons and group of their friends were playing in the school yard.”

She said they noticed something colorful in a garbage container and ran over to see what it was. One of the boys picked up the object and then there was a loud explosion.
“My sons watched as the legs of six classmates were blown to bits,” she told me, her eyes welling up with tears.  “One of the boys died.  He was a friend of my sons. I can’t tell you how my boys suffered after this.”

At that point, Isara said she knew it was time to leave.

“I don’t want my children to grow up in a place where they are surrounded by all this darkness.  I don’t want these pictures to remain in their heads forever.  I came here to Jordan to replace those terrible memories with better things,” she told me.

In October of 2005, her family settled in Zarqa, a small Jordanian city about 40 minutes away from Amman, where thousands of Iraqi refugees were fleeing.  A Jordanian neighbor found Isara a part-time job as a cleaner in a salon, which helps pay the rent for her small apartment.  She finds other random cleaning jobs to afford school fees, food, and other necessities.  She ekes by, but barely.

Her biggest concern is b