Iraqis in America

Still, he has mixed feelings on his identity. He fits the American model on the surface, he says: he goes to work, he pays his bills, he raises his family. But if someone were to ask if he's American, he would say no. "I'm proud of where I came from. I am from Babylon, one of the wonders of the world," he says. "Sometimes I feel even more American than Americans. I helped fight a war for them. I would spill my own blood to defend the United States of America. But I am not an American."

Marwan Abu-Omar*, 30, Baghdad
If the war in Iraq has produced the lost generation of a new era, Marwan Abu-Omari s one of its casualties. Abu-Omar came to New York last August. In a sense, it was like coming home. The son of a diplomat, he spent his teenage years there, until his father was reassigned back to Iraq. After the American invasion, he translated for the U.S. administration in Baghdad for four years. After his brother was killed for interpreting for the U.S. military, he applied for a special immigrant visa (SIV), which allows Iraqis working with the U.S. administration a chance to resettle in the United States.

Once in New York, he went from doing counterterrorism in the desert to helping sell women's dresses at fashion shows. He was crashing on a friend's couch, working for $12 an hour at the start-up fashion business of a friend of a friend. But in the spring, even her business folded. "I'm disappointed that I haven't succeeded here. I thought it would be easier," he says. "I came here to find a life and a job. The life is beautiful, but I was jobless and running out of savings."

Stuck, Abu-Omar decided to explore his options back in Iraq. Military contractors are still willing to pay six-figure salaries for translators working in Iraq. Abu-Omar is now on a base outside Baghdad, where he both lives and works. The work itself is fine, he says. But it doesn't feel like home, and it can be frustrating to support the Iraqi government when he feels it is serving Iran's interests more than Iraq's.

On the plane back to Baghdad, an American soldier asked him if he was an American. He told him he wasn't. The soldier responded, "So you are coming back home, then?" Abu-Omar hesitated. "I don't know what home means anymore," he replied. "I have lived in so many different places I've considered home—Baghdad, New York, Lebanon, and so on. At this point, if I like a place, I call it home."

It's not ideal, and it's not safe, but for now, it's a solution. "Life goes on," he says. "If you let it get into you, it will destroy you. Whatever it is—whether it's Iraq, or losing a job. Life is too short to waste it on being scared." The time he spends will be counted as time spent in the United States when his citizenship application is considered. At least, he says, he'll be in a better position to get an apartment of his own once he gets back to New York. In the end, that is still the closest thing he has to home.

Haider al-Huriya*, 27, Annapolis, Md.
For an aspiring software engineer, getting to tinker with the U.S. military's hardware in Baghdad is about as good as it gets. Haider al-Huriya started working with the U.S. Army's IT department when he was still in college, then took on even more responsibilities once he graduated in 2006. In the beginning, he says, it was great. He got to go inside the Green Zone, which had always been off-limits. He got better training than an Iraqi system could ever provide. And he felt like he was making a difference. "Some people would say, 'You're helping the enemy.' But I always felt like I was helping my country," he says.

But working for the Americans had its costs. As the insurgency grew, Huriya had to keep what he did for a living hidden. He severed ties with childhood friends. His family moved closer to the Green Zone, where neighbors wouldn't be suspicious. His days consisted of working and sleeping. "I was like a secret agent. Even my parents didn't know the details," he says. "Nobody could know. Not my childhood friends, not my cousins, nobody. These people don't ask for money. They execute you. So you have to be careful."

Eventually, he started to see people he couldn't trust within the Green Zone itself. Cars began following him home. He felt exposed. Finally, last summer, the first day the SIV program became available, he signed up. He and a friend did their interviews in Beirut, then, in December, flew to Texas, where an American colleague from the Green Zone took them in. Together, they moved to Maryland, expecting job prospects would be good near D.C., but neither has found work, even after trying for jobs at Wal-mart and cleaning companies. Now, Huriya is worried. The meager benefits provided for new arrivals—a few hundred dollars, food stamps—last only eight months, which means he's a month away from being cut off. He wants to try to bring his family over, but he's struggling just to be able to support himself.

"We worked hard in a war zone for years, but that money I made is running out just within a few months," he says. "I wonder why they can't put us to use. They know us. They trusted us. We have big files with letters from high-level military officers. We had access to the most sensitive information. We sacrificed for the United States. I'm not just another refugee."

Said Rifai, 31, New York City
The city of New York tends to suit worldly types. Said Rifai is no exception. Born in Belgium to an Iraqi diplomat—in "involuntary exile" after he fell out of favor, as Rifai puts it—he relishes the diversity, the freedom, and the movement. "No one looks at you here," he says. "I never assimilated with society over there. It's not the way my parents brought me up. Everybody asks, do you miss home? And I say, where is home?"