Refugee High

by Elly Fishman

  REFUGEE HIGH

  REFUGEE HIGH

  COMING OF AGE IN AMERICA

  ELLY FISHMAN

  For my family

  CONTENTS

  Featuring

  1. September

  2. October 13

  3. October

  4. November

  Tobias

  5. December

  Alejandro

  6. January

  7. February

  8. March

  Fatmeh

  9. April

  Zakiah

  10. May

  11. June

  12. August

  Epilogue: September

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  FEATURING

  Mariah, a sophomore from Basra, Iraq

  Fatmeh, her mother

  Farha, her older sister

  Khalil, her father

  Alejandro, a senior and asylum seeker from Guatemala City, Guatemala

  Sergio, his father

  Luana, his mother

  Jose, his best friend

  Belenge, a Congolese sophomore born in Nyarugusu, a refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania

  Esengo, his friend and a Congolese refugee

  Tobias, his father

  Asani, his brother

  Felix, his friend, neighbor, and a Congolese refugee

  Mama Sakina, Felix’s mother

  Shahina, a sophomore from Yangon, Myanmar

  Aishah, her best friend and a Burmese refugee

  Zakiah, her mother

  Nassim, a freshman from Daraa, Syria

  Abdul Karim, a senior from Homs, Syria

  Samir, a senior from Homs, Syria

  Chad Adams, the principal of Roger C. Sullivan High School

  Sarah Quintenz, the director of the Sullivan High School English language learner program

  Matt Fasana, the assistant principal at Sullivan High School

  Josh Zepeda, the English language learner social worker at Sullivan High School

  Danny Rizk, a math and science teacher’s aide at Sullivan High School

  REFUGEE HIGH

  1

  SEPTEMBER

  Mariah

  Mariah can’t sleep. Tomorrow is her first day at Sullivan High School. Staring up at the underbelly of the top bunk occupied by her younger sister, Mariah considers the outfit she’s picked out for her first day: white jeans, a blue and white shirt, and blue Converse sneakers with white trim and white laces. She’s also decided to wear her hijab again, this time with style. Mariah picked out a black scarf, which she plans to wrap into a turban. She’s anxious about starting at a new school. What will it be like? Will there be drama? Will life at Sullivan prove better than at the huge suburban high school where she barely survived her freshman year?

  Sometimes when Mariah lies awake, she tries to revisit her memories from Basra, the coastal city in Iraq where she was born, but left at age ten. The fifteen-year-old doesn’t recall much, but she likes to replay what she does. She remembers walking down the street with her eldest sister. Men would often approach her sister, something Mariah, whose arched eyebrows and barbed spirit have made her a favorite among high school boys, only understood once she got older. She remembers going to school and fearing traveling alone to the outdoor shower.

  Soon, Mariah shifts back to her surroundings. The bedroom remains still. It’s quieter now that Mariah’s seventeen-year-old sister Farha moved to Atlanta to marry. But Mariah still shares the room with two of her sisters and their bedroom is rarely this peaceful—Mariah’s arms are dotted with scars, all of them battle wounds from hair-pulling, shin-kicking fights. Before Farha left, Mariah was close with her older sister. That was before everything went sour last year. The thought saddens Mariah, but she isn’t one to dwell. Farha is gone and Mariah gets a fresh start.

  Chad Adams

  Chad Adams sits at the edge of his bed. The heat, which he feels rising from the floor, suggests that summer lingers. But the sunless sky reveals the truth: fall waits just around the corner. Chad has always loved the first day of school. As principal of Roger C. Sullivan High School, Chad gets to hit reset every September. It’s like New Year’s Eve, but better. And by his own logic, today marks Chad’s fifteenth shot at reinvention.

  Planting his feet on the ground, Chad begins to visualize the day ahead of him. He imagines the school facade, marked by red bricks and white stone carved with modern gothic finishes. The building is large with two wings, each of which stretches out from the central lobby and covers nearly half a city block. The sign out front welcomes the students back and shines with the hope of a promising new year. Inside, the forty-one-year-old imagines himself in the auditorium welcoming new students and high-fiving those returning. Chad sees himself talking to parents, assuring them their kids are in good hands. He pokes his head into classrooms to check in on teachers. He jokes around with the security staff, who are stationed on every floor.

  Visualizing the day helps Chad feel prepared. Without opening his blue eyes, he begins his mantra—the same one he practices each morning: I am calm. I am calm. I am calm. As he repeats the line in his head, he can feel his body—shoulders, chest, stomach—relax. He lets the weight of his body sink into the mattress. He feels heavier with each repetition. Chad inhales through his nose and breathes out of his mouth. He repeats the mantra for a full minute. When he finishes, Chad turns his attention to his toes. He starts his third exercise of the morning. I am noticing my feet, he says to himself. He holds the thought for a few seconds before letting it dissipate. I am noticing my ankles. I am noticing my calves. My knees. Chad crawls his way to the tip of his head. When he acknowledges each part of his body, he opens his eyes. Chad begins every day like this—he has to.

  Just after 6:30 a.m., Chad zigzags his way into the Rogers Park neighborhood. The rainy summer has turned the already verdant blocks surrounding Sullivan High School an even richer array of greens. In the remaining few blocks of his commute, Chad passes rows of blocky, heavily corniced two-flat apartment buildings and nineteenth-century Victorian homes. The neighborhood is marked by a smattering of murals that celebrate native lake fish and the popular local cartoon character Fly Boy. He passes signs, wet with dew, that read Hate Has No Home Here, and rainbow flags pinned to first-floor window frames. Few sounds travel across the neighborhood at this early hour. Only the elevated Red Line train drums a clicking bass line as it rolls to and from the Loyola and Morse Avenue stops. Soon, street traffic will start to pick up. The Ethiopian cafe, Royal Coffee, will open its doors at 7 a.m. and later the Cuban grocery store La Unica will welcome its first customers of the day. But for now, Chad lets the early-morning serenity sink in.

  Wearing a slim black suit with his shaggy blond hair hanging at his shoulders, Chad punches his four-digit employee code into one of the school’s heavy steel doors. The halls are quiet; only the custodians and the front desk clerk precede him here. On his way to school, Chad listened as President Trump threatened to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program created by the Obama administration that gives immigrant youth brought to the United States unlawfully the temporary right to legally live, study, and work in America. Spanish is the second-most-spoken language at Sullivan, and Chad knows the school serves several Dreamers.

  In the nine months since Donald Trump took office, he’s been a source of fear at Sullivan. As soon as his term began, the Forty-Fifth, as Chad calls him, started a campaign to reduce the number of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers entering the United States. In January, he announced a travel ban barring citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country. He pushed to allot $18 billion toward building a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border and prioritized the prosecutio
n of criminal immigrant violations such as illegal entry. Chad knows that such rhetoric could have a ripple effect and shake students living in already tenuous circumstances. And there are a lot of such kids at Sullivan. More than half the students, or over three hundred kids, came to the United States as immigrants or refugees.

  At 7:30 a.m., students start to pour into the hallways. Groups of girls in hijabs squeal as they greet one another. Congolese mothers, clad in bright Liputa dresses, admonish their children to stay nearby. Boys from the football team arrive in packs, their shouts to one another cutting across the wall of sounds. In many ways, Sullivan, which is small by Chicago public school standards, operates like several mini schools within the same building. Immigrant and refugee students tend to stick together and to classrooms that sit in the North Wing of the school. Their American-born classmates, by contrast, tribe up based on sports teams, school clubs, grade levels, and academic tracks such as the medical and business programs, and ROTC. Chad’s job includes finding ways to unify the various populations. He wants everyone to feel proud to wear Sullivan’s uniform and that Sullivan is their school.

  Standing just inside the front doors, Chad can feel the potent mix of first-day jitters and excitement. He tries to greet every student who enters. Chad exudes casual confidence. He is Sullivan’s best salesman.

  Thirty minutes later, Chad takes the stage in the school auditorium. The room is near silent except for the low murmurs of new freshmen who fill the first few rows. Chad, looking out at a string of international flags that hang off the balcony, pulls the microphone to his mouth. He quickly clears his throat. He’s always clearing his throat, a habit that verges on compulsive.

  Welcome, freshmen! It’s great to meet you. Chad looks out onto the new students. Who will they become, he wonders. We’re here to help you. Use the resources of your school. Use your teachers. Use everyone you can to help you this year whenever you’re struggling. And whenever you need something, make sure you come to me. My name is Mr. Adams and I’m the principal. I’m in 215. My office is right in the middle of the school. … At Sullivan we really try not to solve our problems with our fists. Chad scrunches his hand into a fist and holds it up. Because this leads to this. Chad contorts his hand into a gun shape. Which leads to this. He points his hand toward the ground. At Sullivan we try and use our heads and our hearts. He releases the gun shape and motions to his temples and chest. But I also want you to know that I have the biggest security guard in the district and no one is entering this school without a warrant, no matter what the Forty-Fifth is saying outside these walls.… Have a great day today.

  Mariah

  When Mariah’s alarm rings, she guesses she got less than four hours of sleep. Fatmeh, Mariah’s mother, accompanies the new sophomore to her first day. As soon as the two are through the front doors, Mariah notes the two metal detectors, which form a prison-like barrier to the school. Like every student in front of her, Mariah must put her backpack on a conveyor belt where it is screened under an X-ray machine. Fatmeh tells her daughter the machinery reminds her of the airport.

  Once inside, Mariah surveys the hall. She hears Arabic and soon spots a cluster of girls wearing hijabs. Sullivan, she thinks to herself, is nothing like her previous school. Someone directs Mariah and Fatmeh to the school library, a space that has become a landing place, and waiting area, for the school’s refugee families. Inside, smatterings of Arabic-speaking parents gather around tables to the south. Mothers clad in hijabs and long dresses seem to wilt in the near ninety-degree heat. Together, their conversations swing from laughter and gossip to fierce disciplinary outcries. On the western edge of the room, where desktop computers form a line just below the windows, a group of Burmese families hunch in metal chairs that suit their small frames. A few Latino boys sit at the center of the room. One brags that his fake ID got him a job at Dunkin Donuts, and the other sheepishly admits that he was fired from the sandwich shop Jimmy Johns. In the northeastern section of the room, African families, most of them Congolese, crowd a corner.

  Only a few minutes pass before Mariah hears her name.

  “What? Mariah? I’m so confused,” says Josh Zepeda, the newly hired social worker for the English language learner program. Josh spent a year working as a social worker at the same high school north of Chicago where Mariah finished her freshman year.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Zepeda?” Mariah snaps back. “You changed schools?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, it just wasn’t the place for me.”

  “Me either.”

  Mariah surveys the room. She suddenly feels shy. Following Fatmeh, Mariah takes a seat and waits.

  Alejandro

  Alejandro never leaves for school without perfecting his hair. The eighteen-year-old Guatemalan always keeps his curls combed up into a square, well-defined pompadour that sweeps upward from his forehead and drops into a frizzy ponytail in back. Alejandro also sports a pencil mustache and bushy strap of hair along the length of his lower lip. He likes to look good and the facial hair projects maturity. He rotates between fitted jeans—including a pair of bright white ones with ripped knees—and heather gray sweatpants, which he might pair with a soccer jersey or a matching tightly fitted shirt. Alejandro’s future in the United States may be tenuous, but that’s not a reason to stifle his sense of style or the quietly confident way he moves in unsure space.

  Most days, Alejandro walks to school. He likes to walk. In Guatemala City, walking through the blocks claimed by rival gangs could feel like an act of resistance. Varying his route helped him stay free, for a while, of gang violence. In Chicago, Alejandro walks the same twenty-five-minute route to school almost every day. On his way he passes a yard full of sculptures made from scrap metal and a neighborhood vendor who hawks smoothies and plastic cups filled with fruit. He passes McDonald’s and a taco joint he knows well. The salsa is especially spicy and the television plays soccer matches all day long.

  Now a senior at Sullivan High School, Alejandro feels more assured there than ever. He knows where all the classes are, and what teachers he likes and which ones he dreads. He knows he’ll never eat the cafeteria food even though the lunch is free. Sarah Quintenz, his former and favorite teacher, makes daily runs to 7-Eleven, and if he gives her a few dollars, she brings him a hot dog or slice of pizza. Alejandro knows that this year the school counselors will push him to map out his future after Sullivan. He’ll apply to a few community colleges. His bigger plan is to be a master plumber or mechanic.

  But Alejandro’s life also comes with some terrifying “ifs” that may well wreck his planned adulthood. Before Alejandro fled Guatemala in 2013, he spent months feeling like he was being hunted. He’d often spot cars tailing him on his way home from school. That’s why he never walked the same paths twice. He stopped going to restaurants, and rarely left the house. Gang members from MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha gang, he feared, were watching him to kill him. In the logic of Guatemala’s gangland, Alejandro’s life would be a price his family paid for not giving in to thugs. At just thirteen years old, Alejandro felt alternatively like a prisoner or like prey. If he returns to Guatemala now, Alejandro feels certain he’d face the same threat, and likely, death. Maybe the judge he meets on November 11 will believe Alejandro’s fears are real and give him asylee status in the United States. It’s a last chance for him. This will be his second, and final, plea for asylum.

  Belenge

  Pausing just inside the metal detectors, Belenge, who has arrived with his younger brother, Asani, stands frozen at the edge of the Sullivan hallways. The fast-moving stream of students bends around the boys. Belenge and Asani are no strangers to chaos. They were raised in a world colored by makeshift shelters and scarcity of wood, food, and water. Like many young Congolese refugees, the two were born as stateless citizens in the only hospital inside Nyarugusu, the sprawling refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania. They gr
ew up among more than 150,000 people without a place to call home. But here, in the hallways of Sullivan, where the crowds of students include groups of tall, broad-shouldered Syrian teenagers, pairs of girls in headscarves and trench coats, and kids with Apple headphones and pristine Jordans, Belenge does not yet understand his place in the school’s social order.

  Belenge has been anticipating his first day of school all summer. He picked out red track pants and a black striped jacket for his first-day outfit. He arrived in Chicago twelve months ago and spent last year at the nearby Senn High School. There, he sat in the back of regular classes. Belenge, who still struggles to communicate and express himself in English, couldn’t follow the lessons. He also found the rigid structure—long hours, strict attendance policies, nightly homework—frustrating.

  Everything overwhelmed Belenge when he first arrived in the United States. Belenge and his family had never lived in an apartment. He never had electricity nor seen a three-story building. He’d never used a refrigerator or walked into a room full of books. He’d never seen snow or worn a winter coat. Cell phones and social media were novel, too. But enrolling at a new school introduced Belenge to a new, social anxiety: fitting in. The sixteen-year-old discovered that strangers often assumed he was Black American. But to Belenge, Black students were just as foreign to him as any of his other American classmates.

  Not long after Belenge and Asani arrive at Sullivan, a youth manager joins them. She’s from RefugeeOne, the resettlement agency that helped Belenge and his family establish their lives in Chicago. Taking a few steps into the hallway, the counselor shepherds the brothers toward the library. Inside, Belenge spots a coterie of Bembe Congolese families in the corner. His entire body relaxes and he smiles, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth. Among the group, Belenge sees his friends Esengo and Felix. Both boys are also from Nyarugusu. Esengo sits with his sister whose feet are squeezed into high heels and whose eyes and cheekbones are accentuated by thick makeup. She looks like a soap opera star. Felix, who started at Sullivan last year, nods to Belenge. Felix’s English is good thanks to hours spent watching American movies, listening to pop music, and reading American books. Belenge figures Felix probably knows every lyric to every Justin Bieber song by now.