“Do you know what I am going to do to you?”
The cold steel of the pistol against his temple and the acrid smell of gunpowder in the air, Ayman Abbosh knew what the terrorist was going to do, but he dared not answer. The man who, along with several henchmen, had moments ago hijacked the bus Abbosh rode daily and grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the dusty Iraqi sunlit afternoon. Only one thought permeated his mind.
“I could only think of my family,” Abbosh said. “I wondered how they would survive without me. I didn’t think of dying, just them.”
Imagine the world’s worst news played out in your front yard. Picture the neighborhood where you grew up torn asunder by world events beyond your control and people set against people who had co-existed for generations. Imagine the streets of your town transformed, with barely a moment’s notice, from nondescript to war zone to martial-law deserted.
“Dark days,” said Abbosh’s father, Isaac, said of the ordeal in June 2007.
Contrary to what many in the West believe, Christianity has had a presence in the region for centuries and throughout, the followers of Christ have been targets. Even Catholics, who have existed there since 1580, have enjoyed only shaky co-existence between sects not recognized by the Vatican and relative latecomers in communion with the Holy See.
Visiting the Abbosh family — Ayman, Bushra, his wife of 10 years and his parents Isaac and Naqiya — is to be treated like an honored guest, even at a first meeting.
They are now nestled in their house, the former Benedictine nun’s residence at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church in Little Rock.
As the couple’s three boys Ayham, 9, Albert, 7, and Alan, 3, play in the next room, the adults are relaxed. The unfamiliar cars passing by the house aren’t likely to shoot holes in the side of the house like they did in Mosul City, and U.S. Apache helicopters aren’t soon to drop out of the sky and fire rocket propelled grenades into a firefight out front.
And still, the war is here.
Pictures flash on the computer screen of the aftermath of bombings in their old neighborhood. Buses riddled with bullets and scarred by flames. In one frame, a picture of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus lies crumpled, encircled with broken glass on a seat cushion.
These were the buses Ayman rode from his parent’s town of Bakhdida where they had moved to be among other Christians when the violence and threats became too intense in Mosul City. For 20 minutes, he rode through checkpoints en route to work at Mosul University where he was a college professor. The very bus he was pulled off and made to wait in the road while eight other passengers were loaded two by two into trunks of cars before the man with the pistol turned to face him.
“All of a sudden they started yelling, ’We have to go! We have to go now!’ and the man gave me the identification of the people they had kidnapped,” Abbosh said. “I don’t know what scared them off. They took eight and I was number nine.”
Abbosh returned home from his ordeal determined to get his family to safety. He devised a plan to get the family to neighboring Turkey to seek refugee status from the United Nations. As Bushra’s family lived in a village some hours away in a community comprised entirely of Catholics, “we left so quickly I didn’t even have time to say goodbye,” she said.
Issac and Naqiya also stayed behind, until the rest of the family was settled. The memory of leaving them behind in such a dangerous environment is overwhelming to Abbosh, even now.
“I never thought we would separate,” Abbosh said. “I didn’t know if I would ever see them again.”
Once in Istanbul, the family was connected with a local refugee network through which they found housing — a single room for the five of them — and necessary credentials were lined up with various officials. But as refugees are not allowed employment in Turkey, there was nothing to do for six months but wait, worry and pray.
In February 2008, the call finally came. The International Catholic Migration Commission, with whom Abbosh had applied for help, called and told a stunned Bushra the family was headed for America. Even as Abbosh called his parents — soon to be on their way to Turkey to begin the application process for themselves — the young family didn’t believe the ordeal was nearing an end until their airplane started rolling forward at Ataturk International Airport.
“We looked at each other and we prayed,” Abbosh said. “We wondered, ’Could this really be happening?’”
Their life in America began in San Diego where Bushra’s brother Saad had already settled. They took orientation classes on American culture and Bushra, who has a degree in science and mathematics, attended English as a second language classes. After a time, Abbosh heard about assistanceships at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and, eager to resume his teaching career and complete his doctorate, he applied and was accepted into the program. They arrived in Little Rock in December 2009. They said they are grateful to Bishop Anthony B. Taylor, pastor Father Erik Pohlmeier, parish and school and Catholic Charities of Arkansas for their resettlement in the state.
They are also grateful to those who donate food, who grant scholarships to Holy Souls School and help them find work.
“When I think about what happened on the bus, I still get mad and it makes me want to cry,” Abbosh said. “Then I saw a video of a young man who was on one of those bombed buses and he was bleeding and saying, ’Why? Why did you do this to us?’ And then he looked at the camera and said, ’But we forgive you.’ I thought, if he can say that…” A pause.
“It’s as Jesus did,” said Bushra, quietly.
