Final story for magazine writing class with Douglas Foster

June 2010

By Taylor Soppe

Julia Fields drives an elongated van that she nicknamed "The Big Comfy Couch

Mobile" after a children's television show. The black vehicle lumbers along N.

Broadway in Uptown. Three stickers bedeck the back: “well-headed women seldom

make history,” “war is not working,” and an image of Obama emblazoned with “HOPE.”

The interior is red— only slightly brighter than her kidney bean colored hair— and looks

like my closet on a busy week. Boxes and bags are piled in disarray. A few two by fours

slope upward to the front of the vehicle where they are wedged between the passenger

seat and side of the car. Homemade posters inhabit the trunk space. They are decorated

with photos and descriptions of The Refugee Center for Hope (ReaCH), the non-profit

organization she runs. It is largely a one-woman operation; she solicits donations,

devises programs to assist refugees and develops relationships with them.

Fields characterizes herself as driven by a "get-it-done attitude" and has devised

an alternative to refugees' fruitless job searching: offer them micro-loans to help them set

up their own businesses. Her hope is that the refugees become self-sufficient. "If I do

my job well, they won't need me," she tells me. And at first, it seems like her vision

might work.

Fields slides the van into a parking space and sets out on foot down a tree-lined

street. She stops outside an apartment building where many Iraqi refugees live, including

the woman she is visiting today, Luma Abdulhamid. The petite figure emerges from the

building wearing a red, ribbed sweater. She escorts us upstairs, through her front door

and into a tiny living room. A small bookshelf sits against one wall, a twin bed against

another.

Fields sits perched at the edge of a floral sofa chair. She is a big-boned woman

with cheeks dappled pink. She has sparse eyebrows and tortoise-shelled glasses framing

her light blue eyes. You have to try the tea, she reminds me. It's culturally rude not to

accept it, she says.

Abdulhamid returns from the kitchen carrying a silver tray. She arrived in the

U.S. in August of 2008 with her husband and two teenage daughters. In Iraq, she was a

certified public accountant and her husband was a professor. They had a house and a

comfortable life. Now, the couple struggles to find work.

Abdulhamid hands Fields and me each a cup of tea and a sliver of white cake.

“Would you like some sugar or—”

“Please,” Fields answers before Abdulhamid can finish her question.

The dark-haired woman settles into a couch across from Fields. The conversation

floats from tea to Chinese food (which Abdulhamid proclaims a newfound affinity for) to

more important matters. “We’ll teach you to drive and then you can teach other people to

drive,” Fields suggests.

“I need to learn to drive first!” Abdulhamid says. “I have some of the basics in

my country. You know, when you have a husband you rely, you depend on him.” Her

hand bounces along as she speaks.

They laugh together, Field’s throaty chuckle drowning out Abdulhamid’s giggle.

“The woman who donated the car to me has insurance right now but she needs to take it

out of her name because she doesn’t want us driving it in her name,” Fields explains.

“You are going to sell the car before you…” Abdulhamid asks, her voice trailing

off in uncertainty.

“No! I’m giving it to you!” Fields corrects her. She thought Abdulhamid had

understood that she was teaching her to drive because she was giving her the car.

“You’re giving it to me?” Abdulhamid asks. She looks at me. A smile stretches

across her face and her thinly plucked eyebrows lift in surprise. She has large brown

eyes frayed with long lashes. Her narrow body is nestled into the corner of the couch.

Abdulhamid expresses her concerns about the costs of owning a vehicle, but

Fields assures her that she will help.

“Whenever I apply for a job now, to wherever I apply, they ask for a driver’s

license,” Abdulhamid explains. The humanitarian agencies where she's been seeking

work need people who can drive to pick up donations and meet with clients.

“Well let’s get you those driving lessons so you can get to work a bit more,”

Fields suggests.

As we leave Abdulhamid’s apartment, Fields points to the muted brick building

next door. Abdulhamid and her family were originally placed in that apartment complex,

but were so disgusted that they demanded to be moved. “[The apartments where refugees

are placed] usually have bed bugs. They often have roaches, sometimes rodents

depending on where you are,” Fields explains, shaking her head. A pair of pink bunny

slippers sits on one of the windowsills, a misleading mark of charm in an otherwise bleak

building.

The first time I met Julia Fields, she gave me a tour of the office space she rents

from the Institute of Cultural Affairs, located a few blocks from the Lawrence El stop.

Fields bustled into the high-ceiling foyer, an 18-year-old Iraqi refugee named Ahmed

Alrassam trailing behind her.

After greeting the man at the front desk, she led me to a room on the first floor.

This is our office, she explained. One of the walls was painted bright green. A giant

pink peace sign leaned against it, an artifact from her involvement with Code Pink, a

women's organization for peace that she has little time for these days. She led me across

the hall to another room. Lit by overhead florescent lights, the space was cluttered with

donations she had collected. Clothing racks that were jammed with garments. Bags of

linens. Upturned chairs piled on boxes. A small framed photo of a cat.

We returned to her office, where she sank into the chair behind her desk. She told

me the story of how she started ReaCH. It began as a project to help six refugee families

by making and selling holiday cards and giving them the proceeds. Fields decided to

continue aiding refugees, many of whom are from Iraq, because she felt that the

government funded resettlement agencies weren't doing enough to help them. “When

this opportunity came along, I just knew this was the right thing and I just jumped in with

both feet. And I said, the fact that the economy is in freefall, ahhh, that won’t bother us.

The fact that all Americans hate Iraqi people right now and wouldn’t even think of giving

them a job… ehhh! That won’t bother us!” As she spoke, she fingered a thick, white

ponytail holder.

Fields told me a lot on this evening, roving from one grievance to the next. “The

government is not following their own law regarding immigration or refugees,” she said.

The U.S. didn’t start letting in very many Iraqi refugees until about two years ago, she

told me. But Homeland Security’s rigorous background checks means they don’t have

time to let in anywhere near the number of people allowed. “It’s absolutely crazy!” she

said, her voice rising in pitch and her arms flying up in exasperation.

“People coming to this country are lied to,” she continued. And welfare, she

asserted, doesn’t give the refugee families enough money to pay for rent, much less food.

“There is no welfare to work program. They dock you the money you make,” she said,

her voice tinged with an acrid sharpness. “They have to work for cash and that means

they get abused. They get ripped off.” Her voice had a gravelly texture and a melancholy

lilt. Every few minutes, she’d gaze away distractedly, her words trailing off. Then, she’d

jump back in with gusto, picking up where she left off. “It doesn’t make any sense! It’s

crazy! We are trying to figure out what to do.”

The arraignments just kept coming. Refugees, she told me, have to repay the

resettlement agencies for the cost of their airline tickets to America. “They have to pay

something like fifty or a hundred dollars a month. They don’t have fifty or a hundred

dollars a month!” she cried out, her head shaking back and forth.

Sometimes, Fields continued, refugees she serves turn to family back in Iraq for

help. “People from this war-torn area and displaced people are actually sending money

to their refugees here who are supposed to be well taken care of. It’s pretty ridiculous,”

she said. “We were supposed to send money home, not the other way around.”

With each outrageous allegation, I found myself wondering if her frustration with

the system had led her to exaggeration. With an activist background, she seemed poised

to attack the government and any imperfect institution. It turns out, however, that every

injustice she described was true.

The system currently in place to aid refugees was set up in the Refugee Act of

1980. Resettlement agencies begin working with displaced people before they fly to the

United States. Upon arrival, refugees are greeted by a staff member and brought to the

apartment that will be their new home. The government allocates $900 for each refugee's

resettlement, double the sum prior to this year. The agencies work with this money, as

well as what they receive from grants and fundraising, to help refugees set up new lives.

The meager funding is the biggest challenge, according to Lauren Perez, the

Coordination & Compliance Supervisor for Heartland Human Care Services.

Resettlement agencies are expected to pay the first few months' rent and supply

furnishings, food, spending money and transportation. Nine-hundred dollars does not go

far, as the average studio rent in Chicago is around $600 per month. With such limited

government endowment, it is almost impossible to provide even the bare essentials.

“They’ll get into the apartments and there’ll be literally one plate for each

member of the family. One fork. One spoon. One knife. One cup,” Fields tells me. “The

absolute minimum.” She is highly critical of the minimal government support and of the

resettlement agencies themselves, as she sees the consequences of the system's flaws

every day. "To me, it’s just heartbreaking. It’s important. It’s just broken, just like so

many other systems,” she says. Her brows furrow, making three deep creases between

them.

After the first few months, the agency stops supporting a refugee financially.

They can apply for public aid in the form of cash and food stamps, but that is never

enough. A family of four, for example, is expected to subsist on $475 a month. Perez

explains the pressure this puts on refugees to find some immediate source of income:

“This lack of funding means that refugees need to find jobs really quickly. If you come

from a totally different culture, speak no English, are not literate in your own language,

and have few transferable skills, it's quite a lot to demand that you also find a job within

three months.”

Perez works for one of the resettlement agencies that Fields feels fall short. "For

them, it's a job," Fields says, quickly adding that she doesn't mean to say that they don't

care. "But for me, I don't look at these people as just part of my work or something that

has to be dealt with. I look at them as people in need." Fields feels responsible for the

well-being of the refugees she meets, and working to help them leaves her consistently

exhausted. She often yawns mid-sentence or gazes off, her shoulders sinking and her

eyes drooping. "I worry about them all the time," she says.

Iraqi refugees, however, aren't the only people in her life that need taking care of.

Fields herself is battling chronic Hepatitis C, a virus that affects the liver. Hers is already

significantly damaged and several treatments have failed to cure her. The medical bills

are hard to keep up with. Fatigue is the most noticeable symptom, she says, and she

sometimes spends an entire day recuperating after a particularly strenuous one. Nausea

and depression also ail her. Focusing on the refugees' plight helps distract from her own.

"It helps me to work and to help other people," she says.

A few years ago, Fields' doctor informed her that her condition was worsening

and that she may die from the disease. This news greatly affected her son, who is now

sixteen years old. He sank into depression. Now, he is fighting this and a substance

abuse problem. Fields is always pulling out her iphone, calling to check up on him. The

new bluetooth headpiece that he bought her for Mother's Day is a constant fixture in her

right ear.

Fields likes to say, "We broke it, we bought it." She insists that the U.S. has a

responsibility to help refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. "We went in and occupied

their country and made it into a place that is unlivable for them. We are obligated to do

something about that," she says. The issue Fields has set out to tackle is an enormous

one, as the number of Iraqi refugees has grown considerably in the last few years. In

2006, only 202 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the United States, 21 of which were

placed in Illinois. In 2009, about 17,000 were admitted to the country, and Illinois

received 1,195 displaced Iraqis. Four-hundred fifty of them ended up in Chicago.

For Iraqi refugees, like Alrassam and his family, finding a job is more difficult

than it is for the average American. A study by the Georgetown University School of

Law found that the current resettlement approach makes it nearly impossible to obtain a

long-term job because agencies’ employment services and English language training are

insufficient. There is also a lack of transportation and professional recertification

assistance.

Many resettled Iraqis are well-educated and held high-paying professional jobs

prior to the war, like Abdulhamid and her husband. However, the United States Refugee

Admissions Program pushes agencies to encourage refugees to take lower-paying, less

sustainable jobs rather than pursue recertification or professional positions. Most of the

well-educated Iraqi refugees are shocked that at first they have to take a low-paying job.

“I’ve had doctors saying ‘I can’t clean toilets. It would be so shameful,”’ says Fields.

Most Iraqis easily adjust to the American style of self-promotion in job

applications and interviews, according to Rebecca Tancredi, the Managing Director of

the Chicago branch of Upwardly Global, an organization that helps highly-qualified

immigrants rebuild their careers. However, she says they aren’t prepared for the hurdles

to reestablishing their careers. “When they set up to come over here, they didn’t know

the economy was going to crash. They weren’t really prepared for the amount of time it

will take to get a professional job. They weren’t aware of all the re-licensings,” she says.

Many refugees say that before departing for the U.S. they were misled about the

job-placement services and support they’d receive, according to "Iraqi Refugees in the

United States: In Dire Straights," a report by the International Rescue Committee. This is

one of Fields’ biggest criticisms of resettlement agencies, as she believes they may be

responsible for misinforming displaced Iraqis. “Whatever it is that someone does, they

are always told that it is in high demand here,” she says. They are told they will make a

lot of money. "It takes months before they come to the realization that that’s not going to

happen.”

ReaCH works with these disillusioned refugees to help them earn money on their

own. One project aims to help a handful of Iraqi women set up cooking parties in which

they teach customers how to prepare Middle Eastern dishes. Fields lends the women

money to buy food and assists them in creating recipe cards and in finding clients.

Lately, though, she hasn't been able to find many customers. The organization's other

primary program is faltering as well.

Fields, Alrassam, and I gathered in the old elevator in ReaCH’s office building.

Fields jabbed the third floor button that no longer lit up and we lifted off. We walked

down a white hallway to a room that she uses for free. The sharp, heady smell of fresh

wood saturated the air. A broom rested against one wall, a pile of sawdust next to it.

There was a heap of two by fours like the ones in Fields' van and a table topped with a

saw.

Fields walked across the room and gestured to the wooden trellises leaning

against the far wall, telling me about her trellis-building program. She lends Iraqi

refugees money to buy wood and gives them access to this work space. Fields then helps

them sell the latticed creations and solicit customs jobs, setting up spaces at farmer’s

markets and handing out flyers in her neighborhood. Most of the trellises sell for $40 to

$60, and it costs anywhere from $4 to $7 to make each one. Fields hopes that the clients

will call the refugees in the future for other work opportunities. “My mission is to help

people through a hand up, not a hand out,” she told me later.

Fields urged Alrassam to get working and left to pick up some dinner. He told me

that he thought up the diamond shape design featured on many of the trellises. He has

thick brows, a sharp nose, a goatee and plump lips. His shiny hair makes little waves

across his head and sideburns frame his face.

Alrassam cut a piece of wood on the table, then affixed it to the latticework

forming on the floor. We talked as he worked, and he told me about school and his

family. “I took the SAT’s yesterday,” he said, bent over his project. His hammer went

smack smack smack smack. “I hate my school. I don’t like the teachers, the people…”

He passed a piece of wood through the electric saw and the resulting screech drowned

our conversation. “I hate this wood. Fuck—I hate everything. I hate my life.” He

laughed. His voice was gentle, and there was no anger in it. With his accent, each word

pools into the next, his vowels dripping into his sharp consonants.

I offered to help, and he taught me how to drive the nails into the wood. He

teased me, as he sank three nails in for every one I weakly pounded down. Alrassam

grabbed a comically tiny hammer and offered it to me with a smile. His father and

brother also worked on the trellis project, and it was their only source of income.

Alrassam pounded nails into another slat of the forming trellis. “This is not my

real job,” he said. “I like to go to medical school.”

Fields later told me about Iraqi twins previously engaged in the trellis project.

When she met them, they were uncomfortable speaking in English. “They were just

really shy and selling—forget about it!” she said. But by the end of the season, they were

able to interact with customers. They found jobs at McDonald’s that they couldn’t have

gotten without the language skills they acquired through the trellis project. Now, they

have jobs at a factory with even better pay. When she told me this story, Fields was still

optimistic about the success of the micro loan system. Now, though, she's not so sure.

Recently, Fields and her son spent an entire day seeing doctors, a process that put

the teenager in an irritable mood. They were sitting in the red seats of her van when her

son erupted in anger at something she said. He threw his phone at the dashboard, and it

smacked into the window. A jagged starburst cracked its way across the windshield on

the passenger side. "I am just beside myself at his behavior," she told me afterwords.

Like her van's window, ReaCH is also splintering apart. Fields had to ask an Iraqi

woman that was working with her, once a refugee herself, to leave ReaCH. Fields tells

me that she wasn't keeping financial records for ReacH related transactions or carrying

things out how she asked. The split has been hard on Fields, as the two had become close

friends.

And the micro loan program, Fields has concluded, is not a viable solution.

Alrassam recently told her he'd rather search for a job than continue building trellises.

She told him about the new 'Put Illinois to Work' state program which would help her pay

him $10 an hour for his labor in addition to the profits from the sale of wooden structures.

When she proposed this, he told her he'd think about it. "I bend over backwards trying to

help these people," she tells me. "I was just so insulted after all that I have done for him

and his family. I couldn't believe it." She pauses. "I think he's just a typical teenager,

you know."

What seems to bother her the most is that she tries so hard to help the refugees,

but she feels like they don't want to put in the effort themselves. "Sometimes it blows my

mind that some people just don't want to work," she says. Many ask to be paid in cash to

avoid affecting their welfare checks. She refuses to do so, wanting to operate legally and

so some don't want to work with her.

The frustrated Fields feels unappreciated. Because of her outspoken views about

the system’s shortcomings, she hasn’t made many friends in the non-profit world. And

she says that some of the refugees view her with suspicion. “I don’t take any salary. I

pay out of my own pocket to run my agency,” she says. “And a lot of people think that I

make money off of them.” The refugees, she tells me, think she gets money from the

government and just doesn’t share it with them. “I tell them things and they don’t believe

me. They think I’m lying to them, and you know it’s really very difficult.”

She has trouble convincing refugees of other things as well. Fields warns them

that they will be evicted if they don’t pay their rent. However, homelessness doesn't

really exist in Iraq, so this concept is hard for them to understand. Somebody, a relative

or a friend, will take a person in. Being left out on the street is unthinkable. “It’s hard to

wrap their brains around because they’ve been lied to so much that they just don’t believe

anything and don’t know who to trust,” Fields says.

She tells me the story of one woman who didn’t pay her rent for eight months.

She told her again and again that she would be evicted, but the woman wouldn’t believe

her. It took actual eviction for her to understand. “I can’t force it. I have to just let time

show them,” Fields says, shaking her head. “I worry about them all the time and I feel

really distraught when I can't help somebody. And it happens all the time."

ReaCH has been Fields' primary focus, and the failure she is facing has hit her

hard. "Frankly, I'm just so depressed. I'm so disgusted and upset and frustrated. Micro

loans for refugees is too much. They can't handle it." She has concluded that refugees

aren't stable enough to start their own businesses or work for themselves. "They are just

too traumatized to do much of anything. And that's the real problem here. Refugees

come with a very distinct set of issues. They could probably work at a job, but nobody

here is going to give them a job in their own field," she says.

Fields' health needs to be addressed, and she is considering taking the summer off

from ReaCH to regroup. She wants to rethink the organization, from the programs to

implement to who to help. She will likely shut down the office, maybe moving it nearer

to her home. Fields tells me how distressed she is. She doesn't know what to do. "I love

what I do, and I don't want to give up on it," she says. This summer, she wants to get

back into her artwork and try working with stained glass. Her specialty, she tells me, is

assembling little bits of materials to create mosaics.

"I like to use broken things," she says.

She will begin piecing things together from broken glass to broken organizations

to broken lives. First she'll have to deal with the cracked car window. Then ReaCH and

Abdulhamid and Alrassam and her son and the cooking party women. And then, maybe,

she'll get around to fighting her disease and fitting together the various pieces of her own

life.