If you really want to see the spirit of Thanksgiving, try viewing it through the eyes of our most-recently arrived neighbors. When you’re thankfully celebrating a new home, but holding memories of the old one, there’s nothing that says “thanks” any better than having both roast turkey and ropa vieja, or crispy falafel, on the table.
Even more than the quiet family joy of Christmas, the warmth of the Thanksgiving feast brings more Americans home for the holiday than at any other time of year. The number of long-distance trips over the long Thanksgiving weekend jumps 54 percent over normal, according to federal statistics.
A growing number of immigrants and refugees have made even longer journeys to get to Louisville. These new neighbors will celebrate Thanksgiving 2016 in their new homes as new Americans, still polishing our language and our ways, yet already filled with thanksgiving about the safety and hope the feel in their new homes, and planning holiday feasts that will combine their discovery of new traditions — including turkey — without forgetting the comfort-food traditions that they left behind.
Here are the stories of three such recent arrivals and their families. Please say hello to Alex Radhi, from Baghdad, Iraq; Yuniel Reyes and his family, from Havana, Cuba; and Shaker Ali and his family, from Mosul, in Iraq’s Kurdish region.
Alex Radhi
If you’re a regular at Texas Roadhouse, you may have seen Alex with his trim, black beard, smiling and talkative as he checks every plate to make sure it’s just right before signaling a server to hustle it out to waiting diners. The 28-year-old native of Baghdad, Iraq, enjoys the work, as he enjoyed working in an Amazon warehouse, but he wouldn’t mind moving to a restaurant server job to boost his income with tips.It’s far from his life in Baghdad, where he served the U.S. Army as an interpreter for 2 1/2 years, parlaying the American-accented English that he said he learned from watching U.S. television programs — particularly Oprah Winfrey — into a paying job.
As U.S. forces began withdrawing, though, interpreters and other Iraqi civilians who’d worked for the American military were more than vulnerable. Their chances of survival at the hands of the Iraqi radicals who evolved into ISIS were slim. Accordingly, Congress in 2008 created a Special Immigrant visa, which — with security screening — made speedy immigration, relocation and financial assistance possible for Iraqis who had provided “faithful and valuable service” and were under threat because of that service. He found his way to Louisville because his brother and his family were already here; he lives in the home of a friend near Zorn Avenue for now.
On Thanksgiving, Alex will celebrate his new life in a peaceful home. He’ll offer particular thanks for having become an American citizen this year, and he voted for the first time in the presidential election. Those happy events are muted, though, by his concern about his parents, who are in a refugee camp in Turkey awaiting visas. He’s concerned that a Trump administration may raise new barriers to entry to refugees, in which case he hopes his parents can migrate to Canada instead.He also hopes a good friend in the Philippines will be able to get to the U.S.
Alex said he has learned to love American food. But if he has turkey for his Thanksgiving feast, he said it will probably be deli slices, as he doesn’t plan a big feast unless he’s invited to a dinner with friends from Covenant Community Church, which he attends after having converted from Islam. Or he might cook up a batch of fried chicken, a dish he said he makes well, having switched from an Iraqi-spiced preparation to American Southern-fried. But then, he shyly added, he might just hanker for a little Iraq-style bean and meat stew, too.
Yuniel Reyes
Yuniel Reyes, his wife, Yessica, and their daughter Jennifer, have made a good life in Louisville that started when his mother won a green-card lottery that enabled her to move here from Havana in 1997. His parents and younger sister grabbed the opportunity and migrated immediately, but Yuniel, then in his late teens, and his 12-year-old brother, weren’t so sure about leaving the only home they knew, and stayed behind for a few years, because they didn’t want to leave their friends.Eventually, though, he said, maturity brought wisdom and the recognition that, although a hamburger cost only $1 in Havana, nobody could afford that dollar. “There was a lot more opportunity in America,” he said. “There was no future in Cuba.” So the young men followed their family, arriving in Louisville with assistance from Catholic Charities. He’s 35 now, and doesn’t have to think twice about getting a burger.
The Reyeses live in an attractive apartment complex in the Okolona area, and Yuniel and Yessica have a regular job delivering The Courier-Journal daily. She’s also director of the choir at St. Rita Catholic Church in their neighborhood, which has a large Latino community, and he also sings in the bilingual choir.
On Thanksgiving, they’ll give thanks for their new life, and for their good fortune in having their family together, they said, and in particular young Jessica’s success as a budding actor in the magnet theater program at Western Middle School, where she played the lead, Soledad, in a play earlier this month.
What’s on the Reyes holiday table?
A turkey roasted American-style, that’s for sure. Their palates are well acclimated to U.S. dishes now… in fact, with Jessica’s eyes lighting up, they announced that their favorite local eats come from the buffet at Golden Corral. But they don’t forget their Cuban heritage either, and the turkey will likely be joined by delicious lechon asada, long-roasted, citrus-marinated Cuban-style roast pork. There’ll be bowls of congris, too, the iconic Cuban mix of white rice and black beans.
Shaker Ali
Shaker, who pronounces his name “Shah-kur,” was an Army translator in Iraq, too, and he also came to the U.S. with his family on a Special Immigrant Visa. They followed very different journeys, though. Shaker, a Sunni Muslim of Kurdish heritage, comes from an ethnic tradition at odds with Iraq’s Shiite majority.He lived in the Kurdish capital, Mosul, when the American Army came. He said many of his neighbors ran away from the Americans, persuaded by Saddam Hussein’s warnings that the U.S. soldiers were vicious killers. But Shaker — who had learned English in college and would later earn a master’s degree in English in Russia — said he ran toward the Americans and became the first Iraqi translator in the city.
Later, they opened small retail shops offering food, toiletries and household goods to truck drivers delivering supplies to the American military bases.
The family — Shaker, his wife Riffah, their son Hassan and daughter Noor Sayeed, came to Louisville via Chicago in November 2013. Now 46, he works as a translator and serves as a board member for Catholic Charities’ refugee program. He is also working toward his doctoral degree in education at Bellarmine University. The family attends the Islamic Center of Louisville mosque on Fourth Street, near UofL. Shaker said they have a great deal to be thankful for as they settle into their new home off Fern Valley Road.
Last year they bought a turkey for Thanksgiving, but when they cooked it Iraqi style, boiled with spices, they were not happy with the result. So this year a friend is helping them roast it the American way, preceded by a 24-hour brine. They’ll put some biryani rice on the side, too, made the Iraqi way with a lot more meat than the original from India. And for dessert there will be baklava, the sweet Mediterranean treat.
Thanksgiving! It’s all-American, and it’s all Americans, of every heritage in the world. •
