Iraqi student's education goes far beyond Goucher

Pointed opinions, caring Americans mark experience

Ahmed's hands trembled as he stepped to the microphone. Despite the horror and tumult that had visited his home city of Baghdad, he had never been the sort of boy to confront politicians.

But before him stood one of the chief advisers to the U.S. president who had abruptly halted the calm routines of Ahmed's youth with bombs and tanks. Ahmed could not live with himself if he remained silent.

If Saddam Hussein paid for vicious crimes with his life, Ahmed asked Karl Rove, what should the punishment be for the invaders who cost millions of Iraqis their lives, their homes, their health and their security?

With that bold question to a controversial guest speaker, Ahmed became a campus celebrity at Goucher College, crystallized his reasons for studying in the United States and, most importantly for him, stayed true to the home country he loves so deeply.

"It was," he says of the September exchange, "one of the greatest moments in my life."

"It certainly was a very poignant and a very sharp moment for the campus," says Goucher President Sanford J. Ungar, who moderated the Rove discussion.

Ahmed, 18, who asked The Baltimore Sun to withhold his last name because of concern for his family's safety, arrived in Towson six months ago with the rest of Goucher's freshman class. He is one of 33 students placed at American colleges by the nonprofit Iraqi Student Project.

He brought with him many of the same doubts as other students about fitting in and handling the work. But he had also traveled much farther than most, literally and emotionally.

Ahmed was 13 when American soldiers streamed into his city. Though the two years immediately after were full of hope, a darker reality set in when Sunni and Shiite gangs began warring over his once-peaceful neighborhood. One day in 2006, Ahmed says, his family received a letter telling them to flee or die. Wrapped inside was a bullet. Others who ignored such threats had been killed, so Ahmed's family fled to Syria, a land of stability but little opportunity for Iraqi refugees.

Ahmed, an excellent student with passions for English and biology, began to lose optimism about his future. But last year, he applied online to the Iraqi Student Project, which promised to take refugees and place them in American colleges. Within a few days, he was face to face in Syria with the program's American co-founders, who seemed nothing like the visions he had concocted based on observing U.S. soldiers and politicians. They accepted Ahmed and, in Goucher, found a college willing to offer a spot and waive his tuition.

His Baltimore sponsor, 2004 Goucher graduate Alessandra Manfre, says the charity needs to raise about $6,000 every six months to help cover Ahmed's living expenses. They've held a kayak race and a candle sale to pay his first-year bills, and he works at the Goucher library to earn supplemental income.

Ahmed arrived in late August, ready to confront the uncertainties of American higher education. He knew he would have to tell his story over and over, knew it so certainly that he insisted his roommate hear the whole thing the first night they lived together.

He speaks of his experiences evenly and with little hesitation.

"I think what struck me as he was telling his story is that I'm one of the luckiest people in the world," Manfre says. "I've never had to deal with that kind of pain and ambiguity. What was I doing when I was 18? I never had to deal with wondering if I'd make it back from school. In some respects, even though he's a teenager, he's more mature than I am now."

A sudden invasion, a slow unraveling

Ahmed's tale began in a section of Baghdad where Sunnis, Shiites and Christians lived harmoniously, their long, deep ties as neighbors overshadowing religious differences.

The adults around Ahmed knew better than to say anything against Hussein or the ruling party. His father, a contractor, had been unable to attend Baghdad College High School because of old disputes between the family and party leaders. So life was not truly free, but neither was it frightening to a child. Ahmed performed well in school and maintained many close friendships in the neighborhood. He had begun preparing for the nationwide exam that would determine his future academic placement when rumors of the American invasion intensified.

Nobody believed foreign troops would reach Baghdad, Ahmed remembers. So it came as a terrible shock when bombs from U.S. airplanes began shaking the city after five or six days.

The electricity went out. Smoke from oil fires blotted out the sun. News passed only from one neighbor's lips to another's. Ahmed huddled under a table in his grandfather's house with his brother and his cousins.

"Boom, bomb, boom, bomb. That's all we heard," he says. "We just wished it would end, whether we were losing or winning. Please God, stop it. We couldn't take it anymore."