Newzad Brifki was an infant when Saddam Hussein’s troops assassinated his. He was far too young to remember their pear and pomegranate orchards irrigated by the Dohuk River, the forested mountains that encircled their village … the comfortable family life his parents, two brothers and three sisters had known before the dictator’s campaign to wipe out the Kurdish resistance.
Newzad was the youngest. His mother carried him in her arms when she and four older children fled the village where they had lived, surrounded by a huge family of aunts and uncles and cousins. Like so many offspring of the Kurdish freedom fighters, the Peshmerga, the family spent the next seven years in miserable refugee camps, running and hiding from bombs and sheltering in a tattered tent shredded by the fierce Turkish weather.
It’s an epic story – though the Moorhead man himself remembers little from its first chapter. He arrived at Hector Airport in 1992 with his mother and four of his siblings … welcomed by two Lutheran families who sponsored them under Lutheran Social Services. One memory in particular stands out: When they visited their sponsors, they spotted a tree heavy with fruit. The man gave the 7-year-old boy an apple.
Now Newzad, 32, has captured and written his story. His autobiography, My Journey to America: A Kurdish-American Story, is to be released later this month by Next Century Publishing. Discussions and book signings are being planned in coming weeks.
“I wanted to tell the story of how I came to this great country, with all the opportunities it offers,” Newzad says. He’s sitting in the office of the Kurdish Community of America, the organization he founded to help others who have followed the same path from refugee camps to the Red River Valley. About 1,100 Kurdish people live in the F-M area, most in Moorhead; it’s one of the largest population of Kurdish Americans in the U.S., second only to Nashville, where some 15,000 have settled.
“It’s my way of reflecting on my history and giving thanks to this country,” he adds. “I’ve written about the benefits and assets here for beginning a new life.”
His organization, the KCA, dates back to 2009, the year he graduated from Minnesota State University Moorhead with a degree in business administration. During his college years, he’d held part-time jobs with LSS, Cultural Diversity Resources and the Family Healthcare. Now he set out on his own to make a difference with the new association, a resource center for learning and development in the local Kurdish community – and an educational force in sharing Kurdish history and culture with the rest of their American neighbors.
Newzad says the KCA’s mission is to provide the kinds of help that newcomers need to build lives here. “It’s a place where they can get help with their everyday needs – finding a job, studying for drivers permits and licenses, moving into affordable housing, registering for school, filing taxes and working their way through the immigration process.
They want to educate the larger community, too, about the Kurds’ unique history and distinctive culture in a region comprised of parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Last month a large group of members took part in the Pangea cultural festival at the Hjemkomst Center. They served piles of dolmas, baklava and “dinosaur eggs” and danced to the traditional sound of the bizik, a Kurdish stringed instrument. Yes, Newzad was out there dancing with all the rest.
Though he’s thoroughly American, Newzad – who became a citizen nearly 10 years ago – still nurtures ties to the enormous network of Brifki relatives who still live within the borders of Iraq. In 2014, after completing his master’s in business administration through the University of Mary, he organized a relief trip to his family’s homeland. The Dohuk region continues to host huge numbers of refugees, now fleeing the Syrian revolt and the depredations of ISIS. One million live in Dohuk province alone, among a total of 1.5 million across Kurdistan.
The Kurdish Community in America raised $20,000 in donations for direct relief — $3,000 in the F-M area, another $13,000 from the smaller Kurdish-American community in Duluth, and $4,000 from Newzad himself. He traveled alone to his family’s homeland, where he met up with volunteers recruited from among his vast network of uncles, aunts and cousins.
Together they purchased propane gas, baby formula, winter clothing and other essentials (far more cost effective, he says, than buying here and shipping). They distributed diapers, jackets, hats, gloves and other welcome supplies to children and parents in several of the smaller refugee camps. He also visited the grave of the father he never knew.
But Moorhead is his home in every sense. Here, he and his wife are raising their three children, ages 5, 2 and 4 months. His four brothers and sisters live here with families of their own. And Newzad aspires to give back to his community whenever he can; in 2013 he ran for the Moorhead City Council.
“We’ve been here a long time,” he reflects. With long-established families like his, newcomers still find a warm welcome today, as his family did, as well as open arms and plenty of helping hands to establish peaceful, comfortable new lives. Newzad adds, “This is a good place.”
