Palmetto, Florida: Ahmad Abdul Gaffar was 15 years old when he left his home in Yemen in August and arrived here for a year-long student exchange programme meant to introduce Muslim teens to America.
Ahmad’s experience mirrored that of any young exchange student. He lived with a host family and went to the local high school. He made friends and joined them at the mall and the beach. He thought often of life at home, and he did not take simple luxuries, such as Florida’s dependable electricity, for granted.
But most exchange programmes end with a flight home. Not so for Ahmad: Halfway through his year in the United States, Yemen descended into a civil war, closing the nation’s airports and making it impossible for him to return.
His mother, who fled the family home after it was bombed twice, put it to him plainly. “She said I need to start to search for a future here, because there is no future there,” said Ahmad, now 16.
Ahmad is one of 31 Yemeni high school students who came to this country as part of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Programme (YES) in August, all of them now trapped by uncertainty. They can’t go home, and they can’t stay in the United States permanently because they are not citizens.
Scattered across the country in the homes of their host families, the teenagers have watched as their home country has fallen apart, their Facebook feeds filling with images of familiar neighbourhood landmarks reduced to rubble. They have heard stories about friends who were killed in crossfire. They have lain awake at night, worrying about their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers.
Days and sometimes weeks pass without contact from their families.
They also have struggled with where they can go, if not home — their student visas are set to expire soon — and how they will support themselves.
The State Department began urging students several months ago to identify family or friends in other countries who could take them in when their US visas expire. State Department officials said they couldn’t help anyone secure permission to stay here, according to a letter they sent to Yemeni exchange participants in May.
Some, seeing no other option, decided to try to stay anyway.
“It’s so hard,” said Wafa Salem, 17, who had no friends or family in another country, and who decided to drop out of the exchange programme and seek asylum.
State Department exchange programmes bring tens of thousands of people to the United States every year, and political conflicts or natural disasters sometimes disrupt their return travel plans. But this is the first time the State Department has grappled with helping a group that is so large and so young, officials said.
Most of the Yemeni students remain in the US government’s care, spending the summer at a leadership institute in Lynchburg, Virginia. They await news of their fate as they fast for Ramadan.
‘Very concerned’
State Department officials said they are working on a longer-term solution to keep the students safe and cared for after August, recognising that Yemen is unlikely to be stable by then. But they said they could not yet provide further details.
“The State Department is very concerned about the safety and security of all of our exchange programmes, obviously including these very young people,” said Chris Miner, the department’s managing director of professional and cultural exchanges.
Yemen’s civil war began in January when Al Houthi militiamen took the capital, Sana’a, and forced out the president. The Al Houthis then pushed south, besieging the port city of Aden. A coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia has conducted a bombing campaign in an effort to drive the Al Houthis back.
At least 2,000 civilians have been killed in the violence, and thousands more have been injured. The war has forced at least a million people to flee their homes and has left many more millions without clean drinking water or enough to eat.
Wafa was originally placed with a host family in Buffalo. But she grew so distressed about the war that she stopped going to school and stopped eating. She contemplated suicide, she said, once going as far as cutting her wrist. She was desperately homesick in a city that saw more than 100 inches (254cm) of snow in winter — as different as could be from subtropical Yemen.
“I stayed in my room for three days crying,” she said. “That’s why I was thinking to kill myself, because no one was feeling what I feel.”
She wore a hijab, and at times that made her a target in upstate New York. One day, on her way to the pharmacy, a woman told her to go back to her country. “We don’t want Muslims in America,” Wafa recalled the woman shouting.
In February, Wafa travelled to Houston to visit a family friend, who convinced her that it was too dangerous to return to Yemen. Wafa stayed in Houston, where she is awaiting word about her asylum application. In the meantime, she is unable to work or go to school.
Her dream is that she’ll be granted an opportunity to stay in the United States and will have a chance to give her family an exit from the war by bringing them here. “That’s why I’m suffering here, for them,” she said. “That’s all for them, to be safe.”
‘Very homesick’
Ahmad has seen photos of sewage and corpses in the streets, of apartment buildings with crumbling facades and burnt balconies, of his favourite bakery in Aden, levelled.
“It’s not a place anybody wants to be,” he said of Yemen. “I feel very homesick, but when I see all that going on, I would never want to go home.”
Ahmed’s student visa expires in July. He has no close contacts in other countries, and he doesn’t know what the State Department will end up doing for students like him. He, too, is applying for asylum, arguing that his time in America would make him a target of anti-Western extremists if he were to go home.
There is plenty he has loved about his experience here, including Disney World’s Epcot Centre (“magical,” he said) and Halloween (he dressed up as a ghoul). He loved Christmas carols and the lights and cheer of New York City. But he was struck by the gulf between his own concerns and those of his American peers, who he said seemed to spend a lot of energy worrying about the state of their romantic relationships. “It was a little bit shocking,” Ahmad said.
His host father, 72-year-old retired teacher Larry Cornell, invited Ahmad to continue staying with him, at least long enough to finish school at Palmetto High next year. Cornell, whose wife died a few years ago, is not wealthy — he lives on his pension and Social Security — but he wants to help.
Ahmad calls him “Dad.” Cornell is seeking to become Ahmad’s legal guardian.
“He’s a good kid,” Cornell said. “As much as he drives me crazy and I drive him crazy, I think we’re a good match.”
Ahmad’s mother said it is not easy to be separated from her son, but she is happy that he is safe. “Please say thanks to your host dad and tell him that I will never forget what he is doing for you,” she said in a message that Ahmad translated.
Outgoing and friendly with an easy smile, Ahmad has won many supporters in Palmetto, a one-time farming community on Florida’s Gulf Coast that now boasts more strip malls than orange groves. Lori Fabiano, the high school librarian, got to know him when he volunteered to help in the stacks after school.
“He handled all of this horror with such seeming grace and calm,” Fabiano said. “He was so upbeat and happy and so appreciative to be here and have this experience.”
Ahmad said he didn’t talk about his country’s war all that much at school. He didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him. “I just want to feel normal,” he said.
And in many ways, he is a lot like an average American teen. He joined his high school’s choir this year and went to the Roaring Twenties-themed prom. He wants to get a job and earn some spending money, and he wants to go to college. He’s determined to learn how to drive.
But at night, when he’s alone and undistracted, anxiety consumes him. He worries that his family will be killed; he worries about how he’s going to pay for college; he worries about what he will do if his asylum application is rejected.
“There’s a lot of stuff I have to think about,” he said. “I lay on the bed and don’t sleep.”
Like Wafa, Ahmad feels responsible for his mother and father. His goal is to bring them to the United States to escape what he feels is a hopeless situation in Yemen. When he feels fearful, he repeats his mantra: God shall provide.
“It doesn’t have to be a great life,” Ahmad said. “But at least a better life.”
