8 minute read
SOMETHING LIKE HOME
SOMETHING
LikeHOME
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“You’re a first timer?” the guy at Guest Assistance asks.
By Kate Benz Photos by Jeff Swensen
“It’s her first time to the United States.” “Her first time to Pittsburgh.” “Her first time to a baseball game.”
“No way!” he exclaims, reaching behind the podium and removing an 8x10 photo of the ball field that reads MY FIRST VISIT TO PNC PARK.
“Here,” he says, handing Noor Al-Sabahi a pencil. “Fill out your name.”
It’s 91 degrees. There’s a banner hanging nearby that says RAISE THE JOLLY ROGER and a teenager in black, high waisted booty shorts, her bra straps visible through the sheer fabric of her t-shirt, face buried in her iPhone.
And then there is Noor. Navy, turquoise and grey cotton hijab covering her brunette hair and body, leather belt around her slim waist and hosiery covering her feet. If the people walking by shouting Let’s Go Bucs! Let’s Go Bucs! are staring, she doesn’t notice. And if the entire scene seems weird, all the fans with their cut off jean shorts and their bright pink lips or their messy man buns, she doesn’t flinch.
Instead, she fills out her name. “Thank you,” she smiles softly.
“Yeah, you’re welcome. Have fun!” the guy behind the podium booms. “And welcome to PNC Park!”
Noor grew up in Damascus. Spent half the day outside with her friends. Playing in the sand. Going to the swimming pool. Riding bikes through the neighborhood. Dipping a toe into the Mediterranean Sea every summer with her family.
Syria was so beautiful back then.
“It was a piece of art,” she says. It’s been five years since Noor and her family had to flee Syria. In 2013, she and her sister were out in the market, buying food, doing normal things on a normal day. Then, everyone started running.
“There’s a bomb in that car!” a man shouted.
“We didn’t believe it,” she said. They returned home to tell their mother, still not believing it. Until moments later, an explosion. Then another. Glass falling. Buildings crumbling. People screaming. Then, bullets flying. Armed men appearing out of nowhere. The Free Syrian Army vs. Assad’s Regime. Helicopters flying low. Guns pointed.
“We’re going to die!” Noor screamed as her brother’s car careened down the street, speeding the family away from their home, the bullets, the explosions. “There’s no way out!”
But they did get out. A miracle, she’ll say. And they started moving. One place. Then another. They couldn’t go back. Not to their house. Not to their neighborhood. Not… anywhere.
“Our nationalities,” she explains. “Our passports weren’t accepted in most countries.”
Where they were accepted was Iraq. So, they family went to Baghdad. “From bad to worse,” she says.
More explosions. More fighting. Another reason to leave another home while the decision was finally made to move to Dubai, where some family members were living. As a professional software engineer, Noor’s prospects for employment in Dubai were excellent. Things were good. Until her request to stay was rejected. “Because of my nationality,” she says. “Birth circumstances always govern our lives.”
With options running out, they thought about Turkey. It was the closest her family would ever get to Syria, both in proximity and culture but not language.
“Language is survival,” she says.
So, she learned it, skipping between tutors before discovering a language learning platform called Duolingo that she could use online. Free of charge. No strings attached. “Duolingo’s mission is to make education free and accessible to all. And that’s firmly rooted in the belief that where you’re born should not impact your ability to learn,” says the company’s Global Head of Community Laura Nestler.
Since Duolingo launched in 2012, emails and hand-written letters in the thousands, “and that’s not an exaggeration,” Nestler adds, have poured in from users around the globe. “We’ve heard from people who use Duolingo as mental exercise while they recover from life-threatening illness, or people who change the course of their lives after learning a new language.”
“But some stories we receive are so powerful that they stop us in our tracks; stories of survival and perseverance, and ultimately, triumph. So, this project started because we knew these stories existed. We knew they were important. And we knew we had to share them,” Nestler says.
Cue the meeting with Duolingo CEO/ Founder Luis von Ahn in early March 2018 to conceptualize the project. Joining him were Nestler and critically acclaimed photojournalist Justin Merriman. The directive from von Ahn was clear. Laura, you have access to these stories from our community. Justin, you have the ability to tell them in an authentic way. You two work together to bring this project to life. Tell these stories as authentically as possible. Give me a finished product in a couple of months.
Our stories aren’t important to the world, they all said. They’re just stories. “How could you feel that they aren’t important to the world?” Merriman wondered. “It’s just incredible.”
Three weeks later, Merriman and Miller returned to the states with enough footage for a full-length documentary.
Something Like Home premiered on June 19, 2018 at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh. Of the refugees featured in the film, Noor was the only one able to get a visa to the states because her passport wasn’t from Syria.
The baseball game was fun. The tailgaters and smoking grills in the parking lots. The national anthem and the Seventh Inning Stretch. The 91-mph fastball.
One selfie. Two. Then four. Photos of life sized, costumed pierogi’s running a race around the bases, the city skyline, the people drinking beer and eating hot dogs in the stands. A black Samsung mounted onto a selfie stick with an extending arm.
Nestler started combing through the letters, wondering where they could get visas on such a short notice and where they might already have contacts and connections who could help her identify people that would tell their stories on camera. Turkey quickly emerged, namely, because Duolingo operated several active Events chapters throughout the country where volunteer led groups of users gathered to practice language and connect as a community.
By March 30, Merriman and videographer/co-director Mickey Miller were flying across the Atlantic. Once in Turkey, they began meeting with people: Alaa, Noor, and Reem in Istanbul. Ahmed, Bera, Lin, Muhannd, Elif, and Zeyd in Gaziantep.
The 8x10 picture of the park and game program sat on a table in her hotel room at the Hotel Indigo. “It’s like the governor’s room,” she said. It was the Governor’s Suite. Sweeping views of Penn and Liberty Avenues and filled with boxes of cakes, cookies, candy.
“This is like a Cinderella story,” she says. “After twelve o’clock, I turn back.”
The more she saw of the United States and its culture, the more she wanted to know.
An hour before the premiere of the film, she’s sitting in her hotel room. Hajib off. Thick, curly black hair cascading in waves over her shoulders. Smiling. Laughing. Being nervous. Looking at the clock. “My stomach,” she groans, standing up. She can’t decide what to wear and thinks about changing her clothes, even as she irons out the almost undetectable wrinkles in her floor length, burgundy skirt.
“One more attempt,” she says, worrying that she’ll mispronounce Congressman Mike Doyle’s last name. “Is it Doy-le?”
“More like Duh-oil,” she’s told.
“Ahhh! Okay. Oil, oil, oil. Duh-oil, Duh-oil, Duh-oil,” she repeats.
It was Doyle and Senator Bob Casey who got her the unrestricted visa, the one that will allow her to travel unlimited times to the United States over the next year instead of something temporary. Both politicians are expected to attend the premiere, which starts in less than an hour. “Duh-oil?” she asks, getting the thumbs up. “Duh-oil. Duh-oil. I hope he isn’t offended… if I do not get the proper pronunciation.”
Only a handful of people, mostly Duolingo employees, know she’s here. Most of them didn’t make the connection that it was her hanging around their offices all day long. And as the theater darkens on an audience that had formed a line out the front doors and down the block to get in, Noor sits alone in a brightly lit dressing room backstage with a massive bouquet of flowers from von Ahn and a box of pastries. She is holding her stomach, saying intermittent prayers, taking one selfie and then another, waiting for periodic check ins from Merriman and Nestler, practicing pronunciations one last time. “Duh-oil. Yes?”
Moments before the film ends, Merriman retrieves her. Miller joins them on a darkened corner of the stage. Both begin to pace back and forth. Hands in pockets. Nerves fraying ahead of an on-stage Q&A, during which Noor will make her presence known to the 400 people sitting in the theater, who came here to hear the story of four refugees who changed their lives by learning a language.
The pacing continues. As Noor peers through the curtains, a smile spreads across her face. She just can’t believe this is happening. Can’t believe she’s here. After everything that has happened. The people running. The explosion. The guns. A new home. Then another. And another. Being welcomed in. Being told to leave. Learning a language. Changing her life. About to change hundreds, then thousands, then a million more who would watch the film online. Five thousand miles away from something like home. Walking onto a stage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, under the bright lights, in the middle of a standing ovation.
“I always felt like I didn’t have enough courage,” she says. “But when I think about what I’m doing, it’s like another person doing it.”
