Fulfilling his mother’s dream
It’s Tuesday at West Valley High School as a CD whirls and a narrator’s voice fills Kamiel Youseph’s portable classroom with the story of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
In desks laid out like rows of corn, ninth-graders flip through pages of Harper Lee’s story about coming of age and courage in the face of racial and class prejudice.
Youseph, an Iranian immigrant who came to the United States as a religious refugee, keeps pausing the recording for the discussion. He wants to make sure every student understands what’s at stake in Lee’s book, that an angry white majority wants to deny a black man his day in court. That the town’s public defender is arguing at the peril of his own social welfare that justice must be colorblind. That the worst of social wrongs wither beneath the light of truth, even when that light is shown by someone as innocent and defenseless as a small child.
“It’s the simple idea of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes,” Youseph says in an interview away from the classroom.
The 30-year-old English teacher knows first-hand about majority-rule run amok. It’s the reason his family fled Iran roughly 27 years ago. Drawing from those life experiences, Youseph brings greater meaning to classroom lessons about civil rights and citizenship.
“He allows for a very rich dialogue in the classroom,” says Stacy Delcour, a social studies educator who team teaches with Youseph.”You end up getting a richer, deeper curriculum.”
Youseph’s family is Assyrian, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East and one of the earliest ethnic groups to convert to Christianity. Because of their religious faith, they are also one of Iran’s smallest minorities. In Iran’s current population of 69 million, Christians of all kinds are estimated to number at best 250,000. In the last Iranian census, Muslims made up 98 percent of Iran’s population.
Religious freedoms of minorities are considered one of the bigger social casualties in Iran. Christianity is allowed to exist in Iran, but Shi’a Islam is the country’s official religion as enforced by the government. It is illegal for Muslims to convert to Christianity and illegal for Christians to proselytize, a real problem considering the Christian New Testament instructs followers to spread the word of God.
Minority religions in Iran weren’t always so oppressed by the rule of the majority. In fact, prior to 1978 the nation went through nearly 20 years of cultural and economic revolution fueled by the tapping of the world’s third largest oil reserves. The rising tide of prosperity and pro-Western policies buoyed the quality of life for nearly all Iranian ethnic groups.
It was during this time of prosperity that Youseph’s parents, Paul and Mable, started their family. Their two-income household was one most U.S. residents could recognize. Paul was a successful, self-employed furniture maker.
“Mom, in Iran, worked as a secretary for one of the biggest oil companies in the world,” Youseph says.
Iran was just a different place for minorities than it is today. The Iranian culture of yesteryear allowed for minority scholars, like Youseph’s uncle, the college education necessary to become skilled professionals, in the uncle’s case, a doctor.
Today, while not outright prohibiting minorities from enrolling in colleges and universities, Iran does require college applicants to take an Islamic theology test as well as a “character test,” which is also required of minorities applying for government work. The country’s handling of minorities, officially recognized as second-class citizens, is monitored in the U.S. by the University of Maryland Center for International development and Conflict Management.
Youseph’s family decided to flee Iran during the Shi’a Islamic revolution of the late 1970s, during which time Iran’s current social policies were ushered in. Religious minorities at the time were not only losing certain freedoms, they were also being asked to join the country’s war against Iraq, which started in 1980. Youseph’s uncle, the doctor, actually wound up serving the Iranian army, treating Iranian soldiers attacked with mustard gas by Saddam Hussein.
Youseph’s parents created a plan for leaving the country, or at least getting Mable, Kamiel and his brother Chris out. The government wouldn’t allow the entire family to leave the country, but the parents were able to get Mable and the boys permission for a two-month Christmas trip to Spokane, where the family had relatives. With a limited amount of luggage, the three said goodbye to Paul Youseph, knowing once they made it to the United States, they would never come back to Iran.
“From all the things my parents told me,” Youseph says, “there was no confidence that they would see each other again.”
While his family overstayed their visas in Spokane, hiding until they could receive refugee status, Paul Youseph was stuck in Iran. He couldn’t just sell his business and home without looking like he was leaving the country, but politically Iran was getting shakier by the day for religious minorities.
He did work out a plan with friends to stow away in the back seats of cars leaving the country. Friends drove him out of Iran and into Afghanistan. He eventually made his way to Frankfurt, Germany, with just a little bit of Iranian cash.
Working with the U.S. government, Paul Youseph was able to join his family in Spokane, but he made the trip with only $28. In Spokane the family lived with relatives until Paul Youseph could get on his feet financially.
Kamiel wasn’t even 4 years old when he arrived in the United States. His brother was 7. While his parents struggled with the language, Kamiel and his brother soaked up the culture and English by watching television.
“I learned the language by watching ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘The Jetsons’ on TV,” Youseph says.
Although the family was able to establish a home and support themselves in the United States, the American dream for Youseph’s parents wasn’t an easy one.
Roughly a decade after arriving in America, starting his own furniture business and buying a home, Paul Youseph suffered a debilitating stroke that brought his progress to a standstill. He lost full use of the right side of his body. His speech was impaired and his family tumbled from self-sufficiency to public assistance.
It was a hard time for Youseph’s parents, but it only reinforced their belief that America was a great nation, that not only took them in and allowed them to practice Christianity, but also came their financial aid, though they’d only been in the country for a decade.
What mattered most was that their sons would be able to grow up free.
“Ultimately, my parents’ main objective was to bring their children to a country where we could peacefully practice our Christian religion, attend schools with equal opportunities, and eventually have the opportunities to attend college and choose a career to our liking.” Youseph says. “My brother and I did just that, and I happened to pick education.”
Paul Youseph died in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Knowing something about religious discrimination, he spent his last days defending the Muslim religion against allegations that the attacks were religiously motivated.
“He kept saying, ‘It’s not Muslims, it’s extremists,’ ” Youseph says.
Paul Youseph marveled at how Americans pulled together after that Sept. 11, and he backed his adopted country wholeheartedly to his death. He was 56.
Mable Youseph died in 2005, having seen her boys become the Americans of which she dreamed. Like a lot of adult immigrants to the United States, she had her struggles with the language and the culture. She probably never read “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but she would have approved of the lesson her son teaches from the book. It’s one she taught Youseph long ago.
“Mom used to say,” Youseph recalls, ” ‘The only time you’re supposed to look down on someone is when you’re helping them back up.’ ”