Khetam Dahi - The Journey of an Immigrant: From Farm to Freedom

The Journey of An
Immigrant

From Farm To Freedom

Khetam Dahi

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Copyright 2012 Khetam Dahi .

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America .

isbn: 978-1-4669-4711-5 (sc)
isbn: 978-1-4669-4710-8 (e)

Trafford rev. 07/24/2012

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North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

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Contents

Anticipation: The News

Family Issues: Preparing for the Trip

Tough Goodbyes: Leaving Syria

The Language Barrier: Arriving In Paris

Complete Shock: Arriving to California

Tough Transitions: Junior High

New Opportunities: High School

Financial Pressure: My First Job

Difficult Lessons: My Second job at Babas Liquor Store

Working For Independence: My Third Job, My New Friend, and my First Brand New Car

Following My Dream: FIDM (The Fashion Institute of Design andMerchandizing)

Reuniting: My Sister Maha Comes to Visit

To my husband, Ayham Dahi, my inspiration, supporter beyond limits, friend,
soul mate, great role model and amazing father to our four children

The stories you are about to read are mostly based on true situations that my family and I experienced as immigrants in the USA. In some cases, I omitted or added information to protect some characters privacy. I also changed most characters names so as to not reveal personal information. The order of events may not be 100% accurate, but mostly true based on my memory. I tried to do my best to keep the stories as genuinely true as possible, but had to fill in the gaps creatively where needed.

I hope to entertain, inspire, motivate and intrigue you, share my positive and negative experiences with you as an immigrant, and hopefully bring awareness of many social issues, mistreatment and bad work conditions that immigrants have endured and still do.

Over the years, I have read hundreds of journal entries written by my ESL students, and they have often touched and inspired me, so they are a huge part of the reason why I am sharing my stories.

The stories are great not only for my ESL students, but also for new comers who are trying to overcome struggles and obstacles in their lives. Hopefully they could easily relate to many of my stories.

In terms of the level of language, these stories are written in simple English and at an intermediate level designed for Adult ESL students, but at the same time, any adult can read and enjoy them.

Each chapter begins with a list of the characters, the announcement of what type of paragraph/essay students will write at the end of the chapters, and two Before You Read Questions that students would have to answer in writing.

At the end of the chapters, there are eight writing assignments and four Journal Writing assignments-all related to the topics in the stories designed for a Low-Intermediate level of credit ESL Writing Course.

I have designed the stories and activities to accompany a main grammar book. So, this acts as a reader and as a source for writing prompts with prewriting activities.

Please contact me for any helpful feedback on this first project as I am always learning and trying to improve my writing and teaching methods. Next, I will be working on a book based on my life on a farm in Syria, which will hopefully give more background knowledge about the culture, social issues, type of daily work and situations people had, and many anecdotes about my childhood.

Note: Sections in italics are either flashbacks or the narrators thoughts.

E-mail:

I want to thank the following people for supporting me in doing this project: My husband Ayham Dahi, my biggest critic and supporter, Novia Elvina, our ESL Club Delegate, who did the majority of the cartoon illustrations inside the book (I personally did four), Sandro Wong and Cindy Liang, our East Los Angeles College ESL Club Presidents and Vice-President for being my right and left hands last semester as they ran most of the meetings and organized all the fundraisers for the club so that I could focus on teaching and writing, my daughter, Reem Atallah and her friend Mike Floresca for designing the book cover and organizing all the illustrations, my colleagues and friends, Dr. Linda Elias, Associate Professors Nancy Ramirez, Nathan Warner, and Arleta Roberts for their invaluable comments, suggestions, ideas and corrections. I am also grateful to my brother-in-law, Dr. Omar Dahi for doing much of the editing at such a short notice and for making many confusing parts a lot clearer, my brother Sam Atalla for proof reading and filling in some gaps when I did not remember details about some events, my four children, Kinda, Reem, Jamal and Joel for being patient and supportive in every way, and my nine wonderful brothers and sisters for their constant support. Most of all, I want to thank my students who encouraged me to write and collect these stories that I usually mention to them briefly in class.

Map sketched by author