KARTHOUM MOHAMMED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karthoum Mohammed was born in a peaceful Darfur, Sudan in 1988, but hardly anyone remembers that time anymore.  Life was normal and happy until the government of Sudan began killing its citizens because they were African Muslims, not Arab Muslims.

 

“This is the big picture, but the small picture is me,” Mohammed said.

 

Mohammed and her family were forced to flee from their farm land when she was 22 and escaped into Libya.

 

“It’s really difficult to see them kill your aunt or your uncle in front of your eyes and rape people in front of your eyes,” Mohammed said.  “People just run from the war and some make it and some don’t.  We had to leave Darfur because it’s not safe for us and if we stay they were going to kill us.”

 

After being in Libya for three months, Mohammed and her husband had to leave because they didn’t have the needed documents, so they decided to take an illegal boat to Italy where they hoped they would be better off. 

 

For three or four days Mohammed and 10 others were crammed into the bottom storage of the boat until they finally hit land.  But when they got off the boat, they found that they had been cheated and were taken to Turkey, a country that did not welcome refugees and didn’t speak Arabic, instead of Italy.

 

In Turkey, Mohammed and her husband both had to worked 12 hours a day at a shoe

factory and made just enough money to survive.  Their life in Turkey was difficult so

they had applied to the U.S. embassy to be accepted as refugees in the United States. 

 

Neither of them wanted to have a child in Turkey because of the poor living condition,

rules that refugees couldn’t attend school and expensive medical care, but as Mohammed

said, “Sometimes God says what he wants to say, and I got pregnant with my son.”

 

The Turkish government gives their people free Medicaid, but refugees have to pay for

medical care themselves.  Just for one trip to the doctor it would cost Mohammed a

whole week’s worth of wages, which she needed to pay for her rent and food.

 

But three weeks into her pregnancy, Mohammed started having trouble with her baby

and had to go to the hospital.  While she was outside, a doctor noticed her because she

was different and asked her where she was from.

 

Mohammed explained her situation and the doctor responded, “I am Mustafa Bassel, this is my card and my number.  If you need medical care, you just call me.”

 

Because Mohammed was in a difficult situation, she called Dr. Bassel a few days later.  He asked her to meet him at his office where he did an ultrasound, explained to her what she needed to be eating to keep the baby healthy and gave her some prenatal vitamins. 

 

“I’m going to take care of you,” he told her and said he would need to see her every month until the baby was born.

 

Mohammed continued to meet with Dr. Bassel throughout the whole pregnancy and her friends were constantly wondering how she was affording care at such an expensive medical center, but Dr. Bassel was treating her for free.

 

The pregnancy was going well, but when it came close to time for her baby to arrive, Mohammed got some devastating news.

Mohammed and her husband had been granted an interview with the U.S. embassy in Istanbul, but it was scheduled for her due date and would require 12 hours of travel.

 

Dr. Bassel told Mohammed that he couldn’t let her go.  Since she couldn’t afford medical care she wouldn’t be able to have assistance

delivering her child unless she stayed where he could help her. 

 

But Mohammed knew she had to go because if she didn’t attend the interview, she would never be allowed a second chance at coming to the United States.

 

“I was so scared because I saw a lot of refugee women die because they didn’t have proper medical care,” Mohammed said. “I saw them, I knew them and I worked with them.”

 

When Mohammed told Dr. Bassel she was going, he bought her and her husband a plane ticket for Istanbul and gave her the phone numbers of the best doctors in the area who had agreed to help her deliver her baby.

 

Mohammed and her husband traveled to Istanbul for their 14 hour interview at the embassy.  They prepared to be asked hundreds of questions and to be cross-examined to make sure they were telling the truth.  But Mohammed was so stressed about her pregnancy and felt like her baby was going to come out any minute that she could hardly focus. 

 

“I could have my baby on the street, anywhere but the embassy!” she said.

Sensing her distress, the women questioning Mohammed dismissed her after asking for just her name and age.

 

“I was so sad,” she said, “I knew we were going to get rejected.”

Mohammed and her husband headed home disappointed and prepared to wait for their rejection from the U.S. embassy but relieved that she had not had her baby.

 

They arrived home, still pregnant and just in time to hurry to Dr. Bassel’s office to have him deliver their healthy baby boy.  When her son came out, Mohammed said, “His name is Mustafa Bassel because I want my son to be like him.”

 

“I will appreciate him for my whole life,” she said.  “I always pray to god that my son will be like that man.”

Dr. Bassel set Mohammed and baby Bassel up with a friend of his who was a pediatrician and would help care for them for free, just as he had.

 

They met with the pediatrician regularly and one day, on the way to her office, Mohammed got a phone call from a friend.  He had just checked the updated refugee status online and saw that Mohammed and her husband were granted to travel to the U.S. as refugees.

 

“I was so surprised!” Mohammed said.  She ran straight to Dr. Bassel’s office to tell him the good news and he immediately sent someone to pick up a bouquet of flowers for her.

 

The day Mohammed, her husband and son were to leave Turkey for the U.S. she stopped at Dr. Bassel’s office.  She wanted to make sure he understood how much he had helped their family and that she would never forget him all of her life.

 

“He make me believe in humanity again.” Mohammed said. “I’ve been through a lot of

pain and fear.   To have some strange people help you like that meant he gives us hope.”

 

Now in America, Mohammed calls Dr. Bassel every so often to tell him how baby Bassel

is doing and how life in America is.

 

Bassel is now an energetic and determined toddler and Mohammed plans to tell him the

story of his birth as soon as he is old enough to understand.

 

“In my mind, I think that is the basic thing that will help him make the right decision in life,

because I don’t want him to think that life is easy,” Mohammed said.  “I don’t want him to

take it all for granted.  Some people provided a lot so he can make it to this.”

Mohammed dreams of her son getting a good education and spending his life helping people. 

For her, helping people is the most important thing.

 

“People are going to remember you by the way you make them feel,” she said.

 

She hopes he becomes a doctor, but she plans to let him grow up and decide for himself what he would like to be. “Maybe he will be a rapper or a lawyer,” she laughed.

 

"This is the big picture, but the small picture is me."

"I always pray to god that my son will be like that man."