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Hyphen-American Fireworks

Ashley Makar | July 17th, 2024

Hyphen-American Fireworks

Culture & Community  |  Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS)  |  Refugees  |  Arts & Anti-racism

4th of July 2024 group photo 1

The Fourth of July crew. Courtesy Ashley Makar. The second photo is Azhar Ahmed and her son, Kutti. Rachel Peet Photo.

Lamb and okra and kisra, a thinner-than-crepes bread that layers as if you could peel and stack a full moon on a platter. Halal hot dogs and hamburgers. Kids whispering into my dog’s floppy ears and slipping him popsicles. Spontaneous, contagious dance parties with toddlers and grandmothers and all ages in between (move as you are able, eyes to shoulders to feet). Chasing fireworks, from East Rock to West Haven beach to the Guilford green. 

This is the July tradition I get to live, thanks to my Sudanese-American friend Azhar Ahmed and her family. 

Nine years after arriving in New Haven, Azhar is now a case manager who helps refugees from Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Guatemala. Azhar brings the work of welcoming alive.

Azhar, her family, and Sudanese-American friends foster belonging out of loss. War is destroying their home country: They’re grieving siblings and aunts and grandparents who’ve died in Sudan. They’re trying to help the rest of their families survive a dire humanitarian emergency the world has largely ignored. But Sudanese communities are flourishing in New Haven. They’re always inviting people to gather with them–at Lighthouse Point, at East Rock Park, in their backyards.

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Our July tradition started in 2018. We’d had a year and a half of travel bans aimed at keeping Muslim immigrants out of the U.S. I didn’t want to celebrate the Fourth of July anymore—until Azhar invited me to picnic and watch fireworks with her family and Sudanese friends. They were fasting for Ramadan. The sun would set at 8:40, just enough time to do an iftar picnic before the fireworks would start. We gathered on the hill between Farnam Gardens and the Yale Farm.

I brought my dog Nelson, a terrier-mix rescue from Houston. He did great playing with the kids, until the sounds of the fireworks startled him. He tried to dart away, but he was on a leash. He clung close to me, shaking and whimpering. A girl named Aya took him under her wing: She put her arm around Nelson and placed her hand on his trembling barrel chest and started to sing.

I couldn’t make out the words, and I asked, “What are you singing to him?”

“O, just a song I’m making up,” she said. “It goes ‘Nelson, don’t be afraid of the fireworks.’”

Azhar laughed. “She understands how scared he is,” she said. “When we first heard fireworks, we thought they were bombs.”

*

4th of July celebration 2021

A Fourth of July celebration in 2021.

Hundreds of Sudanese-Americans living in Connecticut came here as refugees from three genocides perpetrated by the 30-year regime of Omar al-Bashir. Although he was overthrown in a 2019 coup, his brutal legacy continues: The janjaweed militias that were armed to obliterate Indigenous people (in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains) have organized into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF.) The current war is a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the RSF. Both sides are terrorizing civilians throughout the country. Genocide is happening again in Darfur.

Sudan is now the largest displacement crisis in the world. Since the war started on April 15, 2023, 11 million have fled. Over 16,000 people have died. Over 4 million children are acutely malnourished. The healthcare system is in shambles. Sudan is on the verge of famine

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For the danger the people in Sudan are facing. Azhar used the metaphor of a blade. “It’s like you’re standing on something sharp. If you move, it hurts. If you stay, it hurts,” she wrote in her story of how the war has scattered her family.

The house where Azhar grew up in Khartoum is now occupied by the RSF. They captured her brother Ahmed in October. Her mom, three other brothers, and their wives and children escaped to Egypt. At first, it was a relief that they survived the journey and made it to Cairo. Egypt is deporting Sudanese refugees who do not have a visa. But most of the 500,000 who fled under duress had no way of getting a visa before they left. The landlord of the apartment where Azhar’s mom, brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews live told them he’ll have to evict them if they don’t get visas soon. Azhar’s mom will try to apply for visas for them at the Mogamma, the headquarters of all bureaucracy in Cairo, where everyone has to go for vital documents. (Imagine a cross between the DMV and an agitated beehive.) 

Most Sudanese newcomers in Cairo have no protection. They face police brutality, mass arrests, and hate crimes on the street. They have to live with the constant threat of being deported to a war zone. Those who are lucky enough to get registered as asylum seekers with the U.N. office in Cairo are not being given refugee status, much less a chance to resettle to a third country like the U.S.

Many people in Sudan have had to choose between escaping with their children or staying with their elderly or ill parents. “In my culture, when someone dies, you wrap them in a white cloth," Azhar told me. Many who chose to save their children left their parents and grandparents with white cloths, hoping someone would wrap their bodies when they die.

*

Azhar Ahmed and her son Kutti in front of IRIS photo by Rachel PeetLast 4th of July, Azhar and her husband Fouad invited people over to their house in Westville. I wondered how they had it in them to host a gathering. Then, I remembered what Fouad had said about how they’d gotten through their most difficult times: “You have to do picnics,” he told his case manager at Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), shortly after they arrived to the U.S. “Otherwise, you will get depressed.”

That summer, violence escalated in their home region, the Nuba Mountains. Fouad’s mom and siblings were displaced from their home in Kadugli, a city which has been under siege for over a year. At first, they were living in a makeshift shelter in a church, with no access to medical care or vital supplies. 

We gathered in their backyard. Friends from Sudan, Ethiopia, Connecticut, California, and Alabama. The adults in a circle of fold-out chairs. The little kids playing duck-duck goose. Teens kicked a soccer ball. When I arrived with Nelson, he had an instant entourage: sisters fighting over who gets to hug him first; Azhar’s six-year-old son Kutti and his friends begging Nelson to play tag with them; the older cousins asking to take turns holding his leash.

I asked the calmest of them all, a South Sudanese middle-schooler named Ayii, to watch Nelson while I went inside to the restroom. When I came back, Ayii was handfeeding Nelson hot dogs. “If this could be a job,” he said, “I’ll take it.”

That evening, we had a feast. An eggplant and peanut dish. Chicken with dill sauce. Mounds of kisra. Okra stewed with tomato sauce. “We scoop up the stew with kisra. To use a spoon would be disrespectful to the dish,” Azhar’s daughter Lameese wrote in a poem about the Sudanese way of celebrating.  “When you arrive, no matter how crowded, you follow your mom to greet everybody with a hug before you sit down to eat. You wear a light silk taub, because we sweat at parties. Because we dance our hearts out. This is the life our ancestors gave us.”

After we ate, Azhar carried her Sudanese coffee set out to the yard. Lameese started roasting the beans, with cardamom pods, in a pan over charcoal. When the beans had turned from green to brown, she walked around with the pan, so each of us could take in the scent. It smelled like dark chocolate and rich soil and incense. They ground the beans in a wooden mortar and then brewed the coffee in a clay pot, with a long, tapering spout. We drank cup after cup. 

They’d brought the beans back from their last trip to Sudan, in the summer of 2022, nine months before the war broke out. Kutti and Lameese got to meet their grandmothers and aunts and uncles and cousins for the first time in person. They stayed in the house where Azhar grew up in Khartoum, where her dad was always inviting people: neighbors and extended family, newcomers who’d escaped violence in the Nuba Mountains. He was always offering a meal, she told me, a place to stay. Their home was a refuge and a gathering place. Now, the house is occupied by fighters from the RSF.

Azhar Ahmed & her mom Husna, Nuba Mtns Sudan, summer 2022I cannot fathom what it’s like to witness war destroying your home. But when we gather in Azhar’s yard, I feel like I’m getting to visit Sudan as it could be: We chat and we laugh; we remember those who have passed; we grieve and we celebrate together.

After coffee, it was almost dark, and the fireworks started. At the sound of the first blast, Nelson bolted for cover under the deck. Most of the kids darted to the front yard to watch the teenagers set off sparklers. But Ayii stayed behind with Nelson. Fouad offered for  us to take Nelson to his office in the basement, where he might feel safer. Ayii lured him with a hot dog and carried him downstairs. He sat on the floor, eye-level with Nelson. “I can stay with him,” I said. “Go enjoy the fireworks and sparklers.”

Ayii declined. He told me he’d rather stay with Nelson. “You go ahead.”

When I came back to check on them a little later, Ayii was watching the fireworks and sparklers on his mom’s Facebook live, with the sound all the way down. Nelson was leaning his whole body into  Ayii. “He stopped shaking,” he told me.

“Wow, you’ve got a special touch with him.”

“It’s a side-effect of petting him a lot.”

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Saturday before last, a World Refugee Day celebration turned into a dance party, starting with Ukrainian and Sudanese moves. Afterwards, I worked with Azhar on paperwork for a Reconnecting Families case with the International Red Cross. She’s trying to find her brother who was captured by the RSF. We were doing the paperwork in an IRIS classroom where Afghan, Syrian, and Congolese women gather every Tuesday afternoon for a sewing group.

Their names are stitched into a small tapestry that’s hanging on the wall. Azhar and I looked up from the Red Cross forms at the cloth on the wall, the curves of the letters sewn by widows and single moms and grandmothers, women who come together and stitch belonging out of loss.

After finishing the paperwork, we walked over to the Caribbean Festival on the Green, in time for the Lyrikal concert. At the end of the night, as we were about to get into our cars, Azhar asked, “Did you invite everyone to the 4th of July?” 

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Kallou and Elham Gindeel and their kids at World Refugee Celebration June 29th 2024

Kallou and Elham Gindeel and their kids at World Refugee Celebration in June 2024. Courtesy Ashley Makar.

Azhar and her South Sudanese friend Angelina planned to do a 4th-of-July celebration at Lighthouse Point this year, but the park was full by noon. They moved the party to Angelina’s house in Guilford. Angelina is the Finance Manager for Elm City Communities. Her husband Dut is a veterinarian with his own clinic in Branford, Lakes Veterinary Services. They have a big yard with a swingset and slide for the kids.

When I arrived, Ayii was playing basketball with the high schoolers in the driveway. Kutti was leading a pack of kids his age on what appeared to be a Spiderman adventure. Ayii’s mom Suzy was revving up Sudanese music through a huge speaker. Men were sitting in fold-out chairs, talking politics, near the swingset. Women were sitting in a circle under the trees. Each of them welcomed and greeted me. I met a family who had arrived to Connecticut  just three weeks ago. The grandmother was carrying a purse covered with beads in the colors and pattern of the flag of South Sudan. (July 9th is South Sudanese Independence Day.)

One of the kids ran up to me and asked, “Where is your dog?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her–or to hear myself say it out loud–Nelson passed away. Telling a four-year-old he’s not here gave me a way to imagine Nelson living his best afterlife: “Oh, he’s on a long adventure in a forest where there are no fireworks and plenty of rivers and trails to explore. And lots of squirrels to chase and places to dig and kids to feed him hot dogs and ice cream.”

Angelina and Fouad were the grillmasters this fourth: Corn in the husks, drumsticks and lamb, hamburgers and hot dogs. Fouad took a break to greet me and share some good news: His mom Samira is ok. He hadn’t been able to reach her for four months. Internet blackouts are a common tactic of the rival factions in Sudan. Fouad had been calling and calling his family in Kadugli, but they didn’t answer. Two weeks ago, one of Fouad’s siblings got enough of a signal to post a photo of their mom on Facebook. He saw it when he checked his phone just after he’d finished a statistics exam for his MBA program at Southern. He was so happy and relieved to see her.

Fouad told me he wishes he could send money for his family in Kadugli to travel to a safe area in the Nuba Mountains called Kauda. But there’s no way for them to receive the money, and they can’t get out of Kadugli: The city is surrounded by the Sudanese army. “Kauda is beautiful,” Fouad told me. It’s full of trees with red flowers. And the frogs are so loud all night. “They won’t let you sleep.”

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This 4th of July, I also met Abdelillah Douda, a human-rights activist from Darfur with a PhD in Educational Leadership. Dr. Douda traveled to Chad in November, 2023, to visit with Sudanese refugees who had escaped genocidal violence in in West Darfur. “None of the women could finish telling [what they experienced],” he told me. “They broke down. A recent Human Rights Watch Report documents ethnic cleansing, torture, and war crimes in West Darfur, which has driven survivors across the border into Chad, where they are facing a hunger crisis.

Dr. Douda is working to address the humanitarian crisis among Sudanese refugees in Chad. Most of them don’t have shelter, not even tents or mosquito nets, in the midst of a long rainy season. Those with chronic disease who need regular treatment and medication cannot survive, Dr. Douda told me. He collaborated with physicians and other medical professionals who fled West Darfur to start a medical clinic and a feeding center. Dr. Douda told me that they get some small donations, but they need major funders like USAID and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR.)

Here in the U.S., Dr. Douda is hoping to start a campaign to end the war. I asked him a question I’ve had since last summer: What happened to all the people who were involved in the Save-Darfur movement that mobilized to stop the genocide in the 2000s? The movement failed and shut down in 2016. But I wonder, where are all those congregations and student groups and activists now that genocide is happening again in Darfur? Dr. Douda told me he thinks people have “humanitarian fatigue.” But he’s going to keep trying and do all he can to mobilize a movement to end the war.

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As the sun was setting, one of the teenagers brought out a cake with a candle in it. (The 4th of July happens to be Azhar’s birthday.) The little kids flocked to Azhar, and she sat on the ground with them and stretched her arms as high as she could to hold up the cake for the shortest children to see. The anticipation and wonder among them was as thick as the humidity in the air. And you could see the joy pouring out of her as she invited the kids to blow out the candle with her. 

Over cake, we made plans to go to the Guilford fireworks together this weekend. I overheard a kid asking his mom, “Can we do a lemonade stand for Sudan?”

When the fireflies started to spark up from the ground, a little girl darted across the yard after them. I was surprised to see how nimble she was in her dress that looked like a wedding cake–pink and white flowers cascading down to her velcro-sneakered feet bounding through the grass.

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On Sunday night, we went to see the Guilford fireworks. We started out in our friend Madeleine’s yard. When it was almost dark, we walked to the Guilford Green with camp chairs and bug spray, blankets and popsicles. 

When the first firework launched up and showered the sky, the kids screamed with glee. When the next firework burst into red and green, Kutti yelled, “It’s like moving light.”

“It’s Christmas!” another kid said.

“It’s aliens!”

One of the big sisters shushed them, a rising senior from Darfur, who’s excited to go on college tours with LEAP and Squash Haven. We laid on our backs in the grass, our eyes watching the sprays of  light: the ones that look like tadpoles flashing across the sky, their tails disintegrating behind them; the ones that look like fountains of fireflies; the ones that arc up and burst into a zillion pins of light that fall like cherry blossoms in fast motion. One little girl stretched out her arms as if trying to catch them in her hand.

During the finale, a pair of twins with glow bracelets on their wrists starting singing “Party in the U.S.A.” All of us joined in.

On the walk back, a South Sudanese teen, a recent graduate from Common Ground High School, asked a first-grader from the Nuba Mountains what he wants to be when he grows up. “A pilot,” he said. “So I can bring my grandmother to America.”

To learn more about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and how you can help, visit Eyes On Sudan.