What Two Iraqi Teenagers Taught Me About America
Asla (left) and Mariam Al-Khafaji came to America from Iraq nearly 10 years ago. (All images courtesy of the Al-Khafaji family; photoshop by The Free Press)
To Mariam and Asla, America was both beautiful and pockmarked. But they believed in it, because here they became the people they were meant to be.
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The reason Mariam and Asla Al-Khafaji were in America was America.
They were born in Baghdad a few years before the United States invaded their country, in 2003. Their father, a mechanic, repaired bulldozers, trucks, and power generators in the Green Zone.
When they remember being children, they remember bombs exploding, the clatter of gunfire, the IED t…
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