In September 2017, Muhammad Habib Ismail joined fellow Rohingya Muslims on a march through downtown Chicago. The march, organized by the Rohingya Cultural Center, was to protest the Myanmar military’s campaign of rape, arson, and killing of Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, which UN investigators found to have been carried out “with genocidal intent.”
In Malaysia, where refugees are classified together with undocumented immigrants, Ismail’s family did not have access to public services or legal employment. When he was a child, his father scraped together an income selling Islamic books door-to-door. As is customary in many Rohingya families, his father did not allow his mother to work. Ismail attended public school until fourth grade, when his teacher asked for his legal documentation for a field trip.
Toffenetti says that Chicago—with its long history of welcoming immigrants and refugees and a sizable Muslim population on Devon Street in West Ridge—is a desirable place for Rohingya to settle. The Cultural Center, which opened in 2016 at California and Devon Streets, provides social services and education to support refugee adjustment, and holds activities aiming to celebrate and preserve Rohingya language and culture.
“When Habib came to Mather, I remember his eyes,” Indman says. “The boy could not speak English, and he was just looking in the teachers’ eyes, and the eyes of students, trying to get some information.”
Of Ismail, she notes, “Life brought him to the level of adult too soon.” Nonetheless, she was impressed with his desire to make up for lost time. “If he had a question, he would always ask. He was trying to close [the] gap in his education.”
Ismail enrolled at Wilbur Wright College, attending morning classes and working nights at Wendy’s. He now works night shifts at O’Hare International Airport as a passenger service agent for Frontier Airlines. He sleeps for a few hours and then does morning deliveries for GrubHub. Because his annual income surpasses the threshold to qualify for federal student aid, Ismail paused for two years to save money, and resumed classes this month.
