Growing Up American — Madeleine A Cook

The Sadaat family became six of 65.6 million people across the globe that have been displaced by violence and war, according to the UN. Abdulbari Sadaat fixed the HVAC units inside of a U.S. military building in Kabul, Afghanistan, and a bounty was placed on his family by the Taliban. After years of only leaving their house at night, in 2017 the family was granted asylum and moved to Silver Spring, Maryland. For a year after their arrival, the Sadaat family was sponsored by Temple Sinai synagogue, who helped them pay rent, learn English, and enroll their kids in school. But Abdulbari struggled to find a job, his wife Zeya Gul wasn’t picking up English, and the kids were lagging behind in school.

Daily tasks that seemed simple could become traumatic — while riding the metro Abdulbari was verbally abused for going through the wrong turnstile. The kids were homesick, and the family felt isolated in their apartment building. Their two daughters, Muskah (9) and Yalda (7), and two sons, Omran (4) and Ekraam (18 months), were navigating a completely new environment, one that felt foreign, strange, and completely untraditional. But kids are resilient.

Muskah Sadaat put on lipstick without telling her mother, convinced she needed it on her first day of first grade. In a few minutes, her mother would scrub it off, scolding in her in Dari, their native dialect in Afghanistan. Her mother doesn't know much English, so Muskah and her older sister translate all of the first-day letters from the school in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Muskah pulls back her hair after getting home from school before going to play in the park in their apartment complex. She has made instant friends with a young girl down the hall who has just moved from India. Her parents don't know exactly how they can socialize their four children -- America is very different than Afghanistan. They don't understand the papers slipped underneath their door that advertise a Halloween party for the kids in their building.

Yalda Sadaat (R) is the oldest of the four siblings, before Muskah, Omran (L), and infant Ekraam. Her parents, Abdulbari and Zeya Gul, guess that Yalda is nine years old, but they are not certain. Omran is four.

Omran Sadaat, 4, peers into the sea lion exhibit at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C. He is fascinated with the floating animals, and repeatedly squeals "fish!"

Muskah waves goodbye as she boards the bus toward her school. Zeya Gul spends an hour sitting outside each morning, ushering her three school-age children onto three separate buses. They all attend different schools, at different locations, with different schedules, permission forms, and parent-teacher conferences -- all in English -- that she must navigate.

Muskah presses a flower to her lips as she waits for the light to change on her way to Costco with her family. When they get there, the family will be unable to shop because Abudulbari cannot understand the the application form for a Costco card.

Despite the summer heat, Muskah and her siblings have not gone to the pool in their apartment complex. Their father, Abdulbari, does not feel comfortable taking them to the co-ed swimming grounds. Zeya Gul, their mother, was berated and yelled at by a metro attendee once for not understanding the language. Since then, she has struggled to go out on her own.

Omran laughs on the couch in his living room as his father tickles him. They have a close relationship.

Muskah plays with a Barbie donated to her by the synagogue that sponsors her family under their refugee status. 99% of the belongings in the Sadaat home are donated -- their clothes, kitchen utensils, the old box TV in the living room. Picture frames from Afghanistan are prominently displayed on a coffee table in the middle of the room.

The Sadaat family gets ready to have a formal portrait taken outside of their home. The synagogue that sponsors them is eager for a photo-op to show the rest of their congregation the work they've done, in hopes they can get more funding for the family. The synagogue has agreed to sponsor the family for 12-months, but realistically they say that is not long enough. They would prefer two years, at the least, so they can help the Sadaat family truly get on their feet.