Mark Johnson

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

As Michal Chabo drifts off to sleep, his Milwaukee apartment recedes into the darkness and he is back in Syria, running for his life, pursued by fighters from the Islamic State. The fighters shout, "Nazarene! Nazarene!" the Arabic word for “Christian.” They know he is one, and if they catch him, they will kill him.

On other nights, he says, it is soldiers from the Syrian regime in pursuit. If they catch him, they will force him to serve in the Army, carry a rifle and kill others.

“Always at the end, they are very close, face to face,” says Michal, 26. “But I open my eyes, and I see myself in my bedroom, and I thank God like 10 million times.

“I don’t have to kill or be killed.”

In 2012, when Michal and his younger brother, John, fled Syria, ISIS did not exist. Since then, the terrorist group has become a chilling presence in a war the brothers now follow on the websites of CNN and the BBC, and through a group on Facebook.

They came to Milwaukee a year after their escape from Syria. This summer their applications for asylum were approved and today they have jobs, friends and an apartment. John, 24, works at a Colectivo coffee shop; Michal works at the church they both attend, Eastbrook on N. Green Bay Ave.

And 6,000 miles away lie the things they left behind.

Their beloved city of Aleppo with its cobblestone streets and ancient churches built inside of caves — much of it now rubble.

Childhood photographs, posters of their Christian band and other treasured possessions — everything that did not fit inside the one suitcase each man packed in 30 minutes.

And their precious musical instruments, all except the single guitar their father risked his life to save.

There was no looking back the day the brothers made their run. Helicopters circled Aleppo, firing down into the city.

• • •

They arrived in Milwaukee on Jan. 28, 2014, knowing no one and carrying next to nothing. At that point, few Syrians had been admitted into the United States, either as refugees or asylum recipients.

Refugees apply from outside the U.S., asylum seekers travel here with visas and apply from inside the country. Both groups must prove the same thing: They are no longer safe in their own land.

In early 2014 when the brothers arrived, the Syrian civil war was two years old and just 110 of their countrymen had been admitted as refugees. Fewer than 100 had been granted asylum.

John and Michal were among the first Syrians from either group to arrive in Wisconsin.

Since then, the number of Syrian asylum recipients in the U.S. has more than doubled. It reached 250 by the end of 2015 and continues to grow. The number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S. has grown even faster, surpassing 16,000 by early November. Of those, 115 have settled in Wisconsin, over the objections of Gov. Scott Walker, one of 31 governors who opposed admitting Syrian refugees into their states.

“Let’s be honest,” Michal says, “no one wants Syrian refugees in their country.”

In fact, polls have found Americans divided on the issue, with those supporting the admission of Syrian refugees varying from 36% to a high of 53% (contingent on the refugees receiving security clearance). Opposition has run as high as 60%.

Still, Syrians have faced far more opposition than other groups who have settled in America over the last five years — for example, the 81,124 Iraqi refugees (866 of them in Wisconsin), or the 43,614 Somalis (825 in Wisconsin).

“I have deep concerns about (President Barack Obama’s) plan to accept 10,000 or more Syrian refugees,” Walker said back in November 2015, adding, “it is clear that the influx of Syrian refugees poses a threat.”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, now president-elect, was more blunt in an April speech to supporters in Rhode Island:

“Lock your doors, folks,” he said.

“We don’t know anything about them. We don’t know who they are, where they’re from. There’s no documentation.”

• • •

Here then is the story of Michal and John Chabo, young men who planned a very different life for themselves back in 2012, back before their city, Aleppo, was drawing comparisons to Dresden and Hiroshima.

The brothers were both attending the University of Aleppo. John was studying electrical engineering; Michal, economics and accounting.

They were Christians in a country in which Muslims account for 90% of the population. Their father served as pastor at a church in Aleppo that belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He spent several days a week in Hasakah, where he worked at another Christian church.

The brothers had adored music from the time they were little, pretending to play hymns together on keyboard and guitar the way other children play house. Both had many Muslim friends; they learned not to talk about religion.

As he grew older, Michal dreamed of marrying, buying a house, starting a music production company and writing his own songs. John aimed to be an electrical engineer, married by 25, and performing music with his brother.

Then came the war. In March 2011, soon after the first rumblings from the Arab Spring protests reached the Syrian city of Daraa, President Bashar al-Assad announced he would address the situation in a speech broadcast live across the nation. That morning, before the president had said a word, students began celebrating across the university, anticipating a new era of greater freedom.

“We were so ready to tell the whole world our president is the best. Our government is the best,” John says.

But at noon, as Assad’s voice came crackling over radios throughout the city, it became clear that the movement that had spurred regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya would play out very differently in Syria.

The president blamed foreign conspirators for the protests and made no mention of reforms.

To that point, the university had seen no protests against the government. Soon after Assad’s speech the demonstrations began, and it wasn’t long before police were firing tear gas into the crowds.

The Chabos avoided the protests as best they could. They had their plans.

“Education,” says Michal, “is something holy for us.”

John tried but couldn’t always avoid the unrest. Simply crossing the campus on his way to class, he would find himself in the middle of the protests — and the tear gas — his lungs burning, cheeks swollen.

“It was a daily struggle not taking sides,” he says.

• • •

The first suicide bombing in Aleppo took place early in 2012. By March, fighting raged just outside the city.

Looking out from his balcony, John would sometimes spot an orange rocket streaking across the sky, followed seconds later by a flash of light and a distant boom.

As the explosions became more frequent, people adapted to an odd routine. Within a few minutes of a bombing, the local cellphone network always shut down. Residents learned that if they didn’t phone relatives right away, it would be hours before they could reassure them they were safe.

In those days, the bombs had yet to reach the university. It was possible to believe in safe places.

In May 2012, on a Thursday morning, John sat taking an exam when a blast erupted — much closer this time and shockingly loud.

Pulse racing, John put down his pen and phoned his mother.

"Did you just hear it?" he asked her.

"I’m OK. I’m safe. You’re not going to be able to reach me for the next couple of hours. I’m safe."

Then he and his classmates resumed their exam.

The brothers knew then that their days in Aleppo were numbered.

• • •

The family stayed on a few months, waiting to see if things would improve. John and Michal had school. They had their own contemporary Christian band. Their neighborhood had not come under attack. It was still possible to hope.

But in the first week of August 2012, another bomb went off, and this time it was no distant rumble.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a car exploding, but this was super loud,” John says. “It sounds like it’s right next to you.”

John felt himself enter a place “beyond scared.” His body shook uncontrollably. His temperature veered back and forth, cold, then uncomfortably warm. His voice stammered.

It felt as if the whole city were shaking.

“Always,” Michal says, “I thought the next bomb is going to be our building.”

John and Michal told their mother: We’re leaving tomorrow. No matter what.

Their mother agreed. They would all leave together. Their father was out of the city at the time.

They would head for Hasakah, five hours east and home to their father’s second church. They would stay with relatives until they could acquire passports and depart for Lebanon.

The brothers packed their suitcases quickly and without sentiment, grabbing shorts, pajamas, pants, a couple of shirts, underwear — enough for two days. John remembered his dental retainer.

Everything else they abandoned.

“There’s a condition of fear that is huge,” John explains. “Everything around you is worth nothing. You are worth everything.

“When you feel like your life is directly threatened and you might die at any moment, you just think about yourself and about escaping.”

The bandmates and friends who saw them that day had no idea they were leaving. The brothers told no one.

The next morning Michal phoned a man he knew at the bus station. It’s crowded, the man said, but I’ll save you three seats.

The Chabos arrived at the station to a chaotic scene: people running in all directions, carrying small, hastily assembled bags, shouting at relatives: I’ve got a ticket on this bus. Maybe you can get a ticket on the next one.

It was their last vision of home.

• • •

John and Michal spent 12 days in Hasakah, waiting in a long line in the hot sun with hundreds of other Syrians desperate for passports. On the 13th day, passports finally in hand, they boarded a bus to Lebanon.

For the moment, their mother had to stay in Hasakah; women were not being allowed to leave from that checkpoint. In a week or two she would depart from a different checkpoint and meet up with her sons in Lebanon.

A fearful silence suffused the bus. The driver followed country roads, steering a path around the fighting between the various warring groups: the Syrian government, the rebel Free Syrian Army and the anti-government, terrorist Al-Nusra Front.

Passengers knew they would have to pass through 16 checkpoints. Fresh in their minds was what had happened the previous day on a similar bus. A woman and her two children had been stabbed to death at a checkpoint by a terrorist from Al-Nusra Front.

“Just be with us,” John prayed. He kept reciting Psalm 91.

If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”

And you make the Most High your dwelling,

No harm will overtake you,

No disaster will come near your tent.

At each checkpoint, officers came aboard and questioned the passengers or demanded identification papers. At each, Michal held his breath.

The worst moment came around 3 in the morning, when the bus stopped at a village near Homs, one of the last checkpoints before the border. An Army officer beamed a flashlight inside the bus and ordered the driver to turn off all of the lights. The officer went seat by seat, checking papers. All the luggage was pulled out and inspected.

The driver looked worried. He begged the officer: These are all civilians. Please let us get to the border. To Michal, those 30 minutes seemed to take days.

“The scariest thing,” he says, “is you can’t predict what they want.”

In the end, none of the passengers was removed from the bus or harmed. A few hours later, they crossed into Lebanon.

• • •

Michal missed his guitars, but one most of all; it had verses carved inside from Psalm 57, a prayer for safety from enemies.

In Beirut, the brothers stayed in the home of family friends, thankful for the gift of safety but feeling the absence of their musical instruments. It was as if their voices had been silenced.

“This guitar was special to my heart,” Michal says.

When he was 18, someone had broken his only guitar. For a full month, he had prayed for a new one. He had no money. Then, a visiting pastor gave him the beautiful new Zamar from South Korea, engraved with the Bible verses:

My heart is steadfast, O God,

my heart is steadfast;

I will sing and make music

Awake, my soul!

Awake harp and lyre!

I will awaken the dawn.

While visiting the rest of the family in Lebanon, their father announced that he was planning a very brief trip to Aleppo. He had not been back since the family fled. He had to know if his church was still standing.

Michal asked if his father could pick up the guitar, though he worried about the risk. Don’t go, he said, if it’s just the guitar.

Their father found the church in Aleppo unharmed. He grabbed the guitar from the family’s apartment along with a few important documents. Not long afterward, as he shopped for a new laptop for Michal — even in a war zone, stores remained open — a mortar exploded in the street. Their father escaped uninjured.

Days later, a transportation company called Michal. The bus carrying his guitar had arrived in Beirut. He rushed to meet it at the station.

“It was like my soul coming back into my chest,” Michal says. “My heart is beating. I am alive.”

• • •

For four months John and Michal lived in Beirut with their mother and followed news reports of the disaster unfolding in their former home.

The armies fought and the bombs exploded without regard for historic Aleppo, a thriving metropolis for 8,000 years, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. The decline into chaos was swift. A few weeks after the Chabos left, a fire razed a large section of the city’s ancient marketplace, the central souk.

The brothers tried to look ahead, focusing on learning English, hoping to continue their education. They flew to Los Angeles to visit their grandmother, who’d become a U.S. citizen in 2011 and was now ill.

When they returned to Beirut, they stepped up their efforts in English through intensive classes and through Hollywood. They watched movies like “Bruce Almighty” and “The Proposal,” first with Arabic subtitles, then with English subtitles, and finally with no subtitles at all.

In the meantime, a window was closing for them. It was now the fall of 2013. Their passports were expiring, and so were their visas to stay in Lebanon.

If there were any less than six months left on their passports, they would be unable to travel internationally. That meant when their visas expired, they would be forced to return to Syria.

Weeks before the window was to close, a solution surfaced. Their mother and father, both living in Jordan at this point, were attending a church in Amman; the church had a partnership with Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee. The brothers could try to get the Milwaukee church to support a bid for them to resettle in the U.S.

Their father spoke by phone with the pastor in Milwaukee who wanted to know: Were they Christians? Did they speak English?

• • •

The plane dipped toward the runway at O’Hare, and Michal stared out the window.

“John,” he said. “The ground is white!”

More than 33 inches of snow had fallen in Chicago that month. The temperature was threatening to sink below zero. But the brothers had a more immediate problem.

Just before they’d boarded the plane to America, a Jordanian customs officer had checked their papers and taken particular note of their passports. In three days, the two men would be unable to travel internationally. U.S. customs officials might ask what they planned to do.

Michal and John walked quietly down the hallway to customs. They had spent most of the 14-hour flight worrying over this moment.

John kept asking himself: What’s going to happen?

Michal prayed. If you want me to be in this land, he said, you will open it up to me.

The customs officer in Chicago asked a series of questions: Where are you coming from? What’s the name of the church in Milwaukee? What’s the name of the pastor you are going to meet? What are you going to be doing?

The brothers planned to help out at the church’s refugee center.

As they answered, John and Michal dug in for a long interview. They had photographs and fingerprints taken.

Then, abruptly, the questions stopped.

OK, the officer said. Welcome to the U.S.

The brothers walked until they turned a corner and were out of view. Then they began jumping and celebrating.

They collected their luggage and exited the gate. Outside a man held a sign inscribed with their names and with one more word.

“Welcome.”

• • •

The man who held up the sign was Adam Shidler, international outreach pastor for Eastbrook Church. He drove them to Milwaukee, where they had their first meal.

Before leaving for the U.S., their father had warned them about unhealthy American food. Don’t eat fried food. Don’t eat hamburgers. Find organic food.

The pastor took them to Five Guys, a burger joint. And in spite of the warning, they liked the hamburgers.

Later, at the pastor’s home, Michal rested on a bed by himself, his head on the pillow. He kept wondering about the people who had taken them in: Why would someone be so nice to a pair of strangers?

They knew there would be adjustments, and there were. The brothers had carried with them a small amount of money from their parents, which they used to buy winter clothing. They piled on layers of sweat pants and tucked them into heavy socks, and still they felt the cold. Gone were the stylish jeans they had worn at home.

For one young Syrian refugee, hope lies in surgery

They attended 6 a.m. prayer meetings at the church and were surprised by the huge breakfasts of pancakes and bacon and sausages.

“People can’t eat meat at 6 in the morning,” John exclaimed to Michal in disbelief. “Is that even a thing?”

John noticed how large everyone looked. Not realizing people were wearing heavy winter coats, he remembers thinking: They eat this food, that’s why they are big.

In time, the brothers got used to meetings that began with large boxes of doughnuts. Somehow they stayed skinny.

They learned the words and melodies to hymns they’d never sung before.

They grew accustomed to the question every new acquaintance asked: Tell us about Syria, how are things going there? The brothers shared how broken their country had become and how blessed they felt to be here. And sometimes it stung when someone asked if they would be returning to Syria.

“It feels like they want you to go back,” Michal says.

No one said “go back to Syria,” not in those words, not to their faces. But every time there was an act of terrorism, the brothers avoided mentioning where they came from. Michal flew to other cities on church business and he noticed how fellow passengers looked at him.

“People freak out,” he says, “and to be honest, they have the right to freak out because things are not stable in the Middle East.”

One thing did not change. In the U.S., as in Syria, the brothers avoided political discussions.

• • •

For months John and Michal lived with Shidler, the pastor who’d driven them back from the airport.

They met with an immigration lawyer in Milwaukee named Kime Abduli, who had come over to America from Macedonia when she was little more than a year old. She helped them file the complex application for asylum in the U.S.

They filed in June 2014, needing to prove a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group. Amnesty International says that Christians, along with Kurds and Yazidis, have been targeted by both the Assad regime and armed groups, including ISIS.

The separate interviews required of John and Michal were each three hours. Six months after filing, both would be eligible for work permits. It would be almost two years before they learned whether or not they would receive asylum.

“It’s not that easy,” Abduli says. “You don’t just show up and get asylum.”

In August 2014, a middle aged couple from church stepped forward to host them. Marie Greco and Tom Raczynski have four adult children and their own telecommunications firm. They’d opened their Whitefish Bay home many times to foreign exchange students. The way the couple saw it, they did not go on missions to foreign lands, but having people stay with them made their home into a mission field.

They found the brothers extremely polite, like young men from an earlier time. The brothers asked Greco and Raczynski to correct them whenever they made a mistake in English.

The Chabos missed their parents in Jordan, calling them almost every day. Yet the brothers also seemed mature beyond their years. Michal was then just 24; John 22. They could hardly have been closer.

“They have each other’s backs,” Raczynski says.

Greco called Michal “Misho” just as his mother in Syria had. The couple took the brothers to watch the Milwaukee Brewers and then the Green Bay Packers. John and Michal found baseball too long and slow, football too violent. But they had fun anyway.

Often the brothers cooked with their hosts, chopping onions and talking about the food in Syria.

“We loved them,” Greco says of the young men. “We loved them through spending time, listening and feeding, feeding, feeding. I loved them like a Sicilian mother would love her sons.”

• • •

The brothers stayed with the Whitefish Bay couple for almost a month, then moved in with another couple, Tom and Joan Mahn, both in their early 60s. The Mahns lived in Shorewood and had just moved their daughter, Carolyn, into the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their empty nest lasted one day.

John and Michal could not yet work or attend college. Tom Mahn tried to tutor them in American football. John would draw pictures of the field, asking which side was the offense and which the defense?

The brothers helped out at church, translating for Arabic-speaking refugees and teaching English as a Second Language. They made friends their own age and sometimes cooked Middle Eastern food for them.

The brothers would tell the Mahns about their terrible dreams. While Michal dreamed of being chased, John dreamed that he was back on the bus, passing through each one of the checkpoints on the ride out of Syria. The young men would show the Mahns old photos of Aleppo on the computer, then say, "Here’s what it looks like now."

“We just treated them like our own kids,” Joan Mahn says. “They were at such a vulnerable place.”

Anytime there was a job to do around the house, no matter how small, the brothers would ask to do it. When they received their work permits, John filled out dozens of job applications. After he’d taken the position at Colectivo, the couple would come to see him at work and he would tell coworkers, This is my mom and dad.

Before leaving for the night, John would clean the bathrooms and wash the floor. Michal got his job at the church coordinating worship and music for the student ministry. When the Mahns and their children gathered, John and Michal would tell them all, There is probably no other place we could have done this. You have the greatest country.

Tom Mahn watched the brothers establish themselves in their new land and he thought, “Isn’t this the American Dream?”

When the time came for them to move into an apartment, it took several days. John and Michal carried things out in stages. They wept and so did the Mahns.

In April, two letters arrived from the Department of Homeland Security. First came John’s. He had received asylum.

After two worrisome days, Michal’s letter arrived and the lawyer called him. Michal was driving at the time. He pulled over and started yelling. Then he said a prayer of thanks.

“God gave me this,” he says.

• • •

Since leaving Syria four years ago, the brothers have not seen their old house in Aleppo.

No one in the family has seen it, not since their father went back. Their neighborhood became a target for snipers and crews firing rockets from a nearby hill.

They still have friends living in Syria. Those who’ve survived have changed.

“It’s really sad but there are people in Syria who say you get used to the fear,” John says. “I asked a friend who lives in Damascus and he said, ‘You know, John, life feels normal.’ You get used to all the death and hearing about death. It means nothing anymore.”

• • •

On a warm fall night in October, Michal stood on stage at Eastbrook Church, singing and guiding the congregation through a song. He strummed the guitar his father rescued from Aleppo; John played bass with the other members of the church band.

The brothers and congregation sang:

“Everyone needs compassion

Love that’s never failing.”

“Come on, you know this song,” Michal said.”Let’s sing it.”

Back in the Middle East, their parents now lead a church and run a food pantry; the brothers prefer not to say where precisely.

Back in 2006, both parents applied for permanent resident cards to live in the U.S. They have not received a ruling.

The processing time for applications varies, based on the country of the applicant and the category of application. For some Syrians, the wait now stretches 13 years.

Michal and John imagine that their parents may one day come to live in the U.S., following the strong pull to be close to family.

As for themselves, the brothers no longer dream of a future in Syria. Both are taking classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. John is a freshman studying engineering; Michal, a junior studying business.

They live like many young Americans, hustling off to classes and texting friends. They still steer clear of talk about politics. Their apartment contains no television — by choice. It would be too easy to flip the channels and come upon images from Aleppo.

“I try to avoid seeing my destroyed city,” Michal says.

“Maybe the war shot the last bullet in your dream,” he adds, “but now you are given a new life and a new opportunity to thrive.”



How we reported this story

This story is based on multiple interviews with John and Michal Chabo, with two families who hosted them in Wisconsin and with a pastor at their church. The events the brothers described in Aleppo were checked against news reports and a chronology of Aleppo’s destruction. Some events, however, such as the May 2012 bombing at the University of Aleppo, received no news coverage at the time. Quotation marks in the story are used to indicate only quotes heard by the reporter or reported elsewhere in the media. Conversations that were remembered by the participants have been recorded without quotation marks. In a few places the story describes what people were thinking. In all such cases, the people described their thoughts at the time to the reporter.