I’ve seen this face before. So have you. It is the face of war and deportation, hard work and separation, loss and survival.
On this particular day, it belongs to Narguzel “Babushka” Safarova.
Her face wreathed with wrinkles, her eyes a filmy blue, Safarova, 94, arrived here in June from Russia following a lifetime of upheaval.
“For the first time in our life, it’s like we belong,” says Babushka’s daughter-in-law, Mekhribon Safarova, 55, speaking through an interpreter.
The two women share a small Midtown apartment with Mekhribon’s two sons, Rashid and Yusuf; daughter-in-law, Safiya; and Rashid and Safiya’s young daughters, Maral and Farida.
“The extended families all live together this way,” says Janell Mousseau, program coordinator of the Tucson Refugee Resettlement Program for Lutheran Social Ministry of the Southwest, which is helping the family.
“They are one of the first families in Tucson. We expect several hundred,” says Mousseau.
The Safarovs — males do not use an “a” at the end of their names — are Meskhetian Turks. Originally living in southwest Georgia, more than 100,000 of these Turks were deported to Uzbekistan in 1944 on the orders of Josef Stalin.
Many died of starvation or cold on the way.
In 1989, an outbreak of ethnic violence forced yet another uprooting, with the Meskhetians scattered across Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The Safarov family wound up near Moscow. Only Babushka remembers life in Georgia.
Her husband was in the Army when she and two children were deported to Uzbekistan on a freight train. “It took 23 days to get there,” she says.
Life was hard for Babushka, long a widow, who was forced to work in the cotton fields.
Though the family lived in Uzbekistan for almost 50 years, they never felt it was home.
In 1989, they were uprooted again, this time to the first of several villages ringing Moscow. Home initially was a one-room apartment for five families.
Mekhribon, by then a widow herself, worked side by side with her mother-in-law in the fields, as well as the local granary.
“The Russians did not like that we were there,” says Mekhribon. The family lived under one roof, keeping old traditions and worshipping as Muslims.
They did not make the decision to come to America. America did.
“Like the Somali Bantu, the USA identified a particular group of people who had endured long-standing persecution,” says Mousseau, who estimates 15,000 will eventually settle in America. “They had no place they could call home.”
Even so, the family was unhappy to learn they were moving yet again. To them, it was another forced deportation.
It got no better when they learned they were coming to Tucson. “We thought we would be left out in the desert,” says Mekhribon.
Instead, they were met at the airport, settled into an apartment and initally helped with assistance from the state’s Department of Economic Security.
Today, Babushka, Mekhribon and Yusuf, who is disabled, receive SSI federal income supplements, while Rashid, who works full time in the houskeeping department at the Westin La Paloma, supports his family.
Safiya is also taking English classes.
A few other members of the family have also settled in Tucson. Still others remain in Russia. Even so, no one longs for their former “home.”
“I don’t ever think about it,” says Babushka with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“We have no plans to go anywhere else,” says Mekhribon.
“It’s so amazing to go out and people smile and wave and say, ‘Hi,’ to us. That was never done before.”
Opinion by Bonnie Henry
Arizona Daily Star
Dec 16, 2005
Source: http://tucson.com/news/local/bonnie-henry-lifetime-of-turmoil-comes-to-an-end-at/article_a89de413-be50-5503-8154-da1585dace2d.html