Descendant of Holocaust survivors forms friendship with Muslim refugee and shows ‘what’s possible in the world’
The friendship between the two women was unlikely in so many ways.
One is a devout Muslim who fled religious persecution in Myanmar, arriving in Chicago last year as a pregnant refugee. The other is a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors.
Their deep connection was born of parallel legacies of oppression, immigration and resilience. Then it was strengthened by calamity during an emergency labor and perilous delivery.
Now that bond continues to flourish — even as violence recently raged thousands of miles away in the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war, which has sparked a horrific surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia locally as well as across the globe.
Nurzan Binti Zahid Hussin and Jessica Littmann shared their story with the Tribune last year, as Nurzan’s family celebrated their first Thanksgiving meal in the United States with Jessica’s family in their Evanston home, taking their first bites of turkey, pumpkin pie and other traditional dishes.
Jessica served as a co-sponsor for the refugee family in early 2022, motivated in part by her late grandmother’s survival of a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Germany during World War II and subsequent resettlement as a refugee in the United States.
Dark stories from the Holocaust — contrasted by bright accounts of support and renewal in America — had laced so much of Jessica’s childhood. Yet the 48-year-old mother of three was still unsure of what to expect as she embarked on the journey of welcoming a family of strangers with such a disparate culture, religion and language.
Jessica never anticipated how close she would become with the family, 27-year-old Nurzan in particular. And neither of the women could have predicted that Jessica would be the one by Nurzan’s side as she went into labor early, helping usher into the world her now-17-month-old son Aiman, the first American citizen born to the refugee family.
Jessica met Nurzan at O’Hare International Airport in April 2022, when she arrived with her husband and three sons following a 24-hour flight across the globe.
The family are refugees from Rohingya, a stateless persecuted ethnic minority group from Myanmar, which is in Southeast Asia. More than a million Rohingya people have escaped violence and discrimination there since the 1990s. Nurzan and her husband, Hussin Johar Bin Dil Mohamad — who goes by Johar — fled Myanmar years ago and had been living as refugees in Malaysia before they were approved for resettlement in the United States.
After leaving the airport, the husband, wife and their three boys — Afnan, now 10, and twins Aaryan and Aariz, now 7 — piled into Jessica’s Subaru for a roughly 10-mile ride to their new home on Devon Avenue.
Their small apartment rests on a strip of Chicago lined with a mix of synagogues and mosques, kosher restaurants and halal cafes. Signs in Arabic and Hebrew dot the neighborhood.
One thing Jessica loves about living in the Chicago area is “how many different people come together and from different places, different traditions, different customs, different ways of living.”
That’s especially true along Nurzan’s street, which feels in many ways like a microcosm of the Middle East. Yet Jessica has sensed a shift in this spirit of multiculturalism and acceptance over the last few weeks, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 and thrust the region into a bloody war. Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on a temporary cease-fire agreement that is expected to start Friday.
“I love coming out to Devon and seeing everybody in the same area. Since this happened in the Middle East, I feel like people are retreating to their own tribes, kind of,” Jessica said. “And I hate to see that happen.”
Typically, Nurzan and Jessica see one another about two times a week. Some days Jessica helps Nurzan learn English. Some days they take the boys on trips to the zoo, Chicago Botanic Garden and local parks.
Nurzan is Jessica’s first Muslim friend.
Jessica is Nurzan’s first Jewish friend.
“My friendship with Nurzan shows me what’s possible in the world when we’re just person to person … it’s not about politics, it’s not about religion,” Jessica said on a recent weekday at Nurzan’s home. “This for me has been one of the really great blessings in my life, to have the opportunity to have this friendship that helps us overcome so many different boundaries.”
‘Surprised that happened here’
Nurzan’s apartment is decorated with so many bouquets of artificial flowers, the living room feels a bit like a garden.
The boys’ artwork and a list of English sight words decorate the walls. A plaque with a prayer from the Quran written in Arabic hangs overhead.
“It’s about keeping evil away from the house,” Nurzan explained, through an interpreter.
In Jessica’s home, a mezuzah — which contains sacred prayers of Judaism written on parchment in a small case — is affixed to every doorjamb.
Since coming to Chicago, Nurzan says she is “the happiest that I have been in my life.”
On Jan. 1, she celebrated her birthday for the first time in her 27 years; Jessica brought a chocolate cake and they have video of Nurzan smiling and blowing out the candles. She doesn’t know her real birthday; New Year’s Day was the date assigned by immigration officials, a common birth date used for refugees with no access to documents or knowledge of their true date of birth.
Jahar found a job shortly after their arrival. He attends a nearby mosque and the family often goes to the Rohingya Culture Center, which is across the street. Nurzan plans to start English classes in January.
In her native Myanmar, she explained that Rohingya families fear violence including forced evictions and the burning of their homes. She worries for her mother and father there, though she’s able to speak with them online about once a week.
She’s grateful her three older sons are allowed to go to school here. When she lived in Myanmar, she said, most Rohingya children were barred from attending school.
At the family’s kitchen table, the older three boys play the board game Guess Who?, asking one another questions in English about their mystery person’s hair color and gender. There are occasional accusations of cheating, also in English.
At one point, Aaryan draws a picture of himself and his family smiling at Lake Michigan, under white fluffy clouds and a bright sun.
“The one main thing is that I can give my kids an education,” Nurzan said. “The rest, I can’t describe how happy I am and how thankful I am.”
But she said her sense of safety here was punctured last month when she heard of news of the high-profile slaying of a local Muslim child.
Six-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume was stabbed to death and his mother was wounded in the attack at in Plainfield Township. The family’s landlord pleaded not guilty to murder, hate crime and other charges in connection to the attack; prosecutors have said the landlord was motivated by hearing conservative talk radio discussion of the war between Israel and Hamas.
“I was very surprised that happened here,” Nurzan said.
The attack — which was condemned by local officials as well as President Joe Biden — came amid a spike in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment around the country spurred by the war overseas. Antisemitic violence and rhetoric has soared internationally and across the United States since the war began, with the Anti-Defamation League tracking more than 300 antisemitic incidents in just over two weeks following the attack, a 388% increase over the same period last year.
Nurzan, who wears a niqab in public and is easily identified as Muslim, said she’s been more cautious lately and worries more about the safety of her kids.
“I’m very afraid now,” she said. “I used to go out before and go to the store, but now I’m not going out as much as I used to go because of what is going on in the world.”
Side by side
Aiman, the baby, plays with blocks on the floor, occasionally trying to remove the Velcro straps from his blue and red Marvel sneakers.
He recently learned to run, so Nurzan and Jessica take turns running interference when he takes off or tries to climb too high on the furniture.
The two women barely knew one another before Aiman’s precarious entrance in the world about 18 months ago. Shortly after Nurzan’s arrival in Chicago, she was diagnosed with high blood pressure, a dangerous condition during pregnancy.
She went into emergency labor due to preeclampsia at Swedish Hospital, but her husband needed to stay home because he didn’t want to leave their young sons alone.
It was Jessica who stayed with Nurzan during the labor and delivery, although they had only known one another for a few weeks.
In the hospital room, Jessica held Nurzan’s hand as she labored.
Nurzan prayed aloud to Allah to help her and ease the pain. In her head, Jessica recited the Shehecheyanu blessing, a Jewish prayer for new beginnings.
On May 27, 2022, at about 4 a.m., Jessica watched as the healthy baby boy crowned and took his first breaths, emerging with a full head of thick dark hair.
The physician handed Jessica a pair of scissors, and she cut the umbilical cord and cried tears of joy.
“I did feel this tremendous sense of renewal,” she recalled. “It made me feel so much hope for her future here and this baby, being born an American.”
Jessica and her husband served as co-sponsors for the Dil Mohamad family along with two other local couples, through RefugeeOne, a Chicago resettlement agency. Together, they set up an online fundraising campaign to help the newly arrived family pay rent and household bills until they became more independent.
The co-sponsors also cleaned and furnished the family’s apartment before their arrival and helped them acclimate to their new city.
RefugeeOne officials say they’re in dire need of more co-sponsors due to a sharp rise in new arrivals: Last year, the agency assisted 400 individuals, compared with 650 this year.
Refugees typically undergo an arduous and lengthy process before they’re admitted to the United States, including security screening and background checks, according to immigration officials.
“Many families arrive through RefugeeOne each month without friends or family, and co-sponsors’ friendship and support can ensure a warm welcome and a strong start to life in the U.S.,” said Kelli Wendt, RefugeeOne community engagement manager. “With increasing arrivals and limited co-sponsors, we’re actively looking for new teams to welcome families in 2024.”
After Aiman’s birth, Nurzan gave Jessica a gold ring, held together in the back with tape, which she had brought from Malaysia. Jessica wears it on her right hand.
“As a sister and as a friend, I gave her a ring as a gift,” Nurzan said.
Nurzan said she doesn’t watch the news much, but she’s aware of the Israel-Hamas war.
She and her husband tell her older sons “to pray to God for the Muslims in the Middle East so that God will help them.”
She says she doesn’t know why people there can’t coexist in peace.
“But it’s not strange for me to be friends with Jessica,” she said.
Israel has always been an important place to Jessica and her family.
“Just knowing that it’s there, that it’s a safe haven, has always been a source of security and has brought us a lot of peace,” Jessica said. “It is the dream of returning to a homeland where there has always been this connection. That other people feel this connection too, to the same little piece of land, was never controversial. … The land has a deep meaning for a lot of different people.”
She hopes one day there will be peace in the Middle East.
“I would love to see Muslims and Jews living side by side. I think it’s entirely possible,” she said. “Moving beyond that is going to take a lot of interpersonal friendships and relationships and a lot of rebuilding. But I think it’s in everyone’s interest to make it work.”
