Syrian Refugees in Iowa: Their First American Summer
Hate, Hope and Swimming Lessons An American Summer With the First Syrians in Iowa Abdul Fattah Tameem and his family enjoy the pool on a hot summer day at the family's new apartment complex in West Des Moines , a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa." width="1520" height="1014" /> Abdul Fattah Tameem and his family enjoy the pool at the family’s new apartment complex in West Des Moines . By ROBIN SHULMAN | Photographs by DANNY WILCOX FRAZIER —VII for TIME Just over a year ago, Ghazweh Aljabooli and her husband and five children landed at the Des Moines airport and became the first refugees from Syria’s ongoing civil war to settle in Iowa . In their first summer in America, each step felt momentous . The first shopping trip to Walmart, the kids playing in a pool and taking the bus to school, all put the horrors of war further behind them—the years without sufficient food, the bombs that destroyed their house and ruined their city of Homs, the month they cam...