TAMPA, Fla. -- Maybe it was the empty stomach, the lack of sleep. Or perhaps a hunger five years old.
But at the biggest moment of his young life, Mogtaba Mokhtar fainted. Through his haze he heard the caseworker call his name near a gate at Tampa's airport.
"Mogtaba, are you okay?"
She was trying to revive him.
"Look, Mogtaba," she said, breathless. "All your hard work has paid off."
She motioned to his sisters and father, who stood around the wheelchair, where they placed Mogtaba after he collapsed. Mogtaba, 23, had not seen them since he fled Sudan five years earlier, a scared teenager escaping, alone, to Tampa.
"Look what you have standing here," she said.
Mogtaba raised his head slowly and blinked. He stared for several seconds into each one of the faces of his sisters. They gazed down at him and smiled.
"Isn't this beautiful," he heard the caseworker say, "to have your dream come true?"
+ + +
In 1999, a thinner, younger Mogtaba looked in horror at a bulletin board on a wall.
Around him in the courtyard of Omdurman Islamic University in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, his classmates wept. The bulletin board normally held grades and party announcements. But on this day, Mogtaba saw a list of names. People drafted to fight in the country's bloody civil war.
One of the names was his.
He stood frozen in terror. The posting meant he had to report for duty at a military training camp near Khartoum. From there, the military sent young trainees south, to fight in a battle blamed for killing millions and displacing more.
Mogtaba and his friends didn't believe in the war, fought by mostly Muslim Arabs in the north against Christian black Africans in the south. Mogtaba was agnostic and African, not Arab. The military didn't care. It drafted anyone fit to fight.
Mogtaba had stayed out of politics and buried himself in his dentistry classes. University students usually got reprieves from service. He held tight to his student ID. He had seen soldiers chasing down boys in the street. Those they caught didn't come back. The week before, 500 had died fighting in the south.
The list he saw that day ended his reprieve. He had two weeks to turn himself in.
He raced home at 7 that night. His mother, a teacher, the anchor of his childhood who fostered his love of books, wept at the news. The train that passed every two days was due in at midnight, less than four hours. Boarding that train to Egypt was his only chance of escape.
"I have to go," he said. "I have to go somewhere to leave the country."
Mogtaba knew the stakes. His father, a former politician and policeman under an old regime, had been rousted from bed at midnight two years earlier by soldiers in the new government, jailed and tortured. He was released after a year and fled into exile in Ethiopia. His letters arrived through travelers and friends by clandestine hand delivery.
Mogtaba feared a similar fate, or worse, if caught.
Into his backpack he stuffed three T-shirts, his ID and a pair of shoes.
His decision endangered his family when soldiers came looking for him. He might not make it out. But war meant certain death.
His mother, six sisters and brother wrapped their arms around him. Everyone wept.
"I will see you guys again," Mogtaba promised, "but I don't know when."
+ + +
The train took two days to get to the Egyptian border. Every time it stopped along the way, Mogtaba got out and ran. He dared not sit on the train during the 20-minute lulls. Officials could think him suspicious and ask for his ID.
He ran to the next town, ahead of the train, a mile or two away, and joined the throngs rushing toward it. His feet swelling, he bolted from car to car as the train gathered speed, ahead of officials checking IDs.
At the border, trying to board a ferry to cross the Nile River for Egypt and freedom, Mogtaba spotted bags of cotton. He positioned himself in the middle of workers. To a ferry official waving at him, Mogtaba yelled, "I'm with them," and slipped onboard.
The ferry set out at night, in 30-degree temperatures. Mogtaba put on all his T-shirts, shivering as the ferry crossed the water, his second day with no sleep. His mind reeled with thoughts about his next steps, about his family.
"I have this picture. They got my mom and my siblings. They are in trouble," he said later.
After two days, the ferry docked. Mogtaba and the crowds streamed into Aswan, in southern Egypt. He knew of the Cairo refugee camps. He didn't know how he'd get there. He was broke.
He asked the officers at the railroad station if he could hitch a ride with the luggage.
"I come from Sudan. I just got here. I don't have anything," he told them.
One old man let him climb in. For the next 12 hours, rolling north to Cairo, he slept deeply. He was safe. But what about his family?
+ + +
Mogtaba walked the bustling streets of Cairo until he found the United Nations office. He applied as a refugee to be resettled in another country. Officials steered him to a refugee camp on the city's outskirts.
At the camp, he slept on the hard earthen floors amid thousands of refugees from Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda, packed in warehouse-type rooms. The air reeked of human sweat. Mosquitoes buzzed mercilessly. Even on sweltering summer nights, Mogtaba had to sleep under blankets to keep them away. Many refugees carried malaria.
He tried calling his family from phones in the city, but no one answered. After a month, he found under-the-table jobs in Cairo. Nine months after arriving, on his way to an appointment at the U.N. office, Mogtaba saw a man from his town waiting in line.
"Have you heard anything about my family?" Mogtaba asked.
The man, who arrived as a refugee, promised to call his parents, who had stayed behind.
A few weeks later, the man showed up at the camp, looking for Mogtaba. In his hand, he held a phone number. The man's parents had visited Mogtaba's old address. His family was gone. A neighbor said they had fled to Mogtaba's grandparents' home in the countryside. Here was their number.
Mogtaba was ecstatic. He saved money for two more weeks before he could afford the call. He took a bus to the city, to a food market with long-distance phone service. When the call went through, Mogtaba heard his mother's voice. She started to cry.
"I'm okay, I'm in Cairo," he told her. Everyone was safe, he learned. His mother. His siblings. His father in Ethiopia. He wanted to know so much: Did the soldiers hurt them? Take their home? But his time was up.
Mogtaba called again four days later.
After he left, guards had knocked on their door, looking for him, his mother told him.
The guards put guns to their heads. They arrived at midnight, and 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. They woke up everyone and searched the house repeatedly. They returned and dragged his mother and brother and sisters into cars and drove them around, tormenting them, threatening them.
His mother and siblings took whatever they could carry and fled to the grandparents' home in the countryside. Uncles and family friends gave them money and food. They couldn't work or go to school. Sometimes they sold pieces of furniture just to eat.
Clutching the phone, Mogtaba cried.
"This is my fault," he told her.
No, she said. He was safe. That's what mattered.
+ + +
The piece of paper read 4603 E Whiteway Drive, Tampa, Florida. His new address.
Two years after living in the camp, he was about to leave for a new home. After the United States gave approval, Lutheran Services Florida agreed to sponsor and resettle him through Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Mogtaba knew the geography of the United States, knew of Oprah, Madonna, the Terminator. But he'd never heard of Tampa.
"Nice weather, just like Sudan," a friend told him. "You're going to like it."
In Tampa, a Lutheran Services caseworker picked him up at the airport and brought him to his one-bedroom apartment near the University of South Florida. The agency found him a job at a warehouse. Mogtaba walked to work in the morning and then several miles to free English classes at night. He felt isolated, with no one to talk to. He spoke three languages -- Arabic, Swahili and Nubian -- but almost no English.
He was a vulnerable young man, curious and resourceful. When relaxed, a boyish laugh bubbled out of his cherubic face. Other times he stayed in his shell, observing, judging whom he could trust, who might make fun of his accent.
A few months later, Mogtaba called home, but no one answered. He tried several more times. Nothing.
"I'm afraid all the time," Mogtaba recalled later. "I'm afraid something bad happened."
+ + +
One day a friend from the camp in Cairo called his Tampa home. The friend had some interesting news.
"Your family is here," he told Mogtaba.
To prove it, the friend rattled off the names of Mogtaba's siblings. Through him, Mogtaba was able to call his family at a Cairo market. His mother could not stop crying.
The whole family was there, including his father, who had arranged through letters for the family to meet in Cairo. Mogtaba had missed them by a few weeks. He was crushed.
"We're glad you're there," the family told him.
Mogtaba now worked and studied full-time, a student at Hillsborough Community College with grants and student loans. He still dreamed of becoming a dentist.
Mogtaba taught himself how to drive by watching friends. He got a license and bought a beat-up 1991 Toyota. He started a job at Chili's at Tampa International Airport.
Mogtaba's growing number of friends invited him to parties or their families' homes for holidays. Mostly, he said no. He had to work or study.
He switched to a better-paying job at an airport convenience store, sending $500 to $800 a month to his family in Cairo, sometimes up to three-fourths of his salary. He lived paycheck to paycheck, with only enough left for his rent, bills and food.
His money paid the rent on a house so they didn't have to live in the camp, and tuition for his siblings to go back to school.
"I feel guilty sometimes, even though I know it's not my fault," he said. "That's why I work really hard and try to send them money and help them feel a little happy and a little alive."
He obtained a green card, permanent residency, and applied to sponsor his family.
"How are we going to recognize you at the airport?" his sisters teased when he called.
In August, nearly fluent in English, Mogtaba started at the University of South Florida in predentistry science classes. The workload was harder. He still pulled a full-time shift at his job. The ladies in the school cafeteria, who'd taken a liking to the sweet young man who always stopped to talk, started to worry. He was exhausted and depressed as November turned to December, with still no word on his family's arrival.
"Are you okay, Mogtaba? You don't look so good," the women asked. "You're working too hard."
"I don't have a choice," he told them.
+ + +
Mogtaba was in chemistry lab when the call came on Valentine's Day from Lutheran Services. The family was coming.
After five years of waiting -- seven years since he'd seen his father -- Mogtaba worried if he'd have enough time to get ready. The date was March 9. But he had to move out, find a bigger place. He couldn't fit them all in his one-bedroom apartment.
First to come would be his father and three sisters. Months later, perhaps this spring, his mother and remaining siblings would join them. His mother, still protective, decided they would not overwhelm him financially by arriving all at once.
Even for half the family, he needed beds, sofas and tables. And midterms approached.
Still, Mogtaba was elated.
"I won't believe it's true until I see them," he said.
He moved by himself on March 1 to a two-bedroom apartment near Busch Gardens.
March 9 dawned a dreary, drizzling day. He did his best to decorate the apartment. The sisters' room had three mattresses draped in blue bedding on the floor awaiting new bed frames. Ceramic art colored the wall. Red and yellow silk tulips sprang from a vase on the nightstand.
He was too nervous to eat; he downed only an orange soda. He was too nervous to drive; he rode with a friend to the airport about 2 p.m., 45 minutes before the plane was due.
With his airport ID clipped to his sweatshirt, Mogtaba jumped out of the car at the curb, rushed through the throngs of travelers, through security and to the gate in Airside F where United Flight 1572 was expected. He stood there, his trademark smile replaced by a wide-eyed stare.
United Airlines manager John Dahl had heard about Mogtaba and approached.
"If there's anything I can do for you," he said, "let me know."
"Can I go down there, to the plane?" he asked. "Please?"
Dahl swung open the door to the jetway. He waved to Mogtaba, who quickly followed.
Near the plane's door, airport workers waited with wheelchairs.
"Is one of those for me?" Mogtaba joked. "I might need it."
+ + +
Mogtaba doesn't remember the moment his father stepped into view -- maybe because seconds later, as the two men embraced, Mogtaba fainted in his father's arms.
His father, Maki Mokhtar, eased Mogtaba into one of the wheelchairs. His sisters -- ages 20, 19 and 17 -- dressed in pantsuits, scarves and leather coats, gasped as they stepped off the plane and saw their brother out cold. Fellow passengers pulling luggage and toting babies squeezed around the small gathering.
An airport worker wheeled Mogtaba into the terminal as a Lutheran Services official ran to buy a soda and a turkey sandwich.
"Mogtaba, are you okay?" the caseworker, Amalia Rivera, asked, while his sisters wiped tears from their eyes.
As Mogtaba woke up, his sisters crowded closer. He blinked and smiled as their faces came into focus. The young women wrapped their arms around him and laughed.
Feeling stronger, Mogtaba stood up, took a few steps and hugged his father again, this time shaking his hand.
The last time he'd seen his father, Mogtaba was a boy, 16 years old. Now he was a man.
And he had cleared a path to a new life for his family.
Times researcher Cathy Wos and photographer Melissa Lyttle contributed to this report.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The story of Mogtaba Mokhtar's travels was based on interviews with him. Lutheran Services Florida, which resettled him, said that U.S. officials overseas conduct background checks to verify the stories of all refugees before Lutheran Services receives them. A St. Petersburg Times reporter and/or photographer witnessed Mogtaba in classes at Hillsborough Community College and the day his family arrived, from his apartment to the gate at the airport.
THE STRUGGLE FOR SUDAN
Sudan has suffered two major conflicts. One is the battle in the western region of Darfur, where the United Nations and human rights groups accuse the government of arming and supporting militiamen, called the Janjaweed, to crush a rebellion. The Bush administration and Congress have said the widespread deaths there -- reported to be more than 180,000 -- amounted to genocide.
The story of Mogtaba Mokhtar, 23, is connected to Sudan's other conflict, its civil war, which raged almost as long as he has been alive.
But on Jan. 9, the Islamist government of Sudan signed a peace accord with the Christian rebel group in the south. The two-decade civil war, which pitted the Islamic government against rebels based in the mostly animist and Christian south, left 2-million people dead. Under the accord, which was backed by the Bush administration, the south will have a six-year period of self-rule, then vote on whether to remain part of Sudan.
The devastation in the south forced about 26,000 Sudanese boys to flee their villages and walk as many as 1,000 miles on foot to a refugee camp in Kenya. Only about 10,000 to 12,000 survived. In the late 1990s, the U.S. government agreed to relocate 4,000 of the young men, dubbed the Lost Boys. Dozens were brought to Pasco County.
But Mogtaba was not among them. He was from the north, and had he not fled his country, he may have been a government soldier storming villages in the south.
Though the plight of the Lost Boys has become the subject of numerous newspaper stories, at least one book, plays and a comic book series, little has been written about people like Mogtaba.
-- SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Sources: New York Times, Washington Post and wire services.
Photos:
Mogtaba Mokhtar, overwhelmed by emotion and exhaustion, passes out after being reunited March 9 with his father and three sisters at Tampa International Airport. "I won't believe it's true until I see them," he had said. His sisters, from left, Nusuba, 17; Najla, 20; and Safa, 19, tend to him after he was helped into a wheelchair.
USF student Mogtaba Mokhtar, 23, sits alone in the empty living room of his two-bedroom apartment near Busch Gardens in Tampa.
Mogtaba, who lives in Tampa, prepared for the day he would be reunited with his family. He works full-time and attends USF.
Mogtaba hugs his father, Maki. Seconds later, Mogtaba fainted in his father's arms.
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