An Iraqi Dental Surgeon and Refugee Finds Home in Chicago

This article was originally published by Refugees International.

On an average day, Dr. Raed Ayoub treats between 20 and 30 people at his dental clinic in Chicago. When he lived in Iraq, he used to see twice as many patients.

“I worked through different civil wars. I used to walk between the dead bodies,” he explained.

Now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, his commute consists of a lonely drive on empty highways to his dental practice in Chicago’s suburbs.

Raed is a 39-year-old single father of two young sons. He is a dentist providing emergency care to patients who need him during a global crisis. He is also a refugee.

By 2015, Iraq was embroiled in civil war and Raed’s home in Mosul was under the control of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS).

Wanting safety and security for his family, Raed applied for resettlement in the United States. Fortunately, he and his children were approved quickly. But like many refugees leaving the lives they had worked hard to build, Raed was worried about providing for his family and starting over in a new country.

“…Starting from Baghdad, to Jordan, then to Chicago, all the way I [was] thinking and I [was] looking [at] my kids: can I support them?” Raed said. “Can I do it or not?”

In Iraq, Raed was a surgeon and dean of a faculty of dentistry. In the United States, he had to start over. Since his qualifications were not valid in the United States, at age 35, Raed went back to school to get his dental degree and began rebuilding his life.

Continue reading this article here.