Hazim Afdal

Really good article here:

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I've just found a really good article bout Hazim Avdal in a German news magazine. Since I cannot open the Chicago Tribune article (there's a note that their website uscurrently unavailable in most European countries), I don't know if it's the same article. Before translating it, could you check for me if it starts:

"The only things for Hazim Avdal which were left from his native country Iraq, are a few fade color photos. He sticked them on a bookshelf above his desk; room 606, International House, a dormitory in the south of Chicago, his home for one year. He kindly asks visitors to remove their shoes.
The pictures show Hazim Avdal arm in arm with his mother, laughing with his brother. They are remains of those happy days before the fighters of ISIS attacked his village and killed so many of them. His family survived. Avdal calls it a "miracle"."

The article describes his life before the attack, that he wasn't able to go to university because Al-Qaida threatened Yezidis with death who went to university, how he and his family survived the attack, how he started a data bank and registred every attack and crime he was told. How he met George, Amal and his parents and how they helped him.

Could you please check this for me? Because if that's not the content of the Chicago Tribune article, I would translate it cor you.

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[size=54]George and Amal Clooney sponsor an Iraqi refugee attending U. of C.[/size]



David Letterman, left, chats with George Clooney's dad, Nick, and University of Chicago student Hazim Avdal, right, for an episode of “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" that premiered Friday on Netflix. (Joe Pugliese / Netflix)

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Tracy Swartz[email=tswartz@tribpub.com?subject=Regarding:%20%27George%20and%20Amal%20Clooney%20sponsor%20an%20Iraqi%20refugee%20attending%20U.%20of%20C.%27]Contact Reporter[/email]Chicago Tribune

University of Chicago computer science student Hazim Avdal was too busy with schoolwork to watch his interview with David Letterman when it premiered Friday morning. Avdal sat down with the veteran talk show host to explain how he left Iraq after the Islamic State targeted his hometown and received support from George and Amal Clooney to continue his studies in Chicago.
Avdal’s appearance on the new Netflix series “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” was part of a wide-ranging interview Letterman conducted with George Clooney about his career, his marriage to Amal, their 8-month-old twins and their sponsorship of Avdal, who moved to Chicago in September.
“I’m hoping that through this Letterman show that (my classmates and friends) will be more aware of the things that happened back in Iraq,” Avdal told the Tribune.
Avdal, 23, grew up as part of the Yazidi religious minority in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. He graduated high school in 2013 and was accepted to the University of Mosul but was unable to begin his studies because al-Qaeda violence against Yazidis made Mosul unsafe. In 2014, the Islamic State, or ISIS, began the Yazidi genocide.

Thousands of Yazidis were massacred or kidnapped. Women were turned into sex slaves, while children were separated from their families and forced to convert to Islam.
Avdal told the Tribune he was working about six hours from his hometown when the attacks began. He said his family escaped just minutes before ISIS arrived. They went to a refugee camp in Turkey. His mother now lives in Germany, while other relatives are still in Iraq. Avdal’s father died when he was a young boy.
Avdal ended up working in Iraq for Yazda, an organization devoted to supporting the Yazidi community in the aftermath of the genocide. A self-taught programmer, Avdal designed and programmed database management software that helped the organization manage its clients — hundreds of Yazidi women rescued from sexual enslavement.
It is through this organization that Avdal connected with Amal Clooney, an international human-rights lawyer who represents Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who survived enslavement. Avdal said he met Clooney at a ceremony for Murad when she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations in September 2016.

“I’ve had the privilege of representing a number of Yazidis who have been the victims of genocide perpetrated by ISIS over the last couple of years; that’s how I met Hazim,” Amal Clooney told Letterman on his show. “And when I met him, I remember being so struck by his courage but also just this amazing spirit and how he spoke about, even after everything he lost, he spoke about a desire for justice, not revenge.”
Avdal also met Matthew Barber, a University of Chicago doctoral student focused on Islamic thought and Syrian and Iraqi history. Barber, the former executive director for Yazda in Iraq, talked up the University of Chicago to Avdal while they worked together for a year. Barber, meanwhile, worked behind the scenes with George Clooney to try to get Avdal into the school.


Yazidi refugee Hazim Avdal, left, is pictured on the day in May 2017 he found out he was admitted to the University of Chicago. (Courtesy of Matthew Barber / Handout)

“I was really impressed with his character and his work ethic when I was there, but also his intelligence,” Barber told the Tribune. “Iraq has a standardized high school examination that’s given to all graduating seniors from high school. … The year that Hazim graduated from high school, he was the seventh-highest-scoring student in the whole country of Iraq.”
Avdal found out he was accepted to the University of Chicago in May 2017 during a visit to the admissions office. Barber said Avdal buried his face in his hands and couldn’t speak for several minutes.
Barber and one of George Clooney’s cousins helped move Avdal into his dorm in September before he began classes. During breaks and holidays, Avdal stays at Clooney’s home near the Oscar winner’s parents in their hometown of Augusta, Ky. Avdal gave Letterman a tour of the home for his show.
Avdal has mixed feelings about appearing on Letterman’s show since it will affect his anonymity. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published in September, George Clooney mentioned he and Amal took in a Yazidi refugee who was attending the University of Chicago, but Avdal was not named.
“I want people to know about what’s happening in other parts of the world, particularly in my experience, what happened in my part of the world,” Avdal told the Tribune. “On the other hand, I also want to live my life as a student here at the University of Chicago, just quiet and have my own privacy. So it’s like a trade-off. I will have to find a way to make a balance after (Letterman’s) show comes out.”
Avdal is too busy with his studies to think about potential fame. He plans to graduate with the class of 2021 and do “something meaningful” that would make a difference in Iraq. Barber said thousands of Yazidis whose homes and villages were destroyed by ISIS are still waiting for reconstruction support, while survivors of the genocide and enslavement are trying to put their lives back together.
Avdal is also still settling into his new life in Chicago.
“It’s a big city. I’m a small-town boy. This kind of environment is kind of new to me. The weather is crazy cold. Where I grew up it was warmer and more quiet,” Avdal said. “It was a little bit hard at the beginning, but now I love it.”

Thanks Annemarie - I couldn't read it either, they're probably not signed up to GDPR yet. But I've found a Chicago University video of him talking about everything....

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Thanks, PAN. G&A couldn't have found anyone better to sponsor. He is so articulate and intelligent, it's no wonder they were impressed by him. I wish he wanted to stay here and help make this country better, but I fully understand why his focus is on his homeland. Maybe he'll add international law to his computer science studies and continue Amal's fight.

Titbit-wise, this is interesting - and very sweet

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party animal - not! wrote:Titbit-wise, this is interesting - and very sweet

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Love George's gesture...........

As?

Ah. You can't have watched the last video, IM.............

Caressing beard ?

Watch the whole thing, IM and listen to him saying in the interview how George helped him...

George is a sweetie as we all know and very caring.

I have such admiration for Hazim.  He is a brave and smart young man with a bright future.  He will do good things!

George’s  generous gesture to stay with Hazim for a few days to help Hazim feel at home in this strange new country seems typical of the empathy George feels for others.  I think he has that quality of knowing what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

Oh my God
Yes
I literally translated

Was
Welcoming Haz
Took a flight
Slept two night on his couch

Right?

Donnamarie wrote:
 I think he has that quality of knowing what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

I would really like to know

Donnamarie wrote:I have such admiration for Hazim. 

So do I, Donna! I have  recently read Nadia Murad's book and was so struck by her courage and how she decided to fight instead of giving up. Hazim is the same. Knowing that you're hated by others simply because of your different religion (or skin color, gender, nationality,...) meaning that they see it as their right to kill you - and knowing that the whole world knows about it and still doesn't help you and still believing in people...

I also have to admit that I alwyys had mixed feelings about the Yazidis in my hometown - a very close community, not allowing their kids to leave it or to marry outside their community / religion. Having read Nadia's book taught me a lot about it, and I do understand it much better now.

You've got it, IM! What a lovely unselfish man he is........and even left work to go (in LA or NYC I imagine)to go and help

Yes, Carol, that's my impression of the Yazidis too, but I'm not surprised given the amount of persecution they've gone through over the centuries

Thank you

It’s me, sorry I wasn’t on here earlier to answer your question.  Thanks to PAN!  Yes, you got the translation just right!  

Carol, I haven’t read Nadia’s book.  I can imagine as inspiring as her story must be it must be equally horrifying to read her account of what happened to her and her family after being taken captive by ICIS.

Thank you too