One More Mountain

by Mansur Nurdel
with Jeannette Moninger

“I was twenty-five in 1988 when I escaped my homeland with two of my closest friends. We fled illegally in the height of winter, with the help of Kurdish smugglers, traversing on foot over a forbidding, snowy, mountainous landscape. After weeks of struggle and moments where I felt certain we would all perish, I reached the safety of the United Nations refugee center in Ankara, Turkey. There, I was granted asylum from religious persecution. It would be more than a year before I arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, speaking little English, knowing no one, and understanding little about American culture except what I gleaned from television.”