Iraqis finding a haven in Sweden-thousands

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-refugees19may19,1,7962382.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Iraqis finding a haven in Sweden
The Nordic country has taken in thousands of the refugees. But 'life is so upside down,' one of them laments.

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writer
May 19, 2007

UPPSALA, SWEDEN — The words are strange here, the air is cold, and the girls give their hearts so easily away. The fruit is less sweet too, the winter ice thick, and the thrum of bicycles makes an odd music across the cobblestones.

Mariam Lutfi attends to these unaccustomed rhythms. There are many like her. They're easily spotted around town, nodding to one another, stopping to talk in their native tongue while carrying notebooks scribbled with a foreign alphabet that has too many sounds for the letter G. The call to prayer doesn't warble across the chimneys, the meat isn't slaughtered according to Islamic tradition, and finding a glass of strong tea is difficult amid the clatter of lattes and espressos.
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Leaving families and unrelenting sectarian violence behind, they are photographed and fingerprinted, their lives slipped into folders too slim to hold all that's been endured. They wonder about reinvention. They wrestle with the mundane and the epic, sharing tips on where to get a cheap dress and how to find the Turkish vendor at the edge of town whose vegetables are nearly fresh and not too expensive.

"We have safety and freedom here, but our tradition differs so much from the Swedes'," said Amer Mazin, a Palestinian born in Baghdad, who paid a smuggler $13,500 and arrived here in December. "From my balcony, I can see into other balconies. I see a man in an apartment living by himself, and on the balcony next to his a woman is living by herself. They don't believe in marriage like we do, they don't believe in family. My language teacher tells me he has a dog and doesn't need a child. It seems strange."