Former military translator put life on line before moving to Nashville

When Mohammed Berwari realized the job was across the Davidson County line, he began to fret. His navigation app led him to a church, where two men stood outside watching him approach.

He'd come to clean the carpet.

"First they asked me, 'Where you from?' " Berwari said. "No hi. No nothing."

"I told them, 'I'm Kurdish. I'm from Iraq.' " 

And then one of the men asked, "Are you a Muslim?" 

Berwari moved to Nashville in 2012 after working with the U.S. military made him a target. The job at Stanley Steemer was one of his first in the U.S. And yes, he is Muslim.

He noticed the man who spoke was wearing a Gulf War veteran hat, so he told the man of his service as a translator on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The two eventually bonded over their shared experience.

"Racism is everywhere," he said. "But I like everyone. It's all about how you talk to people."

Berwari speaks English, Arabic and Kurdish. U.S. Army Maj. Adam Taliaferro, then a commander with the 82nd Airborne Division, recalled nights when Berwari would work well past the hours he was contracted to translate documents at a military base in Iraq.

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Taliaferro is currently stationed at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and studied economics at Middle Tennessee State University. 

"We were doing this microgrant program where we do these small loans to get businesses started," Taliaferro said. "Mohammed translated them all (from Kurdish) to Arabic and then again to English."

The business loans helped local Iraqis get on their feet financially, so they wouldn't be forced to turn to terrorist groups as the only other option for work. Taliaferro and Berwari were giving families a way out.

"Where his interpreter peers were sleeping or going on leave and seeing their families, he was working," Taliaferro said.

Taliaferro was Berwari's main sponsor, and the two are still friends. They met after Berwari spent six months working with another unit in Badoush Prison, outside Mosul. He would spend three days back at the military base and four days helping soldiers guard high-value prisoners. 

Back then, the name patch on his Army fatigues read "Pasha," to protect himself and his family from those unhappy about his work with the U.S.

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When Taliaferro's unit rotated in, Berwari went to work with them to ensure the Iraqi-Syrian border remained secure, a much more dangerous job.

"His job was just to translate for me, but I leaned on him almost like a political adviser," Taliaferro said. "I trusted him with my life."

When Taliaferro had to meet with local leaders, Berwari was by his side. And when they patrolled the open border, he came along, too. 

"The 82nd Airborne — excuse my language — are badass," Berwari said. "We had a lot of bad times." 

They set up a post in a grain silo in Rabia, a city near the northern Syrian border, where they had frequent run-ins with vehicle blasts and suicide bombers.

"These guys put their lives on the line. As a leader, I have to be at the front, but I’m counting on him to be there by my side," Taliaferro said. "I couldn’t have done it without him."

Berwari remembers a translator friend who'd worked hard and received a visa to come to the U.S. Three days before what would have been his last day as a linguist, he was killed in an explosive roadside attack in Mosul.

"He was just like me," Berwari said. "It happened to us a lot of times." 

After a year of working for the Army, Berwari applied for a visa along with his wife. After a couple of years undergoing a vetting process, they stepped off a plane in Nashville on June 13, 2012.

"I started a new life," he said. "Life here is not that hard, like a lot of people say. It's just that you've got to find what you want to do. I started as a janitor at the YMCA, and now I'm an assistant manager at Taco Bell. I have a salary." 

His wife cares for their baby son and is busy planning to start college. She wants to be a pharmacist.  

Like other Nashville Kurds, he loves the city. He said he appreciates attending Kurdish celebrations and visiting the many shops where he can buy traditional Kurdish flat bread. 

Despite recent rounds of anti-Muslim rhetoric, Berwari said he tries to keep an open mind. He worries that people don't know how to talk to each other anymore.

"Well, it's all just opinion," he likes to tell people at the end of an argument. "At the end of the day, we are all brothers and sisters."  

Earlier this year, Berwari got his green card. Taliaferro calls him the "personification of the American dream."