I will follow anyone and thank everyone who tries to make a difference in the lives of vulnerable civilians. ~ Widad Akrawi, Kurdish health expert and human rights activist, Founder, "Save The Yazidis: The World Has To Act Now"

It was an early May afternoon, Hasan Khalil was busy in his hair salon attending to a client from Nebraska City. He has many people visiting him from nearby towns and cities.

Hasan started his venture Golden Scissor, a barbershop and nail salon, at Holdrege, Lincoln, in 2014. But before coming to the Midwest, he had a long journey that started in the Middle East — specifically, Iraq. Hasan Khalil was one of the many persecuted Yazidis.

In the mid-1990s, when he was 14 years old, Hasan’s family took refuge in Virginia and later in Buffalo, New York. From the wide-open farm fields to crowded multi-generational households, from a close-knit community to only a few known faces, like many Yazidi refugees in top-tier American cities, Hasan hasn’t yet found his way through isolation to full assimilation. Even before he set foot in Nebraska, he had made a name for himself in New York City as a salonist.

What brought him to Nebraska? The community, he says. When his family moved to Nebraska in 2010, Lincoln was already home to 500 Yazidi refugees. With a large section of Yazidis moving to the USA and many of them to Nebraska in since 2014, the population rapidly increased to over 3000.

Hasan speculates it is now more than 4000, making Lincoln the largest Yazidi settlement in the USA and Canada. Now, the Yazidis who settled earlier in other states are choosing to move to Nebraska.

“Maybe the feeling of being part of the community, it is good for kids,” he says. Or could it be what the state has to offer?

Talking about Nebraska’s business environment, Hasan says “For me, it was easier to open a business here. Nebraska has equal rules for everyone. There are centers and persons to help business aspirants.”

Hasan recalls the support provided by the Mayor’s office during the lockdown and isolation phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They took steps to ensure that we don’t have to close down our businesses and even provided us with financial benefits.”

He remarks it is not only the city or state administration, but the people of Nebraska who support small businesses.

Many of the new Yazidi immigrants have successfully set up small businesses ranging from car dealerships, grocery stores and barber shops, to vape and smoke shops and liquor stores. To Hasan’s knowledge, Lincoln alone has more than 20 Yazidi-run small businesses.

A few blocks away from Hasan, is the Mediterranean Market. Gulie Khalaf is managing the family business while her brother is visiting Iraq. Gulie grew up in Syria before moving to New York City in her teenage years,. Being a nerd, she earned straight-A’s, despite surviving the abject poverty of immigrant life.

Like many other Yazidi families, her family moved to Nebraska in the 2000s. Gulie went on to become a Language Arts teacher and later an activist for Yazidi International.

She talks about large sections of Yazidis moving to Nebraska from other states like Arizona, Atlanta, California, Colorado, New Jersey, and New York.

“We just love Nebraska. It gives us a sense of belonging in the presence of the community. This was initially because the Nebraska settlement office facilitated more members of the Yazidi community to settle in the region compared to other places. This drove Yazidis from other states to migrate here and be part of a larger community.”

This community network is further helping the people to promote their services through word of mouth. “We recommend our customers to our fellow Yazidi businesses based on our personal experience. They trust our opinions and we value that, offering the best of the recommendations,” Gulie says.

As she continues to balance her time between teaching, managing business, and online activism, Gulie talks about how living in Nebraska is supporting the community in the aftermath of the genocide. She calls it a blessing for her people.

The thought is echoed by Hasan, who often plays Yazidi music in local events.“It is all about connections,” he says. “To be part of a community you need to sacrifice — time, knowledge or just to make somebody feel better. I do music to share my culture and be part of a community.”

Hasan hopes to bring together more Yazidi immigrants to develop the community while increasingly integrating with the other communities.

In his message to new Yazidi immigrants, Hasan emphasizes the non-judgemental character of Lincoln regardless of the diversity of the people, the presence of a large and flourishing community, good facilities provided by the state, and the abundance of jobs.