My Dad has always been his own harshest critic. I can’t count the number of times Dad had delivered the sermon and then on a Saturday evening, the family would sit around the dinner table, often with guests present, and brutally pick apart the bits we liked and the parts we didn’t, like vultures over freshly fallen prey.

Over and over again, when everyone else ran for the hills, Sarmad stayed behind until there was nearly no one left to serve. He would not describe it that way, but that seemed to be the essence of how this Iraqi Christian refugee has chosen to live through the recurring nightmare that is the civil wars in Iraq and Syria.