2015 KC McGinnis – “Iraqi” Iraqi Yasir Mohsin prays to end a day of fasting at his friend’s apartment in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. Mohsin arrived in Iowa City as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Iowa in 2011, while the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq was coming to a close. Yasir Mohsin gets dressed in his basement room in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. Mohsin lives in a converted closet, sharing a one-bathroom house with four American undergraduate students and recent graduates. Today is a holy day for Yasir, during which he will avoid food, drink and cigarettes. Yasir Mohsin, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, looks at his notes during a lecture in the University of Iowa’s engineering building on Friday, September 26, 2014. As Mohsin, a Shiite, neared completion of his Master’s degree in 2013, he sought multiple extensions in hopes of waiting out the violence that engulfed his country with the emergence of the Sunni extremist group ISIS. Yasir Mohsin washes his face in a bathroom at the University of Iowa engineering building in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. After filing for multiple extensions, Mohsin was forced to return to Iraq in May of 2014. Within a few weeks of returning to Baghdad, Yasir began secretly arranging an academic training program with one of his former professors at the University of Iowa, which would allow him to secure a visa. Yasir Mohsin walks across the Iowa River on Friday, September 26, 2014. Mohsin returned to Iowa City after spending 82 days in Baghdad (he had been counting). Yasir Mohsin breaks his fast at an Iraqi friend’s house in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. Yasir Mohsin talks and argues with other Iraqi students at a friend’s house in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. Friends of Yasir Mohsin play backgammon and smoke hookah in an Iowa City, Iowa apartment on Friday, September 26, 2014. Iowa’s Iraqi students have managed to form a tight-knit community, centered mostly in the Carriage Hill neighborhood of Iowa City. Yasir Mohsin plays dominoes with friends in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. Mohsin’s return to the United States virtually guaranteed that he will never be able to return to Iraq; he also had to pay $40,000 to a university that had been holding a job for him. Yasir Mohsin finds a place to sleep for the night at a friend’s house in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday, September 26, 2014. These images are copyright KC McGinnis and are use here by permission. They may not be used elsewhere without permission.
