In Egypt, where his family lived for more than three years after fleeing Baghdad, 14-year-old Hassan Hindal could not go to school. So, his father, Saad, taught him to paint.

Today, in the sunroom of their Gilmore Street apartment, the walls are covered in watercolors - pieces of Baghdad carried in the memories of father and son to this quiet leafy street and transferred to paper: the golden domes of a mosque contrasted against a blue sky, a brightly colored music shop, a boy holding a dove as a tank rolls down the street.

The family cherishes one painting above all the others. It shows Hassan himself, holding an olive branch and looking across a barren landscape to a barbed wire fence that marks the border of Iraq.

"This (is) a favorite picture of Hassan's," said 16-year-old Hussein Hindal, translating and paraphrasing his father's words. "This, from his heart. . . . Always we are looking at this picture, very sad."

The Hindal family left Baghdad in 2006, after Hussein was kidnapped and held hostage for a month. He was released when his family paid a ransom and the family was ordered to leave the country, he said.

In Egypt, Hussein, Hassan, and their two sisters, 12-year-old Tyba and 18-year-old Ashtra, could not attend school. Their father worked at internet cafes and coffee shops.

The painters in the family would

cut cardboard boxes into canvases and ask at construction sites for a bit of paint that they would water down. Later, an American friend provided them with art supplies - paints, brushes, an easel.

In one painting from those years, four abstract human figures stand with feet like tree roots against a Baghdad skyline. Above them flies a black jet.

"Apache," Saad Hindal said pointing to the jet but referring to the helicopters used in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In June, the family moved to Chicago through the State Department's refugee resettlement program. They found life in Chicago too hectic. Friends who had been settled in Concord suggested to Saad Hindal and his wife, Layla Ali, that they move their family here.

One month ago they did.

Now the four children are enrolled at Rundlett Middle School and Concord High School. Saad Hindal is looking for work.

A friend of the Hindals was walking down the street recently when he spotted Eleanor Broussard, an art student at New Hampshire Technical Institute, carrying her supplies.

The boy asked her if she was an artist, then led her to the Hindals' home. The visit sparked a friendship between the Hindal family and the Broussard family, including Eleanor's parents, Jemi Broussard, membership coordinator at Red River Theatres, and Rick Broussard, executive editor of New Hampshire Magazine. The families have shared food and art supplies.

Single page