Museum in Philadelphia hires Syrian and Iraqi immigrant tour guides for Middle East gallery

Moumena Saradar, originally from Syria, guides visitors through the Middle East gallery at Penn Museum in Philadelphia.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)

Visitors to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology's Middle East gallery not only get to see exquisite artifacts, but also hear from tour guides who offer special insight into the priceless relics.

The museum has hired immigrants and refugees from Syria and Iraq, who are trained to share details about the items and answer questions while also telling their own stories and memories about their homelands. Hadi Jasim is from Iraq, and was an interpreter for the U.S. military in 2004. He is in the United States on a visa for Iraqis who worked with the military, and told PRI that "sometimes, even if I don't have tours here, I just show up to work, go through the Middle East gallery, go and see the clay tables, and see the carvings. It just brings my memories back."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.