Fear and Loathing in Immigrant America
A house full of hustling outsiders turns on one of their own.
WASHINGTON—In a creaky rowhouse on the edge of D.C., where the air smells of curry and desperation, Mustafa from Ivory Coast is trying to keep his head above water. He’s got a laugh like a warm hearth, but his eyes are red-rimmed, darting like a cornered animal. He’s here on an F-1 visa, chasing a doctor’s coat, but the dream’s fraying at the seams. Tuition’s bleeding his family dry—$4,000 a semester, a fortune when your folks back home scrape by on $228 a month. They’re pooling every cent, betting it all on him, and he’s drowning in the weight of it.
Mustafa’s university was a bust—wrong fit, wrong vibe—so he transferred to another, clinging to legal status. But the new school’s got rules: wait a semester, keep a 3.2 GPA, then maybe you’ll get a $10-an-hour gig. Until then? He’s got $415 to his name. Rent in D.C. laughs at that. So he leans on a church, bouncing between strangers’ couches, until he meets Christopher, another Ivorian, at a cattle-call for 15 university jobs swarmed by …