Ahmed Mashshay, 40, a soft-spoken and unfailingly polite refugee from Iraq, measures his progress in St. Louis, his home for a year and a half now, in small steps. Otherwise, there would be none to measure.

The former high school and university phonetics teacher from Iraq now cleans a casino, and he appreciates the $9.55 hourly wage.

"I have my wife and I have two kids. I have to work," he said. "I don't mind cleaning. I knew coming to the United States I had to start from zero."

But working at a gambling establishment — the job he's been able to find, his education and excellent English notwithstanding — violates his beliefs. "I don't want to work on a casino boat," Mashshay says. "I don't want to be there." Compounding matters, customers who lost money or had too much to drink periodically took out their frustrations on him.

He recently scored a small victory, when he got his job changed from late-night utility porter to overnight cleaner. Now he cleans floors in a mostly empty place. It bothers Mashshay that the new shift places his family alone at night. But the reduced contact with gambling customers makes work more palatable. And when he talks to other refugees, he knows he's fortunate to have a job.

His problems here pale against what he endured back home. In 1980, his oldest brother was among 80 university students arrested by security forces after someone spoke out against Saddam Hussein. He was jailed for three years, then hanged.

Security forces warned the terrified 10-year-old, "Don't be like your brother."

In 1984, they took the next brother, also at the university. "He hadn't spoken out," Mashshay says. "They were just concerned he might."

His distraught mother spoke out after her second son was arrested; five days later she died in a mysterious auto accident, for which her son blames Saddam. "We were like chickens in a coop. He would just take us and kill us when he wanted," Mashshay says. "We just waited for our time."

When coalition forces invaded Iraq, Mashshay went to work for the U.S. Army as soon as he could, signing up on May 19, 2003. He later lived as a refugee in Turkey and Syria, feeling isolated in both.

"In St. Louis, there is more diversity. We feel much more comfortable," Mashshay says. "I love the people, I love the community, I love freedom."

So it's perhaps not surprising that outside his modest home in south St. Louis a small American flag proudly flies.