From Washing Dishes to Cutting Egypt's Hair
The barber now serving Egypt's national team arrived in Spokane in 2012 and started out washing dishes at a Panda Express.
Maram Hammadi went from washing dishes to cutting the hair of Egypt's national team at the 2026 World Cup. He arrived in Spokane in 2012, and World Relief, the agency that welcomed him, shared his story.
A home that stopped being safe
He grew up in Iraq. Life was simple: family, school and soccer in the street, even in the middle of war.
His father had done work for the United States government. When the two countries went to war, the neighbors started calling them traitors, and their home stopped being safe.
«His dignity didn't begin the day Egypt called.»
To protect him, the government took his father out and moved him to a place the family didn't know, for years. Maram and his family didn't know where he was. They couldn't stop to think about it, either: they were in danger too.
At 16, he crossed into Jordan by road. His brothers took another route, toward Turkey.
In Jordan he spent three years in a refugee camp. At first he made tea for the people there, and that earned him what he needed to stay and survive. Later he heard about the United Nations, applied, and that was where his new life began.
"Welcome home. You're safe now"
On July 3, 2012, he landed in Spokane. He expected skyscrapers and taxis. He found neither. Two World Relief workers and an interpreter were waiting for him.
The first words he heard were: "You made it. Welcome home. You're safe now" (translation by Sígueme). He cried. It had been a long time since he had felt at home.
The same agency helped him find housing and a job and, in time, citizenship.
A trade learned slowly
His first job was washing dishes at a Panda Express. He stuck it out for two years until he was promoted to kitchen manager. Other restaurants followed, and then a decision that changed his course: enrolling in barber school.
He graduated. He worked for two years at Jazz Salon in downtown Spokane. Then he spent a year in the oil fields of North Dakota to save money. In 2018 he went to Seattle on vacation and never left.
There he worked for five years with an Arab barber until he took the risk of opening his own shop. The community pitched in: someone took care of the speakers, someone else did the electrical work, and the chairs were bought on Facebook. That's how Jazz Barbershop was born.
He said he took out no loan and owed no money: the shop was built with people's support. According to World Relief, the business became the most successful one in the plaza.
One day a former client called him: would he be interested in cutting the hair of Egypt's national team? There were World Cup matches in Seattle. He sent photos of his work without expecting much. The next day they called him to take care of 26 members of the team. Today he is preparing a second location.
The story can be told as a ladder: from the dishes to Egypt's national team. I read it differently.
A trade isn't learned in a day or sustained by luck. It's learned with patience, with hours, with someone who teaches you and waits for you. That is vocation, and it doesn't need a World Cup to be worth something.
His dignity didn't begin the day Egypt called. It began earlier, when he was washing dishes in Spokane and kept learning.
Scripture says it plainly: "Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19, ESV).
Someone reached out a hand to him: two strangers at an airport, an interpreter, an agency, neighbors with cables and chairs. Receiving people like this is the work of the church, not seasonal charity.
Think of someone who recently arrived at your school, your block or your church. Who reached out a hand to you when you were starting out? Now it's your turn to be that hand.
