MANCHESTER — A small community is waiting.
Men and women with ties to South Sudan hope to welcome home a neighbor’s wife — a Christian who made global headlines after a court in Sudan sentenced her to death because of her faith.
The plight of Mariam Yehya Ibrahim, her husband and two young children is a topic of prayer meetings and Sunday sermons, dinner-table talk and pleas to members of Congress from people in a city that has learned to embrace newcomers.
“We can’t wait to see them,” said Zakaria Aging, 35, who came to the United States from Sudan in 2000. “So many people have been waiting.”
It’s not clear how long they will wait.
A court in Sudan overturned Ibrahim’s death sentence a few weeks ago, but police arrested her again when she tried to leave Sudan to go to the United States. Now she’s waiting, too. She’s somewhere in Sudan, clutched by the anxiety of an uncertain future.
Her ordeal is very much on the minds of people more than 6,000 miles away.