IRAQI REFUGEE FINDS NICHE IN LOCAL PIZZA RESTAURANT

Stavros thinks he knows half the people in Cape Girardeau because they eat at the restaurant he manages or wave at him as he walks around the city.

Stavros knows them. They don't know him.

All they know is that "I cook here and it's good," he said, sitting at Dino's Pizza.

Stavros, Jalil Faleh, is 35. In 1979, he served in Saddam Hussein's navy in Iraq before buying a fake passport and escaping by bus to Turkey.

But the story begins two decades earlier when Faleh, the first of nine children, was born to a Baghdad baker and his wife.

Stavros' childhood was similar to that of American children -- school, helping his father in the family business, playing with friends.

His simple life ended when his father was accused of a crime he didn't commit and was imprisoned because for refusing to align himself with a political party.

Faleh was 17 and felt obligated to support his family, working odd jobs until his high school wrestling coach persuaded him to join the navy in Basrah. That allowed Stavros to continue wrestling while doing a minimal amount of military work.

Things were good for Stavros, his father was released from prison and Stavros sent money home. Then, Stavros was jailed for not joining a political party.

"I didn't want to get involved with any of that," he said. "I didn't believe the philosophies of either party in Iraq."

After Basrah was bombed during Iraq war with Iran, Stavros wanted out of Iraq.

A bothersome skin condition -- psoriasis -- helped Stavros get a six-day military leave to get treated. He used the time to get fake papers saying he was a student, returned to Baghdad to retrieve his things and leave the country.

Stavros and a neighbor fled Iraq to Turkey on three-month visas.

"My mother was crying. She wouldn't say goodbye," Stavros said. "My father supported me. He told me goodbye."

He wouldn't hear their voices for 12 years.

Stavros and his friend traveled from Turkey to Bulgaria but settled in Athens. The friend married an English woman and moved to live with her. Stavros went to the refugee office and decided to live in the Iraqi community of about 25,000 in Athens.

The Greeks gave him the popular name Stavros, their word for the crucifix. Stavros picked oranges and olives, loaded watermelons onto trucks, built furniture in a factory and finally ended up working in a restaurant.

There he met Alacia Demoupolos of Cape Girardeau and who lived with her mother, Fotoula, who operated Dino's. Demoupolos attended school in Greece.

Demoupolos and Stavros became friends before she returned to the United States. They stayed in touch for a year.

After nearly seven years as a Greek, the refugee office gave Stavros three months to leave the country.

In 1986, with $62 and little knowledge of English, Stavros flew to New York. Someone from the Immigration and Naturalization Service met him and put him on a plane for St. Louis.

Stavros was determined to find his old friend, who had no idea he was in the country. In St. Louis an immigration official looked at Stavros' tattered piece of paper with the Cape Girardeau restaurant's address and phone number scribbled on it, and put him on a bus for Cape Girardeau.

Fatoula Demoupolos greeted him when he entered the restaurant and he became one of the family.

"They gave me a job here, but I didn't care about the money," Stavros said. "I was just excited to think I could live here permanently."

A native of Greece, Demoupolos helped Stavros get his immigration paperwork straightened out. Today, she calls him her "other son," and they talk a lot, easily switching between Greek and English.

News coverage of Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991 gave Stavros his first glimpse of Iraq since he left it. He feared for his family and friends when Baghdad was bombed, but none of his immediate family was hurt. He lost two uncles and his best friend's brother.

He calls his parents once a month but knows he won't be able to return to Iraq.

"The government would have me killed if I went back," he said. "My parents can't come here because Iraq is so messed up."

So he works 70-hour weeks and studies to become a U.S. citizen. Stavros wants to go through the ceremony in three months, making this country the last one where he lives.