Kamal Kareem was once an engineer with a good job in Iraq, but there was always something missing inside him.

His uncle taught him to play the saxophone as a young man, and he later taught himself to play guitar, keyboard and flute.

But, Kareem said, a tense political and religious atmosphere in the city he lived in prevented him from ever being able to live his life as a professional musician.

In 2000, he came upon a chance to make a living teaching music to children, but he’d have to move to Amman, Jordan.

He took it, temporarily leaving his wife and children behind to pursue his dream.

Kareem spent seven years in Amman, and today lives in the US, with his family, still chasing a career as a musician.

“It was the right decision,” he said about leaving Iraq with very little money and without the government’s permission.

Kareem went to Amman and secured the job giving lessons at music shop for various instruments, but he had no place to stay and needed to save his money.

He said that without a place to live, during his first few years in Jordan he snuck back into the store after work every night and slept in the basement.

In that basement, he had access to keyboards, equipment and an Internet connection.

He said he spent every night making full use of his surroundings, preparing background music for well-known Western songs like ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” developing a repertoire that would later allow him to play his saxophone along with the recorded instrumentals at clubs, hotels and malls.

Kareem said that he often took long, grueling shifts playing for seven hours at a time at shopping malls, trying to save enough money to allow him to fulfill his dream of reuniting with his family and supporting them through his music.

His Western style, jazzy adaptations of well-known songs attracted a high-class, high-profile audience, which eventually would pay off.

In 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, his wife and children had to flee their home, ending up in a refugee camp. 

Through the high-profile friends he made playing clubs, he was able to meet with a government minister and convince him to grant permission to bring his family out of the camp and into Jordan.

Several years later, Kareem attained refugee status and was able to come to the US, along with his wife and kids.

He’s lived in Dearborn for the last four months, spending every waking hour in his makeshift basement studio working on music.

Kareem is now working on projects in which he takes traditional Middle Eastern songs and blends them with Western instrumental styles, adding his jazzy touch.

He hopes to finally develop a career as a musician here in the US, teaching and performing music, while creating and being innovative.

“I want to give lessons and to play music and to create a new thing for Arabic music,” he said, in freshly learned English.