Staff Writer 

For five years, Ajmal Shir has made a living assembling bicycles for other people’s children. While he enjoys working in an L.L. Bean warehouse, he said his children wouldn’t have use for such toys as long as they lived in a cramped two-bedroom, Section 8 housing apartment in Portland.

“Where would they go?” he asked. “There are only streets and sidewalks, no yard.”

Now, thanks to a special USDA Rural Development program and a Section 502 Direct Loan, the Shir children have bicycles, baseball mitts and skateboards – and a place to use them. 

“We heard about the program and I looked at my wife and we said ‘Yes, this is the one we have been waiting for,’” Ajmal Shir said. “Having your own place, it’s something I thought we’d never attain. I thank the lord, the state and the USDA.”

A U.S. citizen since April, Ajmar Shir arrived in Portland as a refugee in 1984 with his mother. He said his father had come to the U.S. 10 years earlier after participating in battles in Afghanistan and Germany. At age 15, Ajmal Shir found himself face-to-face with his father for the first time. 

“I hadn’t ever sat down and had coffee with him before,” he said. “We didn’t even see him for 12 whole years.”

With the help of his parents and cousins who lived in Cape Elizabeth, Ajmal Shir attended Portland High School and graduated in 1989. Although he said he repeated his senior year in order to refine his English speaking skills, he said he still could not earn a high enough score on a college entrance exam to attend classes at the University of Southern Maine. 

Ajmal Shir said he didn’t let the missed opportunity to attend college get him down. 

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he said. “I had other family that went to college so I worked to help pay for that.”

In 1996, Ajmal Shir met and married Sharifa Shir, and they found themselves moving from one subsidized apartment to the next. Ajmal Shir said they probably could have afforded their own place if he hadn’t agreed to help support other family members as they moved on to college. 

With two children by 2001, the Shirs applied for state programs to help them get a loan for a house, but were denied. 

“I had to fix some things with my credit and pay some bills,” Ajmal Shir said. “It takes time, it takes patience.”

Determined to move their growing family out of subsidized housing, Sharifa Shir applied for the program again in 2003. Their application was accepted in 2004, and Ajmal Shir said they qualified for a $150,000 loan from a bank, where a banker told them to go another route.

“He said they could give us $150,000 but through the USDA we could get more and at zero percent,” Ajmal said. “The government wants to help, the programs are out there. You just have to find and go for it.”

The Shirs are now the proud owners of a .31-acre lot on Spurwink Avenue in Cape Elizabeth. The three-bedroom home, assessed at more than $188,000, is already feeling like home to 4-year-old Abubacker Shir, who said he enjoys sleeping in his own bed rather than on the floor with his parents. Zahid Shir, the oldest sibling at 11, said he has to share a room with his 9-year-old younger brother Sulaymon Shir, but is looking forward to riding his new bicycle around Cape Elizabeth and practicing his soccer skills in the front yard. 

Ajmal Shir said he is glad to land in Cape Elizabeth, close to members of his extended family and in a town that values education. 

“Now when I am gone there is something left for my kids, they can have something,” he said. “I want them to get an education the best they can get. Anything that keeps them off the streets and gets them into college, I’m 110 percent.”

Ajmal  Shir said the family is already enjoying the luxury of having their own laundry machines, driveway and kitchen. Like any new homeowner, he has already begun to invest in the home by installing a new kitchen floor and cabinets, he said. Sharifa Shir said she is just beginning to understand the pride that comes with tending to the exterior of the house.

“Apartments are bad, the house is good,” Sharifa Shir said. “I can walk around the outside of the house and tend to the gardens and grow things now.”

The house may be spacious compared to their former apartments, but Ajmal Shir said the family is already drawing boundary lines. The two-car drive-in garage underneath the second floor has been claimed by his wife and a small shed in the backyard is a place for the kids to play, but he said the detached garage will be his own private space.

“I’m going to do some work on it, make a shop,” he said, eyeing the building. “That – it’s mine.”

To learn more about the USDA Rural Development program, visit www.rurdev.usda.gov/me/.

Staff Writer Nate Jones may be reached at 282-4337 ext. 233.