On a windy summer day outside of Stockholm, Sweden, Hormus Mesho plunged into a lake surrounded by his motorcycle-riding brothers. His unruly beard blowing in the wind, he yelped at the sky before bowing his head to be slapped with icy water — his long-awaited baptism into the brotherhood of the Assyrian Riders.
Just one year later, Mesho, a diesel mechanic by trade and prominent member of the motorcycle club, known for his boundless energy and kindhearted spirit, died on Sept. 2 in Chicago. He was 34.
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Growing up in the Windy City
Born in Linz, Austria, to refugees who fled Iraq during the Gulf War, Mesho moved to Chicago at a young age and became a fixture of Chicago’s Assyrian community.
But as a child, he distanced himself from Assyrians — at times bullied by his own community — and couldn’t understand why his younger sister Mary wanted to visit the homeland.
He was fiercely protective of her. Mary remembers trying to tag along with her older brother and his friends. When they protested, she said her brother pushed back.
The siblings grew closer as they got older, steered in part by the separation of their parents when Mesho was just thirteen.
“We didn’t really have a father figure in the house, so he took on that role pretty seriously,” Mary said. “He had so much anger in him, and he got a different version of my parents than what I got. It was hard. But I feel like he was trying to make it easier for me.”
Mesho channeled that anger into taking apart and rebuilding household electronics. He crafted robots for school science fairs — and at one point built a hovercraft. “He didn’t need a set of instructions, that’s how his brain was wired,” Mary said.
Finding purpose with the Assyrian Riders
Mesho’s passion for mechanics led him to Lincoln College of Technology, where he assembled engines from the ground up. In his spare time, he developed a passion for motorcycles, spending hours each week on the road.
Outside of mechanics and riding, though, his family described him as a homebody — until his brother-in-law introduced him to the Assyrian Riders.
The group gave him purpose, Mary said. “It wasn’t just that he was riding a bike, he was proud to be part of the riders and helping the community.”
Just like that, everything changed.
“He never wanted to go out, he didn’t have many friends, he never wanted to communicate or talk to anybody or have anybody get close to him,” Mary said. “With the brothers, he was able to express himself. He talked to them about personal things I never thought he could talk to anybody about. At the end of the day, they weren’t just his friends, they really were his brothers.”
A surprise flight to Sweden
Ferit Rhawi was days away from his wedding near Stockholm when his fellow Riders kidnapped him, masked his face, and dragged him to their clubhouse. Rhawi, the club’s international ambassador, arrived to find Mesho waiting — having flown in to surprise him.
It was their first meeting in person after months of weekly phone calls.
“With those calls, I had to take out at least one-and-a-half hours, two hours, away from my wife,” Rhawi said.
By then, Mesho — known to the Riders as “Hype Man” — had been in the club for a year and had fully immersed himself. Rhawi took him under his wing.
“In the beginning, riders mostly just follow the group, but he went all in,” Rhawi said. “We couldn’t understand how important the Assyrian Riders were to him until I met his mom and sister. They told me it was life changing, he’d had the best four years of his life.”
The trip to Sweden changed Mesho, Rhawi said. Seeing the club’s large membership, its established clubhouse, and the deep brotherhood forged among the Riders in the country where the club began, Mesho carried that energy back to Chicago.
As Rhawi spoke, he glanced at the last motorcycle Mesho rode in Sweden — one that in true fashion, he had torn apart and rebuilt to his liking. The bike now sits in the Sweden clubhouse as a memorial.
Visiting the homeland
As his involvement in the community deepened, Mesho began talking about visiting Iraq — something that surprised his family. Ten years prior, they said, visiting the homeland wasn’t even on his radar.
His chance came in the Spring of 2023 during Akitu, or the Assyrian New Year, when Mesho traveled to northern Iraq with his Rider brothers and their friends. And, despite losing his luggage on arrival, the trip transformed him.
Over two weeks, Mesho traversed the countryside, visiting a dozen cities and Assyrian villages and their churches, some centuries old.
As a kid, he’d never shown interest in attending church, his sister recalls, despite attempts by his family to drag him to service. “His hyper energy meant he could never pay close attention,” she said. The few times she forced him to join bible study, he sat in the back of the room cracking jokes.
But visiting ancient churches sparked something in him.
“It brought him closer to God,” Mary said.
The journey also introduced him to Assyrians from across the region. At the Akitu parade in Duhok, he marched alongside Riders from all over the world. In small villages, he spoke with teachers and students about their classroom needs. He even linked up with his mother’s cousins from Iran whom he’d never known.
When he returned home, his family said, Mesho felt renewed — committed to serving the Assyrian community beyond Chicago’s borders.
An Assyrian American in Paris
Enuma Elish, an Assyrian Rider based in France, met Mesho during the 2023 Iraq trip. The two formed an instant bond and stayed in close contact. The following year, they traveled together to the homeland and later met in Sweden for the club’s 10th-anniversary celebration.
By then, Elish said, they were inseparable.
So when Elish mentioned the upcoming MesopotamiArt festival in Paris, Mesho booked his ticket just hours before takeoff.
In France, Mesho met the country’s large Assyrian-Chaldean community, visiting its shops, local associations, churches, and relatives he hadn’t yet encountered.
At the festival, Assyrian and non-Assyrian artists buzzed around him, eager to meet the visiting Assyrian from American. Elish said the trip left its mark on the people of France.
“Every person in our Assyrian-Chaldean community who met him immediately became attached to him,” he said. “There was something special about him, something indescribable. He exuded a sincerity and warmth that were impossible to ignore.”
On their last night at the festival, the group gathered at Mata (“village” in sureth), an Assyrian restaurant outside the French capital. Elish described the evening as one of the most beautiful of their lives.
“He had a rare gift of bringing people together,” he said. “With him, even the simplest moments became unforgettable.”
Making his mark, around the world and at home
Mesho represented the Assyrian Riders across the world: he handed out gifts through Toys for Tots, delivered presents as a motorcycle-riding Santa, volunteered at the Assyrian Food Festival, attended conventions in Florida, Arizona and California, marched in the Akitu parade in Iraq, celebrated the club’s 10th anniversary in Sweden, and visited his fellow riders in France.
“I knew he knew a lot of people, but I didn’t realize just how many,” said his mother, Joliet Khamis. “I didn’t realize what a huge impact he made on everybody.”
Despite his travels, Mary said her brother had grown closer to his Chicago family in recent years. After a long period of estrangement, he rebuilt his relationship with his father. “They became really close,” she said.
He also spent more time with Mary and her two sons. Every Monday on his day off, he would call them for hours.
“He wasn’t just my brother, he was honestly my best friend,” she said. “He was the life of the party and now everything is so quiet. He taught me to live my life and not care what anybody says. I feel like I forgot that.”
In the days after his death, his mother sorted through his room and found a bag stuffed with clothes for his next trip to Iraq. He never prepared in advance for anything, his family said, which told them everything about what that first trip meant to him.
They remembered his instructions clearly: don’t touch the bag — it’s ready to go.
