Mina
Saturday, April 22, 2004
Every time I open my mouth to speak, any person I was meeting for the first time asks 'Are you American, why do you have an American accent?' Then I go into explaining that I had an American accent cuz I lived in Saudi Arabia and went to an international school there where I picked up an American accent. This is quickly followed by 'Oh you are from Saudi Arabia' and I answer 'No I’m from Iraq'.Ok, this is instantly followed by two questions since Iraq hit every single headline in the world some 14 months ago: 'Which part of Iraq?'
or
'What do you think of the present situation in Iraq?'
Both are often asked, its just a matter of sequence.
So, the first question: Which part of Iraq, most people would have hardly known of Baghdad a few years ago, let alone every village dotted on Iraq's map.. so maybe one of the few benefits of all this chaos is fame for all our Iraqi towns!
So I say 'Mosul' and instantly 'Does that make you Sunni, Shia or Kurd?'. GRRRRRRRRR. when I get that question I want to thump whoever asked it.. I mean who cares? Im Iraqi, that’s what matters.. why stereotype me? Why pigeonhole me? I mean when you meet someone who is British, you don’t say are you Church of England? You might ask about his or her town, but not religion or sect, or even ethnicity!
Now, the next question 'What do you think of the present situation in Iraq?', this fine query has replaced the pre-war question of 'So, what do YOU think of Saddam?'. Before, the question about Saddam was easy: 'Brutal dictator' and if that didn't satisfy them, I could list one account after another of his faults and crimes.
Only now, the question is way more complicated cuz frankly I don't know what I think. Iraq is no longer suffering from one problem, it suffers from so many I lost count, if we could sell the problems for a penny each, we would be millionaires!
If a question is specific, like on fallujah, or Al-Sadr, or CPA its easier, but question on Iraq is just too much to deal with.
Then again, its interesting, whenever I go out with a group of people and there is some one I haven’t met before and he or she finds out Im Iraqi, I suddenly become the most interesting person in the group, a relic from that far away land almost. Questions come one after the other, my reaction depends on my mood.. Catch me in a good mood and I'm flattered that people want to know more about where I come from and my personal views. Catch me on an especially bad day with bad news from Iraq and I'm really not going to be in the mood to explain A-B-C of Iraq to someone who read a few newspaper articles and think he/she is an expert on the country, when I myself am having trouble coming to terms with it! So I usually keep quiet and say 'Its all too complicated for me to understand anymore', which is probably the closest thing to a concrete thought I can often conjure up about Iraq.
Why couldn’t I have been born from Luxembourg? Life would have probably been so much less complicated!
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Iraq and its people have gone through an endless list of misfortunes and sufferings, from war, to epidemics, to torture, to the loss of freedoms. It has also had blessings (although there are times which we are all prone to forgetting these blessings in the many times of hardship), blessings of a rich and diverse culture, blessings of the removal of decades-old shackles imposed by Saddam Hussein and his regime, blessings of having millions of people around the world genuinely caring for Iraq and its people, crying when we cry, showing outrage at our pains, and trying to make sense of the many conflicting and contradicting images of the land between two rivers - Mesopotamia.Yet one of the many hardships endured by Iraqis, are those of the Iraqis living abroad. Yes, before everyone says it, I will be the first to admit that I, like 4 million other Iraqis, have been somewhat lucky by getting out of the war-torn country. My family, like many others, was able to leave Iraq and establish itself in Britain. Yet, it's not such a lucky situation. At each moment of Iraq's recent history, most Iraqis living abroad have been glued to their television screens. During the many instances of war, each person was naturally scared that the houses being bombed may be that of their mother's, brother's, best friend etc. This is a feeling common to any person who’s country is subjected to wars while they are outside it. Yet we have had our fair share, and a little more, of violence ravishing our streets.
I left Iraq when I was 6, and only returned for a brief visit when I was 9 for 23 days of bliss. This was in March 1990. nearly every Iraqi I know abroad visited Iraq in that beautiful spring. The war with Iran had ended and people were looking forward to a new future, in peace and comfort. Gosh. we were in for a shock.
As I'm sure you all remember, when you visit somewhere at the age of 9, you don't think of memorising the names of streets, or the atmosphere in the local shopping markets. In the 14 years of exile which followed that last trip, I would at times close my eyes and truly dig deep into my inner thoughts to remember just one more thing from that place I called home yet not really knew the simplest details about. I created a set of memories of Iraq, which I treasure to this day, yet I'm sure many of them were created from images on television and stories heard from other Iraqis. Still they were mine.
During the last war, every time I would hear a certain place had been bombed, I would call my mother from work and ask 'Is Uncle so and so near that place?' or 'Isn't Aunt so and so near there'.. the answer would always be no.. I later realised that my mother and father always said no to stop me from worrying.. and I was none the wiser.
One year later, I am still asking my mother the same questions. I am still glued to the television screen, watching news updates on the hour every hour. As I worry about the entire nation, my deepest concern revolves around our dear family and friends. Yet there is one difference. I can now call most of them and check up on them myself. In the 14 years we were exiled my family, like thousands of other Iraqis, could not call their loved ones in Iraq for fear their phones were tapped, or a guest would be visiting who would know of the phone call from the 'traitors' and news would get to the secret service - Mukhabarat. Yet we had committed no crime, simply not pledging eternal allegiance to the meglomaniac and his cronies was enough to banish an entire family from the country. And of course, we could not get in touch with our family and loved ones for fear for their safety. That fear was part of 'Saddam's Republic of Fear' to borrow the title of a famous book on Saddam's reign. This state of fear is over, and I think we have become all too engrossed in the daily troubles of Iraq, forgetting what has been achieved.. the Republic of Fear has collapsed! Lets all breathe a deep breath of relief before we go back to complaining and worrying about the many current troubles in Iraq.
I was once sitting with a group of young Iraqis who had also been raised in the UK, yet had lived their lives through television snapshots of their country and the stories of the homeland carried by their parents, their parents' friends and many other nostalgic Iraqis you now find in every corner of the world. I said to them that one of the most things I begrudge my parents was raising me to feel so attached to Iraq, it brought me heartache and sorrow living every day I can remember, stiff with worry about Iraq and its future. It shocked me that they all nodded their head in agreement. We are a generation of Iraqis who live in limbo, we are fortunate for having much that others of our generation inside Iraq missed out on. Yet we never enjoyed these fortunes as we always looked over our shoulders to that distant land we were deprived of for so long, now we must stop looking over our shoulders and look forward to Iraq. It is now in our future and no longer in our distant past. That is a blessing I hope to never take for granted. For all its heartache, I am eternally grateful to my parents for teaching me Arabic with perfect Iraqi dialect (although I lack a lot of the slang since my parents are not prone to use teenage slang in their daily speech!), I am grateful for them teaching me to love Iraqi music, food, and culture. So much so that when I returned lately to Iraq, I was not a stranger. I was at home. And in the two weeks I was home, I tried to collect all the treasures of sounds, scents and sites that my mind and heart had longed to understand for years.
In the past few weeks I have found it so difficult to conjure up feelings of hope and security of belonging to such a great nation. As I felt shame and sadness of monstrous acts committed by some Iraqis. At the same time I felt immense sorrow for the continuation of the suffering of the millions of innocent Iraqis who have yet to see a day of peace and rest in the troubled lives. Yet as a dear American friend reminded me that 'the history of man is written in blood' and urged me not to lose hope, I reminded myself that all who strive for a liberal and free Iraq must persevere. Perhaps in London my actions are limited, yet I convince myself that even speaking to as many people as possible about Iraq and about its culture can go a long way. Helping others to understand the many facets of Iraqi society helps me to come to terms with it also. Maybe one day I will be able to give more.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
"Hope is the dimension of the spirit. It is not outside us, but within us. When you lose it, you must seek it again within yourself and in people around you - not in objects or even events".
Vaclev Havel wrote these words to his wife Olga in November 19, 1979 from his prison cell where he was beginning his four and a half year prison sentence. Striving for freedom and democracy for former Czechoslovakia, he declined offers to go to the United States, preferring to stay in his country, knowing he will be constrained and imprisoned. Surviving many torments, he later became the President of Czechoslovakia and later President of the Czech Republic.
In his prison cell, he had no way of knowing what a bright future awaited him, yet he held on to the most significant survival factor: Hope.
As I speak to Iraqis in Iraq and scattered all over the globe, I find that our number one characteristic has become a sense of lost hope, most rejoice at the ending of Saddam's brutal regime, others can't bear the idea of being occupied, some see that a bright future will eventually come, yet after much heart-ache, others see an inevitable civil war, yet the sense of hope has been lost for many.
In Saddam's days, my family and I lived our days with the distant hope that one day, some day, this dictatorial rule will fall and we will be able to return to our homeland, see our loved ones, walk the streets of Baghdad, stand in the shade of Iraq's proud palm trees and sit at the side of the Tigris and listen to the stories its ripples have to say. That day came, yet with so much destruction and sadness. Sadly, that destruction is at the hands of Iraqis themselves, and of course many outside forces who wish to fight some holy battle or another with Iraqi blood.
So now I have stopped hoping for Saddam's demise, what is the new hope?? What horizon are we looking to? Democracy? What if we have elections at a time when the only organised political forces are militant Islamists? They do not represent the majority, yet under the iron rule of Saddam no organisations of any sort were allowed, so people turned to the mosques in a strive for an alternative doctrine, and now we see political parties cropping up based on ethnicity or religion, and with the lack of any sense of security, how is a political sphere is emerge to allow for true democratic institutions? Economic betterment? We see millions upon millions of Iraq's money being stolen left, right and centre. Freedom? How can there be talk of freedom when an average Iraqi is not free to walk outside his or her home without the security of knowing they will not be blown up by some bomb? Ending the occupation? This can only lead to the demise of any minimal order there is in Iraq now. It will only leave Iraq to the hands of those with bigger guns or bombs, and perhaps a hijacking of Iraq's freedom by another crazy man (or maybe woman? Unlikely) for another endless period of bloodshed and repression.
I can go on and on and on about all Iraq's problems, but I'm sure you are already aware of most of them. Yet to return to Havel's poignant words: "Hope is a dimension of the spirit". So rather than looking at all the external events and actors in Iraq's vulnerable situation, perhaps its worth stopping for a moment and looking at the internal spirit of the Iraqi people. It is at this point that I can find any sense of hope and optimism. In my visit to Iraq last December, I found it mind- numbing that regardless of all the years of war, repression, dictatorship, and sanctions, the Iraqi people still have the will to live. More than that, they are eager to learn about the world, reconnect with the outside world they were kept from for so long, to give their children a better life. They are still able to come up with new jokes about the situation they are in. They have a political awareness and intelligence that would be hard to find in the most advanced and developed countries of the world. When I first started reading this blog and other Iraqis blogs, I was searching for someone to make sense of the situation in Iraq, and it is here that I found hope. And this is where we must put all our energies towards, sustaining Iraqi people who are fighting for their survival and their sanity.
It would be foolish and ignorant to ignore that it is of these people that Saddam and his cronies. Let us not forget that Adolf Hitler came to power through elections in Germany in 1933, and it would be absurd to hold the German people responsible for World War II. We cannot burden ourselves with a collective sense of guilt that seems to be weighing heavy on many. I left Iraq when I was 6 and there are still times when I hold myself accountable for not returning to Iraq and somehow putting a stop to it all. Yet what is done is done, our job is to be accountable for our present and the foundations of our future. Although it is equally important not to dismiss the past and keep Iraq's collective memory aware of all those who suffered and sacrificed over the years.
Again, it is of the Iraqi nation that some are holding guns against their own people, and again it is Iraqis who are looting, killing and kidnapping. I do not wish to overlook these people, yet as in all societies there are those who will anything they can for their self- interest. However, these are the minority, and Im sure that if we let open the prisons of any country (as Saddam did before the war) and took away all forms of government, the same would happen in another country. This is not to excuse the many mistakes and crimes committed, but an effort to contextualise them and to stop from branding the Iraqi people as a whole as 'bad' or 'evil'. This is what I have heard being said about Iraqis from many people, especially from Iraqis themselves. And it is wrong. Only when we learn to accept our bloody past and bring out all the truths about it, will we be able to prevent its repetition.
Our hope lies in Iraqis themselves, it is from here we must find the patience to deal with the crimes unearthed everyday and hope for a better future.
Thank you for giving me the time to unload all these thoughts, it really is a cleansing process :-) and thanks to Zeyad for convincing me to blog.
Monday, March 29, 2004
In an effort to shake off the sense of shock at the news of the 'postponement' of the Arab league summit, I decided to come and write the blog I promised Zeyad.
I have spent my Sunday following the latest news on Arabic satellite channels regarding Tunis' surprise announcement yesterday. What struck me is that commentator after commentator was inquiring how the news will affect the Iraqi people. One commentator said "the Iraqi people had hoped that the Arab world would stand by them in their current situation, now they are left facing the American tanks alone". I care to disagree with this gentleman and all other Arabs who think that Iraq was in any way waiting for the outcome of this summit.
First and foremost, the majority of the Iraqi people are wise enough to realise that the Arabs cannot sit around one table and have a civilised discussion, let alone finding a solution for Iraq's impossible situation. Secondly, he forgot that the Iraqi people were left to face Saddam Hussain's guns and torture chambers year after year, so why on earth would they expect the Arab leaders to help them out now? Thirdly, the American tanks rolled into Iraq from its Arab neighbours' lands and over their airspace, so there is no point of any Arab commentator sounding like the presence of these tanks comes as some sort of surprise that needs to be addressed ONE YEAR after the event. We are still waiting for Arab condemnation of Saddam's crimes...but then again that must be wishful thinking!
I think the we have all come to a realisation that as Iraqis we are left to face the music alone, and must find unity within our nation to stand strong and succeed in repairing all the disastrous damage that Saddam's regime - and NOT the Americans - did to Iraq, including convincing the American administration that we are not sheep to be herded along to whatever field suits American interests.
Sorry for the political rant. I promise to follow with more personal accounts of being an Iraqi girl in London, and returning to Baghdad last December after 14 years of exile, so till next time, keep up your prayers for 'healing Iraq'.