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ESCAPING NORTH

March 18, 2008 11:12 AM

We flew up to the Kurdish north of Iraq recently – it is always a welcome release for us to go up north, where security is so much better.  After a day in Erbil, the main city, we drove across to the town of Zakho, close to the Syrian and Turkish borders, and an area which has long had a Christian presence.  Most are Chaldean Christians, who speak Aramaic – the same language as Jesus – and are an Eastern branch of the Catholic Church who still recognize the Pope.

Since 2003 I have been friends with a priest here, Father Mofeed Toma, who has seen Christians in Iraq get pushed out of their livelihoods and homes as religious tolerance has evaporated across much of the country.  First in Basra in the south, and then in Baghdad and Mosul, Christians have been targeted by kidnappers (because they often are relatively wealthy and so presumably good sources of ransom).  They have also had their businesses attacked, particularly those who sold alcohol.  Iraq has always been fairly liberal about alcohol – it has never been illegal, and many Iraqis drink beer and whisky, but the merchandizing has always been left to the Christians.  As more religiously conservative Shiite politicians came to power, many of these liquor stores have been burnt out.  And the Christians have fled to towns like Zakho in the Kurdish north where they are relatively safe.

Fr Mofeed lives in a small house inside a compound that includes his church and a small garden with orange trees.   He has a handyman who digs holes for the sheep’s cheese that they make up here called “jajik” – it is buried in a clay pot under the earth for about 40 days, and when it is disinterred it has a pungent, slightly rotten aroma akin to a ripe gorgonzola – quite delicious.

One night Father Mofeed asked us to come and meet his English class – he teaches English to his parishioners twice a week, and wanted a native speaker to come and enhance his lesson.  I stood up in front of about 40 people, most of them adults, and we had a rudimentary conversation about Iraqi politics.  At one point I asked the class how many people wanted to leave Iraq – and pretty much everyone in the room raised their hands, amidst much laughter.  As if I had asked a silly question.

As we went back to the hotel across the river where we were staying that night, I realized that, almost unnoticed, a significant demographic change was happening in Iraq.  Tens of thousands of Christians are emigrating – it is much easier for Christians in Iraq to get visas to Europe, the US and Australia than it is for Muslims – and their absence is changing the fabric of Iraqi society.  Of all the Arab countries, Iraq has long been one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse – now much of that is being destroyed, probably irrevocably.  There is little to attract Christians back to Iraq as it becomes more strictly Islamic.  Friends in Basra tell me horror stories of women being killed for wearing makeup in public.  A Christian woman I just met told me how she had to smuggle a small bottle of whisky into Basra last December to put into her Christmas cake last year – if she had been discovered by the local militia she said it could have been very dangerous for her.

We had some nice meals with Father Mofeed, ate his smelly jajik cheese and drank his beer.  We laughed a lot, and  left on an upbeat note.  But soon afterwards we heard that his archbishop in Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, had been kidnapped – and subsequently was found dead, buried in a shallow grave outside the city.  The prime minister and others condemned the killing of this wise and respected old man.  But the message was clear – nothing is sacred in the new Iraq.  That is the real tragedy of Archbishop Paulos…and it is the tragedy of Christians in Iraq.  A country that will be poorer off if they all leave.

March 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Franklin in Fallujah

March 11, 2008 6:40 PM

We were walking down the main street of Fallujah the other day -- a fact remarkable in itself, given all that has gone on in that benighted town over the past five years -- when we came across a man sitting on a stool on the sidewalk, sketching. I did a double take. Of all the towns in all the world, this is the last one where I would have expected to see a street artist. 

Fallujah is where soldiers of the 82nd Airborne opened up on a crowd of protesters in April 2003, killing 17 and starting a long cycle of resentment and revenge. In March 2004, four U.S. contractors were killed, burnt and strung from a bridge there. In November of that year, the Marines stormed the city in a long and bitter street battle that cost the lives of 95 U.S. troops and some 1,300 insurgents. But insurgents crept back, and until last year it was one of the nastiest places in Iraq. Much has changed since the Sunni tribes in Anbar decided to go over to the Americans and fight against al Qaeda. But street art?

As I walked up to this man, I was even more surprised to see the subject of his deft pencil work. There on the back of a cardboard shirt-stiffener were the deep reflective eyes and flowing hair of Benjamin Franklin -- the man responsible above all for the very idea of an American nation. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He was a famous American writer, scientist, ambassador, statesman...an
American icon; and now, apparently, worthy of artistic representation in Fallujah, a town that has more reason than most in Iraq to hate Americans.

As I peered over the artist's shoulder, I saw the source of his inspiration: a $100 bill, clamped to the top of the cardboard sheet, served as a model. The artist, Moayad Mohammed Hamed, seemed unaware of who the man was whom he was so carefully reproducing. When I expressed interest in his work he offered it to me for free. I pressed some dollars into his hand -- now he can work on Andrew Jackson too, if he cares to.

The U.S. lieutenant who was walking next to me stopped and took the man's details from his ID card -- he was less interested in the sketch than in the fact that a man on the street had a freshly minted $100 bill.  Where had that come from? he wondered.

We moved on, with me clutching my new art work under my arm. Benjamin Franklin isn't such a bad model for today's Iraq, I thought. He had some pretty good ideas about how to run a country; he was a moralist who was deeply suspicious of the dogmas of organized religion, and he knew all about visitors overstaying their welcome. Like fish, he said, visitors start going off after three days. Now that things have started to improve in Anbar, the U.S. Marines are acutely sensitive to not overstay their welcome in Fallujah. Franklin would approve.

March 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

THE BATTLE FOR HEARTS

March 04, 2008 4:17 PM

Dr Moayad Hamad used to be a heart surgeon.  In fact in 1996 he was the first doctor to see Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, when he was brought in to hospital after an assassination attempt.  Uday had been shot while driving through Mansour in western Baghdad – when he reached the hospital his blood pressure was zero over 20 – almost bled out.  According to Dr Moayad Uday’s bodyguards were selected among other things to have the same blood type as their boss, so the doctors could take blood straight from them and transfuse into Uday.  On that day it saved his life.  (Uday, along with his brother Qusay, were killed in Mosul by US troops in July 2003).

Dr Moayad was not political, but after the 2003 he lost his job as his hospital, Ibn Sina, was taken over by the US military as its main combat hospital in the Green Zone.  His house is in Dora, a once relatively affluent neighborhood in southern Baghdad that became a haven for Al Qaeda extremists.  He began working as a simple physician in his neighborhood, but as Al Qaeda’s grip tightened it became harder for him to function.  By 2006 Dora was one of the most dangerous areas of the entire city, and people barely dared to go out onto the streets.

One day an IED (improvised explosive device) planted at the side of the road outside his house went off as a US patrol passed by – it injured several Americans and blew in all the windows in his house.  He came home and ran from room to room looking for his wife and three year old daughter.  Fortunately he discovered they had left an hour before the blast to visit his mother’s house, but something snapped in him that day.  He decided to make a stand.  “If I stay at home I will be killed, if I go out on the street I will be killed – so I might as well be killed doing something,” he said.

He went to the US troops who were just beginning to arrive in his area as a result of the surge and offered to help pick up garbage (a favorite hiding place for IED’s), repair the sidewalks and get the sewage system running again.   He got some grants from the US to bring in garbage trucks, and soon the former heart surgeon had become a local contractor for garbage collection and construction.  “I love garbage,” he says – not only did his trucks clean up the streets, but it provided plenty of jobs for young men who might otherwise be tempted into the insurgency.   It was just the first step to cleaning up the neighborhood, but after four years of no garbage collection it was a very welcome initiative for the locals.  As they saw their neighborhood improving, they became better disposed to the US soldiers and began passing on information about where the Al Qaeda fighters were hiding and where the IEDs were being placed.

Now Dr Moayad’s part of Dora is quite peaceful – the US military unit based there haven’t been attacked since last September.  Shops are opening up and people were happy to stop and chat to us in the street, even after dark.  It is quite a long journey from heart surgery to garbage collection.  But as he says, “if you don’t change in life, you won’t get anywhere.”  Now he has got a profitable little contracting company going, his next idea - to open a chain of restaurants in Dora.  And also a private hospital.  He is, after all, a doctor.

March 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)