A Visit to Sayyid Ali

Sayyid Ali, on my second visit to his home with our team, presented me
with a soft gray hijab—the kind that pulls over your head like a stocking
and falls to your elbows. No pins are required to hold it in place. It
is a little heavy, but I kind of like the weight on my head. It also
holds the slippery black abaya in place a little better. The Sayyid has
really shown his appreciation for my understanding of Muslim people and
willingness to learn about the Shi’a, even though he knows I am starting
seminary next year. I told him that one of my life’s goals was to teach
Christians about Muslims so that they would befriend them rather than wage
wars against them. He chuckles and says, little by little, I will convert
to Islam and then I will never want to leave Iraq. He is joking though,
and we are becoming good friends.

That day we also had our first lunch at his home. He brought out large
platters of chicken and rice, salad and pickled vegetables. First he
insisted that we try to clean our plates. Impossible, of course. Then,
after tidily pulling the meat away from the bones with the flatbread and
bringing it to my mouth, a polite Beit Sahour table lesson I learned in
Palestine, he laughed. “Eat with your hands,” he said. “It is the
natural way.” I felt a little funny about it while in a suit, but he had
no trouble eating this way in all his clerical robes. Iraqis have a
pronounced earthy practicality about basic life matters that also makes
them seem more eloquent and spiritual.

Our translator is a former staffer at the Ministry of Tourism. He lost
his job when Baghdad fell, then had his office looted in the aftermath.
He’s enthusiastic about our work, always suggesting and occasionally
overwhelming us with suggestions of leads to follow, but really more than
translating you can see he lives for the moments when we’re just traveling
place to place and he can point out the sights. Then his eyes really
light up. Curiously, this is a trait true to some extent of most Iraqis
I’ve met, particularly now that they are more free to associate with
foreigners. They know their history down to the smallest detail, and they
know their religion, whichever it may be. In this second part I am
feeling more and more ashamed of myself for beginning to forget just how
exactly certain Bible stories happened or who said just what. It doesn’t
sound so difficult, but just try reciting scene by scene, word by word the
story of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, or the story of Abraham
entertaining angels in the desert. Fortunately, my embarrassment is
driving me to some serious review sessions.

In other news, it seems I’ve been getting kissed a lot lately, and
fortunately not by the local young men. I’ve made lots of friends among
affectionate older Iraqi women, and they grab me and smooch four, five
times. I think this is mainly because I speak a little Arabic and use it
to compliment their cooking heavily. Two women now, including our
translators’ old auntie, have offered cooking lessons, which might have
useful dividends for my teammies.

Every other person we meet seems to have an engineering degree, and they
are impressive builders. I have no doubt that Iraqis have no need of
Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild their country at inflated US costs paid
in oil; these are the people who can take simple mud and stone and create
buildings that have lasted since the dawn of civilization. Not to mention
the beautiful architecture lining the streets of the modern cities. Still
they are working from mud brick and stone as well. Over a decade of
sanctions has made our friends able repairmen as well. I had the
misfortune my second day here of buying an iron without its original
packaging. I should have realized then it was broken, but somehow missed
the crack in the water reservoir and discovered the electrical short when
I got home. Still, our friends brought it back the next day as functional
as new. I have no idea how. Probably very few of us in the US would know
what to do. Somewhere between money-back guarantees and our disposable
culture, we’ve un-learned quite a bit.

There is all sorts of looting still going on. I notice that four of the
five famed luxury hotels of Baghdad have been turned into US military
barracks. Little flags and the occasional pair of boxers hang out the
windows of the Palestine tower. The ballroom must be getting put to good
use as a lounge. I wonder about the pool. The same is true of the
Sheraton Ishtar, the Mansour, the Rasheed, and the Baghdad. I notice
mainly white soldiers in the air-conditioned Baghdad conference center
turned US ‘Iraqi Assistance Center,’ as well as in the air-conditioned CPA
Palace compound, formerly Saddam’s central palace, and very few white
soldiers in the humvees and tanks patrolling the streets of Baghdad, or on
foot. It’s something I just want to sit with and continue to observe
before saying anything more.

There is also looting which seems quite appropriate, if only as poetic
justice. We met several human rights organizations which have set up shop
in former villas of the Republican Guard and Baath party elites. I
especially admire the Free Prisoners Association, which after looting its
office space took advantage of the day the security services went into
hiding to loot their office of the millions of files of political
detainees and executions throughout the Saddam era and hustle them off to
undisclosed locations around the country. Now hundreds of relatives pour
into their offices every day with renewed hope of finding their loved
ones. If only it were so easy for them, they say, to get the lists from
our military about its detainees.

Part of our work is supposed to be encouraging the local human rights and
peace groups which are springing up all over. Their task is so immense
and heartbreaking I’m not sure just how to do that. Maybe I could bring
them jellybeans. I’m feeling otherwise a bit ill-equipped for the job.
Still they plug on in ways I cannot imagine. The Human Rights
Organization in Karbala had little special training or equipment but knew
a major pilgrimage was soon to begin late in the war, so they took it upon
themselves to remove 20,000 [internationally-outlawed yet popularly used
by our forces] cluster bombs from their streets and yards in about one
week. One man who did have some training, a former Iraqi military
officer, removed 5,200 in that time with his own hands until one he was
trying to disarm blew up and killed him. It was planted in an elementary
schoolyard. The group didn’t have to do it—under international law it is
the US’ responsibility to clear their own unexploded ordnance—but they saw
the US was in no mood to do so and the need was urgent. The industrious
mine-sapper was given a high martyr’s funeral in Kerbala, he who truly fit
such a description.

I have now learned how to enter and exit the smallest and most awkward of
taxis while wearing long skirts and heels with true grace. I wish I could
explain my magic formula to you all. I think though it is mostly
practice. Or wishing peace upon the driver. Our drivers, many of whom
hold advanced degrees, frequently wax political. One more profound
statement I heard recently was, “Our country is lost. That which is Iraq
is no more.”

I’ve been several times now to the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University
of Baghdad and always feel right at home. The walls surrounding the
building are covered in colorful and free-thinking murals. Inside, a
large mural of Guernica puts things in perspective quickly. There is also
a sculpture garden created by students, and the most striking is a female
form wrapped and dangling as if a butterfly’s cocoon, about to open. It’s
just a meter away from a stoic Sumerian warrior posed for the fight.
Hmmm..

I think most of the uncovering work about the truths of the old regime is
probably happening quite well by Iraqis’ own selves. When I think about
the mass graves panic back home on US television, that families are not
waiting for a proper DNA testing, but Iraqis are talking to each other and
working things out and figuring out their past in many ways and that’s all
that’s really needed. What our country learns or doesn’t learn, curious
though we may be, is really just an afterthought. We need to focus on
learning from our own actions, anyway. I think about how true it is that
history repeats itself if you choose not to learn from it. Like that
dictators often follow foreign military occupations. Or that looting
follows almost all wars. Or that foreign-appointed governments are often
viewed as just that, puppet regimes, and never gain local credibility.
Several Iraqis here have said that they are certain the atrocities of the
old regime will be taught in schools, similar to Germany’s Holocaust
education program, so that this may never happen again. Wow, so soon. Do
you suppose our country will ever start teaching our Viet Nam war
atrocities in high schools? Or our Gulf War atrocities? Or anything
after our WWII victory, A-bombs de-emphasized, where most high school
history courses end?