Barefoot in Baghdad (14 page)

The third way in which I was dependent on men involved my finding someone within a community to make the introduction for me to the community leaders. I could not suddenly appear at a city center and announce that I was there to discuss women’s programs and debate women’s roles with in Islam. Someone known and accepted in the community had to facilitate my presentation. This process allowed me to enter the areas of Karbala and Najaf successfully as early as August 2003.

***

At some point during my first few months in Iraq, I came across Ashraf Al-Khalidi, a young civil society activist. His sense of dedication toward the new Iraq bordered on obsession. He was a handsome Iraqi professional who took advantage of every opportunity to broadcast the great ideals the United States had brought to Iraq. It quickly became apparent that this was more than mere lip service for him. He believed in those ideals, he was committed to them, and he was ready to sacrifice his life to see them take root in Iraq.

Many years later the U.S. government recognized Ashraf as one of the Iraqis who took a great personal risk by aligning himself with America. The government granted him a special immigration visa, but Ashraf refused it. His sacrifices had never been for the Americans; they had been for Iraq.

Ashraf saw the potential in a democratic Iraq, and he worked day and night to fulfill his role in making it happen. He was a native of Karbala, and he urged me to expand my programs into the governorate.

As a single woman traveling the country alone, I had few options for places to stay. Since my objective was to meet with tribal and community leaders, the option of staying at a local hotel was ruled out instantly. Why? It was strongly believed that only a certain kind of woman would stay at a hotel alone. For the same reason, I ruled out the option of staying at the CPA or at a military base. My impartiality was my main entry point into some of the most conservative areas in the country, and I could not afford to compromise that for accommodations. In such cases I would stay at the homes of extended families of Iraqi friends and staff. This had the added benefit of providing me an opportunity to fully grasp the daily life of Iraqis.

Among the most memorable homes was that of Ashraf’s family. Although he was based in Baghdad, his family home was in Karbala’s city center. Ashraf had six sisters; two were married and four were still at the family home. His father had passed away and, as the oldest son, Ashraf was considered the head of the household. Despite his living in Baghdad, he still called the shots back home. The fact that Ashraf was an active member of civil society strongly distinguished him from other male heads of households. He urged his sisters to continue their education and encouraged them not to rush into marriage. I was touched at the way his sisters would run to greet him, love and admiration radiating as they embraced him each time he visited.

The moment Ashraf and I would arrive from Baghdad, a large feast was prepared, and the girls would hurry a round the house to prepare the meal. Once we had eaten, the family spent hours catching up on everything from the latest soap operas to current affairs. At night, mattresses would be pulled into the main living room, where all the women would sleep. It was a large house with plenty of rooms but no electricity. A small generator had been purchased, but it operated only a couple of fans.

Electricity problems were not uncommon. Every community-needs assessment conducted by humanitarian organizations indicated that electricity was the number-one community priority. Years later, several military strategists attributed the failure to restore electricity in Iraq as one of the CPA’s key failures in establishing security in Iraq. From the beginning, however, the insurgents knew this. Energy plants, power lines, and neighborhood generators were targeted weekly. Their goal was to undermine the CPA and Iraqi government officials, and their plan worked well. Many Iraqis lost confidence in the United States as a result of the unreliability of utilities. Women complained they could not access water (because pumps operated on electricity), their children studied by candle light, and their infants cried all night due to the suffocating heat. Previously simple tasks such as laundry turned into strenuous chores.

It was one thing to hear the complaints; it was another to live it. During those nights without electricity my body fought between exhaustion and the oppressive heat that refused to let me sleep. Some women dipped towels in cold water and wrapped them around their hands and feet before they went to sleep. I often lay in silence all night and prayed exhaustion would take over and force my body to sleep. Instead I would toss and turn in a semiconscious state, suspended between the desire to sleep and the sounds of whistles blowing throughout the night.

As a result of the vacuum in local security that began in 2003, the men in Karbala had developed a neighborhood watch system to maintain law and order in their communities. A member of the neighborhood watch monitored each street corner, and they would blow whistles every five minutes to indicate all was well. This was long before the debate on Iraqis taking responsibility for their own security. The men of Karbala instinctively knew that they would have to tend to their own safety measures if they wanted to keep their families safe.

Instead of counting sheep, I counted the moments until the next whistle. Just as I approached three hundred, I would hear a whistle and start counting over again.

When Lieutenant McBride—I never knew her first name—opened the door to the trailer, I saw five Iraqi girls seated on bunk beds: two on the top mattress, three on the bottom. When they saw me, the three on the bottom made a futile effort to scramble toward a hiding place in the narrow trailer. The two on top buried their faces in the bed’s thin pillows.

I stared in disbelief. With their fake green and blue contact lenses, badly highlighted hair that had taken on an orange hue, and tight-fitting, crystal-studded jeans with tight tank tops, they looked neither Iraqi nor American, but rather like some sort of misconstrued hybrid. I knew right away that I was in over my head by agreeing to meet with them. Five girls from Baqubah living inside an American trailer in the Green Zone spelled trouble.

During our walk from the palace being used as U.S. military headquarters to the trailers, McBride told me that the girls—five cousins who had run away from home—had entered the Green Zone only after they had been promised they wouldn’t have to interact with any Arabs. Still, their initial reaction to me caught me off guard.

“Ya prohmise me,” the oldest of the girls—the ringleader, no doubt—shouted out in broken English. Of the five, she had the brightest orange highlights. Her fiery hair, combined with her eerie blue contact lenses, gave her a demonic appearance.

“She’s an American,” responded McBride with reassuring confidence. When the lieutenant had initially seen my head scarf, she, too, had been worried. The girls had convinced her that Arab women would not sympathize with their plight. But during our walk from the palace to the trailer, I told the lieutenant about some of the cases I had handled in the last six months: rape victims, prostitutes, and victims of honor crimes. McBride seemed to relax with each step we took. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my experience in dealing with women in difficult circumstances or my crisp American accent.

“Yes, I’m an American.” I told the girls. “And I work for an international women’s organization. I’ve helped many girls like you, and trust me, the things I’ve seen can’t be any worse than what you’re about to tell me.”

I spoke softly in English to quell any fears about my Arab origin, even though I knew speaking in Arabic would have been easier for them to understand.

I leaned against the trailer door, trying to look as casual and nonthreatening as possible, and the lieutenant stayed outside and just behind me. The sky had already begun to break out into sunset shades of red and orange. As soon as darkness fell, the temperature would drop. The chill of January nights in Baghdad was almost as torturous as the heat of July days. I wished I hadn’t left my coat in Lieutenant McBride’s car. Still, no matter how cold it was, I did not want to enter the girl’s tiny space unless they invited me in.

One of the girls on the top bunk lifted her face from her pillow and looked down at me. She didn’t look a day over ten years old, although later I learned that she was twelve. Her waist-long hair was twisted into an impromptu braid that she kept twirling over her shoulder. With her head tilted slightly, she asked, “If you’re an American, why are you covered?”

“I am a Muslim. I cover because I have chosen to. The important word is
chosen.
” I was surprised by my non sequitur, but instinctively I knew that I needed to keep talking. It didn’t matter what I said as long as I said it in English. It was clearly working.

One of the girls, who had convinced herself that she was invisible behind one of the thin bed posts, peeked out at me and asked in a timid voice, “Are your parents Iraqi?”

“No,” I replied. “I have only been here a few months.”

“You came with the Americans?”

“No, not at all. I’m here with humanitarian aid workers. My job is to help women. I have nothing to do with the military.”

The ringleader sat down on the bottom mattress and stared at me defiantly with eerie eyes. “We only talk army people. Only U.S. soldier we trust. We give information, and now they take us to America.”

I later learned that her name was Zeena. She was sixteen, and she had masterminded the girls’ little adventure.

“That’s fair,” I replied calmly. I knew it was important that they understand what I was about to tell them, but I also worried about switching from English to Arabic, consciously thickening it with what my close friends call my Texas Arabic accent.

“Look, the soldiers can’t do anything for you except keep you in this trailer. And even that they can only do for no more than a month. They called me because they know I may be your only chance. We need to figure out a more realistic solution for you, and I can help them do that. But only if you want me to.”

“We no want your help,” Zeena snapped back, speaking loudly in English for the sake of the lieutenant, who apparently knew only five Arabic words.

“Okay,” I said, still standing outside the trailer. I shrugged my shoulders and started to withdraw, closing the door behind me.

“Wait,” said the girl sitting next to Zeena. She turned to Zeena and said very sharply in Arabic, “We have been here three days, and I cannot keep sleeping in this trailer. The food is horrible, and we need to know what the hell is going to happen to us. Maybe she can help. Let’s at least talk to her.”

I remained silent, the trailer door slightly ajar. Now all five faces looked at me. This other girl was close to Zeena’s age. Her name was Rasha. The remaining three girls were clearly very young and very scared. I wanted to pull the young ones to me and give them a long, tight hug. What horrible thing had happened to them to force them into this situation?

Not waiting for Zeena or Rasha to come to an agreement, the youngest on the top bunk blurted out, “We ran away from home. There is no way we can go back. We thought the military would send us to America, but now we do not know what to think.” She was close to tears.

“
Inchaabi
! (Shut up!)” Zeena screamed, standing up and whirling herself around to face the little one.

“You do not need to tell me anything now,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. I opened the door and placed one foot inside the trailer. Zeena’s fierceness made me afraid to leave the little ones with her. “Instead, why don’t you ask me questions and get to know me. If you feel there is something I can do for you, then fine. I will be happy to come back tomorrow. If you don’t, then you never have to see me again, and I will forget I ever met you. Deal?”

Zeena did not answer. She just sat back down and didn’t interrupt when the rest of the girls started asking me questions. I sat at the edge of the entrance to the trailer, leaning my back against the open door. My feet dangled freely outside, and I crossed my arms for warmth. For the next fifteen minutes we talked. They asked about my job and seemed impressed to hear that I traveled so extensively. They were thrilled to hear I had been to Kenya and Afghanistan, and even Zeena seemed to open up by sharing that her dream had always been to travel all over the world. The younger girls—Zahra, Iman, and Amani—formally introduced themselves. Amani, the youngest, was only nine. Both Zahra and Iman were twelve years old.

I found myself enjoying talking to the girls and even managed to forget how cold I was. By the time a colonel came by to check on us, the tension had dissipated, and the girls were shooting questions at me.

The colonel stood to the side and cleared his throat. Taking my cue from him, I stood up. “I have to go now. I do not know if I will see you again, but I will be thinking of all of you. I know you girls are smart and brave, so I will not worry about you too much.”

With that, Lieutenant McBride and I made our way back to the palace, and I waited for her in the parking lot to get her keys to the Toyota Land Cruiser. I was already frozen to the core, so another five minutes outside wasn’t going to kill me. She would have to drive me back to the convention center, where my driver was waiting.

As I waited, I realized I had broken my promise to myself not to get involved when the U.S. Army randomly intervened in the lives of Iraqi civilians, especially women. The stubborn bull in me simply refused to learn her lesson. My staff was still frustrated by the last incident: the army contacted us when a soldier’s chivalry led to the arrest of a man who had allegedly threatened his wife at a vegetable stand in Baghdad. When the man was released three days later, he threw his wife out of the house and divorced her. When we failed to reconcile the couple, all we could do was enroll the woman in our job skills training program to help her earn an income. What she described as a simple market place squabble ended up leaving her with no protection or livelihood.

Years of humanitarian work had taught me that the smallest intervention could set loose an avalanche of unexpected consequences. I knew better than to dive in on a whim. The key was to anticipate and plan for worst-case scenarios and to take calculated risks to improve people’s lives. Even the most experienced aid workers could find themselves stuck in some intractable situation. My organization’s motto was “Underpromise and overdeliver.”

Somehow, the U.S.-led coalition had overlooked this lesson. Every day the gap between rhetoric and reality grew wider. Well-meaning individuals in the military were so zealous about providing assistance, they made outlandish commitments. As a result, the military was left to handle cases far beyond its jurisdiction. When those cases involved women, they often found their way to me.

Case in point: the five Pandoras who had opened a box without thinking of the consequences. Once again, I’d been dragged into a complicated situation made intractable now that the U.S. military was involved.

Capt. Anne Murphy had called me about the girls’ situation. She did not know any details, but a colonel had asked her to put him in touch with an American women’s nongovernmental aid organization. At the time of her call, she explained that I was the only person she could recommend with a clear conscience. Her faith in me meant a lot, and I couldn’t just turn away. Over the last few months I had begun to look at Anne as more of a friend than a colleague. I agreed to see the girls as a favor to her.

Since Anne’s intervention with Kalthoum, we had worked on several projects together. Primarily we were both intent on seeing a women’s shelter open in Baghdad to provide a safe haven for marginalized women. We had also begun work on the women’s center project. We quickly became inseparable. Becoming friends with a U.S. soldier was the last thing I had expected, but Anne won me over with her dedication and integrity.

She was a native of Boston, reared in a liberal family, and an advocate of what she called hard-core Democratic beliefs. She was one of the only people I knew in Baghdad who had voluntarily enlisted after the war in Afghanistan started. Most of the soldiers I knew had either joined the reserves, an ROTC program in college, or were on a long-term career track in the army.

During one of our first meetings, Anne had described the circumstances that had led her to enlist. From her point of view it was only a matter of time before President Bush and his cronies messed things up. At the same time, she felt she could not just sit back and watch bad things happen. She decided to enlist in order to be at the front lines with her countrymen to try to bring about a positive change.

“Even if it’s just changing the lives of the people I meet directly, at least I feel I am doing something,” she explained. I liked her immediately.

Besides my personal dedication to Anne, I was really touched by the looks on the faces of the girls as I left the trailer. I sincerely wanted to do my best to help them, but it was clear that Zeena, the oldest, didn’t want me to. I didn’t know whether to leave Zeena in charge and just walk away or to force my help on them for the sake of the little ones. My rational side told me not to get involved, but my emotional side was already thinking of solutions. Part of me wanted destiny to take control of the situation and for Lieutenant McBride to tell me the girls didn’t want my help.

When the lieutenant arrived with her car keys, her cell phone was pinched between her shoulder and her ear. She quickly finished the call and said,. “Well, they want you back. Can you come tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. I was surprised that instead of dread I felt a sense of relief sweep over me. I wanted to stay involved because I was afraid for the younger girls. Zeena thought she was calling the shots, but she had no idea what she was doing.

And I still had even less insight into what was really happening. Under what circumstances had the five girls run away from their homes? Why would they undertake such a crazy risk? I needed to collect a little intelligence of my own.

Before I went to sleep that night, I decided to call Abdullah, a police sergeant in Baqubah who was always eager to help me. I asked him if he had heard about the disappearance of a group of girls, but I omitted any mention of my meeting with them. He told me he would look into it and get back to me.

***

The next morning I woke up early and headed to the Green Zone for my ten o’clock appointment with the girls. Access to this secure area was gradually becoming more difficult. When I had first arrived six months earlier, anyone could walk up to the sidewalk in front of the convention center, which sat in the middle of the Green Zone and served as the main administrative contact point between Iraqi civilians and the Coalition Provisional Authority. There had only been one checkpoint, which was a quarter of a mile from the convention center’s main entrance. Now visitors had to walk more than a mile through a corridor of sand bags and barbed wire and pass through three checkpoints. Special badges and body searches were required to get past the first barbed-wire checkpoint that encroached on a busy intersection perpendicular to Haifa Street.