Barefoot in Baghdad (18 page)

I decided to stop wearing the traditional black clothes of mourning the day I moved into my new home in Baghdad’s wealthier Mansour district. I had worn black since the day of Fern’s and Salwa’s funerals. I moved into my new home for similarly depressing reasons.

Their murders were considered a major turning point for civilians working inside Iraq: Fern was the first American female civilian working with the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq. Internationals and locals alike believed the fact that Fern and Salwa worked to help women was the reason they were targeted. There was a fear that the United States was attacking the social fabric of the community by empowering women.

Nobody in Iraq had expected me to wear the traditional black. I would like to say I did it out of respect for the local customs, but that would not be completely true. I did it because I needed to. I was experiencing an overwhelming level of sadness, and wearing black somehow allowed me to release it. It was a nod to those I had lost.

I later learned I was not alone. Many women in the areas where Fern and Salwa worked also wore black during the days of mourning after the loss of a loved one.

I did not wear the traditional abaya that was worn in the southern villages. I mixed and matched whatever black pants, shirts, and skirts I already had. Outfits I had bought with the intention of looking slimmer suddenly turned into my uniform of mourning. I never realized how much black clothing I actually owned, and I was surprised it could last me an entire month. Iraqi women wore black for a minimum of one year after the loss of a loved one. Many widows wore it for the rest of their lives.

I could not help but wonder who, if anyone, would wear black if I were to die?

During my time of mourning I was touched by the level of support I received from Yusuf’s family. His mother, who had so kindly sent me pots of food, continued to send me home-cooked meals every other day, and she often insisted Yusuf bring me home to spend time with her. During these days, she would hold my hand and offer me words of comfort. I saw her as my mother in Iraq, and her sympathy helped in my healing process.

Hussein would often bring Maysoon, Yusuf’s sister, to my house during these days as well. The days she was not able to come, she would call to make sure I was well.

It was the first week of April 2004, and the general situation was at its bleakest point since I had arrived nine months earlier. On the streets of Baghdad, over the course of one year, the description of the coalition had openly shifted from the army of liberation to the army of occupation. Only a few days before, four American civilians were ambushed and killed in the streets of Fallujah. The killings were followed by a public desecration of the victims’ bodies. It was difficult for me to recognize the streets I had walked down only a few months ago as the same streets now being broadcast on Arabic satellite channels with the images of four mutilated and burned bodies.

The hospitality from the tribal families had made Fallujah one of my favorite places to visit. At the time it was a small, insignificant city in western Iraq. The only association I had with Fallujah was that it had the best kebabs in all of Iraq—a well-earned reputation agreed upon throughout the country. I knew there would be no more visits and no more kebabs. The image of the four bodies hanging from the bridge that I had driven under a few months ago would eclipse the renowned Iraqi dish and tribal hospitality for years to come.

American soldiers were now fighting a two-front war with the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah on one side and the Shia stronghold of Najaf on the other. The mosque across from my new house was calling for a national blood and food drive for the people of Fallujah and Najaf. There was a buzz of solidarity between the Shias and Sunnis in the streets of Baghdad as a protest march to Fallujah was planned in defiance of the U.S. coalition siege on the village. All the training organized by the coalition forces on networking and coalition building that had been directed toward the emerging civil society institutions seemed to have had an impact—on the wrong target group.

The tension that enveloped the country blurred the lines between friend and foe. My old neighborhood, Hay
Al Jammah, had somehow made it to the top of the insurgents’ list of hot spots. Waking up to windows shaking from a nearby roadside bomb had become a daily occurrence. The fact that I was a humanitarian aid worker certainly did not guarantee that I would not be targeted. Before the Shawaka office was finished, my house and office were one and the same, and as a result many Iraqi organizations knew where I lived. The address was even registered with the Ministry of the Interior (MOI)—known within the expatriate community as the Ministry of Hate. International aid workers and journalists alike heard rumors of MOI torture chambers for Iraqis and kidnapped internationals.

Everything surrounding me showed the telltale signs of a new time for Iraq. Human Rights Minister Abdel Basset Turki—the man who had opened the Baghdad women’s center—had resigned. He quit his post on April 8 in protest over the military offensives against Fallujah and Najaf. The building with a pool that I had been offered in the Karrada district, and which was subsequently occupied by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was bombed. The women’s center we had opened a month ago in Mustansiriya, across the bridge from Sadr City, now lay empty due to several attacks.

As things were deteriorating in Iraq, the Washington DC–based headquarters of Women for Women International made an executive decision that I was to leave my old house immediately and move to Mansour.

The house I moved into was at least four times the size of my home in Hay Al Jammah. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac and opened into a large garden that had been meticulously maintained. The garden was a short-term consolation. The new security procedures, which I received by email, highlighted that I should not sit in places that were visible. They also strictly forbade me from interacting with my neighbors. The name of the new game was low profile. Gone were the days of having breakfast with the family across the street or midafternoon tea in the garden of my landlord. During my first nine months in Iraq, I had been invited to two weddings, an engagement dinner, and a graduation. In my new neighborhood I was to do my best to go unnoticed.

From a security perspective it made sense. From a social perspective I was lonely. Each morning a different Iraqi employee from our office picked me up in a different car to take me to one of three office locations around Baghdad. By the end of the first week I could almost hear the theme song of
Mission: Impossible
playing in the background as my life began to resemble a bad Agent 007 pastiche. I had nothing to hide, and yet I traveled around Baghdad like a wanted woman.

***

One morning Fadi arrived an hour late. Although he worked as a logistics officer, he sometimes came instead of my usual driver, Salah. It was all part of the security procedures. Fadi’s arrival didn’t alarm me, because the security procedures recommended shifting time and routes regularly. It was when I got into the car and noticed the silence inside that I knew something was wrong. Fadi’s car stereo was an extension of him. He always had to play the latest single from the Lebanese pop star Elissa. The volume of the radio was somehow connected to the gas pedal. As Fadi sped down the Baghdad highway, his music would be blasting, and when he approached traffic lights, he would automatically lower it. This fluctuation in volume would last for the entire journey. No music in Fadi’s car was a sign of big trouble.

“What’s happened now?” I asked.

He shook his head and told me he had overheard some bad news. I sighed. Fadi was renowned as a source of organizational gossip—and not just our organization. He had a wide network of connections with almost all the international organizations, including the UN. He often joked that hot-off-the-press information was an added advantage of regularly attending Sunday church services. Most of the news he passed on was legit. This morning, however, he only agreed to share his news after extracting a promise that I would forget what he was about to say.

Our headquarters was at it again, Fadi said. He had overheard a conversation between the finance manager and the main office, and it appeared they were not convinced that moving homes was enough of a security precaution for me. They felt the situation inside Iraq did not look good. There was a clear standoff in Najaf, and the violence in Fallujah did not look like it would ease any time soon. They wanted to move me to Amman, Jordan.

I found the idea unbearable. Despite my promise to Fadi, I picked up the phone and called the main office to see if there was any truth to the rumor. I was reassured that such a decision would not happen unilaterally. Nonetheless, they said, they had concerns about keeping me—an American national—in the Red Zone.

The Red Zone?
Since when were humanitarian organizations using that term? In 2003, the Red Zone had been part of the U.S. military terminology. It disturbed me that it was now being used by civilians. Another sign of the times.

Since when was my passport my only identity classification? Yes, I was an American, but my past year in the Iraqi community had to count for something. I knew there was a certain amount of protection I would receive as an Arab Muslim woman.

I launched into a monologue over the phone and passionately argued that nothing had changed and that the news and media outlets were dramatizing the situation. Our program had managed to enroll close to two thousand women, and several of them had opened microbusinesses. Were we ready to turn our back on them just as they were starting?

When they asked me about the status of other international humanitarian organizations, I grew silent. Almost all my colleagues from other humanitarian organizations had pulled out of Iraq over the last couple of months. The remaining few could be counted on two hands.

Yet, in my mind, it was irrelevant. I would not leave Iraq. I owed it to too many people to continue the program for women I’d started. I could not tolerate the idea of leaving midway through. The deaths of Fern and Salwa had made me even more resolute. I strongly believed that if I was creative and flexible, I could find a way to continue our programs. I just needed to shift gears. I needed a new beginning to adjust myself to the changing context inside Iraq.

The conversation ended with a clear assignment for me: I needed to provide a new solution that would expose me to less risk. I was not sure what the hell that meant, but I was happy that I was able to buy myself more time. I mumbled an apology to Fadi for breaking our deal and asked him to turn around and take me back home. I needed time to think. It was only when Fadi handed me a tissue that I became aware of the tears streaming down my cheeks.

***

Finding a solution should have been easier. I had argued with near hysteria that there were many different solutions to remaining inside Iraq and continuing our humanitarian work. Yet now, at the eleventh hour, I could not think of a single viable option. I refused to live inside the Green Zone. It made no sense to me. It would only seal me off from the rest of Iraq and alienate me from the very group for whom my programs were targeted—Iraqi women. As for living in the Red Zone, my only argument was if I was viewed as one of the good guys, the Iraqi community would protect me.

But I knew this assumption was pretty naive, not to mention arrogant. The lines between civilian and military had been blurred a long time ago. The distinction between a humanitarian aid worker, a journalist, a contractor, and a civilian officer in the military were opaque at best among the Iraqi population. Given that the first civilian casualties in Fallujah had turned out to be mercenaries employed by Blackwater Security Consulting, it was no wonder that Iraqis could not differentiate between civilians and soldiers. The Iraqi population was increasingly doubtful of the intentions of international aid workers inside Iraq, and the average Iraqi citizen could only think about how the tangible changes in their lives (electricity, water, food) had all either remained the same or become worse. Since many Iraqis had been convinced that the coalition forces would improve these things by leaps and bounds, their disappointment at the reality was great.

I could not think clearly and reverted to my main coping mechanism: cooking. In times of stress I usually resorted to any food that would allow me to do a lot of chopping. The first thing that popped into my mind was tabbouleh. I called Fadi for the list of ingredients: bulgur, mint, tomato, and spring onions. I got stuck when it came to parsley, the key ingredient. Fadi had no idea what parsley was. The Iraqi Arabic word for parsley was different than the one common among Arab speakers in the Levant. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t recall it. Desperate to lose myself at the chopping board, I told Fadi I would find out and call him back. I dialed Zeena, my Iraqi American friend in Washington DC who was on call for emergency moments like these to translate my Palestinian-American Arabic to Iraqi Arabic.
Krafas!
I slapped my palm against my forehead. I knew that was the word. Armed with the right word I started to dial Fadi’s number.