By Cathy Breen
Voices in the Wilderness
Baghdad

How upside down the world is. We have no telephone service here in our neighborhood. Should an accident occur, should someone need to talk urgently to a loved one or with someone across town, it is impossible to communicate. And yet here I sit writing at an Internet center near to our apartment. The people here are very kind to us, offering help whenever needed.

Yesterday my bag went missing in the early morning–everything dear to me gone in a moment! Except, thanks be to God, my passport and ticket. My calendar, notebook, phone numbers, digital camera, house key to apartment, ID, sunglasses–things I can’t do without–I am suddenly without. My only hope at their reappearing is that Ewa, who was on her way out to the south for a few days, may have grabbed my bag by mistake. Time will tell, but I can see by the effect this has had on me that there is a lesson in this.

The last days have not been easy for me. I have been out of sorts, feeling aimless and drifting, questioning my/our purpose for being here. This morning I was hanging around the house hoping that someone would come by to take me to an appointment with a doctor I have been trying to get in touch with. This doctor has done serious work around depleted uranium and I have already missed two appointments with him. I can only get in touch with him through a mutual friend who stopped by a couple of days ago while I was out. I set about sweeping and wet mopping the floors, grumbling to myself as I cleaned a particularly smelly bathroom downstairs. Later I went out to see if I could find a piece of chicken to make a soup. Chicken soup tends to help set the world right again. I felt people staring at me sternly and suspiciously as I walked through the neighborhood.

A short while later as I was cutting up onions Sattar and a new friend I just wrote about, Muhannad, stopped by the house at the same time. A short while later Muhannad offered to take me to a local photo place to get a picture for a new ID. Tomorrow is a meeting at the UN complex for NGOs, and one needs an ID to get in. As we walked we talked, Muhannad commenting at how bad things seem. When I told him how I felt people were reacting to me in the streets, he said, “People see that you are a foreigner. They want to know why you are here.”

He put the same question to me that another Iraqi had put to me just a couple of days prior. “What are you doing concretely to help the Iraqi people?” Muhannad added, however, “In the last two days what have you done?” I began to tell him of my/our struggle to know if it is of any benefit to stay on in Iraq. This was not the first time we’d spoken of this. I related how yesterday I’d gone to the Children’s hospital to sit with a young 14 year old girl, Joaan, who is dying of leukemia and fighting depression. She likes to speak
English, and seemed happy for me to come and visit with her for a while. Today a man we know came to the house to say that one of his cousins had been arrested over a month ago by the coalition forces and has turned up in a hospital near the CPA headquarters. But nobody, not even family, is allowed to see him. “Could I be of any help?” I asked him. We shall see. But these things seem feeble at best in justifying my presence here.

I told Muhannad that in the final analysis I can only ask God to show me/us the way, to open and close the doors for me and for us if indeed we should not be here. And I must believe that I will be shown the way. Yes, he said, it is the same with me, the same with all of us. He says I give him hope. I say he gives me hope. We agree that we must have hope.

Just the other day, feeling lonely and vulnerable, I wrote a cry for help to a dear young poet friend of mine, Mia, asking if she could send me a poem or two. And behold, today she answered me with four poems! She said, I hope she doesn’t mind my quoting her, “…my life will be one of seasons….this is my time here and I must remind myself that it will be surprisingly brief, so as to drink deep, drink deep.”

With this beautiful thought I greet you. With this wish that we all drink deeply today and tomorrow and the day after–wherever we may be. Love, Cathy.