Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
October 26, 2003

T.S. ELIOT & BAGHDAD U. Off to Baghdad University for an 8:30am class in one of the University’s three English departments. Cynthia and I were invited by Christian Peacemakers Team member Kathleen Namphy. Today she was to give a guest lecture on T. S. Eliot to a small MA seminar. Kathleen has been a Stanford U. English professor for many years. Cynthia tells me Kathleen was once married into the Namphy family in Haiti. There is a snafu. The professor, whose class it is and who had been out of town, didn’t know the department had made arrangements for Kathleen to come this morning. Sizing Kathleen up, she vigorously encourages her to give her lecture anyway. But Kathleen wants to have the students prepare for her by reading some Eliot in advance. As it turns out Kathleen gives a brief preparatory lecture and hands out some poems — in the hope that her CPT responsibilities will permit her to return next Sunday.

Eliot, who wrote “The Waste Land”–considered by some the major poem in English of the 20th century–may have special resonance in 21st century Iraq. Last year when Kathleen was here she gave a several week seminar on “The Waste Land” at Baghdad U.

I find Kathleen’s remarks on Eliot engaging. I re-read his “Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” finding it engaging. Over the years–since I first encountered the poem in Mrs. Ketchum’s advance placement English class at Central Tech — several of its lines have reverberated thru my non-poetic brain. [”Let us go then, you and I . . .” “I should have been a ragged crab scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”]

After class we visit Professor ______________ in his roomy but sparsely furnished office. Professor ______________ is the Arabic translator of “The Waste Land”–an exceedingly long and esoteric poem with lines in various languages besides English. The indefatigable Cynthia had arranged to bring the Professor three boxes of books donated by a colleague in the States. (The University’s library had been looted back in April, damaging the collection.)

While we’re chatting with the professor, a student comes in proudly distributing copies of issue 1 of the Arabic-language student newspaper (13 Oct.). It has eight full-size pages with color print and photos. The only words in English are in the page 1 masthead: “This Newsletter was prepared by development alternatives, Inc, With financing from the U.S. Agency for international development . . . “

Cynthia also brings a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary to give to the department library. Because of my fondness for dictionaries, I join Cynthia as she turns over the dictionary to the library staff.

HAYTHEM
Next I set out on my own to find our friend Haythem Jaboury in another English department, that of the University’s College of Education. Knowing I would be on campus, he had given me directions to meet him.

I find my way to the office of the department chair, explaining to him whom I was looking for. He is hesitant, so I show him my Voices ID. He says he thought Voices had left Iraq. Soon Haythem is summoned from his linguistics class to meet me.

He has two more classes. Will I wait? I wonder if I might sit in on the classes. Haythem says sure, but goes back to the department chair’s office to ask permission. It turns out we would need the permission of the dean. We decide not to go there and arrange to meet back at the house later.

Just outside the College of Education I walk past three parked US military vehicles and among a bunch of soldiers apparently keeping an eye on the campus. We don’t say anything to each other. I can understand why a department chair might hesitate to let a gringo monitor classes.

Later in the afternoon Haythem and I visit the one-time home–now rubble–of the Healaa family. Haythem, Neville and I had visited their bombed-out house earlier in the month. We visit today on behalf of Neville who was unable to return there before he left Iraq. He had wanted to get some reparations money to them from his congregation in Perth.

We see their bedding neatly laid out on the cleared-off patio. The father wasn’t there; I give the envelope of money (US$400) to Nejat, the wife. We don’t really have much of a conversation. For nearly the entire time we are there Rabia’s mother holds forth passionately. Haythem chooses not to translate.

FAMILY VALUES

In the early evening Haythem and I have dinner–one of Cathy’s soups–at home. Everyone else is out. Haythem, a college senior, asks me if at his age I had a girlfriend. When I say yes, he asks if “we did anything wrong together.” He says that having a girlfriend in Iraq has to be secret.

In his program at school there are four male students and 18 or 20 female students. Haythem says the females really like him, that they are like sisters to him. He explains that they can only be driven from home to the campus and go nowhere else. He tries to be helpful by getting them books, etc. from off-campus sources.

Haythem is good looking, diplomatic and charming. He says he has never had sex, never has drunk wine, and has smoked only seven cigarettes in his life. (Smoking is very widespread among Iraqis.) Haythem says he is ashamed of those cigarettes. He talks approvingly of platonic love. It was just the other night when Salam asked me for the English word for platonic love. He too spoke highly of it. And he, clearly, is a romantic.

In 1991, in Sri Lanka, I spent a night or two at a bed and breakfast in the mountains. It was run by a lovely, loving Islamic family who were most hospitable to me. The encounter, which so impressed me, was my first with an Islamic family. That Sri Lankan family would have fit in well in Iraq. I see much the same “family values” here.

Compared to the US, Iraqi culture is much more ‘wholesome’ and family oriented. Family ties are strong, drugs and alcohol are far less prevalent; sexual objectification and commodification is virtually invisible. Nonetheless, too often it’s those in the US who spout family values rhetoric who have done so much over the past 13 years to make the Iraqi people suffer.

No wonder it was illegal until a few mnths for US citizens to travel to Iraq without permission: to do so is to see the preposterousness of demonizing Iraqis. And now, thanks to the climate of terror the US collaborates in, US forces here can have only very minimal contact with Iraqis. For security reasons, that purdah–isolation–also extends to many US citizens who work with NGOs.