By Kathy Kelly

It’s ironic that my most treasured Christmas moments have come in a largely Muslim country.

It is December 1998, and, after an intense and illegal bombing campaign at the very beginning of Ramadan, we have spent a week with children in Baghdad learning to sing “We Shall Overcome” in Arabic. The sweet voices of those children sustain me to this day.

It is December 1999, and in a particularly run-down area of Basra, a little boy pulls a milk crate by a frayed rope. Inside the crate, bundled in a muddied, ragged blanket, an obviously malnourished baby gazes calmly at me, undisturbed by the flies that surround him. This is a nativity under siege. That child’s innocent, suffering gaze, drives me to this day.