By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams

March 7, 2005

Our new 23-year-old, Metallica-T-Shirt-wearing translator is fun to be around. I tease him by saying that he is more American than me, since he knows so much of the pop culture. But he possesses a seriousness beneath the pop-culture exterior: a year ago, he spent 11 months in Bucca prison camp in southern Iraq. After all that time he still does not know what his charges were.

He told me about his experience: “Sometimes, we became friends with the soldiers. They were more like friends than guards. They would tell us, ‘You know, it’s like we’re in prison too.’ They didn’t want to be there. They would come into our tent and play cards.

“When I got out of prison, I felt lost and depressed. In Bucca Camp, at least I had work to do–there were 500 detainees in my camp I had to translate for. I could forget that I was in prison. When I was released, I had no purpose anymore. I felt confused. When I tried to use my computer, it was like I had forgotten how to use it. One day I was at the market, and I reached into my pocket to use cigarettes to pay for the food. In prison we used cigarettes as cash. It was hard to adjust. And so I started volunteering at Women’s Will, a human-rights group that my mother works at. Now I can look back and feel that it all happened for a reason.”

March 8, 2005: International Women’s Day

Four of us CPTers attended a demonstration in Firdos Square, Baghdad, with the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. It was amazing! Little girls with head scarves holding banners, older women draped in full black abaya and hijab, young women in jeans and T-shirts. They chanted for equality, separation of religious and state law, and an end to the American occupation. They seemed delighted to see four Americans there who also wanted the occupation to end. It was a beautiful way to resist with voices rather than with violence.

Along the road from the demonstration, tiny yellow flowers pushed their way through cracks in concrete only yards away from razor wire.

Later, Cliff and I went to Women’s Will, an organization for women’s rights founded by Hana, a dynamic woman whose eyes snap with both mirth and determination. We talked about Iraqi women detained without trial in U.S. prisons in Iraq. At the idea of an action to highlight their situation, Hana practically leapt into action. “Yes, we must do this,” she said. “Even if only five of us march, if we take one step, others will follow. I believe this!”

March 9, 2005

Life in Iraq is like a rollercoaster. At 6:30 this morning I woke up because the bed and windows were shaking. A car bomb had exploded about a mile away. As usual I went to the roof to see what had happened and guessed it must have hit a fuel station because the clouds of black smoke just kept coming and coming. After two weeks of quiet in the neighborhood, dull “booms” continued throughout the day.

It would be easy to look at bombs as something that only terrorists do, but every time I feel an explosion here in Iraq, I wonder what it was like to be beneath the “Shock and Awe” of March 2003. Every Iraqi I’ve ever asked has said that there is nothing like the American bombs. This morning one of our translators said to me, “You cannot imagine it. It was like traveling through hell.”

Later today I was at a meeting with the UN representative for human rights and one of my Iraqi colleagues from a village west of Baghdad. My Iraqi friend walks a tightrope between the resistance and the U.S. military presence: his humanitarian organization received CPA funding for their projects, so he is viewed by the resistance as a collaborator. His best friend, a kind man I met last summer, was shot dead by resistance a few weeks ago. But to my Iraqi colleague, the U.S. military occupation is just as dangerous: last fall they wrongly detained him for six weeks, suspecting him as resistance just because he is on the governing council of his village. His car was in an accident caused by a military convoy, caught fire, and was later crushed by a tank. The military refused to give him compensation.

He told the UN worker about the problems happening in his village. “There is a curfew between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.,” he began.

“What happens if you break the curfew?” asked the UN rep.

My friend’s face became grave. “There have been many accidents because of this. Soldiers have shot whole families by mistake–if we break the curfew because someone needs to go to the hospital, because someone is sick, anything. Many mistakes.”

Listening to my friend, I remembered my reaction when I read about the Italian journalist and her guards being shot by U.S. troops. Once the shock passed, the first clear thought in my mind was: “That happens to Iraqis all the time.” I have a photograph of the bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi man accidentally shot at a checkpoint a year ago.

Tonight, I spoke by phone to an Iraqi woman whose sister has been taken to the high-security airport prison. The woman and her sister were imprisoned for more than seven months last year, during which time their detained brother’s dead body was thrown into their laps. They finally were released last July after authorities concluded that they were not involved with the resistance. Two weeks ago, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers raided her sister’s home again and took her away. The woman’s voice was tired and sad. “Maybe we will talk later,” she said.

Going to sleep, I remembered something my Iraqi friend from the village west of Baghdad said: “You are very brave to be with us through all this. I feel that you are my family.”

Little does he realize that he is the brave one.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical violence-reduction program with roots in the historic peace churches. Teams of trained peace workers live in areas of lethal conflict around the world. CPT has been present in Iraq since October, 2002. To learn more about CPT, please visit www.cpt.org. Photos of CPT projects may be viewed at www.cpt.org/gallery