Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad

Oral traditions eventually recorded in the Book of Exodus narrate the tales of the ancient Israelites’ escape from bondage in Egypt. A cruel Pharaoh was ruthless in his murderous demands. Already crushed by the work of building monuments to their oppressor, they were then ordered to also gather the straw to make the bricks that would be used for building. It was the last straw. The Israelites began to heed revolutionary calls for escape.

Today I visited the former Iraqi Air Defense Camp in Baghdad. Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, now legendary for ruthless repression, military officers and their families were given decent housing. In this camp, they even had two swimming pools. Heavily bombed during Operation Shock and Awe, the compound’s main buildings are now massive heaps of rubble, with a few long, grey tubular US missiles scattered on the debris.

Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad

When I was in high school, I participated in a public speaking contest and was asked to present a humorous reading. I chose a passage from the book, The Joyous Season in which a young boy describes how his father dreads the Christmas season with the attendant demands to shop and socialize. I still remember the opening line: “Daddy always said that the best place to spend Christmas is in a Moslem country.”

Now, having spent several Christmases in Iraq, I’m amazed at how easily one can step into the drama of a light shining in the darkness which the darkness shall not overcome. Several days ago, next door to our home in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood, baby Noor was born. Her dark, damp, chilly home resembles a stable. Baby Noor’s grandmother begged us for a blanket in which to wrap the newborn. Her aunt, ten year old Eman, has no socks and no coat. She smiles as she shivers. Yet Abu Noor and Umm Noor, the proud young parents, are beaming with gratitude and pride as they hold up their newborn. Leaving their home, I realize that they are slightly better off than the family across the street. At least they have a roof overhead.

Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness

Last evening, in Amman, we met with Fadi Elayyan and Jihad Tahboub, two Palestinian young men who were imprisoned for two months, without charge, by US Occupying forces who seized them, in Baghdad, on April 10, 2003

They are trying to help four of their companions who are still held by the US military, presumably in a prison compound at Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq.

“On April 10, the US Marines kidnapped us,” Jihad began in a matter of fact tone. “We were students, and we stayed in Baghdad during the war because we did not want to give up our studies or leave our friends. The Marines wanted to occupy our building because it is high and gives a good view of the area. ”

Some of the students had Palestinian passports. When they asked what they were guilty of, the soldiers said, “You are guilty of being Palestinian.” The soldiers told them, “You are not studying education in Baghdad. You are studying terrorism.”

“We said that we had citizen IDs and we are students,” said Fadi, but the soldiers insisted, with guns pointed at their heads, “You are in Iraq and you are terrorists.”

Fadi, age 24, had been living in Baghdad for six years. At the Mustansariya University, he was three months short of achieving a degree in environmental engineering. Jihad, age 23, studied hotel management.

Fadi and Jihad were released from a prison in Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq, two months later, on June 10, after a US military Tribunal issued each of them signed but undated documents stating that there was no evidence to support a claim that he committed a belligerent act against the Coalition forces. Before being released, they had to sign a document stating that the US military bore no responsibility for what had happened to them while they were in custody.

Baghdad, Iraq
Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness

Since I first met him in 1997, Sa,ad had talked about bringing me to meet his parents and, after he married, his wife and newborn baby. But fear prohibited the visit. We were nearly certain that Ba’ath party intelligence workers would interrogate Sa’ad’almost immediately after a westerner left his home. Yesterday, John Farrell and I spent the afternoon with Sa’ad and his family. We sat on thin mats in a bare room furnished only with a rickety wooden table and a vase of plastic flowers. The family is fortunate to have a fan and a working telephone.

Sharing the home are Sa’ad, his wife and six month old son, Sa’ad’s brothers Ra’ad and Qasim, his sister Eman, and his parents. At the doorstep, before we entered, Sa’ad whispered to me that Saddam’s fedayeen had broken his brother Qasim’s nose when they tried to conscript him into military service just before the recent invasion. Because Qasim refused, they tortured him with electric shock.

“This affect him,” said Sa’ad, lightly tapping his head. “His mind, it changes.”

Baghdad, Iraq
Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness

Meeting with our Iraqi friend, Sattar, who struggles now to adjust to the Occupation, we asked him if he has any hopes for the future. “If someone takes you to a far away land, to an unfamiliar city, and then to a street where there are no lights, –if you ask yourself how you would feel, then you will have an idea of my feelings now.”

He told us about a “good” encounter with a US soldier who showed kindness and decency during a ten-minute conversation while Sattar was stalled for two hours at a checkpoint. The soldier apologized for the long wait. Sattar posed a question he regularly asks of soldiers who talk with him: “What are you doing here?” The soldier said he wasn’t sure, but that they’d been told they had come to help Iraqis by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. “You’ve done that,” said Sattar. “Why are you still here?” The soldier couldn’t say, but he thought they still might have some important work to do in Iraq. He and Sattar shared a good moment of civil conversation, something to help balance some awful exchanges Sattar has had with soldiers who have behaved rudely.