By Peggy Gish
30 January 2005

Ninety-year-old Keleje smiled widely as she walked out of the voting station in a school on the edge of Kerbala, where she voted for the first time in her life. Over the doorway of the school a sign in Arabic read, “Today is the real Iraq wedding.”

Ahmed Mohammed Hussein, an elderly man near a polling station in central Kerbalay other Iraqis in Kerbala, echoed this hopeful spirit as he said, “We voted in a democratic atmosphere. We are happy and hope this will give us a better life.”

By Peggy Gish

I saw something different in the faces of the women at the women’s wedding party in Kerbala. Their eyes were open and welcoming, ready to risk, and ready to see how much alike we are.

In Baghdad, so many eyes were heavy and tense with worry, or averted out of fear or suspicion. Even among our long-time Iraqi friends, the strain was evident. While trying to be sensitive to those who no longer feel safe to relate to us, we found ourselves pulling back from others, not wanting to put them is danger.

By Peggy Gish

“I saw my friend get ready to take some cocaine,” Nassim told Maxine and me as we sat in the CPT apartment in Central Baghdad. “So I asked him, ‘Why do you do that?’ He told me, ‘To forget.’ ‘To forget what?’ I asked. “He told me that he loved a woman, who now found another man. ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded. ‘You are young. You have your life ahead of you. You have a good home and family. You have everything you need!”

Nassim continued: “Then I began to tell him my story. I told him about my first girl that I loved, who died from an illness, about being tortured in prison, having my ear cut and called a traitor because, in the army, I refused to kill my fellow Kurdish Iraqis. I told him about losing my father and then my stepmother selling our home and disappearing, about having no family, no home. Twice last summer I was almost killed. Now I am sad and confused because a woman I loved, just left for Amman. I smoke cigarettes, but I don’t take drugs or drink alcohol.”

By Peggy Gish

Along the entrance to the Women’s Will organization, Maxine Nash and I saw banners saying, “the Occupation Kills Your Sons, Don’t Buy from the Occupiers,” “Boycott the Invaders,” and “Iraqi Mothers United Against Sectarian Fighting.” Inside the meeting room another more colorful banner said, “No Peace Without Justice.”

We walked into a teach-in, already in process. Hana Ibrahim, coordinator of Women’s Will and Dr Balkiss, member of the board, (two middle aged Muslim women) alternatively spoke to about 18 women and five men about one way Iraqis could resist the U.S. occupation.

By Peggy Gish
August 28, 2004

After navigating two checkpoint searches and three concrete walls, My CPT teammate and I entered a U.S. Military Base on the edge of Baghdad, a fortified island of U.S. soldiers.

“Where’ya from?” was the most common question we heard. One soldier came up to us with a big grin saying, “Hey, real Americans here!” Feeling cut off from their families and “real” lives, they welcome some diversion or reminders of family and home. We saw soldiers joking around with Iraqi workers and treating Iraqis politely who come to talk to get information or register a complaint.