An Interview With an Iraqi Friar

By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Yousif Thomas Mirkis, O.P., is an Iraqi Roman Catholic priest. He recently welcomed me to his community home in Baghdad, the convent of the Dominican friars. In the courtyard, he pointed to the ground. “Look,” he said. A cross lay molded into the tiles. “This is to remind us that the cross is down here, with us. The cross is in the mud.” At 55, Father Yousif has spent most of his life working “in the mud,” striving to heal his society’s wounds and build healthy communities. He teaches theology and ethnology at Babel College in Baghdad and is the chief editor of Christian Thought, Iraq’s oldest theological journal. Amid the current strife, Father Yousif works to foster peace through understanding. He views education as the best way to respond to the poverty, illiteracy and subsequent violence created by years of war and sanctions. His current projects include a popular university for the working poor, an online distance-learning program for foreign languages and numerous dialogues with Muslim and Christian leaders.

“I have no fear,” he says. “I am prudent, I try to seek wisdom. But I am not afraid.” The following interview was conducted in Baghdad last November.

By Sheila Provencher

The flocking birds wheel and turn above Baghdad buildings. Sunlight glints white on their wings. In the morning sun, their wings flash like light; in the evening, like blood. I do not know why they dance like this. I think it is simply for joy of the wind.

In Kerbala, during a visit to the hospital, I met dozens of bombing victims injured in a pre-Christmas suicide blast. Faces swathed in bandages; skulls stitched together. *Ahmed, age 32. Khalid, age 13. Students, porters, taxi drivers. And Simah, a 6-year-old shepherd girl whose legs were torn to pieces by gunfire.

By Sheila Provencher

“Open the door! Open the door!”

The soldier’s face was only about a foot away. “Give me the camera,” he demanded. “Now!”

My colleague Tom had been on our apartment rooftop moments before. He saw about 10 young soldiers playing with neighborhood kids. The soldiers swung the children into the air, earning giggles and shrieks of delight. Tom snapped a picture. “I wanted a photo so I could prove that soldiers do something more than just shoot people,” he later explained.

The effect was instantaneous: within five seconds, five soldiers were at the door shouting for the camera.

“Let us in!”

By Sheila Provencher
December 18, 2004

The small office is freezing cold–no gas heater, no electricity. “Many groups offer us money to improve the place, but we refuse, because we need to be independent, you understand?” she says.

Hana is the founder of Women’s Will, an Iraqi women’s organization that works for justice and human rights. Sixty-something, gray-haired and blue-eyed (”I do not look Iraqi” she says, smiling), wearing an old blue windbreaker and dark-blue pants, she chain-smokes as she talks. She stands only about 5′3″, but her energy envelops the room full of people.

She speaks about their latest project: to unite Iraqi mothers across religious lines and to reach out to mothers in the US and around the world to work for peace. “We all suffer from the war,” she says. “Here in Iraq, when the Coalition forces detain a young man, they are imprisoning his mother too. She and the family suffer with him. When the US sends soldiers to Iraq, they are sending the soldiers’ mothers too. The families suffer.”

by Sheila Provencher

Last week I read a news report that said up to seven Iraqis are kidnapped every day. Today I found out that CPT’s neighbor might be one of them. He was driving from Baghdad to Kirkuk when he disappeared. Sometimes kidnappers ask for ransom, sometimes thieves kill the victim and keep the money, phone, and car. It has been seven days since my neighbor disappeared.

He has three children: *Mohammed (8) and Esam (6), my two miniature bodyguards who always insist on walking me down the street, and their sister Fatima (2). When I visited, their mother Um Mohammed sat on the living room floor and wept. The boys smiled hesitantly at me and did not know how to comfort her.