By Sheila Provencher, Christian Peacemaker Teams
November 29, 2004

Iraq feels like a prison. Our neighborhood is surrounded by the dangerous places our friends tell us to avoid. People in neighborhoods like Haifa Street are surrounded by daily gun battles between insurgents (foreign and Iraqi) and soldiers (U.S. and Iraqi). Baghdad itself is surrounded by roads known for everything from kidnapping to explosions.

People in the U.S. enclave otherwise known as the “Green Zone” are in prison too. They surround themselves with blast walls, checkpoints, and razor wire, cutting themselves off from harm. But they also cut themselves off from ordinary Iraqis – the very faces and voices they claim to liberate. “You live outside the wire?” one soldier asked me. “Wow. I can’t imagine that.”

Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams
10 November 2004

Somewhere, someone was playing a flute. The melody drifted down the stairacase.

Fr. Yousif Thomas, an Iraqi Roman Catholic priest, led me into the library of the Dominican friars in Baghdad. “See?” he pointed at the ceiling. A cross, made up of wooden panels and mirrors, faced down into the room. Next he led me outside. “Now, see?” he pointed to the courtyard floor. Another cross of the same design was molded into the tiles. “This is to remind us that the cross is down here, with us. The cross is in the mud. Even while it is also over us.”

Fighter jets roared overhead and broke the evening music.

“Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya.”

Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams
1 November 2004

When I returned to Baghdad yesterday, Um Yousif* and her husband — both Iraqi Christians who have lived here their entire lives — gave me a cake. Chocolate, with white-flowered frosting blobs and green lettering. “Wellcom to Baghdad,” it read.

“We’re sorry that the baker spelled the word wrong,” smiled Um Yousif. “But at least it is a big WELL.”

Unfortunately, things are far from well. Um Yousif does not leave her house, not even to buy groceries. Fear of violence or kidnapping reigns. “I do not think it will get better, even after our elections,” she said. “It will only change when the Americans leave. So many people just cannot bear that the American army is here. If they leave, there is no one left to fight. It could get better within months.”

She paused. “But my heart feels for the American soldiers and their families. So many killed. They are human beings. We are all human beings.”

By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Team in Baghdad

When the explosion shook the St. Raphael’s Catholic Church doors and windows, the people paused in a brief hush. Then the priest’s quiet voice continued the liturgy:

“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”

Like many other times when explosions interrupted the liturgy, everyone just kept on praying, going on instinct, somehow, that it was the best thing to do. Usually the explosions seem close but are actually quite distant.

July 5, 2004
Dear Friends,
Thank you so much for your emails of encouragement!

Life is plugging along here under the July sun. The air outside is like a hair dryer, and the clothes one puts on in the morning feel like they’ve been cooked in an oven! Everyone is talking about Saddam’s appearance in court. Most want him to be executed. Others talk about the power transfer and what has changed and what hasn’t. CPT work has not changed much. This week we’ll accompany a woman to a hospital in the Green Zone where she hopes to find her detained husband. A young man from Sadr City wants to report the wrongful death of his brother. And we’re looking forward to attending the opening of a new organization for women’s rights.

I wrote the following reflection after speaking to a man who spent nine months in detention. CPT speaks to many such people and their families. Most are innocent. Some were well-treated, others were abused. I have never heard a story to match what follows, though. It is hard to read at first, but just persevere to the end.

Much peace to each of you, and to your families,
Sheila

He has two sons now.

Mr. Najib is 59 years old. His health is fragile: he has a history of heart trouble. On Saturday, June 26, Mr. Najib sat in a bare room in Kerbala, Iraq, and shared his story with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

On May 15, 2003, the then-governor of Kerbala sent him on a business trip. When he returned, US intelligence officers were waiting. To this day, Mr. Najib does not know why the Iraqi governor wanted to get rid of him. Perhaps because he had criticized local corruption. Regardless–the US soldiers imprisoned him without charges within the occupation’s vast detention system.

Mr. Najib held back tears as he told us about his first night at the military base at Kerbala University. “The soldiers there threw a party to make fun of me,” he said. “They beat me and spit in my face. When I asked for water, they poured it over my head.” He hesitated, apologized for what he was about to say, and then told how one soldier opened his own pants, put his penis in Mr. Najib’s mouth, and said, “Now you can drink!” They stretched Mr. Najib face-down on the ground and danced around him, yelling obscenities and shouting, “Tomorrow, Guantanamo!”