Embracing the Occupiers: Conversations with the Future Leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq (Praeger Security International)

EMBRACING THE OCCUPIERS

Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) Th´er`ese Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.)

EMBRACING THE OCCUPIERS Conversations with the Future Leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq

Jeremy S. Block

PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL Westport, Connecticut r London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Block, Jeremy S., 1977– Embracing the occupiers : conversations with the future leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq / Jeremy S. Block. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–36534–8 (alk. paper) 1. Fulbright scholars—Iraq—Interviews. 2. Fulbright scholars— Afghanistan—Interviews. 3. Iraq—Politics and government—2003– . 4. Afghanistan—Politics and government—2001– . 5. United States—Politics and government—2001– I. Title. DS769.B56 2009 2008047532 956.7044 3—dc22 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. C 2009 by Jeremy S. Block Copyright 

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008047532 ISBN: 978–0–313–36534–8 First published in 2009 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my late Pop Pop, Herman Block—a man who loved people and their stories. And to the millions upon millions of Afghans and Iraqis who have been slaughtered, maimed, raped, tortured, exiled, and never had a chance to share their stories.

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1 An American Setting

13

Chapter 2 Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

35

Chapter 3 Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

57

Chapter 4 You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

83

Chapter 5 We Have Landed

109

Chapter 6 Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

135

Chapter 7 After?

161

Epilogue

189

Index

193

This page intentionally left blank

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS No one has been more supportive in this endeavor than my fianc´e Afsi Khot. I could never have waded through the piles of rejection letters with a smile on my face if she wasn’t there the whole time smiling along with me. My editor, Timothy Furnish, has been supportive of this project the entire time and, when not writing about the mahdi or the caliphate, is one hell of a nice guy. I would also like to thank all of the support staff at Greenwood Press who have been very patient and attentive to all of my little idiosyncratic requests. My parents, though skeptical when I told them I was quitting my job to write this book, have also been very supportive and I could never have completed this without them. I would also like to thank the following people for their help with edits—both grammar and substance wise. My aunt Judy Katz was extremely helpful with her initial edits and I hope a copy of this book will put a smile on her face. My good friend, Scott Shanley, gave excellent advice on ways to make the characters come to life—hopefully his own book will be published soon. My friend and neighbor Mark Resnick seemed at times more enthusiastic than me about this project and helped in every way he could with his connections. I would also like to thank Elly Weisenberg for her initial help with giving my proposal a little life. My friend Michael Auerbach gave me encouraging pearls of wisdom on how to market this book. Terrorism analyst, Peter Bergen,

x

Acknowledgments

was extremely helpful with his suggestions, as well as Ambassador Robert Finn for his kind endorsement. Finally, this book would not have been possible if it were not for the ten Afghan and Iraqi students that allowed me the time and privilege to learn about their lives: Ali, Salimi, Omar, Idrees, Taifa, Haider, Nadia, Abdu, Zabi, and Mohammad. You are some of the most interesting people I have met in my life and I will cherish your stories forever. I am confident that you all will make a lasting contribution to your war-torn countries and, if you ever feel you are falling short, remember the dreams and aspirations that you shared with me in this book. Jeremy S. Block January 2009

INTRODUCTION What else is there left to discuss in this post-9/11 world? We have heard time and time again from what seems like every facet of information flowing through the airwaves: Politicians, military commanders, scholars, analysts, you name it. Countless books, articles, and papers have been written, speeches have been made, pacts have been concocted, wars have been fought, embassies have been blown up, prisoners have been captured, dictators have been hanged, and here we are—right at this moment. There can’t really be anything left to discuss. Or is there? Almost right away I knew I had a story to tell, but its great importance hadn’t hit me quite yet. In April 2005, I began working as a Program Officer at the Institute of International Education (IIE), managing the Foreign Fulbright program for Afghanistan and working closely with Iraq under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State. In 1946, Senator William J. Fulbright had the grand idea that avoiding the previous horrors of two world wars could only steadily come through creating a system of cross-cultural exchange that enabled, “the government of the United States to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries” he remarked at its founding ceremony. In other words, maybe countries and leaders might not be so mean to each other if they could only spend some time in each other’s turf—going to school, interacting, all the while trying

2

Embracing the Occupiers

to figure out this strange phenomenon we call “culture.” And even though the ideological founder of Al Qaeda, Sayyid Qutb, developed his splendid idea for turning the world into an Islamic theocracy only after living in Colorado for two years—many other great ideas have been cultivated since. As of 1946, more than 100,000 students from the United States and 250,000 from foreign countries have engaged in this type of exchange, producing significant figures such as Henry Kissinger, Amartya Sen, Boutros BoutrosGhali, John Steinbeck, Milton Friedman, and many others. In this new age of unprecedented American hegemony in the world, there are very few surprises left anymore. Although the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan do have many differences, they are one of the first examples in history of a global superpower attempting to rebuild a country in its own image as a result of security needs. The development of the Fulbright program fits right into this mindset, where an occupying country created a program whereby the occupied could come and receive a free education in mass numbers. In 2004, after a three-year occupation of Afghanistan and a recent overthrow of Saddam’s government in Iraq, the foreign Fulbright programs were enacted. The criteria for these scholarships are largely based on grades, ideas, andof course, a resume as impeccable as they come, decked with the three Ls: languages, leadership, and lots of connections. However, for Iraq and Afghanistan there is a fourth—loyalty. Most of the individuals chosen believe in the American ideas and objectives laid out for their countries while adhering to the notion that an education in the United States, paid for by the United States, would benefit not only each individual but the future of their wartorn lands as well. This is by no means to suggest that all who were chosen for this prestigious award worship the Bush administration and pray five times a day to Paul Bremmer. However, an individual with the perfect “three Ls” whose application reads something to the extent of, “Like Gandhi a hundred years before me, I will use an education in the land of the occupiers for the purpose of understanding the way they think in order to help remove them from my country once and for all,” would probably take a second seat to those repeating the comfort line: “I hope to use my education in America to understand democracy and freedom and how I can help better serve my country.”

Introduction

3

From my experience in knowing most of these individuals for over two years, I can safely say that the “comfort line” for many is only a safety valve. While an ex-Taliban or Al Qaeda supporter hasn’t slipped through the system just yet, many differ sharply with U.S. policy in their countries and around the world. More importantly, not all of them share one “big brain” on issues of public policy. The so-called “Arab” and “Muslim” street that we so frequently hear about in the media has been paved on a different route than the ones these individuals walk on. For the most part, the 200 Afghans and Iraqis selected to the Fulbright program since 2004 do share one idea—progress. After talking to them, even for a little while, it becomes quite apparent that the tyranny of yesterday—whether in the form of religious demagogy or nationalistic despotism—is all but a thing of the past. Issues being hotly debated in the Arab/Islamic world today, such as religious pluralism, women’s rights, and civil society are almost universally accepted as integral parts of their philosophical outlook. There is a ubiquitous feeling I have come to perceive—one that accepts the fact that there are real problems in the Arab/Islamic world which can only be dealt with from within. The Afghan and Iraqi Fulbrighters feel they are the ones who need to accept this responsibility because no one else will. When I was first offered the job with IIE, I was ecstatic—as if my previous years of meaningless office tasks had been a serious life lesson: one must suffer for the benefit of the future—or something like that. The years had been tough. Though too young for a mid-life crisis, the walls of my surroundings were closing in. At twenty-six, I felt smack in the middle of a great debate crashing through the world to which I wanted to be a part but hadn’t the slightest clue of where to begin placing my feet. With this new job I was now one foot in the door. The rest would be up to me. I had spent most of my twenties traveling around the area we call today the “greater Middle East”—cultivating my experiences into the thresholds of two Master’s degrees and spending as much free time as possible trying to learn all I could about an area that has quivered in my imagination since childhood. Although I never thought of myself as an “expert” I knew that the experiences I had in these lands were unique and that my opinions of events taking place in this contentious period of history needed to be expressed

4

Embracing the Occupiers

or I would go mad trying. I couldn’t stand watching the so-called “specialists” on Sunday morning news shows wax philosophical over questions like “why do they hate us?” and “who are the moderate Muslims?” when most of their time spent in these countries was spent at the Sheraton Hotel and its swimming pool. I knew that my opinions had to matter. So when this position was offered I leapt at the opportunity with what must have seemed like a great stride of vengeance. Only two days into the job, the 2005 Fulbright scholars from Iraq had arrived. They strolled through New York with expressions of a people reborn—laden with elation, confusion, and just a bit of concern for this great task for which they had been chosen. From the first steps out of immigration to the remnants of the World Trade Center’s hallow echo, I felt like recording each movement. They were ones being put into history and I was there as a witness. Apart from sight seeing, the days were spent partaking in panel discussions where they spoke about the need for becoming leaders of a country that has been so weak with despots for what seemed like an eternity. When the women spoke about their anger with the male-dominated system they perceived to be in power, the men nodded in agreement—not out of a fear for being perceived as some misogynist thug, but a genuine passion in their eyes, which proved to me that they truly believed progress was key. The conversations held with each other were like nothing I had ever heard before and I wanted to be part of them for as long as possible. I recall one scene well: We had reserved a large spot for dinner in Little Italy—a place just outside the fringes of tourism’s pythonic grip but portions large enough to remind us that we were still in America at the end of the day. As the Iraqis glided through the door still in awe of the sounds and smells of the day’s sight seeing remnants, the waiters began to place jugs of wine on the tables eliciting an almost universal expression that said something like, “I have heard about these things and now I have the chance— what should I do?” Quickly, one of the American directors told the waiters that no one would be drinking tonight—appearing to bring about confusion and disappointment for some. It seems even the most educated of us still don’t grasp the notion that not all Muslims are religious.

Introduction

5

The food in the restaurant was terrible, but the incredible conversations taking place around me made up for it. Even though grossly engaged in what seemed like five conversations at a time, I let myself take a step back to survey the room. To my right, an attractive woman in a green tank top whose cleavage seemed to be enjoying undiscovered aspects of the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” was lecturing two Kurdish journalists on the new Arab media outlet, Al Jazeera: “It is nothing but pent up Arab nationalism in disguise” she remarked with her finger waiving in the air—not necessarily angry but clearly ready for a showdown with whomever wanted to take her on. The men didn’t necessarily disagree but wanted to make the point that the Arab news network had done some good things to bring attention to the plight of the Kurds. In another corner, Mustafa who had already been studying at Dartmouth for a year had consumed nearly five coronas and decided to let loose on what he really thought of his people. As he was brought in as a guest speaker, perhaps he felt a step above his newly immigrated countrymen and women: “The Arabs,” he said shaking his head. “Okay, like let’s be honest, we are the most backward people. . . . I mean really, what have we given to the world?” Some looked at him in a disturbed way while others nodded in agreement. As his eyes glanced toward me with the expression of “so what do you think Mr. Non-Arab?”—I immediately looked for the next discussion. I wanted no part of his drunken lament. The man to my left was a chemist from Falluja named Ali. While I felt like telling him that some Americans in his program would call him “Chemical Ali” as a joke and that he shouldn’t get upset, I decided not to inflict any negativity in a mind still nervous about what the future held. As I turned in his direction, he gave me a solemn look like he had something really important to say and almost whispering he confessed, “This whole thing is really a show.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “All of these Iraqis speaking like this to another—it’s a mirage. Once you guys leave, we will all go back to our groups: Sunni, Shiite, Kurd. Deep down, no matter how much we might say that we believe in a secular democracy, we all see things through our own lenses.”

6

Embracing the Occupiers

Perhaps Ali was right. It might have been a show and if so, he certainly had me fooled. But I chose to put his comments aside and continued to observe Iraq’s future leaders pick at their tiramisu and plan the future of their lives and their children’s lives and their children’s children’s lives. What kind of course did they really have in mind? As the group departed for the subway, the streets of Soho seemed a tad unusual. I realized that for the first time in their four days here, these Iraqi men and women were on their own in a city that now looked a bit different from the day’s infiltration of tourists, street vendors, and guides. I studied their every move in what may have seemed like a nineteenth-century anthropologist watching canoe rituals in Papua New Guinea, but I didn’t care. I was amazed by what was taking place. I pretended that the images from the streets they were witnessing were scenes out of several thousand movies—built up over time in the psyche and now given a life to breathe on their own. The conversations from inside the restaurant continued onto the street until the next block when everything seemed to stop short. On the corner was a bar with open windows allowing the cool spring air to flow through. For me, it was any bar in Soho—or any bar in New York for that matter. Nothing seemed different. However, as the group walked past, their motions slowed—almost cautiously as if they were walking through a minefield. I could see some of them glancing inside, some gazing through the corner of their eye while others preferring to look completely away all together. After what seemed like a few minutes of complete silence Abdul, a chubby gentleman in his early thirties studying public health, slowed down and sort of pulled me aside by forcing his hips into mine. “Mr. Jeremy, what is that place?” he whispered. “We’ll, it’s a bar” I responded in an affirmative voice—which tried to not sound patronizing but wanting to make him understand what it was and that it was “normal” here. “Oh, so like . . . what are they doing in there?” he now asked with more confidence. So I felt the need to lay it all on the line— the sooner the better. I explained the entire process from beginning to end starting off with happy hour—the notion that it’s better to drink more when it’s cheap. I then explained the after part: that for some of the people in the bar—class and educational status being irrelevant—their goal was to transport this feeling of drunken

Introduction

7

elation to the person they were speaking to with the firm intention of bringing them home for hopefully a wild night of sex. No strings attached. Instead of being surprised, Abdul simply shrugged his shoulders and asked, “why do they do that?” and now I felt a bit strange. While I tried to let him on the secrets of a society he would be trying to comprehend for the next two years, I myself really couldn’t describe it entirely after twenty-six. On the way home, I played the conversation with Abdul over in my head. Some might call it symbolic—a clear vicious gap between these obstructs we call East and West. Where would it all lead for him and the others who had now placed one foot in the door? Or perhaps this is our fate—all of us. Is freedom just another word for the loss of culture—and if so, what kind of path have we laid out for ourselves and for the world? I would like to say that two years and one book later, I have found the answer, but my path has barely been christened. Walking home that night, there was a genuine excitement in the air that strode above the typical elation springtime seems to possess. The world was changing. My experiences over the past four days were tantamount to being let into a secret club with VIP access. I was proud to be a part of it. While I supported the invasion of Afghanistan on purely humanitarian grounds, the occupation of Iraq never made much sense. Meeting these Iraqis for the first time did not make me change my mind, but it did give me some optimism. Not that we would succeed in Iraq, but that there are people in all lands whom genuinely desire a better way to live. It seemed to be one of progress, respect, and the hope that people no matter where they are from can always expect better from their lives and the society around them. With these thoughts fresh in mind, I went into work the next week feeling quite optimistic about my new position. I would be working with the future leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq. A secret. An undisclosed part of the “war on terror” that most Americans had no idea existed. The way I saw it, these brilliant scholars presence in this country helped confirm what I consider to be one salient truth which sounds clich´e until it is thrown right in your face: military might is never enough to deal with our enemies. Our success in the “war on terror” has to come through the creation of

8

Embracing the Occupiers

“soft power”—the grand theory that the sharing of ideas is just as important as the dropping of bombs. As a result, these individuals experience in the United States has to go above and beyond that of education alone. While receiving a degree from a top U.S. university is an incredibly valuable commodity for nation building, it only touches the periphery of how their time here needs to be spent. They are the future leaders of countries that need all of the help they can get in beginning to move towards a system of normalcy and stability. We need to do whatever it takes to make sure that every moment here counts and are ones filled with a continual expansion of knowledge outside of the classroom. When I began my new position, I believed thoughts like this to have been an already integral part of the program, and I would have the ability to creatively explore options for making them even greater. Unfortunately, I was wrong and what to myself and others seemed like common sense was, for many thinking just a bit too far outside of the box. I have always loathed bureaucracy but was never aware of its true meaning until I had the pleasure of experiencing it first hand in it’s American nucleus—the Department of State. For the folks down in D.C. it was like an art, whose viral spread seemed to capture everyone in its path; contaminating the mind like a prison and poking the senses into submission, thereby breeding the worst qualities humanity has to offer: simplicity, mediocrity, and apathy. Thoughts were best when they stayed still, progress never left the PowerPoint slides, and success could only be measured with numbers. My great optimism had now ceased and I was back to where it all began—a fixture in an office—confined to the fringes of the world’s intellectual pulse and still waiting for the day that my ideas and passions might be taken seriously. Taking these programs to a higher level of their worth was always too risky or not the right time and place I was repeatedly told. What seemed to matter most was the status quo—wrapped in layers of detail that only moved sideways. Passion for the greater cause rarely appeared except in the form of e-mail content and other administrative duties. One could show just how much they cared without ever looking up from their computer. I began to wonder why the future leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq were ever

Introduction

9

brought here in the first place. Were they simply part of a show by the American government to display just how benevolent they could be in these wars? “Yes, we are occupying and murdering you, but just look how much we care about your future.” If so, the PR was pretty lousy, as barely anyone I knew had even the slightest notion that this component of the U.S. wars existed. I never did figure out the exact answer to this question. Weeks turned into months and months into years as tedium and inertia slowly ate away at my core. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (especially the latter) grew worse by the day and the great game of public diplomacy that my job consisted of slowly became almost more worthless by the minute. The future leaders of these countries that I once had great hope for were now stagnant—reduced to numbers on an Excel spreadsheet waiting to be replenished for the next budget cycle. I wanted to bring them to life, but how? In the summer of 2006, while driving back from New Paltz, New York, with my girlfriend (now wife), the idea for Embracing the Occupiers was created. Perhaps it was a combination of hearing countless tales of my frustration at work and infatuation with the passion I used to speak about the different Afghans and Iraqis I worked with that caused Afsane to say out of the blue on the exit to our town, “You know, you should really write a book about it?” It was settled and I began the next day. My goal in the beginning seemed simple: I would spend a significant amount of time with ten Afghans and Iraqis in their various university settings. The selection was difficult. I decided to work with those who I had already known in some way and had been impressed with their charisma, loquaciousness, and ornate storytelling ability. Then there was diversity. I sought out individuals from a range of backgrounds and professions. For Iraq this would be tough. The infamous trio of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd would have been ideal but the first group was incredibly sparse. Looking back I also wish I could have found more women, but two would have to suffice. Because they are some of the most dedicated and passionate people I have ever met, their presence will hopefully make up for the gender imbalance. While I have spent significant time in almost every continent of the globe, I can easily count the number of U.S. states I have been to on both hands. I was excited for the opportunity. On my meager salary, I had to find a way to make different road trips

10

Embracing the Occupiers

while simultaneously continuing my day job. I borrowed a car from the folks and friends whenever possible and rented one in Harlem for $75 a day (the cheapest in the tri-state area) when it was not. I spent the weekends driving to places that I never thought to visit: Upstate New York, rural Massachusetts, New England, and as far south as Savannah, Georgia, for one long weekend. In each new city or town entered, I immediately began my metamorphosis—I was now an Afghan or Iraqi forced to live here for two years. Their eyes were mine and life took on a whole new level of clarity. The most ordinary of places, ones that I have driven by in the past without so much as blinking, now seemed like exotic stretches of Africa. The mundane became abstract and every crevice within the different faces of humanity possessed some meaning in the grand riddle waiting to be solved: what is America in its present time and place? The interviews were long and detailed, some more than others, but all filled with intense cutthroat honesty. Every individual appeared on edge in anticipation of my arrival. Thoughts had been building over time into a violent yet beautiful crescendo waiting to be released—my presence and digital recorder were their orchestra. At the end of each meeting the level of information gathered seemed daunting: What was important for the American people to hear? How could this impact our views of these countries we are at war with? Could I truly express in words the same feeling of beauty that went through my veins as their stories unfolded? I could only try. From the beginning of my journey I knew what I was trying to uncover and tell in this book had to have some importance behind it for America and its citizens. Apart from unique and mesmerizing biographies and adventures that at times seemed like ones from Hollywood movies, the true possibilities behind these individuals’ lives didn’t quite appear in front of me until the end. It has become almost clich´e to discuss how much Americans take for granted. Everyone, myself included, needs to take a step back at times from the day to day minutia of our existence and contemplate the world around them and everything that seems to go with it—the joy, the pain, and the great heterogeneity that makes the earth spin. Maybe this sounds a bit cheesy, but as far back as I can remember, I have always had a fascination with how

Introduction

11

others around the globe were living. As a child lying awake at night, events taking place out in the distance twirled through my imagination: Why was I born into this status? How were others my age coping with the daily reality around them? I dreamt of transporting myself over their beds and asking them the same questions. After spending significant time listening to the ten Afghans and Iraqis in this book, I realized that their upbringing, intellectual and existential struggles, life throughout various periods of war and current philosophical outlook on this contentious period of history needed to be displayed and distributed for the rest of America to witness. They are ones that should continue to remind us just how much we are taking for granted in our lives as Americans. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the phrase “ the war on terror” began to enter our daily lexicon. Its meaning has evolved from a fight over terrorism, to a war against radical Islam, democracy, nation-building, freedom, human rights, and global justice. Are the two current wars being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq part of the “war on terror”? If so, what exactly are our goals? It would appear that the term only leaves us with ambiguity. As America now enters the sixth year of this somewhat undefined mission, it might perhaps be wise to hear from those on the other side—ones that the American public doesn’t seem to know about. Frustration with America’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq is perhaps another clich´e topic. The latter is all but an admitted failure while Afghanistan still contains some semblance of hope, but the end result of victory is a far cry out in the Central Asian mountains. Have we exhausted all of our resources yet for both countries? What other solutions are there really left to discuss from a public policy perspective? Perhaps this is the case—I even used to think so myself. But after listening to these individuals from Afghanistan and Iraq speak about their experiences and views of the current wars, I am convinced that the intellectual playing field may still have a little bit of life left. As students, everything appears raw. The operations of the world exist in theory that can always be opened and mended, played with and eventually changed. The classroom is our battleground and victory never appears short sighted. Then we move on and life begins to alter. What used to be our passions end up collecting dust to make way for comfort, stability, and survival.

12

Embracing the Occupiers

Only a few ever seem to retain the great fire that once existed and possessed the mind to believing that they could, if only they tried hard enough, make a difference for the future. For this reason I find the individuals in this book to have one of the most unique and neglected perspectives of the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: What it was like to live through them and how the future is viewed. Reading about policy issues is always worthwhile, but hearing them come to life in firsthand accounts is truly something else. Existing under Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, living through the sanctions, witnessing American troops enter your country, and seeing your world engulfed with violence can never fully be comprehended until descriptions are waved in front of your face. Most of the public’s information on these events seems to come from two sources: American officials and their counterparts abroad with a little wiggle room in the middle for the “specialists.” What makes the thoughts and opinions of these Afghans and Iraqis unique is their presence “in-between” and when caught at the right moment, are truly valuable sentiments to be heard. The men and women selected to study in America come from the upper tier of these societies intellectual strata and will return to their countries to become future leaders. What they have to say on the matter greatly affects how things can and might eventually turn out. Perhaps it is time to take note.

CHAPTER 1

An American Setting ABDURAHMAN; KURDISTAN, IRAQ: UMASS-BOSTON, LITERATURE Upon first sight, the University of Massachusetts in Quincy may not seem like an ideal place for one of Iraq’s brightest minds to receive a master’s degree in Literature. Its atmosphere reminds me of childhood descriptions from an early Kerouac novel mixed with the scent of burnt detergent and leftover Chinese food. I park outside an old faded white house hovering over a laundromat and make my way up clunky stairs to find Abdurahman, otherwise known as Abdu, opening the door and beginning to chatter about a random topic that he immediately wants me to record. He had been awaiting my presence for some time and was ecstatic that someone was taking this much of an interest in him. From the start, I knew that this trip would be well worth the four-hour drive. As he began to saut´e some chicken in peanut oil, the absurdity of the situation finally dawned on me: Abdu could be anyone in this town—sitting home on a cold Saturday afternoon making chicken and watching movies. Does the neighbor next door know him? Does he care that he wants to translate Nietzsche into Kurdish or that his father is a member of the Iraqi parliament? I got the feeling Abdu sensed that I found the situation a bit absurd, so I immediately asked what he did for fun around here, and as if he knew

14

Embracing the Occupiers

my question was coming, he let me in on his social life: “Quincy you ask, there is no fun here . . . there is nothing. In the summertime, I would run to the beach, about two miles, but that is it. It is very depressing, especially on the weekends, which I dread. UMASS-Boston is a commuter school so the friends and colleagues I have would all leave on the weekends, and what am I supposed to do here?” So Abdu did what earned him his nickname back home, “Abdu movie,” and rented flicks, tons of them, spending the weekends watching them over and over while composing poetry like the following for his beautiful wife back home. A Phone Call to Kurdistan

The hungry wolves of midnight, pacify when my mind beholds you. Tears hesitate to slip on my cheeks before they solidify and shatter into my palms. I revive, only when I listen to the rhythm of your breath—a gentle blow that restores the fire within my ruined existence. My mystic limbs, with one touch of your skin, dance with my heartbeat in a wide circle around the flames of passion. With your lip-print, still warm on mine, with your fingers, crossed into mine, we swing; like ten Sufis in the blessed nights, we sing Rumi till the burning of dawn. Your words have the taste of snow when the days are on fire. Your nightly whisper, a lemon balm when heart’s tears surge. Your scent, a salve for my deep wounds from ages of isolation. Your look upon me, a chalice of spring water refreshing the heart of a desert dweller, and I the dewdrops. I am a dead willow, weeping with a lonely owl; you are the moon that shines on my leafless branches and the sun that sprouts in me buds of new hope. I am a rusty string forsaken on an ancient Qithara; you play me, and give birth to the best of me. Blood erupts into my dry veins, and my cracked heart thrives with one word from your sweet tongue—a solo tune of a divine violin. Your love is my only comfort walking through this strange city’s darkness, when the ugly demons

An American Setting

15

of solitude rip me apart. The air chokes me, spring blinds me; snow makes me sweat, sun makes me freeze. Yet—once you rain your words on my arid depth, darkness lifts. No more sodden pillows and frosty blankets when clocks tick, when the sun plays with the moon, when stars shed. I loathe the ocean, the continents, the hundreds of whitetopped mountains that keep me from you. I even hate the phone—my words are mute, my tongue imprisoned behind ivory bars . . . Silence is more fluent. For a non-native speaker, Abdu’s command of the English language is most impressive and as I read his words, I pictured him on a cold weekend afternoon gazing out his dusty bedroom window dreaming of Kurdistan and the life he knew best. Somewhere beyond the horizons of Quincy, Massachusetts, there was the ideal American experience that Abdu had once conjured up in his mind but when described now, seemed like an inarticulate distant memory. “I’ve seen movies where students are having fun, talking and sitting under a tree, discussing different subjects of life. I expected people in college to be very friendly and open-minded towards different people. In movies you see that someone is sitting under a tree, then someone comes up to them and they start talking and everyone is laughing and they become friends but I don’t really see all this here.” At the time I visited Abdu, he was two weeks away from finishing his degree and actually a bit saddened to be leaving. Over his last semester he had made some good friends and learned to get into a nice routine throughout the week. At the time of my visit, he seemed to be most excited about an invitation to speak at an elderly Jewish home nearby on the differences between Iraq’s religious groups. The weekends were still tough though as the echoes of loneliness and isolation rang warmly while the movies from Blockbuster played throughout the afternoon and into the night on his laptop. Apart from a few stories about developing a writer’s circle, being a leader in the Muslim Students Association, and having a female friend show him a tattoo above her semishaven vagina, there was not much to Abdu’s “social experience” in the United States, so we decided to move on.

16

Embracing the Occupiers

OMAR; KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, ANTHROPOLOGY With salt and pepper hair at the age of twenty-nine, a thick moustache, and deep British accent, Omar could easily be mistaken for a caricature of a nineteenth-century Oxford international student. Before our interview, I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions and, though naturally enjoying our conversations, found him at times to be a bit standoffish. He had a strange habit of staring people directly in the eye during a break in the conversation when it would normally be his turn to respond. Some of his colleagues have told me, both joking and in earnest, that the British accent was a fake—used to enhance an already quite obvious scholarly persona. It turned out he learned to speak English and subsequent British accent as a result of listening to the BBC radio for news of Afghanistan’s various government transformations throughout the 1990s. At the worst junction of political infighting in early 1993, he stayed home for several weeks at a time listening to the radio for seemingly every waking moment. It came to a point where he believed that if the news wasn’t British English, it wasn’t reliable. Therefore, if the accent was in the least bit fake, he definitely had me fooled. Though technically trained as a doctor of urology from Kabul University, Omar’s passion from an early age was history; the former seemed only a pragmatic way to assuage his father’s concerns about Afghanistan’s career reality and how it would affect his son’s future. This point was quite obvious to me. Within our extended interview, the love of medicine never came up but the passion for history seemed almost innate. His knowledge was quite deep and descriptions fiercely ornate—occasionally too deep and ornate. Sometimes speaking with Omar seemed like using Google for a school paper on the history and cultures of Central Asia and the Islamic world as names, dates, and events rapidly spewed from his mouth. Anthropology would come later, much later; in fact he didn’t really grasp what the field of study even meant until about a year before arriving at Columbia University. New York was a quick and intense awakening to both “American culture” and a stimulating display of the field chose to pursue. He studied intensely throughout the day—just hanging on by a thread at times to keep

An American Setting

17

up with the basics. However, on the outside, anthropology became a living, breathing entity, helping bring him much closer to an understanding of how valuable this new knowledge could potentially be for his country and nation. Although not pouring over works from the likes of Foucault, Nietzsche, and Marx, (which at times seemed like a different English language all together) Omar hit the town for some firsthand ethnographic analysis. Strolling through neighborhood after neighborhood with wide-open eyes; observing the sights, sounds, and smells emerging from the streets while striving to stop every so often and reflect upon larger philosophical issues: space, power, love, individualism, community, and the idea of a nation. “All my life I have been surrounded by people and here there is no surrounding,” he explained. “You are connected to a system making you different than the others but not to yourself. It doesn’t come from someone.” Throughout our interview, I realized that the love and great knowledge of history in reality only took a second seat towards his real life objectives: understanding the way people thought at a certain time, why they made the decisions they did, and how we can understand humanity for the future—especially in a country like Afghanistan. Each story he told about his life, most importantly throughout the various periods of war, was somehow wrapped in a riddle constantly trying to be solved. Although he loathed the Taliban as much as the next secular Afghan, he never seemed to express an irrational hate—at the core there was an explanation. At the conclusion of our time together, I realized that my first impression of him had been mistaken. His moments of silence, which at times could seem awkward, were only his way of fully observing what was being discussed in the space around him. If only others, including myself, could at times do the same, I pondered as we departed ways. MOHAMMAD; BABYLON, IRAQ: SUNY-BINGHAMTON, TRANSLATION STUDIES It was a cold Saturday afternoon in downtown America. “Welcome to Binghamton” the sign said as I approached what seemed liked my only idea of a typical up-state New York small townlots of strip malls, not enough fiber. Mohammad and I met at his

18

Embracing the Occupiers

favorite downtown restaurant, a relic from my childhood past— Friendly’s Ice Cream Restaurant. With his slim build and bright green Middle Eastern eyes, I have to say he looked about as familiar in this place as a Binghamton local would at a Greenwich Village vegan cafe. Over lunch, Mohammad sipped an extra large strawberry milkshake and passionately ate a double cheeseburger with fries. His proud and lustful expressions had to make even the biggest health nut content to know that our country produces such gourmet wonders—if only for a minute! This was America and Mohammad loved all of it: the restaurants, the blockbuster movies, the malls. The whole package that seems to scream in your face when opening Wednesday’s mail was for Mohammad a utopia—incrementally piercing his mind since birth. Growing up in Saddam’s Iraq, America represented everything for Mohammad and his family. It was the great escape—albeit the Hollywood version. Some of his first reading materials were comic books of Batman and Robin translated into Arabic. In the evenings, movies from the 1940s and 1950s played on the living room TV as the family gathered to watch repeats of East of Eden, Rebel without a Cause, and A Street Car Named Desire. When Mohammad first arrived in New York City from Baghdad in 2005, he immediately took a taxi to Times Square and purchased a lifesized poster of Marilyn Monroe to send back to his mom. She didn’t know where he was at first, as his group was not told the exact location they would be upon arrival. So when he yelled into the pay phone, “Mom, can you believe it? I’m in New York City!” she paused for a minute and replied “Is it like Sex and the City?” America, especially the one of the 1940s and 1950s, was Mohammad’s ideal world—what he dreamt of every night and what he wished Iraq to one day emulate. With these ideas so vivid and fresh in his mind, SUNY-Binghamton was obviously not his first choice for graduate school and he hated his first semester. Prior to this, Mohammad and twenty other Iraqis spent the summer in Philadelphia in an English and culture immersion program, which Mohammad refers to as “the summer of love.” It was a “perfect time” which confirmed everything about the United States that Mohammad expected. The group spent their days visiting museums, attending lectures, and speaking to local people about their

An American Setting

19

experiences in Iraq. Mohammad ran through the city like a child released for recess—talking to anyone who would listen and absorbing every sensation the city had to offer. The “perfect day,” was when they had just arrived and a jolly black woman whom they met on the subway offered to give them a tour of Philadelphia for the day. These were experiences that he dreamt of his entire life. Binghamton, “reminded me of the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Mohammad claimed. Gallivanting around town upon arrival, he asked some locals where the subway was located. After walking several blocks into a strip mall, he felt stupid, realizing that they were talking about “Subway” the sandwich shop. In Binghamton, one had to rely on the bus. Standing in the middle of the parking lot, Mohammad loathed his new place and wished to be magically transported back to Philadelphia which he justified by saying, “I know it’s wrong to think this way, but you can’t change what someone watched for twenty years in movies and then bring them to a town smaller than your own back home.” These feelings would persist throughout the first semester as he made his way to class, the gym, and back repetitively; not talking to anyone and wishing to be back in Iraq—a thought he ascertained for a while until his Aunt convinced him otherwise, “What will our neighbors think, they were so proud of you when you left.” He recalled being so depressed that on several Sundays he would simply walk into a church several blocks from his house and just sit in the back—listening to the priest and observing the audience as if they were all part of a movie. Over a year and a half later, the Mohammad I visited was not living the Hollywood dream just yet, but ended up learning to appreciate Binghamton: his classes, his friends, and the America that he discovered was probably too real after all. Although he never had a drink in his life, he enjoyed going to local bars and watching people get hammered as they loudly yelled, “Hey, Mohammad from Iraq!” He frequented bowling alleys with groups of friends where his code name displayed in bright neon lights above the lane was “Stanley,” from a Street Car Named Desire. When he got a strike, the friends would yell “Stanley, Stanley, Stanley!” He didn’t tell me exactly why he chose this character but I assumed—he was in constant progress; working through the odds stacked against him in situations where only so much could be controlled.

20

Embracing the Occupiers

NADIA; KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT The Afghan woman has become almost metaphorical in today’s world as a symbol of oppression, cruelty, and misogynist violence. Nothing seems to have misrepresented Islam more to America and the West than images of burka-clad women rummaging through dumpsters only to be beaten by some turban-wrapped, bearded thug for disobeying one of the Taliban’s stringent policies such as no white socks. Defeating Al Qaeda aside, many felt that if invading Afghanistan might eradicate at least some of the horrors facing women, then that was a sufficient reason. I still liked to believe that even the staunchest of anti-war activists couldn’t help but feel at least a little satisfaction that the world’s most oppressed women might gain some attention for their cause. It was these thoughts that stayed with me through most of my drive towards Brandeis University where I would become reacquainted with an Afghan woman who might just be the Taliban’s worst nightmare. I had known Nadia at this point for about two years and was delighted to finally meet her face to face. We had communicated via phone and e-mail numerous times, as she filled me in on her adventures and explained how many people were surprised that a woman from Afghanistan could be intelligent, articulate, and so darn liberal. As she rode her bike to school through town, everyone seemed to know who she was— the Afghan woman. They treated her in the best way they knew how, and she was incredibly grateful for her school, community, and the United States in general. “There is no one woman in Afghanistan quite like Nadia,” I have been repeatedly told by several Afghans. After spending a lot of time with her, it was quite obvious what they meant. Conversing with Nadia, who was medium height and muscular with short dark black hair and a permanent smile tattooed on her face, is an experience that I don’t think anyone would forget. She speaks loudly and firmly and makes excellent eye contact, yet maintains a tone that is soft and soothing, letting you know that she is truly interested in the conversation. When I met Nadia at her campus for the first time, I motioned to lightly shake her hand and touch my heart as I would with any Afghan woman. However, she intercepted my quasi-Afghan manners with a big hug in return.

An American Setting

21

My fondest memories of Nadia come not from my day spent with her at Brandies but at a conference I had organized on leadership in Afghanistan in which she was one of only six women out forty. I recalled a discussion taking place on the dearth of Afghan women Fulbright scholars and how more could apply. One gentleman stated that the major problem with Afghan women receiving this scholarship was that most of them would inevitably not end up working to raise their family, “so it seems like its being wasted giving it to them” the man argued while most in the audience agreed. Nadia stood up and with great ferocity that evoked the compassion and calmness I had known her for, made her point and silenced the crowd on the issue. “It is not your business what the women do with their lives after they receive this education—it is theirs. You would not tell a man that it was a waste of time if he decided to run a family and besides, it is not about what they do for a job it is about educating the next generation of women who will raise their families and teach them new values.” At Brandeis, we spent hours chatting and walking the university grounds. It was Saturday and groups of Brandeis’s large Jewish population made their way back from synagogue as Nadia gave them a smile, as she did everyone. She took me to her school’s lounge where our interview went on for hours as Nadia’s soothing tone led from me a childhood in Kabul, exile in Pakistan, and back to the present. She described how she longed to be the future president of Afghanistan and have people, especially women, develop into the independent and free-thinking figures of society that she knew they were capable of becoming. Nadia is unlike any other Afghan woman I know. The phrase “tomboy” was perhaps too western, and “feminist” too clich´e. Simply put, she was Nadia—hopefully the future of what women in Afghanistan can one day emulate. ALI; BAGHDAD, IRAQ: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, JOURNALISM Ali’s reputation had become somewhat legendary in Fulbright circles, making me a bit nervous for our interview. We met once at an Iraqi orientation and I recall him being sad and quiet—staring out the window in a daze of perplexity while the other Iraqis stood

22

Embracing the Occupiers

in awe at the sight of New York City skyscrapers. I later found out why. Ali missed his family, but more importantly, he despised most of the others in the program whom he saw as similar to the Iraqi exiles he held responsible for driving Iraq into shambles. Prior to beginning his master’s degree at New York University (NYU), he was forced to attend an English immersion program at Temple University in Philadelphia, which he referred to as the “Provisional Authority.” Throughout the classes he would become disgusted when listening to the other Fulbrighters talk about Iraq and issues of leadership when he knew many others back home who were ten times more qualified for this prestigious scholarship. The breaking point came after a meeting with all of them to discuss an urgent situation that arose. Apparently, one Fulbrighter from Falluja was sending e-mails under a fake name to the entire group saying things like he wanted to rape all of the women and was going tell the insurgents back home to kill their families. Once his identity was discovered, the group decided that the best thing to do was apologize to the man. Ali came late and found everyone already in agreement with this proposition. After listening to everyone’s explanation, it was Ali’s turn to speak. “I started to laugh a bit at them and then said ‘You want me to apologize to him?’ I was in true disbelief as they all nodded their heads. ‘Why did you join the Fulbright program?’ I calmly asked, ‘When you return to Iraq are you going to apologize to Saddam?’ Everyone became hysterical, ‘no Ali, it’s not the same thing’, they all shouted. But to me it was. This man said he was going to kill my father and now I am supposed to apologize? We could have called the FBI or I would have even killed him myself, but there was nothing and I mean nothing which would make me apologize to him, no way.” Ali left the meeting, went to his room, packed, and the next day returned to Iraq still pondering the option of maybe deferring his program for next year. While at home sleeping with his family several months later, the U.S. Army blew open his front door and dragged Ali blindfolded to a secret place where he was interrogated until the morning. They supposedly believed he had evidence about the missing journalist Jill Caroll, but frankly he was never quite sure. When he came back to the United States in January, he would immediately write a long op-ed in the New York Times and the Guardian discussing the incident. He even had an hour-long

An American Setting

23

special on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman but refused to return for future interviews because he believed she was a “closeminded extremist.” I had been keeping track of stories like this for a while so when it came time to pick my selection of individuals for this book, Ali was naturally one of my first choices. Yet getting a hold of him was not an easy task. Between being a full-time student at NYU, having a family of four in Brooklyn, and planning a major documentary in Iraq where he would be returning that summer, Ali was quite busy to say the least. Still determined to give me ample time for an interview, he told me that it would have to be done in two nights’ time and we would need to finish no matter how late it became. He kept his word. At my apartment, I poured us some Spanish Grenache for our extensive two seven-hour interviews, which went well into the night. Reminiscent of an old soldier telling war stories, Ali drank the wine in only two parts: the beginning and the end. What was told in between were some ofthe most mesmerizing stories that I have ever heard. Detail by detail, anecdote by anecdote while looking me straight in the eye the entire time and not so much as having a sip of water or piece of bread, Ali confessed his life story with great honesty and articulate detail. I was surprised but later found out his reasons. Before he departed for Iraq, I wrote him an e-mail with several questions and wished him a safe journey. His response went as follows: “I’m returning to Falluja this summer in order to make a documentary and to be 100% honest, I’m not sure if I will make it back. Iraq is in my dreams and returning after a year in America will help me alleviate some of this anger that grows ferociously inside of me everyday as I watch the news unfold. But I am scared to death, and in case anything does happen, I want people to know about my life, but more importantly, I want my children to be able to read something about their father when they grow up.” IDREES; MAZAR-E-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN: STANFORD UNIVERSITY, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Stanford University’s International Studies department is known to be one of the better programs for this field of study—at around $70,000 per year, can it really afford to be anything less?

24

Embracing the Occupiers

Like most of these programs in the United States, the student body contained a good number of extremely educated individuals; many of whom could name every capital in the world, but relatively few who claim experience working in them. Discussions of world events were normally focused around theory, lacking tales of experience in trying to comprehend how the world works. For some, this was expected and sufficient for the type of career they planned on pursuing. But for others deeply imbedded in the field, it was a valuable complement toward an already pre-determined passion. Coming to Stanford straight after living in Afghanistan for thirty-three years, initially “theory” was not an easy concept for Idrees to grasp in trying to elevate his understanding of how the world operated. At his age, he could claim to have accomplished more than most in several lifetimes. Theory was certainly not in the repertoire of someone who convinced Taliban leaders to keep an English and computer instruction course open, saved rural villages in Afghanistan from being destroyed in American bombing raids, raised more than $20 million in donations for the International Rescue Committee after being on CNN for discovering a rural village that was starving to death, and teaching American bodyguards a safer route to drive Colin Powell around Kabul. Open minded the entire time, Idrees loved the debates in and out of the classroom. He especially enjoyed debates with his Jewish friends and colleagues who at times, he believed, occasionally held quite linear views about Islam. Conversely, he felt that his Muslim friends and colleagues failed to grasp what he considered the basis of how foreign policy worked. The latter he would spend hours trying to convince that the infamous “Jewish lobby” on which they blamed everything was only an abstract concept. “I’ve always said that you should stop thinking the way you do and start looking at human beings just as human beings and then start your analysis from that level. Take human beings as equal units of analysis and then look at the issues and relationships and problems that matter. I think it probably comes from my love of mathematics where the basis is that you have to try to find different angles to solve things and you will always find a solution. However, when people don’t understand how politics works, they draw their own conclusions. But things are so complicated and you need to understand how human beings make decisions when their interests are threatened. . . . its truly amazing. For example, if you

An American Setting

25

see a dangerous animal coming toward you, you just immediately kill it, without testing first what its true intentions are. Foreign policy is always misunderstood because you always need to think down the road and people don’t see that, so they always disagree.” I caught up with Idrees on his trip to New York four days before heading back to Afghanistan. He was here fulfilling what he told me were three purposes: To meet one of the leading experts on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin, and discuss his idea for a think tank in Kabul; have lunch to congratulate and discuss some ideas about the political situation in Afghanistan at the United Nations with his old friend Zalmay Khalizad, who was just appointed Ambassador; and finally, travel to Washington, DC by train for just one afternoon to thank his old American boss in Afghanistan who convinced him that it would be worthwhile to leave his family and job for two years in order to have an education in the United States. I was definitely impressed by his first two purposes but found the last to be the most noble and emblematic example of a person whose life I would shortly come to fully comprehend. Some people have claimed Idrees to be a bit pretentious in the way he converses. As he told stories about his accomplishments and drops names of famous people he knows, there always seems to be a high-pitched laughter that tended to follow. I was assuming that for others it could be interpreted as someone overly impressed with the numerous tales they had to offer—ones of unbelievable courage, dedication, and extreme intelligence. But for me, it was nothing more than a laughter of honesty for a life that anyone would be proud to have. More importantly, it came from someone truly gifted and served as a great example for others in Afghanistan and the world to follow. HAIDER; BAGHDAD, IRAQ: NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY, POLITICAL SCIENCE “I wrote in my Fulbright application that I had to be in New York City or else I probably wouldn’t come,” Haider told me forthrightly. So when I asked him if he had any fear for his safety here in the big city, he laughed and replied, “When you come from a city like Baghdad you don’t really worry much about it. I have been shot at several times, arrested on many occasions by you name it and held captive twice. I knew nine journalists who

26

Embracing the Occupiers

were killed and six since I have come here. I have also had relatives killed. After all this, you sort of know that New York cannot be dangerous.” I loved the modesty and knew that whatever came next would be anything but lackluster. After being accepted to the New School in Greenwich Village, Haider planned his trip by searching for an apartment on Craigslist. But soon, the June arrival time became July and then August, as the wait for the visa was constantly being delayed because his name matched a wanted Pakistani terrorist (although the terrorist was sixty-one and Haider was twenty-two). The shared apartment he had hoped for with a young man in Chelsea was now gone and all that could be found in such short notice was a room rented from a Chinese woman in the South Bronx. After a flight with two twenty-four-hour layovers due to the recent terrorist plot in London, Haider arrived at JFK airport exhausted and in desperate need of some deodorant (there is no humidity in Baghdad). Ironically, the taxi driver was Iraqi and seemed surprised by his countrymen’s choice of destinations as would Haider himself in a few moments time. “The area looked like the worst parts of Baghdad and inside was a madhouse. There were three people in each of the six rooms with one bathroom, babies running around naked and about twelve cats. I thought, ‘this is what I have been dreaming about my entire life?’” After screaming at the Chinese woman for being so disingenuous in her ad, he hopped back in the cab and told the driver who now was offering him a couch at his family’s apartment, “Just drop me off at the Empire State Building,” much to the driver’s dismay. “I wanted to see something beautiful before maybe hopping back on a plane to Iraq,” he explained. The building was nice, but a room to rent didn’t seem to magically appear. On the verge of tears, he decided to call the man in Chelsea who couldn’t believe that the young Iraqi he had been corresponding with for months was now standing alone in front of the Empire State building. He picked Haider up and let him crash on the couch for three days during which time, he would show him New York and help him get everything he needed settled. “What was the catch?” I asked. Surprisingly there was none. After getting some sleep, it was now time to search for a place to live where he would find most positive responses coming with some strings attached, such as extra chores around the apartment

An American Setting

27

or required sexual favors. He finally lucked out and stumbled upon a 72-year-old white Christian woman living alone in a fully loaded six-bedroom apartment. Her nearly 100-year-old father had just died and her children didn’t seem to visit much. The lady didn’t quite know what to make of Haider; having a hard time believing he just came from Iraq with such an American accent. Initially, she was suspicious of everything he did and said—deeply pondering every question. When Haider asked, “Is there a lock on my door?” She would snap, “What, why do you need a lock, oh my god what are you planning to do in there?” When he dropped off his luggage on the first day, she thought she heard a ticking sound and wouldn’t allow him to be in the apartment by himself. “And I said what the fuck, its 2006. If I had a bomb it wouldn’t be ticking, it would’ve gone off a long time ago,” he told me laughing. However after a month, the two became great friends and had numerous social outings together (he even took her to a group meeting to quit smoking). But after a year, Haider realized that having a grandmother for this short stay was a bit more than he could handle. A landlord would have to be sufficient. For the first three months, Haider walked the streets of Manhattan till the early hours of the morning night after night. Initially this was the result of not being able to sleep because his bed faced the main window (In Iraq, this was always the first object to explode during an attack). Even the slightest sounds of a garbage truck caused him to jump out of bed and run for cover. He soon realized that nighttime itself was something he missed. For the past four years, Baghdad had a strict curfew, making the idea of night something only recognizable in movies. He began his tour at Times Square, enjoying the lights but thinking to himself, “all of these lights could fill up the entire city of Baghdad,” which hadn’t had electricity for four years causing countless deaths from the heat. Similar thoughts would seem to always prevail. “I’ve been to a lot of different places of nature, parties, restaurants you name it. But it’s never full of joy or happiness, as I would always think, ‘why can’t my people have this better life?’ and of course I might be biased, but I think they deserve it.” The Empire State Building and Times Square may have been enough to fancy the interests of his fellow Iraqis, but Haider needed more. A graduate degree from an American university

28

Embracing the Occupiers

was nice, but was hardly what mattered most. He valued people and experiences; making contacts with every big wig that passed by and compiling a Rolodex that would land him nightly invitations to private parties, dinners, and weekend trips to the Hamptons. At other times, the concept of “culture shock” needed to be pushed to the limits as Haider took an interest in the occasional “sex party” which he had originally seen in—you guessed it— illegal DVDs in Iraq. Perhaps his explanation isn’t exactly what the Bush administration meant by the term “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” but then again, they didn’t know Haider. “Coming from a war zone, it takes a lot more to excite you then if you were from Switzerland or something. For me, my bar was much higher. Some international students I know would see bicycles riding around with people in the back and say ‘oh wow . . . amazing . . . so exciting’ and I was like, ‘what’? For me this is not exciting. I would rather just sit in my room and watch a movie.” ZABI; MAZAR-E-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN: UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, BROADCAST JOURNALISM The first thing that strikes the eye about Zabi was his appearance. A 5 foot 2 man with chiseled biceps and whistling chestnut surfer hair draping over the eyes, he was not your typical-looking Afghan. Speaking quickly with an accent that sounded a bit like several Simpsons characters combined, one could never be quite sure what to expect in a conversation. Besides his unique appearance, there was his capricious personality—rough and intimidating when upset, congenial and funny when content. In my two years as his grant manager, I would come to know both sides quite well. Although his English was quite articulate, it didn’t quite transfer to the infamous TOEFL test, on which near perfection was required in order to study journalism in a master’s degree program. As a result, he spent over nine months at an intensive English program in Eugene, Oregon, complaining constantly about his surroundings and at one point yelling “there is more excitement in Kabul than this place.” Coming from a house packed with people, Zabi constantly stayed up late into the night after everyone fell asleep to enjoy

An American Setting

29

the finer pleasures of movies and music. Even though he doesn’t drink, nightlife in America catering more towards his late night habits was eagerly expected. Eugene didn’t quite cut it. Besides the lack of action, there was homesickness and frustration. The former was a result of being from a city with more than a hundred family members in a five-mile radius. The frustration went beyond his and other Afghans continual failures to reach the required TOEFL score. He expected more sensitivity towards the cultural norms of Afghans. The one story he stressed over and over again was his living situation—a house with a single man and three dogs, five miles from campus. The owner didn’t speak to Zabi very much and perhaps inadvertently, broke one of Afghanistan biggest taboos—feeding pets from the same plates as humans. When Zabi finally reached the appropriate TOEFL score, a placement in one of the nation’s top journalism programs was expected: Columbia, NYU, or Berkeley. Instead, he would attend the University of Arizona where once again similar problems arose but this time without any dogs in the picture. I recall one time when he called me and screamed, “Let me tell you something, and please put this in your book . . . I hate this country. I cannot believe you call yourselves a democracy, nothing here is fair.” From an outsider’s perspective, his behavior didn’t make much sense. On the one hand, he was known to be a troublemaker, constantly arguing with different staff members about particular needs and never listening to what people explained. In one incident, the school had to call security thinking he might become violent during an argument with an administrator. I assumed that being muscular and Muslim probably didn’t help his cause too much. On the other hand there was another reality that was hard to comprehend. He had a perfect 4.0 GPA and seemed to be loved by various professors and students who were constantly asking his advice on world issues and urging him to work with them on projects. Outside of the class Zabi seemed to be a novelty— written up in the school newspaper more times than any other student and paid to speak at various events on issues concerning Islam, the “war on terror,” and Afghanistan. Although several components of his anger may never be fully understood, there was one facet that seemed logical: Zabi saw his experience in America as something much more than

30

Embracing the Occupiers

an education. He truly believed he was on a mission to enlighten people about their misconceptions of Afghanistan and the religion of Islam. From literally the first couple of days off the plane, he noticed that even the most sophisticated of Americans seemed tense and nervous around him. At Eugene, he was assigned an English tutor who initially told her supervisor she would not work with a Muslim let alone an Afghan. After a month went by, they became best friends and laugh together when they reflect on her initial sentiments. Supposedly the young lady has now taken quite an interest in Afghanistan and plans to venture there one day. Stories like these helped me to gain a somewhat better understanding for the multiple dimensions Zabi offered to the world. Learning about his tumultuous upbringing and consequential expectations for a life not always of his choosing, I realized that his grandiose goals should override occasional misunderstandings. Others should be allowed to judge for themselves. “There are almost 300 million Americans, yet how many people could be here under a Fulbright scholarship from Iraq and Afghanistan, 200 or something? This would mean that each of us has to educate more than a million people. You can educate maybe ten people if you’re in class and restricting people to have a discussion, but it doesn’t make any difference if I change the mind of fifteen people and plus there are a lot of issues. But if I can speak to the masses there might be some sort of effect.” TAIFA; BAGHDAD, IRAQ: UNDISCLOSED SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND, CULTURAL STUDIES It has become almost clich´e to discuss the potential many saw in those early days of the war. Iraqis I have spoken to describe it as “a spring of bliss and awakening,” even for those who had their doubts about how it would play out in the long run. The Fulbright program fit neatly into this idealism; where the best and brightest could come and study in the most prestigious institutions, crafting the new Iraq from a safe distance and dreaming about a future of leadership in a country they had only known for its despotism. Yet at the time, no one had the insight (including the Iraqis) to ask if living in the land of the occupiers might potentially be dangerous for themselves and families.

An American Setting

31

The young lady I set out to meet for the second time was one whose intentions were noble, but when faced with the onslaught of realism, quickly decided that political exile in the United States would be a safer alternative—at least for the time being. Even though her name was quite common in Iraq, she insisted on using a pseudonym—“Taifa.” In Arabic, she believed it complemented her original name forming “clarity” when combined. Besides disguising her name, Taifa did not want any other information disclosed about her that could potentially give the jihadists back home the slightest hint of her identity or family location. We met at a caf´e in her new place of exile. She had been working since graduation at a research center in the city’s main university helping to translate documents and records into Iraqi Arabic for the Marines. On the side, she tried her best to replicate life from the previous university—joining social clubs and playing on the women’s rugby team. She seemed content with her surroundings and happy to spend the day with me discussing her life, dreams, and philosophy. As if expected by her current occupation, Taifa is incredibly in favor of the U.S.-led war in Iraq—even when I met her in the spring of 2007. The first week in America, she and others spent an afternoon with President Bush, which she described as “the only time I was ever nervous to meet someone, knowing that I was going to meet this great person who was like an angel from paradise that made it possible for me to be here.” The Americans she met tended to get angry at this story as well as her passion for other tropes of the American right—she considered Fox News to be “the only objective coverage of Iraq.” In our interview, I tried my best to play the devil’s advocate every chance when statements like these came about. She justified all of her answers—articulately and passionately—always smiling and never perturbed. Looking back on it, I can’t believe that anyone could have ever truly have been angry for these viewpoints. She was a sweetheart in the true sense of the word, whose high-pitched laugh was contagious and made listening to her all the more worthwhile. At her old university in New England, Taifa pursued a master’s degree in cultural studies and was the second Iraqi to come that year. The two were famous on campus for among other things— being proud of the American presence in their country. By coincidence, they were placed in the same class on globalization

32

Embracing the Occupiers

and international politics where discussion of the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East turned into what seemed like an echo contest for the bewildered American students. The professor would ask, “Should America be promoting democracy in the Middle East?” eliciting a simultaneous “yes of course” from both sides of the room. He had probably hoped for a different response from his two students straight from the nucleus of where all the action discussed in class was taking place. After a semester or so, the other Iraqi seemed to be a bit aggravated by Taifa’s presence. Alone, he stole the spotlight as the exotic Iraqi whom everyone treated like a rock star. With this new Iraqi female here, existence seemed somehow less original. But Taifa could care less. She wanted people to respect her ideas, not who she was, and most importantly loathed the oppressed Arab/Iraqi woman persona many expected of her. As I would come to learn later in our interview, the power of individualism was something she had struggled with her entire life. When stripped to her essence there was really nothing else left to care about in this world. SALIMI; KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, FILM Anyone who has been to Savannah would immediately notice two components of nature that strike the senses upon arrival: the air and trees. The latter seemed to hover over each crevice of the small city majestically swinging back and forth in what appeared an almost classical rhythm. As night descended, the air, which throughout the day adds benevolent warmth to the slow-paced streets, was now ready to mingle with the trees, giving the town a haunting, yet serene presence that could still seem overly passive and gentle—if you just listen closely enough. It is these settings that complemented my walk through the pristine landscape. Strolling past antique mansions I felt somewhat timeless—content with my surroundings and proud to know there were still some places not overrun by commercialism’s parasitic grip. Head south: mansions began to fade, as did the paint on the semi-dilapidated houses and sidewalks. I walked a bit further and thought to myself how the Savannah of ten minutes ago seemed like a distant memory. The trees, or what’s left of them, were no longer dancing as the air now had a new quality—trepidation—as

An American Setting

33

I found my earlier day’s harmonious strides becoming a bit faster. I finally stopped at a crumbling off-white house where Salimi opened the door with a big smile and hug. As I hadn’t seen him in nine months I immediately commented on his hair—now past his shoulders, and burnt red tan that “makes everyone here think I am a Mexican migrant worker or something,” he said laughing. I sensed that someone was watching me from the kitchen who turned out to be one of his roommates—a flamboyant gay student that seemed a little curious of my relationship with the mysterious Afghan filmmaker inhabiting Savannah College of Art and Design. As my day so far had been nothing but bliss I was curious to hear Salimi’s thoughts, but more importantly, what he made of his current living situation. “Savannah is like walking through art,” he said smiling. “In the beginning I had just come from Tokyo and then New York, so I was definitely not used to this pace of life, but then slowly, slowly I learned to adjust.” I was then filled in on a reality about Savannah that I had not thought of until now: poverty, drugs, prostitution, and racism. “I can’t walk around here at night, it’s too dangerous, so I take my horse,” he said jokingly referring to his bike. His bike was his prized possession; riding five miles to school at times late into the evening. It was this part of Savannah that could bother the laid-back Afghan artist. From dusk onwards, the streets outside of his house became one of the area’s biggest drug dens, bringing the inevitable tripartite of prostitution and theft along with it. “I have seen some things here that I never would have believed. Almost every night at 12:30 a group of drunken black prostitutes walk down the street screaming and the police come right afterwards.” Many other surprises came as well. Several neighbors were drug dealers, which would inevitably incite the frequent police raid. Naturally, Salimi with his long hair seemed like an ideal customer riding his “horse” to school with art supplies. “You know Afghans and Afghanistan are already connected with drugs and I don’t want to be part of it. I don’t want people thinking, ‘now he is an Afghan he must use drugs’. This is really bad and I know when people say these things they are joking but there is a reality behind it.” When Salimi first moved to the neighborhood, many new friends and colleagues told him not to talk to black people—especially at night. But over time he came to understand what the best course of

34

Embracing the Occupiers

action should be. “I’ve not been hurt by these people even though I know they are doing illegal things,” he explained. “Yet I know they are also humans and have feelings and have brains and logic. So I just talk to them at a very basic level and try to not have too much of a relationship.” Yet the issues of “black and white” in Savannah and America in general, were something that Salimi couldn’t seem to get past. Besides the initial warnings about his neighborhood, some American students even told him not to speak to black people at all in Savannah. He initially pondered these recommendations as different incidents in his first couple of months left him confused. The first day in Savannah, he was sitting on a bench in Forsythe Park, listening to the birds and watching the tourists go by when two older black men approached and yelled at him, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” “I didn’t know what to say, and I felt so embarrassed,” he said. ‘I was like, I am new here . . . should I introduce myself?” The men shook their heads at him and left. Salimi had no idea what just happened. Later, another international student in his class told him that earlier on he asked a black guy for directions and the man just spit at him. These examples proved to be quite a challenge in his beginning attempts to understand how life here worked. “Why is everything here an issue of black and white?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. On Salimi’s first trip to the library, a black woman behind the counter asked him where he was from, “I said I am Persian and she was like ‘whoa, you are one of us’ and I didn’t really get it.” In my long weekend in Savannah I realized there were a lot of things Salimi probably didn’t get. However, he never seemed to be bothered by it. If anything, he loved the challenge of trying to figure out the world for himself—something he had struggled with his entire life.

CHAPTER 2

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq ABDU I had written my undergraduate thesis about the Kurds and their struggle for statehood. Trapped in the middle of three great civilizations (Persia, Turkey, and Mesopotamia), they are the Middle East’s eternal kicking bag; always bearing the brunt of the region’s continuous problems and rightfully earning their title, “no friends but the mountains.” Interestingly enough, Abdu was the first Kurd that I had ever really known that well and I felt a little nervous about asking him to describe his experience of growing up in Kurdistan. Images of him and his family running through fields of charcoaled women clutching skeletal babies came to my mind and I immediately wondered how my emotions might affect the rest of the interview. To my surprise, what he told me was not that emotional at all and if anything, was more surreal. Born in Baghdad in 1980, Abdu was the second of six siblings. Originally from the North like most Kurds, his father was a mullah and had moved to Baghdad several years before for study, eventually settling there with his wife. Abdu brought up his father frequently and described as an almost mythological figure. Yet when I asked who had the most impact on his life, he immediately spoke about his mother. When she first moved to Baghdad she did not know Arabic, and due to the limited income the new

36

Embracing the Occupiers

family had to rent a tiny cottage with no electricity in the desolate outskirts of Baghdad in a mostly Shiite neighborhood, where the father’s reputation as the “Sunni cleric” summoned the occasional pile of mud thrown on the front door. It was of this time that Abdu’s memories of his mother were the most vivid and her impact on him most noticeable as he told me about their humble living situation. In the late 1980s, the family, like other Kurds had to escape persecution and fled to Iran, where they lived in approximately three different refugee camps until 1991. When Abdu returned to Kurdistan in 1991, the first Gulf War had begun and Abdu’s memories of it were vague. After the war, he jumped right back into school and despite technically being behind the rest because he missed a grade, he immediately rose to the top of his class. The knowledge he had acquired in Iran put him and his brother far ahead of the rest. He recalled having to read a thick book on the history of Islam, which he had already went through in Iran several times and knew more than the teacher. It was also at this time that Abdu began to study English, which would change him forever. Abdu cruised through high school and eventually went to Saladin University in Erbil. During this time, he became obsessed with English, especially the American dialect, leading to a fascination with American culture. He read English books, listened to American music, and watched whatever American movies were available. When I asked what in particular about the American dialect he found so fascinating, he went off on a long tangent about the song “Jam” by Michael Jackson, an artist his father also enjoyed listening to—one of the many examples Abdu used to demonstrate his father’s open-mindedness despite being a mullah, who are normally stereotyped as stern and unyielding. This was the first American song Abdu heard, and after listening to it several times, he couldn’t find the word “Jam” in the dictionary. Fascinated, he gained a greater appreciation for the uniqueness of the American dialect of English. In Iraq, students generally choose their profession based on what grades they received in the entrance exam, with medicine and law at the top and the arts at the bottom. Even though Abdu received a high score, he decided that studying English was what he wanted to do and nobody was going to stop him. The fact that he already spoke better English than most of his professors did not sway him

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

37

from seeing the potential for this field in an area of the world such as Kurdistan. Throughout college, Abdu had other things on his mind besides Michael Jackson and the American dialect—marriage. Since he was a child, the act was seen as something that could make him complete as a human being and after university; this would become his life’s pursuit. I asked him to explain: “Freud says that people do not feel complete until they are connected with the other sex, that man cannot live alone and that the sexes need to be close to each other. I have this belief that neither man nor woman is complete once they are together but when they form a family, a husband and wife team, then they are complete.” A little while after graduation, Abdu would finally meet his wife who was a sister of some of his best friends and daughter of one of his father’s colleagues. Ironically, before they met for the first time at a family lunch, he never knew she existed, as her family was quite large and for some reason this girl never seemed to be home when he was visiting. They married in 2004, just a little over a year before he would come to the United States. OMAR While technically half Pashton, one-quarter Uzbek, and one quarter Tajik, Omar would only refer to himself as “Afghan.” However as an anthropologist, he believed his family roots to be quite unconventional as being brought up between these three different poles helped him gain a greater appreciation for Afghanistan’s complexities as a nation. Omar’s mother descended from a small Pashton tribe known as Durrani, who moved to Kabul hundreds of years ago from today’s Iran and became what he calls “persianized”—highly educated Kabuli elite. The Durrani tribe’s connection over the years to the cultural norms typical of the Pashton people became somewhat lost. Raised in a rural area of the Kondooz province, Omar’s father and his three friends left for Kabul in the 1960s when some of the social limitations that existed for different ethnic groups began to ease. He entered Kabul’s Faculty of Law and became a civilian judge (in previous decades this was impossible unless one was from the Mohammadzai tribe or a Pashtun). The second friend would end up a famous diplomat, the third a well-known physician and the fourth, joined the air force, where he was killed in the late 1980s. The story of the

38

Embracing the Occupiers

group became legendary in Kondooz and better known within some circles in Kabul after the three remaining friends gathered for the funeral. From early on, the family knew that Omar was incredibly gifted not only by his grades in school, but by his passion for knowledge in and out of the classroom. Being the top student seemed to always have its advantages. As a result of having their house bombed, many families from the mountainside areas of the Panjshir and Shomali regions moved near Omar’s house. Besides having blue eyes and blond hair (characteristics common of some people from this region), their mentality seemed quite different and backwards. For Omar and his friends, the new kids in the neighborhood were not to be trusted. After several of them made disparaging remarks about his sister, turf wars became a common after-school activity. Being the leader of a gang was not based on muscle or popularity but on grades. Omar’s friends relied on him to help cheat on tests and in return obeyed his list of commands as the gang leader in the neighborhood wars. Most of Omar’s childhood until eighteen was spent in the house of his grandparents. On weekly trips to his daughter’s house, the grandfather always brought new books on Afghanistan and history as gifts for his favorite grandchild. He was completely enamored with Omar’s uncanny ability to absorb information and would occasionally yell at his son-in-law for discouraging this passion (the father greatly wanted Omar to become a doctor). When Omar was ten, his grandfather decided it was time to read the classic book, Afghanistan in the Course of History, by Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar. After a full discussion of what he had learned, his grandfather told the family that Omar would now live with him and could come back on the weekends. Omar agreed, and happily moved in with his grandparents where the weekend’s history lessons now became routine. Although it was impossible for Omar to describe everything he learned in those years, he would always remember coming to understand from his grandfather what it meant to be an Afghan. Looking back on his childhood and education as an anthropologist today, understanding what it meant to be an Afghan was also inadvertently complemented by the Russian occupation. Although many loathed the Soviet Union (especially the grandfather who would spit at his TV when they spoke), Omar saw things a bit differently. “The Soviet invasion was disastrous but it did destroy

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

39

the social hierarchy of power that was so rotten. It was the first time that all ethnic groups had a say in society. The sours, the ulcers that always needed to be covered with bandages were allowed to be opened and now the question became how to heal them? The Afghan identity which was damaged had now come back.” Giving into his father’s pragmatism, “there is no future for you as a historian in this country,” Omar enrolled in the Kabul University School of Medicine at just about the point at which the Taliban began to seize power. For the time being, history would have to take a back seat, although it was always being made around him to watch and observe. “Since I was born, I have witnessed ten governments, the establishment of three conflicting regimes and two major wars. As my grandfather used to call history, ‘it is one that describes the past and makes the future.’” MOHAMMAD One can’t begin to comprehend Mohammad’s life without understanding the city of Babylon—an affluent Shiite enclave located outside of Baghdad. Although many have heard the name as a relic of history, fewer are aware of its culture, where the people were known to be sophisticated and highly educated. Yet it was also one of the epicenters of the Shiite resistance after the first Gulf War, what Mohammad referred to as “the true resistance, the real resistance who nobody in the anti-war movement seemed to care about at that time.” Mohammad’s father was a date farmer who dabbled in real estate on the side and owned quite a bit of land in Babylon. His mother longed to be an Olympic Ping-Pong player but ended up working for the Ministry of Trade. The family lived with Mohammad’s aunt whose arranged marriage never worked out and was with his Mohammad’s family from the day he was born. She was Mohammad’s keeper, his true hero who crafted Mohammad in her imagery of what is right and good in this world. During his first couple months in America, he called her five times a day. Despite living in a Shiite community, Mohammad’s family was not the least bit religious. Being a Shiite meant knowing something more than religion—history. “We survived and this is very important,” he explained. “We have the duty to keep this survival to continue our nation, our beliefs, even if we are not religious.”

40

Embracing the Occupiers

With extremely educated and worldly parents who wanted their children to hopefully leave Iraq one day, books, particularly history books, were everything in Mohammad’s childhood, especially the kind not taught in schools and forbidden under Saddam Hussein. With the circumstances of history bestowed upon him and his community, Mohammad realized at a young age that out in the distance, there had to be another life that he could aspire to. “I always had this feeling that everybody should live a normal life. The desire to know why: why this happens to us, why this person, why this dictatorship, why this party is doing all these things to us. They claim we are one nation, or one group, one country, but why do they do this to us? I have always wanted to know why we are treated as second grade citizens or third grade citizens and didn’t have a chance, like any other human being in the world.” The desire for this truth arguably forced its way into his consciousness most vividly about the time when Iraq invaded Kuwait. His community talked behind closed doors about how there was something that was just not right about this event and secretly wished for American success. With a sarcastic laugh Mohammad asked, “Who gave us the right to jump in and swallow a whole nation just for the heck of it? When the occupation happened, in my neighborhood, almost everyone I knew, they were against buying anything from Kuwait. Anything that they would suspect came from Kuwait. And if you bought it and later discovered that it came from Kuwait, you would have to leave it on the side of the road, just leave it.” The “other life” that Mohammad constantly referred to was at least in part a reflection of the thousands of movies continuously being played on the family TV day in and day out. So when the time came to attend university, Mohammad greatly desired to go to film school, a wish quickly dispelled by his mother who told him that at best all he could do was make propaganda films for the government. He was quickly convinced and decided to attend al-Mustansiriyya University to study literature and translation. NADIA Nadia’s father had grown up in the rural area of the Lakhman province north of Kabul where for countless generations, the

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

41

family owned significant amounts of land and held a powerful political presence in the community. Although Nadia’s grandfather was educated and worked for the government but was still very conservative—an intractable part of the tribal system of values that has engulfed much of Afghanistan throughout its history. For boys in the family, one’s greatest hope was to someday inherit the father’s combined assets and carry out his legacy as a man of prestige and power. Girls hardly went to school and rarely worked. Out in the distance some two hours away was Kabul—a city that for most in the rural areas seemed like a different world that they didn’t understand or for some, didn’t want to understand. For Nadia’s father, visions of Kabul danced around his head throughout most of his childhood. It was a place that went beyond the normal rural stereotypes of women walking around without covering their heads and men drinking alcohol. It symbolized a new era for Afghanistan—liberalism—where above anything else, people could choose a career and lifestyle based on what they wanted and not which family they happened to be born into. In the late 1940s, Nadia’s father left the village with his new wife obtained in a love marriage and not through arrangement. They made their way to Kabul where he started working for an organization called Afghan Nasaji Corporations that produced blankets and textiles, eventually becoming the president twenty years later. The grandfather was furious and vowed to cut him off from his assets and never to speak to him again. But Nadia’s father remained steadfast as he proudly left the village with his new wife. Several years later, others from the family following his lead migrated to Kabul. Eventually the father and the grandfather made amends, but he would vow never return to his home in the Lakhman province again. It was this tough choice that helped produce the individual of Nadia we have here today—whom otherwise would probably be a housewife in a village somewhere in Lakhman. Nadia’s parents produced over ten children—a mix of doctors, lawyers, economists, and professors. Their childhood was one of constant education and awakening to new ideas. There was never a dull moment as the family spent the weekends attending museums, lectures, and trips around Kabul. In the modest-sized house, a large

42

Embracing the Occupiers

room was set aside for a library that contained numerous books on philosophy, history, and politics. After dinner, the family convened in the living room for the father to lead discussions on current events in Afghanistan and the world. The children shared their thoughts about the Russian occupation versus the Mujahedeen, communism versus capitalism, and so forth. Most importantly, Nadia and her sisters played volleyball and soccer. It was the latter that would in a sense tear apart the family forever. Nadia’s older brother was a professional volleyball player who made the national team in 1987. It was a competitive sport and several Afghans who didn’t make it had for some reason or another held her brother responsible. One day they waited for him outside of the family’s house and shot him several times; proceeding to lay his dead body on the front doorstep. The family was devastated. One older brother who claimed that this incident could only have happened in Afghanistan left for Australia and vowed never to return. Nadia’s father suffered the most. After a few months he developed cancer, which the doctors said was a unique correlation to the trauma caused by the death of his son. After taking him to the best doctors in as far away places as India, he eventually passed away, around two years after that fateful morning. Only with her father’s death was Nadia made fully aware of his true background. Once the story emerged it became legendary within the family circle and is currently shared within all of the sibling’s new households. For Nadia, her father was a true hero who was willing to make the sacrifices necessary for what he believed to be the betterment of his country. The numerous failures in Afghanistan can only one day be reversed when others, she believed, are prepared to make the same bold decisions that her father made in the Lakhman province over fifty years ago. ALI Born to a Sunni father and Shiite mother, Ali referred to himself as a “sushi”—a line he would tell western journalists with a straight face when asked which of Iraq’s groups he belonged. Yet this unique identity hardly made his family an abode of coexistence in a land filled with sectarian strife. Most of his family hates Sunnis and believes they should all be dead. His mother always

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

43

told him growing up that if you touch one, you would need to wash your hands—especially before you pray. To bother her, he would respond by saying that all Muslims are supposed to wash before they pray anyway to which she would yell in return, “Well wash twice then!” Surprisingly, in her youth, Ali’s mother never cared about religious sects and in the 1960s in Baghdad used to wear mini-skirts. Occasionally when she began to preach about the virtues of Islam, Ali’s father would dig up old pictures of her and parade them around the house, causing her to lock them away where no one could find them. The inevitable question about his father’s religion and its role in the family didn’t need to be asked. Ali told me that his mother and other family members never really considered him a Muslim. Most of his life he had been a communist and always distanced himself from anything Islamic. In 1963, he was a lieutenant in the Iraqi army and when the Baathist revolution took place, Ali’s father and nine others stayed behind to support his hero, President Abdul Qassim. Prepared for a battle to the very end of his rule, Qassim ordered the men to leave at once. His father refused until the demand was set forth with a pistol to the head. A few days later after Qassim was overthrown, Ali’s father was arrested and taken to a torture chamber in what is today Abu Ghraib. When released three years later, he discovered that his large plot of land passed down from generations had now been confiscated by the government. To this day the scars on his feet and legs are still highly visible. Coming from a family of ten children, Ali was the only one to realize what he believed to be the utter absurdity of his family’s situation (even more so today with these sentiments in Iraq fully exacerbated). Through a life of watching most of his relatives become Islamists and seeing his family ostracized from the community for having a brother with down syndrome, Ali has nothing but contempt and disdain for Islam, the Middle East, Arab nationalism, and the Arab people in general—although surprisingly he is quite proud to be an Iraqi. Ali’s father was the perfect role model for how Ali wanted to live his life. He loved and respected him for his hard work and dedication but always was aware that he made many bad choices which he did not want to emulate. In the 1970s, Ali’s father worked for the Minister of Irrigation and was offered a scholarship to study

44

Embracing the Occupiers

in London but turned it down because they made him sign some papers stating that he was a member of the Baathist party. Apparently everyone in Iraq did this at that time, but Ali’s father was too proud. Ever since then he frequently talks about London as if he has lived there. If one were in the room with him, they would probably think he had. Examples such as these convinced Ali that his father took the hardest route life had to offer or as they say in Iraq, he “swam against the current.” For Ali, this was no way to live. “Everyone knows that the people in the government are bastards but the key is not always to fight with your muscles; you have to also use your brains— to be trickier than they are. More importantly, you also have to take risks. This is the only way to survive under Saddam even if it means getting killed as a result.” Taking risks was the only thing that kept Ali going throughout his life—allowing him to plan for the future and not suffer like his father did. Medical school was a breeze, so on the side he looked for ways to get rich on the side. Although his friends spent their spare time socializing with girls (or in Iraqi Arabic, Jig-Jigging) Ali went to the exchange market everyday where he would constantly trade dollars for dinars and attempt to time the conversions correctly. In the second year of medical school, Ali met his future wife, Zena, who at first thought he was an idiot. Known to be the best surgeon in his grade, Ali’s classmates nicknamed him “the dissector.” In order to try and impress the pretty girls in the medical school, he and a Palestinian student would steal brains from the corpse room and go around explaining the different parts of the nervous system. When the final exams came, most students failed but with Ali’s help, Zena passed. They became good friends afterwards until he asked her to marry him after graduation. However according to Ali, it was a bit more complicated than that. “We were sitting on a couch in her house, which we still call the ‘couch of love’. I told her that I loved her and she said ‘Ali, what are you about? What’s after that?’ So I quickly responded, ‘of course I will marry you’ without thinking what I was saying and when I returned home later I said to myself, ‘Idiot, what did you do? You are not ready for this.’ But in the end, I have no regrets. Zena is such a loving woman and so tolerant and quite

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

45

frankly I am very difficult person to be tolerated. Therefore, I’m glad that I didn’t think too much.” Through medical school, Ali continued to work in the exchange market with the hopes of making as much money as possible to finally leave Iraq for good. Shortly after graduation, he discovered a better way to earn money but little did he know at the time, it would be responsible for his exile. IDREES It would almost seem that Idrees was a product of his father’s occupation. In the 1970s during a period of quasi-democracy in the country, different government contractors worked to install hydroelectric dam projects across Afghanistan. At the time, there were only three Afghan specialists capable of running them. When violence began to engulf the country in the late 1980s, two of them would follow the lead of many other professionals and flee for a safer existence in the West. Idrees’s father never left. As a result, when the central government changed hands over the decades from the communists to the Mujahedeen and Taliban; there was always a need for a hydroelectric engineer, which Idrees’s father proudly accepted as his sole responsibility for the country. Unconcerned about the politics behind the different governments, his only devotion was to the people of Afghanistan— turning down every opportunity to work abroad in the direst of situations, as he relocated his family across the country to wherever duty called. The passion for public service that his father professed to the family throughout these rough times influenced Idrees from an early age, making him realize that whatever path he chose to take in life, there had to be a greater cause for humanity behind it. “When all else is said and done, we only have each other; to serve each other, to appreciate each other and to be helpful to each other. Otherwise we only live for ourselves, which I think means there is really little difference between us and animals.” Having a father who was a respected figure in the Afghan government and earned a master’s degree from the Soviet Union, allowed Idrees to get away with many things as a teenager. Completely unaware of what communism actually was, Idrees knew that he didn’t like the system it was producing and would always refer to it as “a plague.” As a result, he refused to join the

46

Embracing the Occupiers

communist youth organization in his school after numerous requests, which was something that all of the top students normally did. “I didn’t know anything about communism, but I didn’t like it because they were using force and I just wanted to resist the force,” he explained. Like capitalism in America, education in Afghanistan at the time focused on invoking antipathy toward another great enemy, the Mujahedeen who were currently fighting the Russian occupation in the rural areas, and were considered “thieves and bandits” as a result. Although hardly a supporter, Idrees fancied their wardrobe, which he would wear to school on several occasions; causing the military to take him to prison for a couple of hours only to have his father save him. In retrospect, Idrees’s contempt for the communist rule was in reality a revolt against an education system that he believed frowned on an analytical mindset. Although an excellent and obedient student in math, he refused to idly stand by in classes like religious studies and history where the teachers made him memorize books. Idrees constantly asked questions (an ultimate sign of disrespect towards a teacher), which were abruptly responded to with a loud “get the hell out of here.” Throughout primary school, Idrees’s reputation was one of being simply “bad,” or “crazy” according to his classmates. Reflecting back on these times he told me, “I felt maybe I am a really bad guy, as I had these three characteristics: I liked music which was bad in Afghanistan, I didn’t like communism which was really bad, and I wanted to learn things in a very analytical way and always asked weird questions which they hated me for. So because of these three things I had very little confidence in myself.” When the time came for university, Idrees sought admission to Kabul University’s School of Engineering. He placed third out of 12,000 students in the entrance exam, only to learn that the Mujahedeen who recently took over enacted a new law barring students from leaving their hometown for studies if a similar department had already existed. As a result, Idrees’s only choice was to attend the same program at Balkh University in Mazar e Sharif where his father had to move for work several years before. Ironically enough, he would find out later that Kabul University’s department of Engineering closed throughout periods of the civil

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

47

war; forcing students from his grade to finish roughly three years later than he did. Idrees found life in University to have an intellectual atmosphere with a bit more room for the free analysis he had longed for. He finished every year with the honor of being either top student in his department or university. The work was too easy, especially the math, as he would egg on his professors to give him harder tests than the rest of the class. Yet, his reputation for being “bad” still lingered throughout the school as he continued to poke fun at the simplistic understanding of the world that the professors provided the students. One day he was pulled into the office of an old professor who needed to tell him, “Idrees you are a fascinating student and you are right about the things you say, but don’t always push so hard.” For once, Idrees began to see that he might be normal after all and was incredibly grateful that at least one person agreed with him. However, the professor also had a reputation in the University for having “crazy ideas,” so at first he was still suspicious. “But later on, I learned that the guy was really smart and everybody else was crazy,” he told me laughing. HAIDER Since the 1950s and through four different regimes, Haider’s father had been a diplomat. At the time of his birth in 1982, he had already been appointed ambassador in Western Europe where Haider and his siblings would be born. Every three years new placements would arise with new languages needing to be learned in destinations distant as Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Gulf States, East Africa, and finally back to Western Europe. Haider became fluent in seven languages with English as a steady medium throughout the family’s relocations. As a result, the ferocious appetite for the cosmopolitan life seemed only a byproduct of years spent in different cities. The real “culture shock” was Iraq, where Haider would return at age fourteen. Throughout his years abroad, Iraq was a distant dream, only known through his dad’s office and the standard diplomatic lines delivered to the media day in and day out. But there was also Saddam—plastered on each wall of the house that loomed over

48

Embracing the Occupiers

the children. Even into the bathroom. They never dared asked questions about politics learned on the outside, but Haider always had a suspicion that things weren’t exactly what they seemed. Besides overhearing his parents discuss information privately or notice the occasional head shakes of disapproval when watching the news, there was always what he referred to as “commonsense.” He recalled watching the masses of Iraqi people cheer for Saddam in the streets and perceiving just a bit of acting in their movements (he would notice this firsthand at Baghdad University when most people who were required to chant for Saddam during intervals between classes expressed the bare amount of enthusiasm, while the screamers always captured the media attention). To my surprise, the father was not a simple crony of the Baathist regime. In fact he was the only diplomat in the government never to join a political party—defining his role over the years as working for the Iraqi people and not the governments. Yet not signing up to be a member would have its consequences. Besides the doubling of one’s salary and possibilities for investment, there was retirement. When the inevitable time came for his status to be renewed, he had two choices: rob the embassy safe in the country he was serving and claim political asylum (this is supposedly what most Iraqi diplomats did), or reconsider his non-Baath party membership; thereby receiving another post overseas where Haider and his siblings could attend University, or at least be entitled to substantial benefits. Too proud for the latter (he had not done so in forty-five years, why would he now?) and too honorable for the former, he chose to return to Iraq in 1996. The government was dismayed. He was the only Shiite in this position, had a PhD and refused all along to join the Baath party. Because they couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t claim asylum, they assumed he was a spy and hence forced him to retire without benefits while keeping him under close surveillance. Haider hated his father for this decision, however, now as a Fulbrighter ten years later, respected him for his principles. Driving through the desert from Jordan, the Iraq Haider knew from his father’s office was now passing before his very eyes and he didn’t really know what to make of it. Now in its fifth year of sanctions, poverty was widespread which in Haider’s young mind translated a bit differently: “They were all so behind in fashion and I was so disappointed. Coming to Iraq for the first time should

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

49

have been so exciting because I saw it as another great country that I have been to but it should have been greater than the others I’ve seen. But it wasn’t.” Everything in Iraq was different: the food, the people, and the mentality. It was depressing. On the first day of school, Haider went dressed as he would in Europe—long hair to his shoulders and shorts. Standing outside, he noticed about 200 students in a line behind him in what seemed at first like a demonstration. But as the laughing and cheering became louder and the line behind became a circle, it was not a demonstration but a circus, with Haider at the center of attention. After a year of adjustment with hundreds of family members who he had never seen before, life became normal and he cursed himself for the original “backwardness” he saw in his own people. “I know that they grew up without the best conditions and atmosphere in the last three decades where over a million people were killed in war. It was sad to me that the Iraqi people never had a call in all of that, so it was not fair to say they are not good people or stupid people. I really felt ashamed for thinking this way.” Haider eventually attended Baghdad University to study English and French. Knowing more than the professors, he would only come for the final exams. His free time was occupied by pursuing other activities, namely importing DVDs and music to sell while exploring a new phenomenon to recently enter Iraq—the Internet. Fluent in numerous languages, extremely educated and worldly, the next phase of Haider’s life would be one of numerous challenges and opportunities: some exciting, some fearful, and others unclear. ZABI Afghanistan’s northernmost city, Mazar e Sharif in the Balkh province, became the first stronghold of the Soviet occupation in 1979 and throughout the next decade a major base of operations as well as a vital strategic link; accessing roads to Uzbekistan whose border could be seen just over the mountain tops. Apart from its geographical importance, the people of Mazar consisted of various ethnic groups that had been left out of the political system through much of Afghanistan’s history: Uzbeks and Hazaras. Cognizant of this reality, the Soviet occupation was in large part able to sell

50

Embracing the Occupiers

its presence as a “liberating force” within the society, allowing ostracized people to feel they now had a voice. For the most part, this strategy was well planned as the next decade Mazar would be almost completely detached from Afghanistan’s political reality until the early 1990s when the same groups who at one point dreamed of having a political presence, were now destined to abuse their power. With this setting in mind, I was not surprised to learn that Zabi’s childhood in a liberal Tajik family under the Russian occupation would probably be a bit more comfortable than other Afghans I have known. Descriptions of his community were ones almost out of a Rockwell painting—minus the winter frolicking. Kites flew in the air above the small, tightly knit houses while children played stickball in the street till dusk. Throughout the night, doors never had locks as neighbors popped in and out bringing tea and sweets along with them; always ready to plop down and watch the latest Bollywood flick. The family spent the weekends going on picnics and occasionally vacations to Uzbekistan. As life calmly went by in Mazar, the violence and political turmoil raging throughout other parts of the country always felt like a world away. One day walking home from school, Zabi noticed a crowd of people gathered around the corpse of a soldier. Attached to his mutilated body was a note from the Mujahedeen which read, “The same will happen to all those who work for the Soviet occupation.” Back at the house, Zabi’s father seemed most distressed that the government allowed the body to lie in the street long enough for children to witness. When Zabi asked why this had happened, he explained that it had to do with the military and he should not be concerned about it. However, because one of Zabi’s older brothers was currently in the military, he was now intrigued. With no one to explain, its meaning quickly faded as life continued in Mazar where it left off—comfortable and content. When the Mujahedeen took over Afghanistan in 1992, Zabi was in his second year of Balkh University studying to be an engineer. It was around this time that things began to change. General Dostum, head of an Uzbek militia recently united with the Northern alliance and opposed to the central government’s rule, took power in Mazar and most of the Balkh province. While technically non-sectarian as Dostum aligned with Tajik and Hazara leaders, the University and most of Balkh became what Zabi called

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

51

“Uzbekanized.” The minority group was specially selected for jobs and university admission, whereas a climate of intimidation prevented non-Uzbeks from ever disagreeing with them in class or on the outside. Zabi recalled going to movies and concerts where if an Uzbek wanted your seat, you had no choice but to give it up or face the wrath of security guards on alert to drag out the impostor. His professor for English was specially chosen by the Uzbek dean of Balkh University although he did not have a university degree and hardly any English under his belt. For four years, he did nothing more than copy a sentence on the board and have students rewrite it in their notebooks, while he read the paper and stared at the women who always got A+s if they happened to be beautiful. The non-Uzbeks in the class meanwhile seemed to always mysteriously fail. “And you wonder why Afghan Fulbrighters don’t do well on the TOEFL test,” Zabi asked me laughing. From the early to mid 1990s, life inside Mazar e Sharif would still retain its subtle tranquility, despite the “Uzbekanisation” that was happening. The rest of Afghanistan would eventually disintegrate and slowly lose power to the Taliban but Mazar became the last to fall in 1998 and ironically the first to be liberated in 2001. The Taliban’s invasion has been described as one of the worst episodes of violence in Afghanistan’s thirty years of war, and for Zabi, an ideal time to leave. TAIFA Throughout our interview, there was to be no talk of names, dates, places, or anything else, which might give away the slightest hint of Taifa’s real identity. Instead she spoke in allegories and metaphors—using movies, books, and poems to guide me through her life growing up in Baghdad; from a lonely girl obsessed with escaping a society that she didn’t feel a part of, to the day she was finally released. “If you want to understand my life, you have to see the movie Bend it Like Beckham,” she said when I first asked her to explain what it was like growing up in Iraq. “That is my biography. I love it! When I first saw it I thought is this movie about me? No one understood the fact that she liked to play soccer, but for her, it was you know. . . . something important. But her sister found it silly, ‘don’t you want to have a boyfriend, why are you doing all these things’. But she kept on, pursued her dream and

52

Embracing the Occupiers

got a scholarship. Her mother wouldn’t let her go, but her father did. That is basically a movie made about me.” Substituting education for soccer and Iraq for India, the two stories had many parallels and I could only imagine her expression when watching the film for the first time. Like the girl in the movie, Taifa never felt completely a part of the society she was born into. From an early age, she sensed life was already predetermined by forces she did not control: limits of educational opportunity in a place like Iraq and the confines of a gender that only rarely existed independently. Taifa revolted by creating her own world revolving around movies and western literature—often taking pleasure in the dreams of escape they would produce, but leaving her depressed knowing that there was a world out there that she would probably never enter. “When I watched the movie ET, I remember there was this science class and they were given these frogs by the teacher for a science experiment. In Iraq we just get a book to learn so you can pass the exam. So I was watching this and thinking, ‘why can’t our school be like that? Why do others get to have these advantages?’” Being from an educated household and having a professor for a father, Western literature, music, and movies were always easily accessible. Taifa spent her days pouring over Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Keats and then moving onto nineteenth-century female literature in an attempt to find the universal meaning of women in society—for herself in Iraq and for those before her. Unbeknownst to her friends and family, Taifa was slowly becoming quite good in English. On the first day of class in high school, she sat back and listened to what she considered a butchering of the language by her teacher. Going around the room each student responded to the teacher’s question, which of course made everyone laugh. Approaching her turn, Taifa became nervous for what might come out of her mouth but eventually answered perfectly—correcting the teacher’s pronunciation and adding a few lines of British poetry to top it off. The class was astonished and Taifa was proud for having what she considered a special knowledge. Yet after class, several students approached her and asked how she knew English so well—perhaps she was an American spy, they implied. A little while later, some friends told her that this earlier accusation had now become a rumor. Outside of her close friends

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

53

and family, Taifa never spoke English again until she landed a job with a newspaper shortly after the U.S. invasion. Incidents like these provoked an almost pervasive fear throughout Taifa’s life, where she felt that it was always wrong to ask questions outside of her household. Although technically Shiite, her family never cared much for religion, as she laughed when I asked her if she considered this to be part of their identity. In fact it was something they rarely discussed at all. One day in school, a girl asked Taifa if she was Sunni or Shiite to which she couldn’t think of an answer. When she inquired to her parents, they yelled and told her never to ask questions like that again. As time went on, any interest at all she had in the political situation of her country quickly dissipated—she didn’t even know about the Kurdish genocide until 2002. Instead she returned to her own world of dreaming about studying one day in America or the West— carrying only a few friends along the way who truly understood her ambitions. For others, she just didn’t have the time. SALIMI At a large house in the center of Kabul in 1975, Salimi was born. The oldest of five who was technically supposed to be dead at birth somehow ended up surviving after living on a machine for several weeks. Yet surviving was just the beginning and what followed was a life of incredible pain and anguish where normalcy at times seemed just around the corner but not quite within reach. The artist and their rough upbringing maybe a universal tale told across the world—and the great ones live to tell about it through their creation. If this is the case, then Salimi’s background seemed almost meant to be—the Afghan version that is. Straight from the hospital and incredibly underweight, Salimi was taken back to his family where his grandmother, freshly arrived from a messy divorce, would become more of a parental figure than his real mother. The tales of dysfunction that would haunt the family during his childhood can arguably be traced back to his grandfather. One wife was not sufficient and after marrying Salimi’s grandmother, he would take several more. After the fourth, the grandmother had enough and left him for good—an act quite rare in Afghanistan. Salimi has nothing but contempt for the situation. “My grandfather is a bastard. Thank god he died

54

Embracing the Occupiers

and I never went to his grave. Marrying four times was not listening to Islam he was listening to his dick. He was a bastard who just enjoyed his life and did nothing for his children or family.” Normally stereotyped as loving, kind, and compassionate, Salimi also has nothing but harsh words to say about his Afghan mom whom he called “rude and aggressive” due to her lack of support for his goals and favoritism towards different brothers in the family. “When I think about my mom there is only a dot,” he explained. “I think, what was her mission in this life, just to keep me in a womb for nine months and then get rid of me? Why should I call her mom?” Salimi’s father was a famous general in the Afghan army. When the communists rose to power, he was taken to prison with other ex-government officials accused of being part of the Mujahedeen for praying in public, among other things. The family spent weeks in the house crying every day, quite sure he would never return. Yet two weeks later for reasons unknown to Salimi, he returned— one of the only ones to not have been tortured and eventually killed. Unlike his mother, Salimi had a tremendous amount of respect for his father who was always supportive and unlike most generals, very liberal—maybe too liberal. Salimi blamed a lot of his mother’s behavior on the fact that his father treated her probably better than she deserved. “There was everything in my father’s house,” he shouted. “He [his father] was a liberal person. He didn’t care about anyone’s beliefs. He didn’t behave like an Afghan man, he behaved like a man, and this is why my mom acted in this way. Her father was not like this, so when my father treated her differently, she was like a bird coming out of the cage and didn’t know how to fly.” As the oldest of five brothers, Salimi would take the group out into the garden on a daily basis and pretend to stage a movie: one was the villain; one was the cop, and so on. He dreamed of being able to one day create real films; ones that rose above the clich´e Indian and Pakistani love stories that seemed so ubiquitous across Afghanistan at the time. But the industry was hardly developed. Kabul University had an Arts department that trained people for professions like painters and stage actors but film had not quite existed yet. Salimi was still convinced that he wanted to enter the Arts. At the university entrance exams, he received the

Coming of Age in Afghanistan and Iraq

55

highest scores possible, which in Afghanistan meant that you would attend the medical or engineering school—as arts were for those who scored the lowest. He went home and lied to his father. After discovering the truth he called the prime minister of Afghanistan who ended up writing a personal letter to the university demanding that Salimi be switched to medicine. But a few weeks into the semester, he would defy his father and the prime minister by skipping classes and spending all of his time with the Arts department. After not receiving his son’s transcript for the first semester, the gig was up and Salimi confessed that he had not been attending the medical classes. His father sat him down and calmly explained why he was making a bad choice—that in this country one cannot have a future in the arts. His mother was less patient. She told him that he was disgracing the family’s name and would amount to nothing but a clown or a dancer on the street (in Afghanistan this is meant to be a horrible insult). Salimi coarsely responded back, “It is my father’s name not yours that I would be disgracing . . . you are only his wife. He made a name for himself, but you have not, you are only living under his name. You did nothing . . . you didn’t study or even complete school.” In the winter of 1990, Salimi left his family’s house to be with his grandmother who at this point was living with some cousins. Throughout his life, Salimi’s grandmother was like his real mother as well as his best friend and hero. When she passed away in 2002, he was devastated and to this day still dreams of her almost every night. At the funeral in Peshawar, Pakistan, no one from his family was present. Since leaving his home that winter seventeen years ago, Salimi hasn’t seen or heard from his family and had no idea where they are or if they are even alive.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 3

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption ABDU Abdu’s father was an Islamist who proudly belonged to the Kurdish Islamic Union (KIU) and served on the Iraqi parliament. Under Saddam’s regime, he was a member of the outlawed Muslim brotherhood. As a famous mullah in Baghdad throughout the 1980s, his sermons were known to be powerful, controversial, and inspirational—drawing large audiences of both Kurds and Arabs. At the time, under Saddam, both the Communists and the Islamists were considered the biggest threat to the Baathist state, and his father took no precautions in regards to making people aware of his beliefs. Abdu proudly recalled one story of security guards bringing in a life-size glass photo of Saddam Hussein to his father at the Friday mosque and asking him to say a prayer over it. Without giving it a second thought, he took the photo and smashed it against the ground—much to the dismay of the young guards and latent joy of the mostly Kurdish audience. His father’s defiance in the face of tyranny would soon have its consequences. In 1986, the Muslim brotherhood cell was discovered and many members (including several relatives) captured— never to be heard from again. Abdu’s father was a wanted man, and knew he had to get his family out of Baghdad immediately. They went to Sulaymaniya in Kurdistan where the children resumed school until it became too unsafe. Abdu recalls one day

58

Embracing the Occupiers

when he and his brother were rushed out of class and hidden because Iraqi security forces were looking for them—knowing they could be used to blackmail his father. The family moved to a village area near Halabja—a place where no one knew his father and he could blend in as a normal sort of “everyday guy.” As the school in this region was far from the village, the children stayed with their aunt and cousins. The Kurds of this area were for the most part “pro-government” and often sparred with the anti-government forces that Abdu’s family was a part of. This group called themselves the Knights of Saladin, but among the rest of the Kurds, they were known as Jash (donkeys). For his father, living in these villages was the perfect disguise. However, playing the role of the normal everyday guy would be difficult for an erudite cleric who couldn’t help but preach streams of virtue even when buying a loaf of bread. The locals questioned his perceived rural peasantry and concluded that he had to be a great mullah from somewhere else. However, his cover was never blown and Abdu was thankful for the people of this area for being so helpful and watching over them—even though to most other Kurds he knew, they were simply Jash. This time period marked the height of the Iran-Iraq war and the Kurds, as always, were stuck right in the middle. Fear and trepidation were looming all around as groups sided with different governments. There was no telling how Saddam would react. One day, during a break in school, Abdu saw his mother pull up in a car and motion for him and his brother to quickly get in. She brought them back home, gave them a shower, and told them to get dressed for they were going to go on a night picnic in the mountains, which made Abdu excited due to his love for the outdoors. Without saying goodbye to their relatives, the family set out over the mountains toward Iran to hopefully begin a new life. I asked Abdu to explain what he remembered most about the trip. “There were tons of minefields, which we went through in a way so that there was a guy in front of us leading and everyone would take the same exact step he took. Sometimes military posts were all around, so they told us not to make a sound, not even to whisper or we would be shot with canons. One time, we were making our way through a river on rafts, and my sister kept shouting a lot, so it was really hard for us, especially my dad. He told my mom, ‘I swear to God if that kid doesn’t stop, I will

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

59

drown her’, in order to save the fate of everyone else on the boats. Luckily, she stopped crying and screaming just in time.” The years in Iran were described by Abdu as some of the best of his life and most intellectually stimulating. The Kurds built a mosque and a large madrassa (Islamic school) where the children spent most of their time, entering into subjects that he claims would never be taught in Iraq: Islamic spirituality, history, and world religions. Outside of learning, the children played games in the mountains and slept underneath mulberry trees, eating the fruit that fell on their bodies. They also took some time off their day to chat with the Iranian soldiers who guarded the camps, comparing Kurdish words with Persian and discussing life in Iraq. Although the Kurds have had their fair share of oppression under different Iranian regimes, Abdu had nothing but kind things to say about the country and his years spent there. I was hesitant to ask Abdu what he knows about events taking place back home in Kurdistan at this time. The year 1988 was the beginning of the Anfal campaign (spoils of war), or the Baathist version of the “final solution.” Within roughly eight stages over a seven month period, over 100,000 Kurds were annihilated in chemical attacks spawned by Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan AlMajid (Chemical Ali), taking more than 90% of villages in Kurdistan with them. Some things might be better off left untold, so I don’t inquire for details, and instead allow the beautiful visions of Iran that he has shared with me to overshadow one of the twentieth century’s most unrecognized genocides. OMAR When the Mujahedeen captured Kabul in 1991 things suddenly began to change. On the first day of school, the new administrators (dressed in clothes that he only knew through folklore), referred to Omar and his friends as “bastard commies,” and threatened to beat them if they didn’t return home and dress like proper Muslims. “We were not used to this new atmosphere of intimidation where how we grew up was now supposedly not correct,” he recollected. The next couple of years were some of the hardest: Sights of war in the streets became a daily occurrence as the neighborhood slowly began to change (more than 90% left for exile including

60

Embracing the Occupiers

Omar’s grandparents). The worst fighting would take place in January 1993 when General Dustam joined forces with Hekmatyar and attacked the loose-knit Kabuli government of the Northern Alliance. It was a bloodbath. Families stayed in their homes for weeks without food, water, or electricity. The only entertainment seemed to be the roof where one could watch the city literally dissipate by the minute. Clouds of smoke and fire rose in the distance of what used to be places Omar knew since childhood: cinemas, hospitals, and parks. Thousands of bullet-ridden corpses eventually lined the streets that for Omar seemed to replace the common landmarks that used to be in the roof’s periphery. The war affected everybody. Omar’s father became sick (insomnia, anorexia, and acute silence) and laid in bed all day for months periodically. Schools would close for weeks at a time without notification and walking through the neighborhood to buy something as simple as a loaf of bread turned out to be mission for the day. With an older brother working for the UN in the northwest city of Herat, the family decided it was time to relocate for the children to finish school. Busy with entrance exams for medical school in 1995, Omar hardly noticed the city of Herat preparing for the onslaught of a new force slowly taking over the country. He and his brother left for Kabul to attend university several months before the Taliban would eventually seize Herat and plot their final move to Kabul. With the civil war continuing in spurts, Kabul University would continue its sporadic closure, causing Omar depression and weight loss. When the Taliban finally took over in 1996, the University would reopen full time. Because girls were unable to attend, Omar’s gifted sister suffered a nervous breakdown. The family decided it was best to relocate to Pakistan where schools for females were still a possibility. Omar, his two brothers, and his father stayed behind. The first day of University under the new government was quite a shock. Now administered by a Mullah from Pakistan named Fazil, ethnic tensions that were previously unknown to most now began to resurface. Thousands of students from the madrassas in Pakistan dressed in Taliban garb began to flood the school. Nicknamed “Dawat o Jihad” or the “D&J boys,” they were known to be of Pashton descent and completely ignorant of Afghanistan’s culture(s) and history. At first, the school became split with Tajiks,

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

61

Hazaras, and Uzbeks on one side (native speakers of Dari) and Afghan Pashtons (which the Taliban primarily consisted of) on the other. With the arrival of the D&J boys, even the Afghan Pashtons couldn’t seem to relate to the D&J boys, who soon became a third column (although Omar claimed to have had a lot of Pashton friends). The D&J boys looked down on the Dari speakers with the most vital contempt, constantly making jokes about their clothes, hair, and beards. Omar recalled one of them asking him, “Why do you wear this horrible scarf (a typical Afghani scarf)?” and responded, “Why do you have this nose? It looks hideous.” The overt favoritism toward this strange and elusive bunch from Pakistan was a result of the University’s “Talibanization” period. Besides the required Islamic dress, the lingua de franca changed from Dari to Pashto while the Taliban and their supporters handpicked the entire administration, leaving non-Pashtons unsure of how new decisions would affect their future. Passing a test for one class on Islam would determine credit for an entire year’s work. So when all the non-D&J boys failed, Omar decided to collect a petition and deliver it to the head mullah who refused to read it. With several others behind, they marched into his office and shouted, “We want our rights! According to Sharia (Islamic law), there is no law between languages or race in Islam. A Muslim is to be valued by his heart.” The Mullah took out a lash and yelled, “Get these kafirs (infidels) back to Tajikistan” while slapping Omar across the face. On the verge of plotting to kill him, a Pashton friend told Omar to speak with the Interior Ministry. They ended up bribing him, which allowed a re-take of the test. Omar and others finally passed. In University one had to also be aware of the Taliban’s religious police that occasionally raided the school for people dressed inappropriately. The D&J boys laughed at Omar and the others fleeing from the classroom or running through the halls when their presence in the university was spotted. Returning from the hospital in his last year at University, Omar and a blue-eyed, blond friend from the Panjshir province whom they nicknamed “Zand” (yellow) found themselves in the center of a Taliban crackdown. Not liking his friend’s features (Being from Panjshir was in itself basically illegal as it was the home of their arch nemesis commander Massoud) they were both sent to prison. Trying to resist, Omar shouted “hey, ask me anything about the Qu’ran and I

62

Embracing the Occupiers

will tell you.” All they could say in response was “shut up you bastard.” The prison was packed with a combination of people wearing improper dress, children caught hiding during prayer time, two boys in a land dispute with their uncle, and several Pashtons from the Wardak province arrested for smuggling cassette tapes. Known to be excellent dancers, one from the latter group said, “hey, since we’re going to probably die anyway, let’s have some fun while were in here,” and tried to ease the fear in the room by performing a traditional women’s dance with a chador (women’s scarf) as others stayed on the lookout. Time went by like this for two weeks with daily beatings incorporated. One child in the land dispute died and the other became paralyzed for life. All of the Wardak Pashtons and Zand couldn’t walk afterwards and needed to be hospitalized for several years. Apart from a few lashes on his back, Omar was unscathed. The prisoners nicknamed the warden “the cat” due to his big green eyes that shined with an evil resonance. He was as ruthless and cruel as they came—laughing and spitting at the prisoners who were beaten all the way back to their cell. After being released due to family bribes, Omar’s heart was full of rage. Visiting his friend Zand in the hospital, they swore to one day find “the cat” and pull his green eyes from their sockets. MOHAMMAD In school, Mohammad’s mind and mouth were a fierce rapture of energy ready to explode at any minute—but mostly confined due to his family’s warnings. Yet at times he just couldn’t contain himself and had to let loose. In seventh grade, the class was reading a basic history book and began discussing Nebakanezer’s army going to Jerusalem and capturing and killing lots of Jews (something the teacher and classmates gladly approved of). Yet Mohammad saw things a bit differently: “I stood up and said to the class, see I told you, the Jews were there, it was a Jewish town. Why were the Jewish people there if they didn’t live there? They didn’t come from heaven.” The teacher really liked Mohammad’s feedback but replied, “Calm down Mohammad, sit down, we will talk about this later.” “And I was like, no, not later, now! Everyone should know this,

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

63

that this great Nebakanezer hero blah, blah, blah. Why would you say this great hero did this to the Jews? The same book said the Jews have no right in Palestine, that this is not their country, they just came and took over and have no roots there, they have nothing there and they just decided one day to come there.” Currently working on translating Iraqi schoolbooks before the war into English, the messages now seemed even more vicious than he realized at the time. “It is so diabolic, you know, planting this hate into those kids.” While Mohammad’s family was a little worried that his slipping mouth might one day land him in trouble, they were secretly proud to see that he was being raised to think for himself. He read everything available and from time to time spoke his mind when something went so blatantly against what he was taught back home. “It was really frustrating you know to spend all that time in class and you know this is all bullshit. What the hell! We knew this is not what we learned about our heritage from our parents, and we’d look at each other and say, what is going on, why do we do this, why don’t we have any other choice? Why do we sit down and listen to this?” One time in eleventh grade, the teacher spent most of the time in class reciting lines from a history book somewhat robotically. When finished, he just kept looking at the pages and scratching his head until he accidentally remarked out loud, “And by the way this is all bullshit.” Mohammed and his friends laughed all the way home, after school, and for years to come. In University, Mohammad’s mouth would continue where it left off in high school, restrained but aware, and at times pushing the envelope to the farthest extent possible. At the end of the second year, he went to the registrar to receive his grades only to be told by the man behind the desk (who was a quiet colleague from one of his classes) that they were the highest in the school. Ecstatic but wary, something had to be up as the man kept the transcripts from him while they made small talk. Finally, he told Mohammad with a big smile, “As a prize for being the top student, you get to spend the summer volunteering for the Jerusalem army” (a group created by Saddam that supposedly trained individuals to fight against Israel). Mohammad was furious, “This is my prize I yelled. Why the hell would I want to waste my summer doing that?”

64

Embracing the Occupiers

He stormed out of the office telling the man that he could stuff his grades. Coming to his senses minutes later he became terrified at the repercussions this might have. What if the man decided to tell the administration? The worst scenarios possible ran through his head as he walked through the campus. Luckily, the quiet man from class never said a word to anybody. Towards the end of university, the events of September 11th took place. A reporter from the BBC strolled through the university looking for an individual brave enough to be interviewed or better yet, say something controversial. Mohammad heard from his friends that this reporter was on campus and rushed to go find her. Upon meeting him she was impressed with his impeccable English and gave him the microphone to say whatever was on his mind. He grabbed it, put his face in the camera and yelled, “The people who did this to those buildings are horrible and disgusting people. They are not human beings. We are with all you New York.” He then confessed to his friends, “When I first saw those buildings come down, I thought someone is attacking the wonderland. These monuments collapsing, it was like the world was collapsing.” Several days later, administrators from the school and some members of the campus Baath party coalition confronted Mohammad. “They were like, you have got to be kidding me, what are you crazy?” And yet, still, nothing happened. NADIA Opinions vary, but surveying the past thirty years of disasterridden governments the general consensus for most Afghans holds the Taliban at the bottom, the Russian occupation in the middle, and Mujahedeen at the top. I have never heard an Afghan use the word “best” to describe the latter group, but their quest to drive the country into shambles during six years of rule became at least partially exonerated after vowing to stay and fight the Taliban from their northern bases; becoming a legitimate source of resistance and pride for most. Acknowledging any positive spillovers from the Russian occupation seems to be for most, definitely a topic of taboo. Childhood under the Russian occupation was a confusing time for Nadia. Relatives in the western parts of the country were

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

65

killed fighting with the resistance. Intellectuals the family knew were rounded up in droves and never heard from again. Rumors circulated that girls walking to school were snagged by Russian soldiers, raped, and sold into brothels. Most of these stories were secondhand information, but around sixth grade, understanding the occupation became more acute as for the first time Nadia’s most precious commodity became affected— grades in school. One afternoon returning to class quite elated about the A on the exam she was expecting to receive, her mood became grim—she had surprisingly failed. After inquiring, the teacher explained that grades were also about participation in “special clubs.” Students who did so, she was told, deserved the high grades they received. For Nadia and her friends in the same predicament, this episode would invoke a new type of after-school discussion—the reality of the Russian occupation. It was a time of fear and uncertainty but as a professional years later and fully cognizant that taboos need to be broken, the government that followed the Soviet withdraw definitely came in second for Nadia. They were not only responsible for destroying the entire county’s infrastructure, but would produce a change in Nadia’s life that the Russians never had—exile. At the time of the government transformation, Nadia’s oldest sister had recently become a doctor in Kabul’s largest hospital. In and out for different war injuries, one of the top Mujahedeen leaders in his fifties happened to notice her passing by. Captivated by her beauty and elegance but perhaps just a bit deficient in the romance department he decided then and there, this was his future wife. If she didn’t like it, too bad, she could always be kidnapped. That night, several of his cronies barged into Nadia’s house with the order. It was to be accepted within forty-eight hours, or else? Besides the obvious lifestyle dilemma that would inevitably come with an educated secular sister marrying a religious resistance fighter, what would be the fate of Nadia and her other sister? Would they be next in line? The family was in despair. Her oldest sister became instantaneously ill while the other females huddled together and sobbed. With a father in the grave and an oldest brother thousands of miles away, the second brother took control and decided they had no choice but to escape. Within twenty-four hours of the ultimatum, the family sold whatever belongings they could and fled to Pakistan at 3 a.m. the following night.

66

Embracing the Occupiers

The journey was treacherous and uncertain. Several relatives from the father’s side they had never met supposedly lived in Peshawar as refugees. They were cousins and uncles from the Lakhman province that Nadia had only known as symbols of her father’s past that he spent so many years trying to escape. As she contemplated the future, the Afghanistan from her childhood books and family stories began to pass before her eyes on the other side of the dirty bus windows: Livestock roamed the lush green and blue-mountain tops, which eventually turned to white ice. Farmers with facial features different than anyone she had ever seen in Kabul slowly and rhythmically plowed their fields as children in colorful garments gaped at kites flying through the air. For the first time in her life, she realized what a beautiful country Afghanistan truly was as she cried herself to sleep with the ominous thought that these visions might be her last. The border with Pakistan was what she was told to expect— chaos. Yet her most vivid memory to date was the presence of the Pakistani police who laughed and spat at the Afghans crossing the border as if they were animals let out from a zoo. “The communists are coming to take over our country,” they sang out loud as Nadia’s family crossed the border. It was there that the meaning of the term “refugee” surpassed any definition she would come to understand in her future education. The years in Pakistan went by as her family did all they could to make sure that Nadia gained the education they believed she rightfully deserved. She enrolled in a technology and English program run by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and eventually moved on to complete a degree in Economics from a small women’s university. Upon graduation, her English was superb and she was offered a job with the IRC and enrolled in a MBA program at Peshawar University in the evenings. Her work was in the Afghanistan section, which became the sole source of information she would come to know about a distant country that was slipping away into chaos across the border. Apart from the determined kidnapping of her older sister, the early 1990s showed Nadia the true side of the Mujahedeen that she believed people are not honest about today because they are only seen through the eyes of fighting the Taliban. “Nobody will tell you this,” she said. “Yes its true, we were under occupation by the Russians but at the same time if you look at the data, a lot of

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

67

good things were done to the country: roads and tunnels were built and education, especially for women, was extremely high. What the Mujahedin did was destroy all of the previous infrastructure practically overnight when they had the means at their hands to work for the people but they just fought for power. I mean when they came, Russia was gone, their mission was accomplished, so why did they begin killing each other for no reason when it was time to establish a unity government?” ALI During one of his frequent trips to Kurdistan, Ali discovered something called an HP 500 laser color jet printer. After doing some calculations, he realized that it would cost 4,000 dinars to print one color page in Baghdad that this new printer could do for only 300. Ali and a friend paid a man US$5,000 to smuggle it in a truck tire from Turkey and quickly became experts at printing. After the first month, they ended up making more money than expected. These were exciting times. Within a year, Ali expected to become rich enough to leave Iraq with Zena. But things shortly took a turn for the worst. One day a student came to print his art thesis and then returned a few days later asking strange questions like, “How can the colors be this sharp? Whom do you really work for?” The partner immediately phoned Ali and they decided to close the shop. Later that week, he was informed that the police raided the location. His partner disappeared and he hasn’t heard from his since. Realizing that he needed to flee Iraq immediately, he arranged a passport for Zena who left through Jordan. Ali’s younger brother lent him his passport which he changed using Photoshop. The plan would be to fly to Syria and arrange a ticket for Yemen where Zena was waiting. Walking past immigration at the Baghdad airport, an officer tapped Ali on the shoulder and said, “This passport is forged. There is no way this is you,” and proceeded to drag him into a small room where he waited in silence; quite sure that this was the end and hoping his brother obliviously waiting outside would not be harmed. For some reason, he was released after half an hour. Ali walked to the plane with joy only to be stopped by another policeman five minutes later who remarked, “We know it is forged, but I told my colleagues that you are a good boy. So you have

68

Embracing the Occupiers

to remember us.” Ali knew what he wanted and without hesitation reached into his pocket and handed over $10, which seemed an apt farewell payment to a country he was hopefully leaving forever. At the Damascus airport he was held up once again as the computer showed another person with a similar name. Sitting next to Ali in the waiting room was a Kuwaiti man and his Filipino maid who didn’t have a passport and didn’t understand why she would need one. “She is not really a human,” he explained to the guards. “She is more like my dog, see” and then started to make her do tricks so when he said “cry!” she cried, “laugh!” she laughed. “See, why would she need a passport?” he shrugged his shoulders and asked. Eventually he gave them $100 and they let them through. Watching this whole episode Ali felt like taking off his shoe and beating the man with it, but finally he too was released. At the hotel, he immediately hopped into bed and fell asleep listening to the sounds of the Damascus night—relieved to be out of Iraq and on his way to meet Zena. The next morning things didn’t go exactly as planned: The ticket counter was only accepting liras and not dollars. Walking back, the men he just exchanged with ran after him yelling, “You gave me fake dollars Iraqi son of a bitch.” Before he knew it, Ali was pushed over a wall and kicked repeatedly as they tore at his clothes and yelled, “He is an Iraqi he gave us fake dollars.” The crowds of people on the streets ignored his shouts for help until another young man ran over and joined in on the fun. As if this wasn’t enough, an old man walking by with a sack of eggs stopped and asked, “why are you beating this young man?’ “He is an Iraqi, he is a thief,” they all shouted back. The old man spit at Ali and kicked him with his slippers. Finally after a few minutes police arrived and threw Ali into the back of a car. When he tried to explain what happened they began hitting him with their stick while screaming about how it is illegal to exchange liras in the street and if he would give them all of his money they would let him go. When he refused, they brought him to a political prison outside of the city. The place was disgusting. There were 30 people in one room where the only water came from the broken toilet. Ali screamed over and over at the guards for the first few hours, “you have made a mistake, you have made a mistake, I am not supposed to be

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

69

here,” until an older man who was supposedly caught distributing anti-Baath posters said, “look son, we have been here for months and we shouted too in the beginning.” Realizing the absurdity of the situation, Ali plunked down and tried to sleep by curling up into a ball and draping his leather jacket around him to avoid the cold. When that didn’t work, he tried to count the dirty tiles on the wall until he eventually passed out. Several hours into the night, the same man who told Ali not to shout woke the prison up by screaming at the top of his lungs, “fuck Bashir al-Assad the dog and his father the pimp” over and over again in a song like fashion. Ali kind of chuckled to himself when he remembered that Syria too was a Baathist regime. When the guards arrived, he ran to the bars and screamed “why did you bring my daughter Muna here you sons of dogs?” The police forced him to confess earlier by raping his daughter Muna over and over again in front of him (a common practice under the Baath party). The guards dragged him out of the cell and beat him repeatedly with electric cables until he lost consciousness and was then stripped naked. Meanwhile, other guards randomly beat people in the cell until they eventually decided to wake the man up by pouring water over him. Until the morning hours, the only sounds heard were the smacking of cables against skin until the screams eventually died down. Ali and the others awoke to find the man now hanging naked from the ceiling by his armpits crying and screaming, “Long live Syria. Long live the Baath party” as the guards continued to whip him with cables. On the fourth day, Ali appeared in court where he was released after being berated by the judge for having the nerve to ask for his $5,000 they took. Back at the hotel room, the owner had thrown Ali’s belongings on the floor (even Zena’s wedding dress) and refused to return anything until the bill was paid for. Not having any idea where to go, Ali walked the streets—filthy and without a cent to his name but refusing to beg. Walking past a barbershop, he assumed for some odd reason that the old man inside would let him use his phone. Luckily he did. Ali called his brother who told him that while in prison, the police had raided the house in search of the printer that his brother cleverly hid in the backyard. The $1,500 came the next afternoon and Ali booked his trip to Yemen but that night slept in the park. The only funny part of the week in Damascus was back in the hotel. The owner, forgetting that just

70

Embracing the Occupiers

yesterday he left Ali out on the street to die now asked, “Leaving so soon? Why don’t you stay here, I have very nice room for you? Good price.” Ali wanted to spit in the man’s face but going back to jail was the last thing he needed. He simply laughed and walked out. Two days later, the reunion at the airport in Yemen with Zena was quite magical to say the least but the events of the past week would change him forever: “To this day I am terrified of the police. Even in Brooklyn where we live now, our upstairs neighbors are real assholes who stomp on the floor at night and tear the labels off of our mail. I don’t know if it’s because we are Arabs, but Zena always wants to call the police and I refuse. I’m just too afraid. More importantly, this experience is the reason I hate Arabs as I realize that they are such selfish close-minded idiots. Yes I know I’m being general but I love how nowadays the Arabs call the Iraqis traitors for letting the Americans into Iraq and overthrowing Saddam but the fact is all Arabs would work as interpreters with the occupiers if they could, despite their calls for suicide bombings against civilians. I really hate them for their double faces, but even worse, they are so weak it disgusts me.” IDREES Each phase of Idrees’s life began with a predicament that always seemed to conclude in some sort of spiritual and intellectual growth. The system was never that set in place and to work through it, one needed to constantly think on their feet. At the age of eighteen, boys were required to partake in military service before attending university. Although not of age at the end of high school, Idrees and several friends were on a notorious government list of students deemed “rebellious.” In the last months of school, recruiters were expected to pop in any moment and whisk away Idrees and company for military assignment. Instead of panicking, they devised a plan: From an early age, Idrees learned how to operate Russian tanks that a brother of a friend happened to have access to. They borrowed one, three Russian uniforms and drove to school and back everyday leaving the vehicle outside with the intention of having government recruiters believe there was already someone there on the job. Surprisingly it worked. Not only

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

71

were Idrees and his friends saved from military service but most of the senior class was as well. To be fully exempt required a university ID that schools didn’t often give out until after the first semester due to bureaucracy. As a result, Idrees and others didn’t leave the dormitory in fear that they would be discovered by the military. But once the Mujahedeen took over, life went back to normal until the unthinkable occurred—the new government fired his father. Idrees would now have to be the sole breadwinner for his family, including his sister in medical school. Dropping out for him and his sister was not an option he wanted to consider. Determined to stick it through till the end, he picked up several odd jobs around Mazar e Sharif that sufficed for the barest living expenses possible (for months they ate only bread and tea once a day). Walking down the street one day pondering how he would be able to survive like this for four years, he ran into an old friend that he used to play music with in school (and is now a famous singer). He had a band that played weddings and other events. Recalling that Idrees once played guitar he offered him an audition. Musicians and artists in Afghanistan at the time (and even today) were known to be the lowest class of society—a social stigma that people looked down upon and brought shame to the family. However, upon realizing that he could make ten times the amount of money he was currently earning, he accepted but refused to disclaim his new occupation to friends and colleagues, and hid in the back of the stage during concerts practically covering his face. While the money flowed in and life became more comfortable, he knew playing guitar could not be something long term. His father, who was still unemployed, spent his days growing fruit in the garden and becoming incrementally delirious—often preaching to Idrees and his sister that education was a waste and they would do best to buy a cow and sell dairy products. After a year of playing in the band, Idrees taught himself computers and English (both of which were very expensive to take as lessons). The teacher in a school nearby was impressed with the speed in which he learned (eventually knowing more than the teacher) and offered him a job that he would hold throughout the rest of University and two years after—making more than enough to support the entire family, including his sister who is now a doctor in Amsterdam.

72

Embracing the Occupiers

“Today when I look back and see how my family worked through these problems I actually even feel like I am very much gifted. I think that it was a very precious gift for me to have this troublesome life because I learned so much so many things. I otherwise would not be here today because that depression pushed me to play music, to learn English and computers, work for NGOs and all the way here to the Fulbright program. Otherwise I probably would have been a lonely person because my dad was always a big guy and everything was taking care of. I would not have been pushed to think a little bit critically at life so you never know sometimes bad things happen, but it’s actually good.” By the time Idrees was nearing the completion of University, Afghanistan was slowly moving into chaos without anyone really noticing. Living 15 miles from the city of Mazar was a daily adventure as buses were frequently pulled over and looted by police and Mujahedeen soldiers who would beat passengers until every possession (including at times clothes off their back) were coughed up. The Taliban’s arrival seemed almost ideal. Idrees started primary school when the Russian occupation first began, University when the Mujahedeen took over, and now he was graduating. While he didn’t really know much about the Taliban, there was at least some hope the daily looting and corruption would be partially ceased. HAIDER Apart from the new way of life, a larger culture shock in returning to Iraq came in the form of speech. Haider knew all along what was allowed to be discussed and that which was forbidden, but in the meantime, full obedience seemed impossible. At the first year of University, Saddam began to institute mandatory classes on Islam. With religion being controversial enough as it was, having the restriction of teaching under the regime became almost ludicrous. Haider decided to have some fun with the robotic cleric by responding to every statement with a question of his own: “How do you know what god wants? Do you talk to him?” It was perhaps his impeccable English and flamboyant personality that never seemed to land him in that much trouble but alternatively set him apart from his fellow classmates as one who

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

73

could represent a positive image of Iraq. Several years prior to the U.S. invasion, Saddam began a system of reforms (albeit incredibly limited). Under these reforms, the Internet was permitted (although most sites were banned) and the government ran a quasi public relations campaign attempting to show the “good side” of Iraq to the world. It seemed to be a last ditch effort of avoiding the inevitable, but for most, it was simply too little too late. The Ministry of Information would be put in charge and Haider was immediately hired as a “model Iraqi youth.” HBO was granted permission to run a televised discussion with six Iraqi students and their counterparts in New York City. Under the direction of Dr. Rihad Tashid (AKA Dr. Germ), Haider and the others spent weeks preparing by being instructed on what was appropriate to say in the broadcast—no Kurdistan, Iran, Kuwait, or WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) for example. They even met Saddam and his family for a quick briefing before show time. In the studio, numerous Baath officials in suits lined the sides of the room away from the eye of the cameras in order to make sure each student did as they were instructed. It was a chilling experience. The Americans wanted to discuss politics while the Iraqis preferred pop culture. When one of the students asked Haider a question such as “does Saddam Hussein really kill people who disagree with him?” he would casually try to pass the microphone onto another student. When it became obvious he was avoiding the question, he would respond, “So tell me, what do you all think of Brittney Spears?” And like this, several shows quickly went by. The Ministry was impressed and about a year later, Haider was hired as a public relations consultant. Besides the packed salary that would support his struggling family whose father’s retirement did not go according to plan, there was the spotlight and lots of attention. Haider spent his days speaking to the media; always carefully towing the party line but with his own charismatic flavor. He was able to work closely with everyone in the government and mingled at parties in Saddam’s palaces. Having this special position allowed him privileges that other Iraqis only dreamed of— namely travel. For work and numerous vacations, Haider visited the neighboring countries Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon— sometimes for weeks at a time.

74

Embracing the Occupiers

Yet having this freedom came with a price—100% perfection at all times. In an interview with ABC news of Australia, the reporter asked Haider what he thought of Saddam Hussein. His answers were always carefully worded but hardly ever embellished. He loathed those who seemed to make it a point of always superficially praising Saddam like a god when they had the opportunity (especially the ones who would chant ecstatically in demonstrations and then claim they were forced to do so years after he was removed). As a result, he answered as he did 100 times before, “Saddam is a very polite man.” But when pushed by the journalist to describe what kind of person he was, one word in his response came out differently, “I said Saddam is just an ordinary type of guy, he’s not a prophet or anything.” When I asked for an explanation, he said that it was true— from the times he met Saddam Hussein, he would always notice how polite he was. Haider first met him as a child when he came to one of the embassies his father worked in. Immediately upon entering the room, Saddam walked over to Haider and with a big smile shook his hand and spent time making small talk. “This was something no other Middle Eastern dictator or most rulers would ever do,” he explained. “This is by no means to suggest that I support him, but as a person he always seemed very nice and gentle. I never understood why people think this is so bad to say?” The day after the interview, intelligence services approached Haider and questioned his choice of words, “Saddam is not a prophet.” He didn’t understand why they were so upset and explained that Saddam was in fact not a prophet and if they listened to his speeches they see that he would never choose such a clunky word to describe himself. Perhaps more upset about his erudite response than the actual incident itself, Haider spent a night in jail to ponder his remarks. Apart from this incident, working for the Ministry of Information gave seventeen-year-old Haider quasi-celebrity status. Spending his days reporting to the media and attending parties at various palaces, the potential U.S. invasion didn’t seem to be anywhere in his periphery. “I had not given it any real thought before this. It was like you are in a busy play and then the curtain goes down. Then what? But I didn’t know what to do,” he reflected.

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

75

ZABI Travelling back and forth between the Balkh province and Kabul for school and work, Zabi’s main concerns at the age of 18 were girls, music, and completing his studies. Like most other Afghans, the Taliban were still a mystery—or perhaps a positive replacement to the corrupt government in power. It was September 27, 1996, when Zabi heard the news from a friend while walking through Kabul—the Taliban had taken over and President Najebullah and his brother were hung in the city square. While he was aware of the president’s vast corruption and inept leadership, what he was about to witness seemed unfathomable: Stripped naked and completely mangled with their genitals ripped out, the bodies dangled like rag dolls. Crowds gathered as women and even some men cried in horror. The new government was now in power. On his way back to Mazar, several foreign reporters hopped on the bus to ask if anyone had witnessed the events taking place in Kabul. Zabi seemed ideal with his conversational English and welldressed attire. He explained the hanging of the president in great detail and went on to express concern about what he knew of the Taliban’s policies—especially the effect on women. Little did he know, the interview became a classic—one of the first to be given at the time of the Taliban’s rise to power and played throughout news channels across the world. Back home, friends and relatives called the family to inform then that Zabi was all over the TV and radio. With word of the Taliban possibly invading Mazar in the near future (and numerous supporters currently in the city), his father urged Zabi to leave for Pakistan at once. He wasn’t alone. The Hazaras (Shiite and therefore infidels in the eyes of the Taliban), Uzbeks, and thousands of others fleeing persecution headed for the mountains where they would begin their escape on foot to Pakistan. The trip lasted two weeks but it seemed like years. Apart from the rugged terrain and lack of food, there was constant war all around. Widowed mothers lugged babies in their arms and whatever possessions they could carry— sometimes dropping the former after the inevitable realization that they had died pragmatically kicked in. Zabi had heard about how difficult life was for Afghans in Pakistan, but to what extent he would soon discover. “It’s funny;

76

Embracing the Occupiers

the word ‘Pak’ in Farsi means clean or pure, but Pakistan was the most disgusting place I have ever seen.” He settled in Karachi and after the first couple of weeks discovered a job working with carpets. When the three-month term was complete, his newly arrived brother found them both work as tailors that lasted for another couple of months. With no work on the horizon because it was now summer, Zabi and his brother moved to a small house with twenty other Afghan refugees. All in the same predicament and flat broke they scraped together whatever money they could find to buy some bread once a day. It was too hot to be outside and too dangerous to visit public places (Pakistani police often harassed and robbed Afghans or accused them of drug dealing after slipping hashish in their clothes and demanding a bribe). Zabi and others slept on the floor; their bodies stacked next to one other as they wished the hours away. They had a joke that “your ribs are cursing at you” as the only movement was switching from side to side without enough room to lie flat. When Zabi did manage to venture out, the world seemed only cruel and ugly. One day walking by the beach (despite the threat of police) Zabi stopped to watch Pakistan’s elite—men driving fancy cars, families enjoying dinner, and couples strolling by the water. He thought about his family back home. The only news he knew was that his father was unemployed and most of the neighborhood had dispersed. Whatever extra money he and his brother did earn was sent to them through smugglers—completely unaware if it even reached them. Could life become anymore miserable? He went home and told his brother that Afghans must be “the cursed people of God.” Were they destined to fight forever? After some time, he managed to find work in a Chinese restaurant where he lived and slept on the kitchen floor at night. One day, he met several members of the Tajikistan consulate who were impressed with his fluency in Urdu. They hired him as a translator and after a year life became somewhat better. He had a room at the consulate and access to their car. The pay was good but he still had no way of knowing if it was reaching his family or what their situation was like. Like other refugees, his final goal was relocation to the West. “Pakistan is always referred to as ‘a diving board’ in a swimming pool because everyone wants to jump and be somewhere else,” he explained.

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

77

Zabi’s swimming pool was London. He heard about an agency that helped smuggle people to Europe but it was expensive and dangerous. Instead, they convinced him to work for them due to his language ability and experience in the consulate. After a year, Zabi and a friend opened a video shop and discovered that the best profits came not from rentals, but making mix tapes. Pakistani teenagers in the midst of their first romance paid almost 100 rupees (roughly two U.S. dollars—a substantial amount for cassettes in Pakistan) for the most up to date assembly of Bollywood and cheesy Western love songs. The voyage to London never seemed to quite work out. After a while, Zabi realized that unless some drastic change happened back in Afghanistan, he would probably be stuck here for a while and for now, should make the best of it. TAIFA Taifa strolled through the first couple of years at Baghdad University still immersed in her fantasy world: poetry, Western literature, and spending time with the few friends she had—ones that truly understood and shared her beliefs which above all else incorporated the day dream that the present life in Iraq was only transitory. The future was outside where the world seemed open. For the latter, the number would only be two and towards the third year both friends began to change. One would marry a Baath party official and slowly become withdrawn into the everyday minutia of married life. The occasional visit to the house seemed to only be a lesson in sadness as her friend would disingenuously try to show Taifa that she was happy when she clearly knew otherwise. The other friend, who was a year older and one of the top students in her grade, slowly began to lose interest in her education and career goals while simultaneously tried to convince Taifa that she was too ambitious in life and would need to change. After graduation, the friend spent four years at home doing nothing until a suitable marriage partner became available. Taifa has not heard from either friend since. Any hope that Taifa ever had of leaving Iraq was now slowly slipping away. “I was shocked with the reality that this is not possible and I hated everything in life. Nothing could make me

78

Embracing the Occupiers

happy. I thought that if I am not leaving Iraq, then why am I alive? I don’t find any point to life except to follow accepted rules by a dictatorship government.” Classes were easy as Taifa’s English far surpassed all of the professors. Whereas some may turn to literature that gives hope in times of solace, Taifa enjoyed the texts that made her depression come alive—someone else thousands of miles away felt the same way at some point in time. One of Taifa’s favorites was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. “It is about people who have no hope and their life is just pointless. Everyday there is a boy that says Godot is coming tomorrow. He goes out everyday and the same thing happens—Godot will come tomorrow. He has this hope, but you know it is false. He wanted to commit suicide but couldn’t. So there is no solution for your problems and the worst thing is that no one else understands. It was basically like dead people living.” After graduation in 1999, Taifa spent the next two years living at home. Any prospect of a semi-desirous job was out of the question. Time went by in a daze. Having already read almost all of the English books available numerous times there was nothing much to do but stay home and sleep or watch the occasional movie. Her relatives and friends occasionally lectured to her that it would be best to start thinking about marriage. Regardless of her bleak future in the distance, anything less than the perfect man who “feels that I am part of his life and not only takes care of his own enjoyment but truly understands who I am” was completely out of the question. As I would learn later, her chances of finding one from the Middle East with about 10% of these characteristics was completely hopeless. One day in the early winter of 2001, Taifa’s brother had heard about a new toy in town called the Internet and its home, the cafe. Although expensive to use, they went to check it out. Although not completely captivated like most others, she found it a good way to pass the time and at least be out of the house for a few hours of the day. The manager soon discovered her knack for English and asked if she would work for him part time. She gladly accepted. Most web sites were banned, but Taifa discovered a way to access some English pages that she would quickly change to pictures of puppies and kittens when someone strolled by.

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

79

The attacks of September 11 had taken place just a few months before. While the information on these events was incredibly limited, she tried her best to assess if the United States held Saddam at all culpable and even greater, if they would be shortly arriving to Iraq. Nothing she read was able to convince her one way or the other. But somehow she had a feeling—that even with Taifa’s stellar lexicon and articulate flow of words seemed impossible to describe in the present—it just had to happen. Issues like genocide and oppression came second in her list of grievances against Saddam. He did not allow women to leave Iraq. With him gone, this would now be possible. It was that simple! SALIMI Out of the hundred or so students in the Fine Arts department at Kabul University, Salimi and six others seemed to be the most passionate. They were quickly drawn to each other and emerged into a gang bent on creation as they put on plays and slapstick comedy shows that poked fun at Afghanistan’s taboo topics—sex, religion, and tribalism—while constructing new methods of using the arts to draw attention to the reality of the country’s almost hereditary problems—war, poverty, and politics. They were an eccentric bunch—the rif raf of the nation, Afghanistan’s hippies who seemed to all have a story about their quest to grow up in a society that spit them out. The rise of the Taliban would be the next important chapter. Their push to conquer Kabul in September 2006 had been a hot topic of conversation for weeks but Salimi and his gang chose creation over trepidation. Relaxing in the school’s theater space with a couple of bongos, guitars, and harmonicas completely oblivious to the world around them, the head professor barged in and yelled, “The Taliban have taken over Kabul, you must all go home.” The streets were practically empty except for the passing of Mujahedeen soldiers and tanks on their way out of the city. Salimi and his friends shot them the finger; eliciting death threats with a shaky gun pointed in their direction. “Why don’t you go use that gun on the Taliban?” they shouted back, no longer afraid of the repercussions. They were happy to see the corrupt government

80

Embracing the Occupiers

leaving although the university would be closed for six months. Salimi then returned and received his diploma. Apart from the barrage of new restrictions that immediately went into place with the Taliban’s takeover, there were those who wanted to settle scores. If a person wasn’t dressed appropriately or known to have a history of actions that deemed them a threat, they were at times ratted out by people who didn’t like them or wanted to get on the Taliban’s good side. One common practice was to tell the Taliban that an individual possessed a gun. Never knowing whom it was exactly that lied to them (although he has some suspicions); Salimi was dragged into the police station as he swore over and over that he never owned a gun in his life. They laid him on a table and beat his feet and legs with sticks for about an hour. When threatened with electric cables, he decided to confess but explained that the gun was with someone else and he would have to retrieve it. They ordered him to give a name of someone who could vouch for him in case he didn’t return while taking his fingerprints and ID card. He made one up of a shopkeeper that didn’t exist and they let him go with the expectation he would return in twenty-four hours. He went to Pakistan instead. Two days later, the Taliban swarmed the Fine Arts department for his arrest. Salimi spent the next seven years in Peshawar’s Afghan refugee camp, occasionally traveling back to Kabul. He arrived at night with 50 Pakistani rupees, a list of phone numbers, and a short introduction to the Afghan refugee’s greatest threat—the Pakistani police, who immediately robbed and beat him for sleeping on the street. Like others, they would become his biggest source of fear. “It was always lunchtime for them and Afghans were a delicious fish,” he said laughing. They were constantly harassed for whatever money they had and teased: “stupid Afghan . . . dirty communist . . . atheist . . . infidel.” At times when the government was upset about something taking place in Afghanistan, they took it out on the refugees making leaving the camp incredibly dangerous. At one point in 1998, the Northern Alliance captured over a dozen Pakistani soldiers. In retaliation, the police kidnapped several thousand Afghans off the streets of Peshawar and threw them in jail. Most rotted away. Apart from the police, the first two to three of Salimi’s years in Pakistan were engulfed with unemployment, starvation, boredom,

Tales of Exile, Struggle, and Redemption

81

loneliness, and days of endemic depression. When I visited Salimi in 2007, he weighed about 130 lbs at 5 ft 6 and I quivered to think what he looked like back then. A few months after his arrival, he had contacted friends and professors back home who told him that a job teaching in the Fine Arts department might be possible. Despite the threat of arrest, he ventured back several times for interviews only to find in the end his records were lost and the job would not be available. Back in Pakistan, misery and hopelessness became pervasive thoughts. Perhaps the regime in Afghanistan would change. But when exactly would that be? Ten years? Fifteen? And what then? Would he still have the creative energy after all this time or need to start from square one? He put these sentiments into one of his plays written at the time, surprisingly referred to as a comedy. “The character has no past. When he looks back everything is dark and when he looks ahead everything is vague and blurry so nothing is visible. So he feels suspended in the present and nothing is around him. What will be next in the future? Nothing.” Gazing in the pristine Savannah morning with blue birds chirping in the trees above and families quietly riding bikes in the park, I couldn’t help but ask Salimi if he reflects back on those years now. “I think about them all the time. There is no day of my life that I don’t go back to my past. Everything I do somehow reminds me of the past, something comes right to my mind. When I read, when I watch a movie, when I lay in bed, when I eat, when I see the trees, when I feel the warmth of the weather. Everything reminds me of the past and at times I feel much better but other times I miss it.”

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 4

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation ABDU I interviewed Abdu in January 2007. The war in Iraq was at its bloodiest and at a possible turning point as the U.S. government had been contemplating whether to send in another 100,000 troops or call it quits. From the beginning, the Kurds were known to support the U.S. invasion even though many a mind has been swayed in these tumultuous years since. I decided to get Abdu’s take on it, which I knew would be anything but conventional. “What were your thoughts prior to the U.S. invasion?” I asked. “At that time I was against the war. Everyone disagreed. I told them yes, Saddam Hussein is bad and this and that but who put Saddam Hussein in power? They [the U.S. government] are not going to remove him and put someone good in power. I mean why did they help put him there in the first place? And I believe that American foreign policy never changes, it is the same thing. There is this face, this mask that is always put on. So that is why I said, who gave Saddam Hussein power? The same people who now want to remove him. Who gave chemical weapons to Saddam— Germany, France, Italy, the West. No one is saying anything about that. See now, this is why I was against it. See, the war is not good. See, they are following the old policy.” “So do you think Americans are constantly looking for a war?”

84

Embracing the Occupiers

“Of course. Every market needs a buyer,” he explained. “The American people cannot stay without fear. They can’t function. Without comparison, that is how the world works.” “But did you ever say to yourself, at least we will be rid of Saddam Hussein?” I responded, just to play the devil’s advocate. “Saddam Hussein was already gone, he was just a shell. Saddam was not in power; it was not the person, it was just the ideology. My dad said one time in an interview, ‘Yes, before we only had one Saddam Hussein, but now we have many.’ So Saddam Hussein is just an ideology, not a person.” “But how did you feel afterwards?” I asked further. “That was my opinion before the war. Once it started and I saw that Saddam was going to lose power, I was happy. I didn’t want to see what was going on Al-Jazeera, for example. I knew it was true—the civilians, the casualties—but at the same time I said: hey, it has started; there is no way to stop it now, so let’s just remove him. Who knows, maybe it will be better? I can’t be against it once it has started. I hoped that I was wrong.” I questioned Abdu on the litany of reasons for why we invaded Iraq in the first place. Currently, the issue of Israel and its place in the war is being fiercely debated in the United States, and I was curious of Abdu’s take on it. “Well, Israel is always part of the thing that is just it. Israel is a stab in the heart of the Muslims (pointing to Israel on the map hanging on his wall to show where it lies in comparison to the rest of the Muslim world).” “Does Israel’s success as a western style democracy feed this pain that you perceive?” I asked. “Yes, yes, that is the thing. Israel is a good thing for the Arab system. Let’s look at the matter objectively for a minute. The Arabs who live in Israel are living a lot better than the Arabs living in Palestine. Israel is a good example of democracy. They [Arabs and Muslims] don’t want to use it as an example, because it is already the antagonist.” The Kurds of Iraq have a popular folktale called “Hayas and the Goat,” which Abdu and his siblings have heard repeatedly as a child. Hayas was known to be the favorite of all the Sultan’s advisors due to his great intellect and uncanny ability to solve problems. One day, Hayas fled the palace to hide in the nearby villages after having a disagreement with the Sultan who immediately

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

85

called his other advisors and concocted a plan to find him. They would ask the people of the Kingdom an impossible task, and the household who solved it must have been living with Hayas for only he could possess the cleverness to solve the riddle. Each family received a baby goat and was asked to keep it for one year with the following instructions: It could not gain or lose weight—not even one pound. Hayas heard of this task from his family and concocted a plan. They would feed the goat good, rich food and afterwards tie a wolf somewhere close by. In Hayas’s plan, the goat would gain weight from the food, but lose it from fear of constantly seeing the wolf. After a year passed by, the Sultan’s advisors searched the houses in the kingdom and found Hayas in the one where the baby goat has not gained or lost a pound. The Sultan and Hayas made amends and he returned to the kingdom. For Abdu it was a perfect anecdote for assessing the problems in Iraq and the world. “Governments always keep a wolf so even if the people get good food they will not benefit from it as long as the wolf is there. The U.S. government used the Soviet Union, Vietnam and now uses the notion of terrorism. Saddam’s government and the other Arab regimes use Israel and the West. Israel used Yasser Arafat and now extremism and Iran. The Kurdish government used Saddam Hussein and now the neighboring countries and instability in the Iraqi government. So when the Kurdish people asked, ‘why is there no life?’ the answer was always ‘Saddam Hussein.’ ‘Why don’t we have food?’ Saddam Hussein. ‘Why are we dying?’ Saddam Hussein. So the wolf is basically a source of threat that keeps people as slaves to the status quo.” OMAR Like others at the time, the Taliban’s rise to power was in Omar’s eyes perhaps a sign of progress, replacing the despotic Mujahedeen that had ripped the country apart through years of civil war. Staring at the corpse of ousted president Najebullah and his brother hanging in the city square with their genitals ripped out, came in second for shock value after his Pashton friend remarked, “This country is now being taken away from these bastard mujahedeen,” and went on to discuss the greatness of the Pashton people.

86

Embracing the Occupiers

Islamization was a new concept for Omar, but ethnic tension he understood and feared. Walking through Kabul with the same friend later in the day, they encountered a scene previously unheard of in Afghanistan: Several Taliban members beating a bloodied up, crying woman for showing her ankles while shopkeepers with broomsticks tried to fend them off. After a few minutes, truckloads of others came and began shooting their AK 47s in the air screaming, “Kaffirs (infidels), we will shoot you all.” After Omar and his friend fled the scene, he asked if what they just saw represented the “glory of the Pashton people.” Still trembling from the shock, “no man, this is bullshit,” seemed to be his friend’s only response. It took Omar about 48 hours to realize that the new rulers in town were hardly the liberating force that others made them out to be. But the depths of their cruelty that would follow were still at this point truly hard to fathom. Listening to the news over the years, Omar had the suspicion that the Taliban’s power was waning and the events of September 11 would somehow be a turning point. However he still had his doubts. The only thing he really knew about America was their culpability in the Taliban’s rise to conquest. People in the streets praised the attacks as a sign from god for their support over the years. While not sharing these sentiments, he thought that the United States would probably continue in its previous footsteps and abide by the wishes of their client states Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (two of the Taliban’s biggest supporters). Perhaps a deal would be made for Osama but regime change seemed out of the question. I asked Omar what I thought was a harmless question, “tell me something about the Taliban that Americans don’t know?” Up until this point, I had never seen him even raise an eyebrow, but my question triggered something deep inside. I was now America and he was going to let me have it (British accent highly accentuated). Although at the end he would apologize for raising his voice but it seemed after living in the United States for one year he was tired of the ignorance and needed to set the record straight. “Oh my god where to begin: Americans don’t know anything about Afghanistan or the Taliban. So picture a generation, a lost generation. Growing up in dirty camps without fathers, without food, without petrol and then entering the only available source

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

87

of life they know—resistance—funded by American and Saudi money. Growing up with nothing but religious hatred, surrounded by no one but enemies, completely cut off from their country of origin. I remember this oil company UNICORE opened an office in Kabul and this man gave an interview, and said ‘why do you tell these people not to treat their women badly.’ Then later on, this son of a bitch, the Undersecretary of State, called the Taliban, “the only solution for Afghanistan.” People like this and lots of other sympathizers who opened websites for the Taliban and made propaganda films for their policies are still in America and no one knows about it. Do you now Laily Holmes? She is an Afghan from the Mohammad Sayyed tribe, who married a nephew of Richard Holmes, the former CIA director. She organized a meeting with American and Taliban officials about oil and spent her days propagandizing their polices. People should know what was happening. It was not the Afghans supporting the Taliban. For each American who died in 9/11, at least a thousand died fighting the Taliban, including two of my relatives, but they killed fifteen Taliban before their death.” When the U.S.-led forces arrived late in September, Omar and his friends climbed their rooftops to once again watch their city succumb to violence, but this time it would be ephemeral and exciting. Regardless of what the American intentions were he knew that the Taliban would be weakened and with nothing much else good going on there was at least something to be hopeful for. “Lets say you have two problems: one deals only with you and it might kill you. But the other problem might kill you, your family, your garden your cattle, burn your culture and destroy everything you have. Which problem do you prefer?” After several days when the violence began to cease and the Taliban slowly made their way out of the major cities, Omar’s family reunited in Pakistan. Returning home after several weeks, the first thing he noticed were the national flags waiving from shops on the road. It was a good sign of things to come back in Kabul and his memory was still fresh with the description. “It was a time of hope, enjoyment and pleasure. When I came to the city every shop had a national flag and everything seemed new because you could walk and laugh. Everywhere was noisy because people turned the volume on their electronics to the highest possible point to express their frustration at years of silence. I saw women tearing

88

Embracing the Occupiers

off their burkas and trying to kill anyone who looked like a mullah. Boys started wearing pants and the market for barbers was the highest it had ever been. Everywhere it seemed people wanted to come together. Musicians returned to give concerts and houses were always open for people to come in once again. It was perfect and then winter came and it suddenly started to snow one day which it hasn’t done in a while.” MOHAMMAD “People in America really know nothing of what it was like to live under Saddam Hussein’s regime, nothing at all and it is just so hard for them to picture it. If they can grasp just 50% of these feelings, it would be another story, just completely another story. I don’t think you can put those feelings into words. You literally feel that you are not a perfect human being, that something is wrong with you, which has nothing to do with your character or your education. It has to do with your faith and reason. No matter what you do, this mistake will be inside you all the time. And obviously Americans don’t know this feeling, that you are condemned. You wake up and hear that your father just vanished or your mother didn’t come back and nobody knows anything about that, nothing at all. I understand that many people in the U.S. and in the world have different point of views about the war in Iraq. I respect those views, I always do, and at the same time I am asking for people to respect mine. For those who call for tolerance, show some tolerance. For me, the Americans coming to Iraq was an opportunity for a better future. It was that time when somebody was coming to you, a time to start all over, to do something about the miserable life that you were forced to live in.” On the brink of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, Babylon was on edge. Saddam went on TV to boast about the “final battle.” Rumors flew: would he really gas the Shiites and Kurds with the WMDs the world believed him to have? In interviews on TV, Saddam read poems which people scanned for codes: “Is he going to gas us? When? Where?” his community members questioned out loud. Yet for Mohammad, these issues were irrelevant. “I swear, I said to my brother, ‘do you consider this a life?’ Let’s look

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

89

at it from this scope, either let’s a get a life or just die. I wasn’t afraid of war. I really reached the point where I was not afraid for myself. The whole gas thing, to watch your family dying, I really wasn’t that afraid. I was convinced that whatever happened, life is just so horrible you know what I mean? To continue living in this place can’t work, so let’s see what will happen.” Yet even with this perpetual fear, there was an excitement in the air, a great one. People wanted something, anything to occur. “We were waiting for this to happen, God knows. I remember I was at the barbershop a few days before the Americans came, and I was talking to the barber. I told him that I had heard on the BBC last night that there might be a way that the Americans may not come, and I swear to God, he looked at me and just went crazy, ‘How dare you say this, you should be praying!’ and I was like, ‘Wow, sorry dude.’” Several days later, the people in Babylon knew the war had begun and the town fell silent. Families huddled inside their homes or on top of their roofs waiting for a sign, a spark, something, anything, to happen. Mohammad’s family preferred the roof, where they camped out for several days. His mother, with the visions of the last Gulf War fresh in her mind, was a pessimist and cringed at the slightest noise. However, Mohammad for some reason had a good feeling about this one. Then came the sound of helicopters in the distance. At first it was soft and unknown but as they drew near the American flags hanging from the sides flowed in the wind, followed by the brandishing hands of American soldiers. Mohammad’s family waived back with jubilation and screamed at the top of their lungs; dancing up and down on the roof with the rest of the neighbors. I asked him to put these initial feelings into words and in the spirit of Hollywood he recapped, “Everything was moving from black and white to a colorful time. The Americans are coming from their fairytale land with their fairytale stick and will do everything to make us into a democracy. It is hard to believe this period of my life is over. The way Saddam was treated like a God, considered like a God by so many. Even I thought he was God or something. Oh, I don’t know. When you listen to these songs on TV, national songs, praising him, the knight with his sword and his big white horse coming to liberate the world, liberate Jerusalem blah, blah,

90

Embracing the Occupiers

blah. It is just so. . . . oh my God, I cannot believe it is over. It is over. I just cannot believe it. I am sorry, this sounds so stupid. But I will tell you, that is what I thought and maybe many other people also did.” A few days later, Mohammad became a translator for the U.S. Army, the first one in Babylon. He immediately made friends with some of the soldiers and interrogated them about their favorite movies and the latest Hollywood releases. More importantly, he wanted to know about schools in America: Were they were similar to what he read about all these years, the openness, the fact that you can speak up in class without fear? The soldiers loved how Mohammad was so knowledgeable about American life, but not just the popular Hollywood stuff; they were amazed that he knew Bob Dylan, old Julia Roberts movies, American history, and cartoons. They would talk into the night about life in Iraq— Mohammad trying to explain to them the needs and fears of the Iraqi people and the soldiers expressing reservations about what they could and could not accomplish. They trusted Mohammad and let him take on his own tasks at will. At the hospitals and other areas they traveled to, Mohammad spoke out loudly to the people they attempted to help. The army called him “the preacher” and he loved the thought—running from person to person no matter what their age and screaming about democracy and responsibility. He wanted people to understand that Saddam might be gone but we have a lot of work to do— namely making sure that he never comes back. “It was one of those times when you feel you are perfect because you are doing something, something completely different, something special,” he explained. “I was valuable. I would wake every morning very early to go to work, only sleeping a couple of hours per night. I didn’t want to waste a minute. I thought I was writing history and I was and you see the results of your work, you see the community getting benefits. We finished rebuilding this school, or we would bring medicine to this hospital or see this sick person. To see that look on peoples’ faces, I think it is the most beautiful thing you can ever do and I was part of it. I did not buy the medicine but I was there, I was doing something. It was very little, but it was better than nothing. Then you go home and you look at yourself and you tell those stories to your family. I really think that 2003 was the best year of my life.”

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

91

NADIA Although many Afghans Nadia knew looked favorably on the Taliban’s arrival in the beginning, for her it was just another misled government—one that would wreak havoc on the country the first chance they got in their quest for power. Fully cognizant of Afghanistan’s Islamization period that began to take place with the Mujahedeen, cases of oppression towards the female gender were hardly surprising anymore. However the reports from her family back in Afghanistan of what would come next seemed truly unbelievable. The litany of new religious laws imposed on women by the Taliban, became a hot topic of conversation. Even though it was just across the border, it somehow didn’t seem real. A report from one of Nadia’s uncles on a visit to Pakistan would quickly clear that up. In the Shimali region of the North (where the people are mostly Tajiks), the Taliban had been tipped off about a farm that grew grapes. Whether or not they were producing wine was irrelevant— grapes were illegal, as it could always be a future enterprise for this shameful practice. The Taliban burned down the entire village and slaughtered all of the men. The women were eventually sold to brothels in Pakistan but before doing so, were held captive for several months. In the time that passed a pregnant woman began to go into labor. Curious as to how the process worked, the Taliban officials decided to view the delivery themselves. They tied her up in a tree roughly twenty feet above the ground so that her arms and legs were spread wide. The men gathered underneath to watch the birth as the woman screamed in pain. The dead baby fell to the ground as the officials stood over it. The woman died minutes later and her corpse stayed in the tree for several weeks. It would be a vital lesson to the community. Stories like this made Nadia sick. How did the situation become so awful? Would this type of society eventually trickle over to Pakistan? While her life as a woman was hardly perfect, it could have been a lot worse. Her job assisting in the humanitarian efforts periodically helped relieve these sentiments and she eventually moved on to work for the Afghanistan section of the UN in Islamabad. She stayed involved in the struggle but could only do so much. “Honestly we had no hope for Afghanistan. We felt that we do not have a

92

Embracing the Occupiers

country anymore, it will just be erased from the map and become Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.” The attacks on September 11 were quite a shock. Many were shocked by the sheer magnitude that the destruction caused, but for Nadia that would come in second. Even though she was fully aware that these networks were being harbored in Afghanistan, it bewildered her to think that they had this much influence and that her country, instead of collapsing, had now become synonymous with only one word—terrorism. What would happen next was anyone’s guess. “Honestly, I knew these terrorist activities are going on in Afghanistan but I didn’t know that something big like this would happen. I never thought about it and when I heard the bad news, I was expecting kind of a global war against Afghanistan but fortunately it happened in another form. They really wanted to attack terrorism whether it was in Afghanistan or somewhere else.” Her Pakistani colleagues at the UN saw things differently and discussion at times became intense. They would argue that the United States was invading Afghanistan just like the Soviet Union years before and once again, the Afghan people were being used. How could she be happy when her country was now under occupation, they would ask? “I didn’t see it that way,” she explained. “I felt that the decision came from the international community and Afghans are now under global international law. I mean some of it is true. I’m not a na¨ıve person. I know the U.S. has other interests in the region but we don’t have enough capacity financial or technical. Afghanistan is completely destroyed, so we have to rely on somebody. I eventually stopped paying attention to them.” In January 2002 the UN opened its office in Kabul and Kofi Annan begged the staff of Islamabad to begin sending some Afghans. It seemed fitting. March 12 was International Women’s Day as Nadia and the UN caravan entered over the mountains and into the city. Women were still wearing burkas but with Nadia’s short hair and clothes, she easily passed for a foreigner. The rest of her family didn’t return until 2004. For the time being, she would be alone with the rest of the UN staff, spending most of her time indoors when not traveling around the country with her team. However the work was fascinating. Her position changed from administration to program implementation. In coordination with

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

93

all other UN agencies, she set out to monitor women’s development and rural education. ALI The date of September 11 would stand out for different reasons: Ali and Zena became officially married and spent the next two years in Yemen where they both worked as doctors and eventually conceived their first child named Sarah. Back home, the stories being told from friends and family were not good ones. The embargo was starving the Iraqi people and Ali hated America for it, but even more, he loathed the UN. Of course he also hated Saddam Hussein. “He was a tyrant, an idiot, the devil and all of the other names people call him but at the same time the Iraqi people thought this was common knowledge to the world and especially the American people. To hate Saddam is one thing but to starve and destroy people’s lives—24 million at a time, just made us mad. It never made sense to me why America would do this to the Iraqi people.” When Ali is asked to explain Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and subsequent tyranny he always tries to make people understand that he is a result of the failures of Iraq, “The failures of our fathers and our grandfathers,” he explained. “Although my father tried, many didn’t and agreed to go along with what was chosen for us while they stayed drunk at home. We love our tyrants. Believe me, if one comes to power tomorrow, we would praise him and clap like idiots in the street. My family included. I think in one-way or another we deserve what we got. Saddam is the people’s product and in the end we are the only ones to blame, not the Americans and not the Israelis. Saddam Hussein was a not a Jew he was an Iraqi. He was dead to me on April 9, 2003 when the statue was toppled. When they found him in Tikrit, buried in that hole several months later he lived again. And when he was executed more than three years after, he was resurrected, in a way that not only destroyed our lives but is now also controlling our lives.” It was obvious in the first months after September 11 that America would eventually go to war with Iraq. “They destroyed us for 13 years with their embargo and now they would just finish us off for good,” he explained almost laughing. Ali was against a U.S. invasion from the beginning. Even though very young, he vividly remembered what happened in 1991, when

94

Embracing the Occupiers

the American government told the Shiites to rise up against Saddam and were massacred as a result. There was no possible way he could contemplate America succeeding in this mission because the Iraqis would eventually see them as occupiers. “This is just part of our history,” he explained. “We are always against the occupier no matter what. Secretly, I hoped that America might assassinate Saddam or inspire a coup, but not an invasion. This did not seem like a good idea.” The first day Ali really began to feel pessimistic was when Saddam’s statue was torn down. It was a hard thing to really explain but there was just a bad feeling in his stomach that horrible things were going to happen. “To me, tearing down the statue meant that America would now be controlling everything. And what Americans never understood is that even though Saddam is an idiot and a ruthless dictator, at the end of the day he is still our president, Iraq is still our country and I was proud. I was not proud of Iraq, but when the war happened it came down to choice. You should think of it as a football game: You have a team and you have to support it even though your team is so bad even, terrible—sort of like how most Americans felt on 9/11 with Bush. Well, for me Saddam was the captain of my terrible team and seeing the American flag on his head, made me think, hmm, Americans in the middle of Baghdad? I don’t like this but I didn’t really know why, and I began to question my beliefs and everything was now conflicting. I didn’t like America and the situation, all the bombings and killings of civilians. So when the statue came down on the last day of the war, I guess I really had this feeling of disgust. I was like come on guys, this is my country, this is my president, and you are now toppling down my president with your flag. Now many people thought I was crazy. They knew Saddam made me live in misery. But still, there is just this feeling that this is your country and looking back on these events, I realize they were just a show that the U.S. administration used to broadcast to the Arabs and the people of the Middle East. It was their way of saying, ‘fuck you, we can do what we want and there’s nothing you can do about it.’” Yet day in and day out his thoughts fluctuated: Maybe the Americans could do some good after all? So when the new government began calling upon doctors in exile to return to Iraq, Zena and Ali heeded the order. They flew into Jordan, crossed the border

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

95

and witnessed their first glimpse of the new Iraq—an American soldier yelling at the cars in broken Arabic “yallah, yallah” (let’s go, let’s go). He was tall and blonde with blue eyes that for Ali was like something he once saw on TV. Everyone was driving slowly, staring and waving. In Ali’s mind he wasn’t sure what to make of him: Was he good or bad? On the way to Baghdad they stopped for gas where the owner told them that American soldiers had taken two looters, laid their bodies in the middle of the street and crushed them with their tanks. “So now the Americans are our new police,” he said to himself, and became sickened with the thought. He later told the people in the car that he felt like going back to the border and running over the American soldier. After a few weeks, Ali began working for the Ministry of Health in the HIV and Hepatitis section that under Saddam was too dangerous to have open since he used to kill or imprison people with these diseases. After being there for a little while, he began to notice a few things he didn’t like, which for him exposed cracks in the new system. Many of the old doctors were kicked out because they had signed up as Baathists under Saddam. Some deserved it, but others only used the identity as a way to get things done under the embargo. Such was Dr. Tehrani al Fath, the founder of the Iraqi Institute of Heart Surgery. He was known to be a great man who worked extremely hard and was loved by everyone. His institute was very well run and he used his Baath party connections to obtain excellent facilities and cheap medicine for the people— sometimes even for free. When the Dawa party took over, he was immediately fired and a doctor from exile, Abdel Mousali, took over and ran the place into the ground. For Ali, he might have been Iraqi by name, but he clearly knew nothing about Iraq, most importantly the new mentality created 13 years after the embargo. Ali sat back and kept his mouth shut, feeling completely helpless and sorry that he ever returned in the first place. He eventually quit the institute and began working as a translator for several well-known journalists. The color printer was never forgotten: On his first day home, he immediately dug it up in the backyard. It was soaked, and he let it dry for a couple of days. At the market later that day, he found out that a more advanced printer in Baghdad was now selling for a tenth of the price. All Ali could do was laugh. This was the new Iraq after all.

96

Embracing the Occupiers

IDREES Idrees barely escaped the brutal fighting that encapsulated the city of Mazar e Sharif when the Taliban arrived in 1998. As the violence escalated, he hopped on his bike and pedaled away quickly, swerving around piles of dead bodies and gazing at the bloodspattered walls along the way. Arriving at the house, he immediately noticed his shirt punctured with what seemed like a thousand bullet holes and was convinced that he was hit somewhere which the adrenaline overtook. They all just missed and he kept the t-shirt as a souvenir. It was a memento—symbolic perhaps for his life over the next three years. Idrees loved math and surviving under the Taliban was his latest equation. It was a time of precariousness and challenges, but above all a journey laced with experiences that brought him one step closer to understanding how the world really operated. At the time of his wedding in May 1998, the restrictions placed on gatherings by the Taliban were still unclear and potentially dangerous. The large colorful festival with music and dancing that the family had hoped for would not be possible and was instead confided to a small party in his house. Idrees joked with his motherin-law that God had wanted the Taliban to come so he wouldn’t need to dish out the large sum of money expected by the groom (at the time an average of $10,000 and today around $50,000). Idrees and his wife eventually bought a house and had three children. Teaching computers kept things stable but the international NGOs operating in the north of Afghanistan paid much higher and the work was more stimulating. Idrees eventually began a job at International Assistance Mission (IAM), a Christian missionary organization whose objectives were overlooked (converting Muslims is forbidden and eventually fatalistic with the Islamization of the country in the early 1990s) due to their large-scale development work in building numerous modern hospitals and schools. Their luck eventually ran out. Accused of proselytizing after several Christian education books were supposedly found, IAM relocated to Pakistan where Idrees went back and forth for the next couple of years for several months at a time. While in Pakistan in 1999, Idrees discovered the International Rescue Community (IRC) through a friend and was immediately hired. Like IAM and other NGOs, the IRC confined most of their

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

97

work to dealing with refugees in Pakistan and occasionally returning to Afghanistan when the threat level was low. As the crisis in the North reached its worst peak in early 2001, the U.S. government funded the most well-known NGOs for humanitarian operations: CARE, Save the Children, and the IRC. Idrees gladly accepted the responsibility of directing their activities in the Balkh province. When the initial bombing campaign began in late September 2001 the Taliban officials, under the leadership of Mullah Dadullah (the Taliban’s most senior military commander who was recently killed in May 2007) wanted to make sure that all NGOs operating in the country were monitored and could not pose a threat. Their biggest concern was the use of satellite phones that could give away their whereabouts and in a meeting, the NGOs had promised to reveal ones in their possession. Idrees had a satellite phone but felt his options were limited: If he handed it over, he would not be able to keep in contact with his organization’s activities in the IDP camps where the Taliban would obviously embed themselves to potentially detract American attacks. But what if the forces bombed the wrong area? The number of casualties would be immense and the moral damage severe. Although it was a matter of life and death, Idrees kept his phone hidden under a friend’s bed when potentially near Taliban officials that could search him. The IRC headquarters in New York called Idrees to ask for the exact location of the camps on the map. The next day, U.S. forces bombed hundreds of Taliban members aligned on the outskirts. The attack was direct and precise and the Taliban knew someone was disclosing information. Shortly after, officials tore apart the office of the IRC in search of a phone but found nothing. A few weeks later, the Taliban vanished all together from the north. With the country now under the full control of international forces, the IRC’s main objectives became focused on food distribution. The U.S. army began dropping supplies across the villages of Afghanistan causing General Tommy Franks and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to declare on TV, “no one is left starving in Afghanistan.” The statement seemed preposterous. Money was coming in from the U.S. government that had to be spent and Idrees requested an investigation. He hired a team of his old professors who were now selling potatoes on the streets because

98

Embracing the Occupiers

universities were closed. They trekked for several days into remote locations of Afghanistan, eventually landing in a mountaintop Hazara village in the Bamayan province. Up to this point Idrees thought he had seen enough poverty and suffering in his lifetime, but what appeared before him was beyond anyone’s imagination: Tens of thousands of people lying on the ground, emaciated, crying, almost melting into the earth. On the outskirts were thousands of corpses as the villagers were too weak to give them a burial. Apparently there were some people still starving in Afghanistan. The team rushed back to the office and immediately called for emergency assistance. Ready to return with some initial emergency supplies, a group of journalists from Reuters and CNN entered the office. They were apparently looking for a “sexy story.” Amazed at the coincidence, Idrees informed them “I have one that will shock the world, but you will need to walk for two days.” The event made headlines around the world and the aftermath was astonishing: Kofi Annan and Tommy Franks immediately went on TV to apologize to the people of Afghanistan. The head of the UN World Food Program resigned after it was learned that he refused to assist when Idrees initially called upon him three times, telling him instead, “No such place exists. You are just an asshole, creating problems for your own reputation.” There was bad blood between the IRC and the UN as a result, which divided the staff. Supporters of Idrees’s action in taking the media to the site and those who felt it was irresponsible. The IRC relied on charitable donations that up until this point never exceeded $400,000 a month in private giving. After the event was broadcast for three days straight on CNN, the amount went up to $8 million. Idrees was called a champion and with the new money raised was able begin a program of repatriation towards returning refugees. Meanwhile, the UN hired ten helicopters for the first time and began to search different villages. Idrees eventually moved on to work for the U.S. AID office in Kabul before coming to study in the United States. HAIDER As Haider spent his days living the good life, an invasion and subsequent occupation just around the corner didn’t seem realistic. “I thought maybe they would bomb some infrastructure to wake

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

99

Saddam up, but invading a country? This seemed like something you only read in history books that took place in the Persian Empire or something. I mean it’s the 21st century—who does this?” Two days before the first strikes began, Haider reported to work only to find that his office was closed. “My boss said ‘they are coming.’ And I was like ‘who’s coming?’ Oh the Americans. That was the moment that took me away to the world of reality.” At home his father panicked. They went south to a neighborhood he had lived fifty years ago hoping that someone would remember him. No one did but they rented a house anyway. The bombing campaign began and the radio blared into the night. On the twelfth day, Haider woke to find everyone on the rooftop: The American forces were now entering the town and the entire community was watching. “It was like aliens landed over night from Mars,” he recollected. While others stared in awe, Haider had a billion questions he wanted to ask them and begged his parents to allow him outside? When Saddam’s statue was pulled down shortly afterwards, Haider’s father remarked, “This will be the best and worst day for Iraq.” At the risk of receiving a five-hour lecture, Haider decided not to press for an explanation. Instead he engaged the troops in town by offering his services as a translator. With the cosmopolitan life now in the past, he yearned for the attention he was accustomed to over the years. In the first couple of days, the U.S. forces captured everyone in the town who had previous connections to the Baath party. Some were senior officers while others just members. Walking home he noticed a scene that didn’t look quite right: A woman was trying to explain to an American officer that her husband who was taken captive was not an official member. More importantly, he was sick and she wanted his medicine to be delivered. Haider went over to translate. “They were shouting and neither one could understand the other. The moment I saw this, I realized maybe this war is a mistake. She was a typical Iraqi citizen and he was a soldier. I watched this for a few minutes and thought how many incidents like this would happen? Is this happening somewhere else now?” Later, Haider noticed a huge banner at the base of the soccer field where the troops were positioned that read, “fuck off fagots.” When he inquired, an officer told him that everyone in Iraq is gay

100

Embracing the Occupiers

since men hold hands and always touch each other when they talk. “Incidents like this made me realize that the soldiers would need to learn things fast or fuck things up really fast. I then thought, are they the right people to help? Can they even help? After the first day I started changing my views. I spoke to a lot of U.S. soldiers, and realized most were there to do good but you know all it takes is one person to do something bad which will overshadow everything else. In war there is always going to be torture, mistreatment, rape and people dying by mistake. This is what happens so why should anything be different now? Human nature is still the same they just didn’t have You Tube and other technology back then to report on it.” Putting these feelings aside, Haider decided that he should take advantage of the opportunities in contrast to his father who believed he should not take a position—the motto of his career history. “I never took sides and I never had enemies. So it’s better to sit back and watch because you don’t know what will happen,” he explained to Haider who saw things differently. “There is a war, what do you mean what will happen? They are here and in power? What should I do weep all day without electricity, power and wait to die?” he shouted back to his father. Haider spent the next three and a half years working for various news agencies, covering every major event. Being in the media was the safest bet possible for security. Everyone wanted his or her side told and with that came respect—even from the insurgents. Yet after a year or so, things began to change. Perhaps the incident at Abu Ghraib was the first sign that it was impossible to make everyone happy. “The U.S. forces were pissed off that we were only saying bad things about them. The Iraqi government was pissed off that we showed them as puppets. The insurgency was pissed off that we showed them as terrorists and civilians thought we didn’t care about casualties. So you didn’t know whom to please.” The situation became intolerable. Haider’s parents thought his work was at a desk and he hated lying to them day and night about everyplace he had been. Going home could take several hours if the driver suspected someone was following them. Meanwhile journalists were being kidnapped and killed on what seemed a daily basis (eleven he knew personally from his office). Would he be next in line? It was definitely time to get out. He knew that deep down there was a psychological attachment built up over the years

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

101

toward what was happening in Iraq. Seeking refuge in a place like Sweden or Australia would simply not cut it. He wanted to be involved and if this was not possible at least he could say he tried. “I thought I could do this in the U.S. I know what Saddam thinks. I know what Iraqi people think. I know what the military thinks but what about the American people? This is the only perspective missing and they are the most important players since the U.S. is a democracy.” ZABI Zabi really never had much of an interest in politics. But like most, being a refugee whose country was imploding by the minute across the border, an infatuation almost inevitably occurred. Spending a year translating media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Tajik consulate in Karachi would probably be his defining point in this shift. He could have mindlessly performed his duties and earned his weekly paycheck, but the information didn’t quite seem to make sense. He was sickened to read that Pakistani officials and their supporters in Afghanistan palpably lie and distort the reality of events unfolding without a soul in the world to call them on it. The Taliban’s policies were rarely criticized, blatantly glossed over, or most of the time, ardently supported. “I swear I said to myself, if I ever get out of here, I am going to become a journalist and make sure that people know the truth,” Zabi recalled. Although he didn’t excuse the bias in his own lands (but would later make fighting it part of his U.S. education), he never quite understood the U.S. position. What exactly were their policies in this part of the world and why didn’t they act sooner to stop the Taliban? Only through studying in the United States would he come to comprehend that even the world’s greatest superpower can’t seem to get their information straight at times? Business in the video store was booming but with the attacks on September 11, everything suddenly seemed to shut down. The same Pakistani teenagers who once flooded the store for the latest Bollywood hits now had other hobbies. Anywhere one went, TVs blared from shops and homes throughout the day and late into the night as groups gathered to fixate on the screen for the latest news. Apart from this new interest on the streets there would be

102

Embracing the Occupiers

another phenomenon to take Zabi by surprise. Thousands of miles away in a land beckoning a new sense of patriotism, Americans flooded their local K-mart for flags. In Karachi, they were burned. The stores that once spawned pictures and T-shirts of Titanic and Pakistani cricket players were now marketing a new hero—Osama bin Laden. Zabi always knew about the American culpability in bringing the Taliban to power. Living in Pakistan it was impossible not to. While fiercely involved in defeating the Russians, the United States was nowhere to be seen when the occupation ended and Afghanistan slipped into chaos. It would even take several years before the Taliban would finally be denounced but not because of their policies that seemed straight from the Middle Ages—their actions became antagonistic toward American interests. As drought and famine coupled with American sanctions in the late 1990s forced thousands across the border, people were irate. In the weeks leading up to the American invasion and for months to follow, there was constant enragement in the streets. For Zabi, the frustrations were easy to understand. The reality of what the United States had done in this part of the world was now more visible than ever. The emotions of the people far surpassed the depths of information that a book could ever bring. The United States was now going to invade Afghanistan. Was it only to defeat Al Qaeda? Did the world’s largest superpower really care about democracy? What about civilian casualties? Zabi’s family still lived there after all—would they be safe? It all seemed to amount to a simple calculation in the end: American policy in the past may have been awful, even unforgivable, but the Taliban ruled in the present. When the bombing campaign began, one of the first areas to come under attack was Mazar e Sharif. One misplaced missile could have instantaneously changed any hope for a better future that Zabi had in mind. A few days later, the news came that the family was unharmed and the city was now free from Taliban rule and infighting. His father begged him to come back. He missed home greatly but without a job, the future was uncertain. In the months after the Taliban fell, the media showed a new Afghanistan—one that might possibly emerge with some stability after all. If life over the past four years in Pakistan had been a diving board, it was now time to jump. In February 2002, Zabi

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

103

sold his half of the video shop and made his way back over the mountains, but this time by bus. His extended family (now over 50) was waiting for him at home. Everything in the neighborhood was different from what he remembered. But as neighbors who had been displaced over the years began to make their way back, the air seemed to tingle with just a bit of glee. Hundreds of international NGOs flooded Afghanistan. For the English-speaking educated, the market for jobs was high and the pay decent, if not superb. Professionally trained journalists were few and far between, which is why Zabi was immediately hired to work as a translator for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Within a short time, his responsibilities grew. He was sent on factfinding missions and allowed to write his own reports and articles. He was a valuable resource and would eventually begin freelance writing for local and international media outlets. The life he once dreamt up of in the Tajik Consulate was now becoming a reality. Without ever second guessing his return, Zabi knew he had made the right decision. TAIFA Talk of the U.S.-led invasion began to circulate in Taifa’s household. While the thoughts seemed pleasant, pessimism as always prevailed. Suppose they did come and topple Saddam—what would happen then? Would the new government let her leave Iraq or would the familiar forces of gender oppression still be pervasive? Saddam might be gone, but the society she had known all too well still existed—holding back every opportunity that could be possible. Cynicism turned to optimism and eventually elation as the American troops easily made their way from city to city. When Saddam’s statue was toppled, Taifa was finally convinced—life would get better, it had to. “It was truly unbelievable, like the forces of good are winning against evil. Finally: Saddam is gone, the Baathist party is gone and the good-hearted people of the world are coming to Iraq. It seemed irrationality doesn’t exist. Normal things are finally happening.” Everything seemed different. Walking to the library at the University where she was now working, the atmosphere appeared clear as if some sentiment in the wind had been magically removed.

104

Embracing the Occupiers

Perhaps it was her imagination, but the most significant vibe came from the western faces now in town—soldiers, journalists, and international organizations. Somehow the society was opening up and eventually the changes she had hoped for were now quite apparent as she explained. “I thought about how it was now possible to get your rights. As a Kurd or Shiite, you will now be free as if you were a Sunni. That is what really matters to me. You can now work the job you want. You can say what you want. There are newspapers and everything expressing themselves freely, hundreds of them in the first few months after the war began. People are walking in the street talking about what they want; writing things against Saddam Hussein on the walls. That is real freedom. That is what I really wanted to see, the freedom of expression. I don’t have to be afraid anymore. I have my own strength no one can offend me. No one can. That is a very beautiful thing.” With these sentiments now in place it was time for Taifa to begin her search. Attending university abroad didn’t seem possible just yet, so in the meantime, she would take advantage of the new Iraq unfolding before her eyes. She wanted to work and mix with people from the West, performing tasks that she pictured Saddam in his cave rolling over in agony if he were to witness. Being educated and fluent in English, the possibilities seemed endless. She ended up working for USA Today as a translator. Above all else, she was now able to judge for herself just what exactly was taking place around her. “The most pleasing thing was hope. Saddam was just recently gone so you cannot judge if Iraq will succeed or fail, but there is hope for success in your life. You look around and yes, some buildings are burned and others are looted, but this is only now, this is only temporary. Iraq will really become a good country, finally.” It was during this time working for the media that Taifa heard about the Fulbright scholarship. At first it seemed impossible. They were accepting twenty-five students and she had already missed the English test. When the acceptance e-mail came, she thought it was spam and erased it. A month before the group was to depart a U.S. official visited the house to inquire if she would be accepting the scholarship or not. Later that afternoon, Saddam Hussein was captured. It seemed almost meant to be.

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

105

Each day that passed was more glorious than the next, but still there was doubt: What if her parents changed their mind, or the government cancelled the program? Perhaps insurgents would blow up the embassy? Who knew? Thoughts like this raced through her head constantly. Eventually she realized that her dream was coming true; she was going to study in America. SALIMI After the first couple years of misery, some stable work began to appear when Salimi strived to learn English and computers. He worked at an organization that taught art and theater to street children and eventually landed a job at BBC News in Peshawar as assistant director for production where he would travel every so often to their office in Kabul. The money was promising but living in Kabul was still not a viable option at this point. With the refugee camp still a reality, life had to continue. In 2000, Salimi and other Afghans he knew formed a group called Exile Theater. A mixture of artists, actors, writers, and directors (including several who are famous in Afghanistan today), they strived to bring Afghanistan back to life through art. If they couldn’t return home at least they could try to recreate it while living in exile. Scraping together whatever money and resources could be found, Exile Theater became the perfect antidote to a life filled with only boredom and emptiness outside of work. For the first time in a while, Salimi had the ability to mend his thoughts into active creation and on the side enjoyed time spent with others from the same background and similar predicament. In a span of two years time, the group put on seven major productions in the refugee camp that occasionally coincided with important events (Festival of Eid and Afghan Independence Day). The works were laced with political satire and slapstick comedy, poking fun at Afghan culture and the deteriorating political situation. In one performance, two men from previous regimes (Communist and Mujahedeen) are forced to live with their families in the same house in order to hide from the Taliban. The days went by arguing and debating with one another about whose ideology was best. One day an old man with a beard knocked on the door and the men immediately think the Taliban

106

Embracing the Occupiers

has come to arrest them. The communist can’t bear the thought of what will happen and takes his own life. When the Mujahedeen opened the door, he immediately cried and begged at the man’s feet, “please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.” Confused, the old man answered, “I am only a beggar, do you have any bread?” The Mujahedeen looked surprised, “no, I am sorry,” and slowly closed the door. Another piece was a pantomime about the Buddha statues recently blown up in Bamayan by the Taliban. Buddha stares down from the sky at a tiny creature on the ground who yells, “I want to kill you.” Buddha feels ashamed and begins to cry as 2000 years of history move in between. As the short play ended, the Pakistani police came and interrogated them about which political party they were being funded by. Unconvinced at their response, they threatened to arrest them if the group didn’t quickly and quietly disband. Several months later Salimi shaved his beard and returned to Kabul. It was summer. The warm weather engendered a new sense of energy that had been lost inside for many years and was now ready to be released. Afghanistan seemed reborn and the season for creativity was riper than ever. Elections were taking place in the country and an Afghan filmmaker was wanted by the United Nations to cover them through fiction and documentary. First, Salimi thought, “What for?” then many more questions arose, such as: “What is this election for? Why is there registration? Why should I change my tribal laws? Why should I try something new?” In “My Day,” the United Nations wanted to show realistic images of the elections—how some people voted three times while police officers at night changed the ballots and lied to villagers about where they could cast their vote. With two productions under his belt, Salimi had the opportunity he had been dreaming of since his days playing cops and robbers in the backyard of his house. He would be given the chance to make his own short films funded by different international organizations. The political and social messages he jotted down in his notebook over the years in exile would now have the ability to come to life and potentially reach a wide audience. He wrote a short comedy called “A Perfect Restaurant,” in which a boy and girl are on a date at a restaurant fully aware that what they are doing

You Say Occupation, I Say Liberation

107

is forbidden. The waiter knows the couple is doing something wrong and proceeds to disturb them by hitting on the beautiful girl. A religious man comes in with his wife wearing a burka and he stares at the girl from across the room as they eat. The police enter and try to assess if any couples are dating but end up being distracted by the Bollywood movie on TV where women are dancing half naked. Finally a beggar enters and begs for food while the lady behind the burka stares at the chickens being roasted. I asked Salimi to explain. “Everyone is hungry for something and everyone creates a problem for one another. It’s all because of traditions, religion and politics. Our constitution says men and women are equal but in practical life, this always gets amended.” It was time to rebuild. Thirty years of war had poked straight into Afghanistan’s membrane of energy and tore its spirit directly from the spine. While economic development and security were desperately sought-after commodities, Afghanistan also needed to remember how to laugh. Taboos that haunted the country for generations screamed to be let out of the bag while current issues and problems had to be thrown in society’s face to be truly understood. Art had a chance to be reborn. With the Taliban gone and existence back to normal, Salimi was ready for the new Afghanistan.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 5

We Have Landed ABDU The reality of Abdu’s living situation could easily melt away any strength and determination that one originally thought they had. Being from a place where family is everything and loneliness was nothing, one might think that the desolate streets of Quincy would over time shatter the congenial warmth that Abdu had to offer to the world—breaking him and everyone in his presence. Yet after speaking with him about his time in America, I didn’t feel this was the case. I immediately asked Abdu, how he coped with being away from his wife for such an extended period of time. “Yes it’s hard,” he said. “I think about it sometimes if she was here. I would really enjoy my stay here and be able to socialize more. But life is a challenge; I have been through too many hard times. I’ve been to refugee camps and for my family education is the most important thing. We were brought up in a way that education is cherished. When people were dropping out of school to go to work for their families my dad and mom did everything they could so we didn’t have to work, even during summer breaks or after school. They would kill themselves for us to go to school and be successful as education is a thing that will change the lives of the people of Kurdistan.”

110

Embracing the Occupiers

Abdu had made it a point of telling me time and time again that he has not had culture shock in the United States, as he is prone not to react to things, no matter how extreme. His example (not necessarily the one I asked about) was of the gay marriage debate going on in this country as a policy that he found to be the most absurd of all “contentious issues.” At first I was disappointed to hear this was his chosen issue, not so much because it was an issue that I necessarily cared that much about, but deep down I was secretly wishing that he would express his unique opinions on religion or culture, but I asked him to explain nonetheless. “In the West,” he said. “There is this attitude of anti-marriage, that somehow once someone gets married they are not free anymore and life becomes only suffering. So there is this antagonism here with marriage, where people do not want to get married until they are 30 or 40 to ‘leave all of their options open.’ And now you have a fight for gay marriage, which if we consider real or unreal or natural or unnatural, we know that the natural is not popular, so why would you want to fight for something unnatural?” I saw his point and it is actually an original one that I had not heard in this debate before. Without wanting to push the argument farther, I asked him if he found it a little ridiculous that people can be so passionate about this topic with situations in the world like Kurdistan that most Americans don’t know the first thing about? “Everything works in its own context, a small problem for you is a big problem for me, but we should not compare ourselves to each other. For example, violence in this country: If a car bomb happens, god for bid, somewhere on the street outside it sounds so terrible, more terrible than a car bomb happening in Baghdad. For Americans and for Iraqis it is different. In Iraq people would say ‘oh 60 people died,’ but if something happens like this in the US, it is a tragedy for 10–20 years and things will start to change, like things started to change after 9/11. September 11th was a great tragedy worldwide, but at the same time if you compare the casualties, the deaths and the destruction, it is nothing compared to what happens in Iraq or Afghanistan.” I asked why he thought this was. His response sounded like a pre-recorded speech that he had obviously given before in which Abdu broke down the consciousness of America and the Middle East.

We Have Landed

111

“You love yourselves we don’t love ourselves. You believe in yourselves we don’t believe in ourselves. We are made to believe that we are nothing and we react, but you know that you are everything and that we are nothing. You know how to deal with your problems we don’t know how to deal with our problems. Remember how I said our problems are political? Those who blow themselves up are political, social problems are political, economic problems are political, biological problems are political. Everything is political. We don’t own ourselves, you own yourselves. We can’t respect ourselves as we don’t know ourselves as you do.” Do you think we value life more here, I asked. “Yes because you have life here, there is not life there so you value something that you already have,” he replied OMAR “New York City is not America and America is definitely not New York City,” Omar was repeatedly told from Americans back in Afghanistan. While studying twelve hours a day at Columbia, the other land he had frequently heard about didn’t seem the least bit real. When summer came, an internship would have been ideal, but for now, had to be put on hold. There was a country to explore. If not now, when? Rummaging through his rolodex and scraping together any extra money available, Omar hit the road for the next three months, for what he told me was one goal he had in mind: “I wanted to see how things work in the U.S., what life is like? How do Americans really live? What is their system and vision of the world and the rest of the people who live there? These things affect Afghanistan because this is where decisions are made. If I can figure this out, then I can understand the politics of this country.” The other major cities were tempting to visit, but he knew he would not find the real America he was looking for. Instead he traveled to lesser-known places in up-state New York and around the East Coast: Cooperstown, Cherry Valley, Albany, rural Virginia, and other areas that Omar referred to as “the villages.” He knew the mentality was going to be different with large-scale ignorance about events in the world and potential hostility towards

112

Embracing the Occupiers

Afghanistan and Islam. It was definitely unexpected, but if it occurred, the last thing he wanted was to be caught off guard where he would find himself upset and backed into a corner. He prepped by watching Fox News every night and reading the trashiest magazines he could find at the supermarket. He was now ready for anything. In the places he had visited, Omar made a point of attending any event that was taking place in the town, enjoying most especially a sheepherding contest. He met with farmers and listened to them explain just how the process worked, from growing a product to putting it in the market and eventually making a living out of it. “Would free markets in Afghanistan be useful?” he thought to himself along the way. There were veterans from as far back as World War I. He pressed them to tell their stories and tried to inquire about how they viewed the United States’ place in the world. On the side he encountered many common folks: mothers, shop owners, and bakers. Some were welcoming and overly hospitable. Some ignored his presence all together while others went to great lengths to engage him in conversation. Overall everyone seemed to be extremely polite and respectful of his presence. However, the depths of ignorance and misunderstanding that he would encounter about Afghanistan, Islam, and the world in general far surpassed anything he anticipated. Several people, especially those who invited him into their house, seemed to be looking for an argument about current events in the world. “We should just bomb the Muslim world,” Omar occasionally heard. He remained calm and discussed the potential ramifications of such an action. The people listened to his views and the conversations at times went on for hours. Others looked at him with suspicion and when he made it a point of introducing himself, he occasionally asked, “What do you think of me? Do you hate me? Do you want to kill me?” At one point Omar found himself in the living room of a house with six older women and a white female friend he brought along from Columbia. One of the ladies innocently asked, “Are you going to make her wear a veil if you marry her?” He could see they were interested in the hottest topic of conversation regarding Afghanistan, the status of women. He tried to explain that while both sexes are equal before the law, men and women are in fact

We Have Landed

113

different entities in terms of their social functions in the society. They were intrigued and wanted to know more. He gave an example of why a commercial billboard with a half-naked woman is inappropriate: “It is seen as degrading the personal status of women,” he explained. “Women, no matter if they are beautiful, ugly, fat or slim all deserve the same level of treatment when they walk on the street, no one will pay any special attention to them. She is a woman and has her own support from her own family, who is part of another unit, say a clan, and if I treat her inappropriately, I will have to pay for that.” Discussions like these were part of a larger misconception that Omar noticed: The American model was always the best and what the rest should emulate, especially in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Muslim world. He sought to discuss with people the possibility that, although the U.S. system does indeed function well, it cannot always be copied. “Diversity is what makes life beautiful,” he would explain to them. “Military force alone cannot bring peace and prosperity. One must consider the values that exist in another society.” At the end of his journey, Omar reached one salient conclusion: The outlook on the world from the areas he visited is almost parallel to that of the rural areas in Afghanistan. Generally speaking, a typical Afghan villager saw Americans as wealthy people, who have little regard for concepts of honor, family, and spirituality. In rural America, Afghanistan and other developing nations (especially Muslim ones) are seen as barbaric, uncivilized, lacking a sense of history, always killing each other, and against every basic value the west offers. Despite these feelings, Omar valued the freedom that Americans have. “You are so free god dammit it and you know it,” he said shaking his finger. This aspect he continuously cherished. But this freedom is often taken for granted he believed, causing most Americans to only see themselves in the world, with everyone else floating around them. “Americans are good people, but ill informed. They know very little about what happens outside their town or state and practically live in a closed frame. Information seems to only be focused on food and the small affairs in their community, never thinking about what is going on in the world. This is the problem; they don’t see anything beyond their feet. This is my impression at least.”

114

Embracing the Occupiers

“Is there anything else you want to say about America,” I asked. “God Save America and in God We Trust,” Omar said laughing hysterically. “I love it here.” MOHAMMAD Every step, inch, and crevice, from the airplane to the terminal, immigration, and to the hotel included a personal commentary along the way: “Wait”, Mohammad shouted holding back the rest of the Iraqis behind him. “We are now officially in America once we take this step above the line . . . Wait, now we are officially smelling American air . . . Wait, now we have spoken to our first American . . . Wait, now we are sleeping in an American bed.” He had finally arrived and was ecstatic. For most of the Americans Mohammad met, there were always questions about life in Iraq to be answered. He loved the discussions more than anything but was always a bit surprised at the way people would react to his sentiments—especially regarding the U.S. soldiers and his work with them. I asked him what exactly he would tell people. “They were amazing men and women, so brave and courageous to come there and put their lives on the line for us. They never said no to anyone in the community. They always showed support. I remember when a woman came to the base with her baby who was sick and they, the doctors, the officers, just invited her inside and took care of the kid. It was like an everyday practice, with people coming with their sick kids. And I was there. I saw it. Every day I would go home and just feel like, oh my God, those people are doing things that I thought I never would see, you know.” At this point in the conversation, people normally stopped and asked how he could condone their behavior when examples like Abu Ghraib or the recent trial of the soldiers who raped the 14year-old Iraqi girl were occurring. “Obviously, I’m not from Abu Ghraib and I didn’t work there so what I can talk about is my community in Babylon, but bad things happen everywhere. This is planet earth and not everybody here is an angel. Thousands of German women and even Holocaust survivors were raped by the Red Army soldiers after WWII and Russia was America’s ally at the time so these things happen everywhere and in anytime and

We Have Landed

115

context. You know what, I might have felt better if the world, including America, said something about the thousands of Iraqi women who were raped and killed by the dictatorial regime in Iraq before the war. Since nobody cared for Iraqis during that time and now everybody is paying attention, not because they care for the Iraqi people but because they want to fish for mistakes that hurt the American administration and the U.S. troops. I can’t find any definition for this except the word ‘hypocrisy’.” Under Saddam, Mohammad was caged; in America, he was making up for lost time. His mind was awakened, driven to intense, magnificent raptures of new philosophical inquiry: Why was I in this state—is it history or chance? For Mohammad, the most important of these questions became finding out how societies can learn from their mistakes and progress. He chose to pick apart these issues by drawing on history and analogy, power and trepidation. A semester into his degree in translation studies at Binghamton, he decided to add on a focus—holocaust studies. Prior to arriving in the United States, he only knew about it in vague notions, but once he landed, the subject became an obsession and he pursued it in a way that seemed like retribution. In the summer of 2006, Mohammad was selected to pursue an internship at the Harvard Divinity College in interfaith dialogue, focusing on the holocaust—but that was hardly enough. Every night of that summer, he attended classes at Hebrew College in Boston on teaching the holocaust in American schools. Mohammad from Iraq, walking into a class of mostly white, Jewish students turned many a head but he ended up being the most popular student in the class, receiving dozens of Passover invitations for the next spring. “They really appreciated the fact that I was seeking knowledge,” he told me. “I was not just sitting down and pre-judging this or following what I read in my history books back home in Iraq.” The only down side to his experience in the United States it seemed was not having the time, or ability to pursue other avenues for interacting with Americans. His degree at Binghamton was secondary. Mohammad saw himself on a mission, not only to fix what he considered misconstrued notions about the war in Iraq but also to build a bridge of clarity. He wanted to enlighten people about the other side of Iraq, outside the tyranny, bombs, and mayhem. Only by doing so, could both sides across the world

116

Embracing the Occupiers

work toward the phrase he learned in his Holocaust class—“never again.” In the spring of 2006, Mohammad was sent to a seminar in Chicago for an opportunity to give a presentation to inner-city middle school students along with other international students from Greece and France. As expected, Mohammad stole the show. “In Chicago, that was the best day of my whole life,” he said with a big smile. “Those kids were so patient and wanted to know everything about Iraq. All of the kids were hugging me, wanting to take pictures with me. I talked to them about their communities. I said that you should never feel like you are different because you are African American or Mexican American, Latino, Arab or Jew. Embrace who you are. I think they saw something about Iraq that day that was different. There was this one girl who said she saw these pictures on CNN or from the media and there was a car bomb and everyone was crying and dying and she said ‘here you are, an Iraqi guy in a suit, what the . . . you know what I mean?’ For me this was really different.” It was the “perfect day.” Throughout our interview I heard this phrase uttered almost a dozen times in some capacity, but I had the feeling this time he truly meant it. NADIA It may seem surprising to many that when Nadia was offered a chance to study in the United States it was not something she immediately accepted. Her work with the United Nations was fascinating and becoming more challenging by the day. She felt for the first time it may have actually mattered in the slow process of Afghanistan’s return to normalcy. Everything was changing and she wanted to play her part. “I like your country and all other Western countries but personally feel that I’m accountable for this country, Afghanistan. To do something for the country, to work for the people has always showed up in my belly. So these types of things were just growing in my mind.” Once she realized just how beneficial the experience would be, she accepted the offer. After all, it was America—a land she dreamed about since the time her father put her on his lap and read from one of the numerous books on the library shelf. At first came the typical excitement one normally had about freedom

We Have Landed

117

and prosperity, but as she got older the fascination moved toward more concrete aspects that seemed important for her own country to one day adapt. With great excitement in her eyes, she spent the next couple of hours describing each component cherished during her two years of living here. Their seemed to be many components—some that would work back in Afghanistan whereas others perhaps never would be possible. There was decision making: “Everyone is allowed to decide his or her fate,” she explained. “You’re not so much bound to your family. You become responsible for yourself. Many Afghans would not think this is a good value, but I think parts of it are important, especially for women, that you have to fight for your education, for your status, for your income. It is constantly putting challenges in front of you. We need that.” Even more important for Afghanistan is what Nadia described as “accountability and responsibility.” “I have seen how people work so hard here. They feel they are responsible for this country,” she claimed. One of the first examples she saw of this reality was in her first week of class. She was amazed at how the professors in her school behaved to the students; always passing the message that they would have time for them and truly cared about their success. She recalled one incident well: In ecology class they were discussing global warming and one day the professor planned a field trip. It was pouring while the professor sat on the ground and performed an experiment about the soil and degree of acid in the rainwater. The students stood around watching with umbrellas over their heads. Nadia couldn’t believe it: “I was just so surprised that this professor who has a Ph.D. is doing this while everyone is standing,” she described. “He could have done it another day or could’ve had brought some rainwater to class but he didn’t. This is all coming with the culture of hard-work, and loving your occupation, doing something for your occupation and being accountable for what your doing. It is not only for the purpose of salary or income. You really enjoy your work.” Then there was our treatment of children: “I really like in this country how you behave in front of children, how you value their personality and give them a lot of space to question everything. You respect their personality; you care about their needs, so in fact you are building on your human capital for the future. Skills that

118

Embracing the Occupiers

you have in your schools are not only hard skills and soft skills, but the way that you teach students how to resolve conflict, how to handle decision-making, how to work in teams, how to have positive ethics. They’re all part of life skills that I can use in my country. It has to be introduced.” Apart from the more abstract concepts, I asked Nadia what she believed was the most original thing about America she had experienced. She laughed at my question, because her answer always seemed to surprise or bore many others who asked something similar. However going back to the abstract, she believed it was categorical of efficiency. “I like the tax system here even though everyone complains about it. It is quite good because it enables the government to invest in so many other things. I really like it. It was introduced to Afghanistan but it needs to be strengthened. Here it is part of efficiency and was I really, really inspired by this and I think we can learn a lot from it. For example, I went to social security office to get my social security number: it was such a nice system, you know. I just waited for my turn and I got my paper and the woman asked me some questions and I gave her some things, and then in two days they send my card. So the system is so efficient and saves you so much time. In Afghanistan if you go to Ministry of Economics or Ministry of Interior affairs because you need something, it is your right and administrators are responsible to help you? But this bureaucracy is so much there, the system is so inefficient, it takes you days and months to finalize the work and it happens in a way that people make you be grateful, instead of assuming that this is their responsibility. In the government offices they work from eight o’clock to four o’clock and the outcomes are not there: The whole day they are talking and drinking tea and gossiping when it really counts, because they’re spending their energy on some kind of work that has no outcomes and so when the client comes they don’t see that efficiency in the system. We need it and Afghanistan and it is the best time in Afghanistan. Some people might say that Afghanistan is under invasion but if you compare today’s Afghanistan with a history at least for the past two centuries, I think this is the honeymoon period for Afghanistan.” Asking Nadia to describe something she didn’t like about America was quite a difficult task. She finally budged and admitted that she would have liked to see the media give a more humanistic

We Have Landed

119

picture of Afghanistan outside of the war. She gave several presentations and interviews within the community about women and civil society in Afghanistan prior to the Russian occupation. She was surprised that even those in her program had no idea just how different it was. Toward the end of her experience, the sentiments she possessed in her youth were still the most important ones. America meant freedom, which in Nadia’s case, became the most cherished when it touched the passion she valued most—freedom for women. The depths that existed were endless. I asked if she ever expected to see women in Afghanistan one day drinking at a bar or dancing at a club. It was impossible to imagine, but these realities in America taught her above everything else that the freedoms this country possessed came from within while time did the rest to amend it. Whether or not Afghanistan would ever see the same examples didn’t matter so much, as long as women were there to make fate happen by themselves. ALI Ali described himself growing up as “a child with the American dream always inside of me.” His favorite movie was “The Goonies,” which he somehow remembered being stuck in his head from a young age. “Perhaps it was the music,” he said laughing. In addition, he always had a strange fascination with the state of Alabama. “I don’t know how to describe it, I just always pictured myself one day living in Alabama and raising a family there.” Yet he wouldn’t have the chance to speak with an American until they eventually came to Iraq. After becoming frustrated with the hospital, he made his way to the Convention Center in the Green Zone, in the hopes of finding some work as a translator for the U.S. Army. The American guard at the checkpoint seemed as scary and exotic as the one he first encountered coming from Jordan. He was doubtful that they would let him in, so he tried as best he could to imitate a southern accent when the solider asked where he was from. “I’m from Alabama,” he said with a straight face. The guard laughed hysterically and let him through. The biggest shock came inside. The U.S. government hired some Iraqis to take applications for jobs as translators. He filled one out and handed it in to a man at the table. “We will get back

120

Embracing the Occupiers

to you by phone or e-mail shortly,” he responded. “In Iraq this basically means, fuck you, we will bring in our own relatives and friends for these positions,” Ali explained. Already quite aware of the other mistakes made in the initial stages of the American occupation, this event seemed to put him over the edge. How could they preach democracy and still allow the same remnants of corruption to infiltrate their own system? He stormed out and felt stupid for even going there in the first place. “I didn’t want to translate for the occupiers—I was a physician after all.” Several days later a friend told him about the possibility of working with journalists as a translator who paid up to $50 a day. Ali took up several assignments over the years for such media outlets as Time, the Guardian, NPR, and others. His most memorable and the one that would eventually have the biggest impact on his future, was a month long assignment with Patrick Graham from the Canadian National Post. They traveled to Fallujah in late 2003 when the first major battle began. Their assignment was to interview a family whose son was killed by an American sniper as he was walking outside with his daughter. The brother was enraged and initially tried to kill Patrick before Ali could calm him down and explain why they were there. He told his side of the story, which was anything but highly traumatic and poignant. On the drive back to Baghdad, Ali truly began to understand for the first time just why Western journalism was so amazing. “They care about anyone,” he explained. “The average idiot on the street—that’s a story. In Iraq and the Middle East, we don’t care about the individual; I mean how could we? We don’t even care about ourselves!” With a wife and family still in Iraq, Ali was reluctant to accept the scholarship to study in the United States. But if he wanted to become a professional journalist, many of his colleagues told him, this type of training was necessary. After everything was settled and his initial anger with the living situation and other Iraqis subsided, the positive benefits of his experience in America had became more evident, but only fully realized when he returned to Iraq after three months. “I was feeling so strong. I was talking to everyone, to Shiites, to Sunnis, everyone, and saying, no, you are wrong, you cannot do this, that is wrong. I would say it is not the fault of Americans; it is your fault. Yes the Americans they are bastards, yes that is right, but we should not be doing these things.”

We Have Landed

121

With this new strength came even more of a detachment from Islam: “I saw the Chinese, the Africans, the Irish, all of them were Americans and all of them living together, just as if there is no difference between them. Everyone is living together and there were no problems. I mean sure you had problems with evangelicals but still nothing to the extent to what Islam is doing in the Middle East, and when I went back I told my family, you are Shiite, you are Sunni, I don’t care. I am not Muslim anymore.” On January 8, Ali’s family was asleep when “BOOOOM” there was an explosion on the front door and all of the windows of the house shattered. After a few seconds, bullets were shot through the bedroom. Ali covered his wife and children and small children old as hordes of American soldiers threw him out of bed and tied his hands together. Everyone was crying hysterically. He tried to explain to them that he was a reporter as they yelled “shut the fuck up” and dragged him downstairs. Looking around, he noticed that there were about twenty other soldiers smashing furniture and searching for something—but what, he didn’t know. They sat him in a chair and hooded his face. One soldier had a dog and said that if he spoke, even one word, they would let it bite him. After some time, one of the captains came with a video camera. He played a tape from the Palestine Hotel balcony where Ali was reporting from the Green Zone, and talking into the camera several days before. “Do you know that these places were targeted recently?” the captain asked. Ali had no idea. They then told him that his father’s house belonged to a man named Ali Mahmoud alMashhadani whose name was the same as a wanted insurgent. Ali informed them that Masshhadani is a Sunni name and if they went to the other room they would see a picture of Imam Ali, which indicates the house was a Shiite house. He asked Ali a bunch of other random questions before blindfolding and bringing him to an undisclosed place for interrogation. The next morning they admitted a mistake had been made and would let him go, although no one apologized. They dropped him off in an area of Baghdad known for its intense insurgency, with $1,000 compensation for the damages. When he returned home, half the house was destroyed and Zena thought for sure she would never see him again. There was never really any explanation for the event. Zalmay Khalizad, the American ambassador at the time personally apologized shortly after. However, the real mysterious component was

122

Embracing the Occupiers

that the tape from his camera was missing. Khalizad himself even denied that it was taken. On top of this incident, several anonymous threatening phone calls came to the house in the days ahead. He suspected the Interior Ministry whom he might have pissed off after reporting on corruption in the Iraqi government. He decided then and there, that the trip to New York needed to be expedited. In late January, the family flew to Jordan and eventually made it to New York several days later. After being exiled, imprisoned in Syria, almost killed by insurgents on several occasions, and finally having half his house blown up in a raid, no moment was as exhausting as finally landing in America. IDREES Idrees met his first Americans while working for the IRC. Compared to the various other internationals in Afghanistan, he considered them to be the brightest, most creative, and more importantly, ones who always thought outside the box. “Maybe it’s because I was never given this kind of support and encouragement by either my family or society,” he said thinking out loud for a moment, but then went on. “No one ever told me that if you could do more it’s a good thing. Everyone thought that your this selfish guy who wants to show off, and because that was really not my intention I always felt discouraged but when working with these guys they continuously reminded me that if you do more stuff, its good.” Initially, the IRC was his only impression of the American people. After switching to the U.S. embassy and seeing how narrow minded and discouraging his colleagues could be, Idrees called his old boss and said, “you Americans are not that good, its just you.” “Welcome to the club,” was his only response as he laughed hysterically. Stanford would elicit a similar reaction: Some Americans he met were the most brilliant people he ever encountered whereas others he found hard to believe were ever considered for this program in the first place. After some time, Idrees noticed that what really divides Americans’ understanding of the world is not education but experience. He saw essentially two groups of people: Ones who had never left the United States and those that worked or lived abroad. The latter group he referred to as “the core of American leadership.” “These are the people who are the eyes and ears

We Have Landed

123

of America,” he explained. “These are the ones who understand how America relates to the world and how the world relates to America.” What immediately struck Idrees about the former group or what he called “ordinary Americans” is how narrow their understanding was of how the world operated. Analysis could be simplistic and general at times: “They use basic economic principles to describe behavior in the world and never go beyond that. When they say ‘terrorism,’ they immediately envision something horrible in the Middle East.” As a result, Idrees was kept on his toes—always ready for a debate at any time, but trying not to fall into the trap he constantly preached against himself. The experience was rich but also ephemeral and Idrees quickly learned that he would never comprehend all of it. “There is so much to understand about the internal politics of Americans and American society: The divisions between blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, third class and first class, upper-middle class or no class. The division between East Coast people versus West Coast people, Republicans versus Democrats. So when you put all these puzzle pieces in the same part, you will see that the big puzzle is not necessarily a surprise to society. It’s so diverse. You should expect so many problems.” The “ordinary Americans” were more of an inspiration than a disappointment, but America’s concept of individualism was perhaps the only surprise. Idrees was always conscious that this was a reality in America, but only fully aware after experiencing it in its most raw state. While on a packed subway one day, two black children came in and asked each passenger one by one if they could do a dance performance. Everyone said no without even blinking an eye, but Idrees nodded in approval. At the end, he gave them all the change in his pocket and was shocked to see that everyone else pretended they didn’t exist even though they had no problem watching the performance while one child was even bleeding afterwards. “What would have happened in Afghanistan?” I asked Idrees. “People feel sympathy. They don’t just look at them with contempt and think it is their business. It’s part of capitalism. As far as I can think back, as a human being I feel very much valued and satisfied when I help another human being no matter what his problem is. I don’t care how the problem got to the point that

124

Embracing the Occupiers

he is in now. I only care if I can help him right now, but when I asked my friends here they say this was his responsibility: he didn’t get an education, he didn’t care about his life, he cannot do these things, it’s not my business. These words are to many very, very disappointing. At some point we’re all human beings, we should care about each other. So that is something disappointing in this society.” The disappointment was only minor as Idrees had confidence that many Americans are aware of this problem and will fight to change it in the long run. At Stanford, his colleagues in class called him Fidel (as in Fidel Castro), but he always assured people that capitalism had good qualities. “After all Stanford is a result,” he said smiling. America was an experience that changed Idrees eternally. At the time of our interview, three days before departing for Afghanistan, he was barely able to express just what exactly he had been through. “I will be analyzing and talking about this experience for many years to come. I am not sure at what point I will actually be able to sit back and decide what exactly has changed in me. There is so much,” he explained with excitement. In June 2007, Idrees was selected as the valedictorian for his graduating class. Apart from saving a refugee camp in Afghanistan, it was one of his proudest moments to date. He spoke about America as a wonderful nation with a great future. As a child and eventually working for Americans, this country was always unique for its image of freedom and prosperity and famous for being lovers of these qualities while not preventing limits for growth and prosperity. Recently, American policies were pushing people to change this view and if so, America would become like any other European country. The most important thing, he stressed, is for the people in this program to continue the discussions they adamantly had during their time at Stanford and keep the networks going. At the ceremony afterwards, Idrees’s long-time rival, “the smartest kid in class,” approached Idrees in front of all their professors and thanked him several times for having the honor of being in the same program as him. It was almost a perfect ending to their two years of fierce debate. Idrees responded, “As I told you, just try to think about the problems from a different perspective and see for yourself if something is missing.” The two shook

We Have Landed

125

hands and laughed. Idrees was certainly going to be missed around here. HAIDER When people in New York asked Haider where he was from, a typical response such as “oh I’m sorry, I didn’t vote for Bush” seemed to always follow. One late night while being robbed of his phone on the street, Haider yelled, “Listen, I’m from Iraq. I’ve had enough of this shit back home. The last thing I need is to come halfway around the world for more.” The man rapturously apologized, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you are from Iraq.” It seemed everyone in New York had some basic understanding of what was going on in the world but what about the rest of America? Sitting on a panel discussion at West Point on the “war on terror” one of Bush’s speech writers remarked pugnaciously to the audience, “Americans are sloppy, fat, ignorant, lazy and loud but this is why we are hated. It’s cute and sweet that we don’t know about the rest of the world and people are jealous of this, especially the French.” Everyone in the room was clapping loudly after she spoke. Haider pulled her aside at the end. “I respect that Americans are all of these things,” he said. “But I am from Iraq and when you had 160,000 troops sent to my country with all of these qualities and with weapons, we didn’t find it cute and sweet.” “You can’t expect more from them,” she said in response. “Well its not wrong to be ignorant,” Haider replied. “But when Americans invade my country, vote and determine millions of peoples’ lives, I think its time for them to begin knowing a bit more.” A week later he had heard from an Iraqi friend at school in the south that the professor referred to her as a “terrorist wearing a hijab,” in relation to a discussion on security post Virginia Tech massacre. He immediately flew down with his old media badges and questioned the professor and dean. An apology didn’t seem to be happening in the near future. With these experiences, Haider slowly had a taste of the world outside of New York. It was definitely time to start learning about the rest of the country, no matter what the costs. In the spring of

126

Embracing the Occupiers

2007, he set off across America where, through various connections, was able to stay with different families: Some felt bad for him, others yearned to tell their friends, “look we have an Iraqi staying with us,” some had family members in the military, still others simply wanted to debate. In each town, Haider called the police station, told them his plans for the day and asked to have an officer stand nearby. In the town center, he would set up his booth with a large sign on top reading, “Ask an Iraqi.” Through thirty small cities and towns and almost a thousand conversations, homogeneity was not to be expected. Some people who walked by the booth simply passed and yelled, “fuck you terrorist,” while others wanted him to know they were against the war. He tried to avoid discussions with the latter since he already knew what they felt back in New York. Everyone seemed to fit into a different group one way or another. First there were the extremists who approached and said something to the extent of, “I think we should withdraw our troops to Kuwait and nuke Iraq.” Or sat down and asked, “Are you a terrorist? Do you want to kill all Americans?” Surprisingly, they were always polite and most of the times open to discussion. At the end of an hour-long conversation on why Iraq should be nuked or not, a young man remarked to Haider, “I’m sorry man, not all Iraqis are bad I guess. You’re the kind of dude I could hang out with here.” Another typical group didn’t seem to listen at all and just wanted to make their point that the war in Iraq was just. Most of the time they tried to get Haider to admit that at least one thing was better in Iraq now than before, which Haider suspected gave them the opportunity to tell people, “an Iraqi told me we did good something good in Iraq.” He found their reasoning simplistic and never evolving beyond September 11 most of the time. After informing them that this theory had been proved wrong a long time ago, they would mention terrorism and security. When Haider asked what these reasons have to do with invading Iraq, it would always still come back to September 11 again. One of Haider’s biggest surprises was that in the smaller towns, the reaction to September 11 appeared to be stronger and the future of security more ominous—much greater than in New York. Haider explained to people that Al Qaeda in all likelihood had probably never heard of their town and with no buildings higher than four stories, an attack didn’t seem too realistic. The logic hardly ever mattered.

We Have Landed

127

Those who were religious, Haider found the most difficult to converse with. Although incredibly polite, everything in their conversation involved Jesus, Christianity, or both: “If all of you people [Iraqis and Middle Easterners] converted to Christianity you wouldn’t be killing each other like this,” Haider frequently heard. In response he often pointed out the Crusades and the Civil War that seemed to go in on ear and out the other. Every so often he found belligerence and hate. At one incident in Savannah, a solider that served in Abu Ghraib approached the booth and tried to convince Haider that Americans shouldn’t feel bad for what is happening in Iraq because all Iraqis were terrorists. As a result, torture should be okay because everyone deserves it. Haider asked how he could condone torture when he was supposedly fighting for democracy? In response, the Marine said that American lives are worth more than Iraqi lives as Americans have given more to the world, so Haider’s comparison of democracy was flawed. In the end, Haider told him that he felt sorry for the Marines and for Iraq because someone like him would go back and “fuck everything up,” when others actually had good intentions. He then mockingly pleaded with the man to not go anywhere near Iraq in the future. The Marine concluded by saying that the only way to help Iraq was to kill as many terrorists as possible. On the side, hundreds of people surrounded them and watched, most seeming to agree with the Marine. The incident eventually made the nightly news. Surprisingly, the most open-minded group were those with family members serving in Iraq and the occasional person who had lost a loved one there. He enjoyed these conversations the most and realized that the war for most Americans was only something seen on the nightly news (if they watched it) but these folks were living through it everyday. “With the lives people are living here,” he explained. “Why would you care about Iraq? The war is not real, its something watched on TV and then forgot about the next day.” Spending time with this group, he heard stories of wives watching over large families and working as their husbands were off in the military. When they came back for the occasional visit, the only thought seemed to be ominous—when would they be returning to Iraq? For Haider, they were perhaps the only ones he met that truly understood the concept of being against the war but still supporting the American troops.

128

Embracing the Occupiers

Toward the end of his trip until the time we met in September 2007, there was not one grand truth about America that Haider had established. Driving back to New York, he began to slowly piece together all of these experiences into the one question he remained steadfast to answer while here, “What are the American people’s role in the war?” ZABI It was the perfect opportunity to let Zabi clarify his earlier comment from several months ago. “Do you still hate America?” I asked. “Not so much anymore,” he explained. School was becoming tolerable and the classes at times even somewhat worthwhile. Yet there were several things that still bugged him every day that couldn’t be ignored. First was America’s sense of community or lack thereof. He was always aware of this but became more bitter after writing a report for class: A man was struck by lighting while working on his car and the story made news in Tempe, Arizona. He went to interview the wife of the man where he observed one aspect that didn’t seem to be covered: When she went to see her husband off to the hospital that night, her three children stayed behind in the house by themselves until the morning. She didn’t complain to Zabi, but merely inferred that there was no one available at the time to help her. He was baffled: “Couldn’t you of asked the neighbors for help?” he asked her. “What would have happened if something went wrong with the kids? No one would have known they existed.” It turns out that the lady didn’t know her neighbors well enough to ask and even if she did, there was no guarantee they would have helped anyway. In Afghanistan according to Zabi, “the neighbors would not only have stayed at the house with the children all night and as many days as needed, but offered the woman their car without even thinking of asking for money when she returned.” On a personal level, the lack of community seemed to seep into peoples’ daily existences without them ever really noticing. It bothered Zabi, that everything in America was always so official. People didn’t want to be friends unless there was some benefit for them whereas those that he did consider friends appeared to only

We Have Landed

129

call or write when something was needed. He hated more than anything when conversations began “Hey, how are you? What are you up to?” before getting to what was really needed. Even if the reason for calling was to have a cup of coffee—why couldn’t they make the effort to contact him once in a while before to simply say hello? Why was everything always about business? He explained that when he returned to Afghanistan in the summer of 2007, people who he hadn’t seen in ten years came or called to greet him upon his return. As a result, Zabi learned never to expect a lot from Americans. At the gym one day he hurt his shoulder and didn’t want to go to the doctor because it was expensive. He wanted to ask someone for help in applying pain cream, but realized people would think it was awkward or not pragmatic. “They would look at you funny or say why don’t you just go to the doctor?” he explained. The lack of community could have its benefits though, “the more individual people here become, the more people here will be able to further themselves and have more status,” he argued. But in the long run, “everything that happens is just a result of government pressure or because it is put into law. No one is willing to help each other, or get together to discuss things. People will just take their own personal ideas and benefit from them. In Afghanistan I never feel alone. Community helps make this happen.” Apart from this aspect of the American people, Zabi had a lot of issues with the media and American politicians—especially when it came to his part of the world. He still supported America’s presence in Afghanistan, but was convinced that their involvement is part of a larger war against Islam. If this isn’t the case, then their actions have been inadequate in explaining otherwise: The United States went from one Muslim country (Afghanistan) to another (Iraq) without ever explaining their actions for the latter. “When North Korea showed it had nuclear weapons,” he explained. “The U.S. didn’t do anything. People barely even talked about it.” Within a day, the news seemed to leave the media’s eye, and America’s sanctions toward Iran’s nuclear weapons were back in the spotlight, this time to another Muslim country. I questioned Zabi again on his comment, “Is this a war against Islam?” He explained that it’s not a war in the sense of America wanting to kill all Muslims or change their religion, but rather that spreading democracy is the goal. Why exactly Islam in itself was

130

Embracing the Occupiers

targeted, he was not sure, but he saw many other countries as being non-democratic and the U.S. government chose to ignore them. I offered my two cents, that perhaps they saw democracy promotion as an antidote to security. “But then why didn’t they do anything when North Korea said it had nuclear weapons that could hit the U.S.?” he asked. “Are North Korean nuclear weapons different than Muslim nuclear weapons?” If someone with Zabi’s education felt this way, then I could only imagine how others must think. Zabi agreed with the irony. He argued that the media was to blame for only showing countries like Afghanistan and Iraq as chaos. History is irrelevant when it came to understanding the democratic period Afghanistan had in the 1960s or Iraq in the 1950s. This would only show a human side to the people of these countries that might dismiss the notion of Islam being an evil religion. But by allowing this to fester, politicians can have excuses to continue their debates and quest for power. TAIFA As the plane touched down at JKF Airport from Jordan and the first group of Iraqi students made their way through the gates, Taifa felt reborn. The five-hour wait through immigration didn’t matter. Life was new—the person she was yesterday had died and everything before her eyes was paradise waiting to be popped open. To capture the moment of symbolism in its entirety, she later changed her birthday to the date she arrived—January 31. On the bus from the airport, someone asked if they could put on the radio. “Ordinary World” by Duran Duran came on and Taifa immediately recognized the song from her youth. The lyrics seemed to fit the moment: “But I won’t cry for yesterday there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive.” “I thought, now I don’t have to escape,” she said reflecting on the song. “I am not in my different world. I open my eyes to what is around me. This is real. This is reality. I am alive.” The group quickly checked into the hotel and walked around New York on only a few hours of sleep in the last seventy-two hours. “I always dream that I am in another foreign country,” looking back on the moment. “I am walking in the street with

We Have Landed

131

all these cool things, talking to someone who is foreign but then I wake up. It happens a lot. When I am dreaming, I know it is a dream because it cannot happen. It was the same here. This is what I see in my dreams. So I was really afraid I was going to wake up, because this only happens in my dreams.” The next day they made their way to Washington, D.C. for, among other things, a private luncheon with President Bush. The main guard who showed them through was Palestinian, causing one of the Iraqis to excitingly pull Taifa aside and say, “See in the Middle East they accuse the U.S. of being against Arabs, but look a Palestinian guy guards the White House.” I immediately asked if she knew that many Americans she would meet didn’t quite like, if not loathed, President Bush and how she planned on reacting? “I only know him through my country,” she said. “So here, like I see, I know people will not agree with me, I am sure about that. If he did not make this war, who knows what will happen? I know that many people will die In Iraq, but how many will die without this war? If I were American I would be against the war. I wouldn’t want my brothers or friends to go to this war. Why would I want my country go to war?” Her graduate school was everything she expected and more. Wanting to leave a good impression with her fellow students and knowing that the future of her Iraqi colleagues at home depended on her success, she strove to be the top student. On the outside, her friends and people around her were what she had always dreamed of—open, non-judgmental, and above all, free. Only one thing at times seemed to bother her—other Americans’ behavior when disagreeing about the war in Iraq. “Some people make their own political views more important than the reality of the world,” she told me. I asked her to explain: “They are against Bush so they hate to hear good things happen. When I tell them things are good, they fight with me, like I am offending them. Then why do they ask me if they don’t want to hear from me? They don’t, they just want me to say, ‘yes you are right. Whatever you say.’ You know it really surprises me how people have never been in Iraq and they argue with me that they know what is going on more than I do. They just want to prove to themselves that they are correct. This is not my fault if President Bush did good to us. I mean yes, unfortunately

132

Embracing the Occupiers

the plans were not good, there were many mistakes and many people are dying some situations in Iraq are terrible. Some things are good some are bad. I don’t care who is Republican and who is Democrat. I care about what is going on in my country.” Other times people Taifa met seemed ashamed of the war in Iraq and always wanted to apologize. She told them to feel proud and described positive stories about the American soldiers she had witnessed first hand. They never wanted to believe her. She blamed the media for exacerbating the situation by giving disproportionate coverage to the negative actions of the U.S. military. For example, in the case of the soldiers raping the Iraqi girl, she was surprised that as this was being shown, not one channel felt the need to mention the number of women raped under the Baath party (even Fox News), or that American soldiers had set up tents to protect women from being kidnapped. “I feel very bad for the good soldiers that are there,” she said. “Many of them really want to help and they do help and they do great things but no one cares. I don’t want to say this is how all Americans soldiers are but we only hear the bad things.” Apart from the war, Taifa occasionally felt that many Americans take for granted the freedoms they have. Some even hated America. Their reasoning never made much sense and only seemed to convince her that everyone should be thankful for having the opportunity to live in a land that many others dream about everyday. “I think that if someone says they don’t like the USA, it is because there is something wrong with them. Either they are depressed or they have a problem with the whole world,” she believed. When speaking to people who often had these views, she would tell them, “If you don’t like America, then you are not going to be happy any place else.” SALIMI Salimi’s biggest fear in coming to the United States was the airport: Would they think he was a terrorist? After all he had been to Pakistan and back several times? To his surprise the process went smoothly. From the outside, America symbolized mainly two pictures, two ideas, and two battles: terrorism and democracy. This was the hot topic in the world and America

We Have Landed

133

was the leader. After living here for a year, he realized that the rosy picture Hollywood painted was only a mirage—one had to go deep inside to find the main realities America was truly faced with: poverty and discrimination. His living situation and isolated incidents in Savannah were only the tip of the iceberg. Sitting at an outdoor restaurant in New York with a friend, a homeless black man approach and asked the waiter if he could use the bathroom. As one would expect, he was turned away, and slowly walked off. Salimi was disgusted and didn’t touch his plate of food. “Where should he pee,” he thought to himself. “On the street? He would go to jail?” After they left he asked his friend, “Is it more important for my country to have democracy or for this guy to be able to take a piss?” I waited for the answer. “America cannot be isolated from the world, but I think dealing with the people in this country should be balanced,” he explained. The week before my trip to Savannah was the infamous Virginia Tech shooting incident. Was this an example of how Salimi saw the United States not taking care of its own citizens? “This was funny, I was following this: Someone makes a gun in the factory that produces the gun. Someone sells it in his shop. Someone buys it and kills people. Some people investigate. Some people reflect on it in the media. Some people give speeches on the TV and they say it is condemned; they feel sorry for the families, etc. And the circle continues—it never ends—it’s like a movie.” The major shock did not come from the sheer veracity of the events, but how widespread the media coverage seemed to be. Thirty-three civilians were killed and America was in mourning. Salimi shared in their commiseration, but wondered what this number would mean in Afghanistan or Iraq? “Life is so important here,” he told me. “But look, many people take it for granted.” Invitations to church were always magnanimous and he loved the discussion and architecture and so every so often he went. On the first day, he noticed a little girl sitting on the floor watching a DVD as her parents attended the service and immediately thought to himself, “Look at that. When did I learn how to use the Internet and computers and she knows when she’s five or six. This is her picture of life and I have another picture and they are so different

134

Embracing the Occupiers

in every way. If people could see the life in places where I have lived they would quickly change and say ‘oh my god, what I have here so many people don’t have there.’” As a filmmaker, Salimi blamed Hollywood and the media for injecting these beliefs into the American public: The United States was the best nation and the world revolved around it. In his English program at Buffalo, the class watched a movie called “Euro Trip” about a group of U.S. college students who backpack around Europe. Salimi was not a big fan. “Everywhere they go they look down on everybody: Europe is so bad, the French have sex with their brothers or sisters, Germany means Hitler, etc. The same thing in that movie Talledega Nights; they ask the French guy, ‘what is your gift to the world’, and he says ‘the blowjob.’ So it’s always the U.S. looking down as the super nation of the world: ‘we are the best, we are the strongest, we bring civilization to you, we give you the best technology.’ These types of movies are only made to make money and when you make this stuff, you destroy something, a bigger concept—you destroy Americas’ profile in the world, and it destroys you right back.” As we sat in the park in Savannah, an old man who was somewhat notorious for being “the crazy guy,” marched by with a sign reading “Bush is the Devil” and yelled something unintelligible. I immediately asked Salimi for his opinion, which it turned out would be his greatest sentiment that America had to offer. “Ah, I really like that you can be what you want to be, live the way you want, express yourself the way you want. This is the part that I really like. He [old man] thinks this way and it is reflected in his sign and he screams in the street, but he has his place in this society and he has no problem with the people and the people don’t have a problem with him. But in Afghanistan he can’t do this. He can say for sure that he doesn’t like George Bush, but if you said you didn’t like the Taliban or you don’t like Karzai you would be gone.”

CHAPTER 6

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror” ABDU At the time of writing, Abdu’s father was serving on the parliament for one of Kurdistan’s major political parties, the Kurdish Islamic Union. The group was known to be Islamist and an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt more than seventy-five years ago. When asked about it (even among Iraqis) people always seemed skeptical and uneasy. How could a soft and passionate individual like Abdu have a father (let alone be a supporter himself) who was a member of a group that purported to strive for a state based on Sharia (Islamic) Law? “Well every Muslim has a different view,” he calmly explained. “If you ask me and you ask Bin-Laden there will be a huge difference. My dad has always been against the jihad extremists and has survived several assassination attempts. My understanding and my father’s understanding of an Islamic state is one that has respect for human rights, freedom, democracy, real understanding of Shari’ a law; which is the true message of god. Although it’s not called ‘Islamic’, it is an Islamic state. Any state that is in a dictatorship, people are hurt, people are sad, people are dying from hunger and political oppression and although it’s sometimes called Islamic, it is not. So Islamic state is not a name it is a manner.” Abdu had a lot of opinions on a range of topics, but one in particular he had been dying to discuss was Islam and terrorism.

136

Embracing the Occupiers

He seemed perplexed about why these two concepts seemed to go hand in hand in America and the West while convinced that other religions have just as many problems with extremists as Islam did. To entertain these notions, I threw out the million-dollar question, “Why are we Americans so hated?” Is it because of our policies, or “who we are” as Bush claimed right after September 11? Without pondering the question for a second, Abdu explained. “It’s a mixture of reasons. A normal Arab might not love the Arab system. For example, an Egyptian might not like Hosni Mubarak and he doesn’t know Americans, he’s never even seen Americans, never talked to an American except for seeing one on TV. However, he hates the government because some policeman has hurt him for example, he has beat him or made him bribe him. So he hates the police of Egypt and he hates the ruler of the police, Mubarak. He hates anyone who supports him, so if the U.S. supports Mubarak then he hates the U.S. How rational that is, is something else but that’s the answer to the question, ‘why do they hate us?’” To play the devil’s advocate, I asked why other groups of people in the world who live under tyranny arguably supported by the United States or disagree with our policy do not act out in the way that Muslims seem to be. In other words, why aren’t Buddhists in South East Asia, Animists in Africa, and Catholics in South America flying airplanes into American buildings? “A Muslim finds religious support for resistance, but for a Christian the glasses are smaller. The Muslim thinks that every problem they have is because of the West and their reaction and their hate is not for the moment.” Abdu looked at me solemnly as I asked him for an example. “One article that I wrote about while here was the Danish cartoons. I asked, why are the Muslims so angry about a few cartoons? However, this is not the right way to look at these problems. We have to look back. These cartoons are today’s reaction. They’re not burning cars for the cartoons. I don’t agree with the outcome; my article says that understanding the problem is half the solution. If you say, ‘oh they are just fanatics and just kill Americans for these small cartoons’, then no, it’s not that.” “So where does this reaction come from then?” I pondered out loud. “This reaction is from a wound that has not been treated. It’s a wound that has not been healed. The Muslim world’s body is

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

137

full of wounds. This wound has been bleeding over and over again and when it’s about to get good they make a problem out of it. It’s a wounded civilization, not Islam itself, but the Muslim world. The people who are Muslims are wounded. So as you see it’s not about cartoons. If the wound is a hundred years old it hurts more than a fresh wound. So this is what makes extremism.” We discussed how Islamism seems to arise for Muslims after they have lived in the West for some time. Such is one of the main inspirations for today’s Al Qaeda movement, Sayyid Qutb, who before becoming one of the leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, studied for five years in Greeley, Colorado. “What do you think of his reaction to living in the U.S.?” I asked Abdu. “Some people just follow things. They go to the mosque and say, ‘I’m good,’ when they go because their father or mother is forcing them. When they come here to a place like the U.S., they see this freedom and they can do so many different things. For example, in school I’m studying literary theory and it shook my beliefs to read people like Nietzsche and Foucault. I have studied psychoanalysis, I have studied Derrida—he is one my favorites— and I have studied some Marxism. Some of these people say that human nature is dead, that God is dead. Freud says that human nature or the human instinct is to go back to the original way, which is to go back into your mother’s womb and the only way to do this is to have sex.” “And how did this influence your beliefs,” I asked. As I have a strong background, I never really thought about some of these things but now when I am learning all this, I would come home and stay awake at night thinking about whether I truly believe in God. I would go through the whole thing: ‘there is a God because of a, b and c’ and so now I feel that my beliefs are stronger than ever before. I know why I believe and I know why I go to pray. I pray better now than I used to pray at home. I read the Koran now and I find it more enduring and understand more than when I was back home.” OMAR Omar’s initial conception of an Islamist movement was one that really only existed in theory. He saw potential limitations for women, conservative dress for men, and bans on alcohol and

138

Embracing the Occupiers

cinema. In other words, the Taliban were “conservative Muslims.” But what they would come to impose on the society had no basis anywhere in the teachings of Islam that he had known. He came to truly understand this point during the two weeks spent in prison. When it came time for forced prayer, Omar and others naturally asked for water to perform abolitions (a practice of washing before and after prayers required in the Qu’ran for all Muslims). They only responded with the typical answer he had heard from them so far, “shut up you bastard.” The Taliban were, simply, not really Muslims at all. Traveling through different parts of Kabul for his history project in the spring of 2004, Omar found himself in the Chehel Sutun district of Kabul—a place he had known was a gathering spot for the mystical Islamic sect, the Sufis. He went with some friends where he would find against a backdrop of mountains, hundreds of people from different ethnic groups and religions enjoying an afternoon of music, dancing, and discussion. Omar sat in the front row and conversed with one of the leaders. The music was getting faster and more hypnotic as the Sufi saints spun around in circles. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed a white woman approach the group (who later turned out to be French) and begin to dance in a sexy black dress—stomach and cleavage fully exposed. Something came over him and he asked the saint, “Who is this Kafir (infidel)? She is polluting us.” Looking back on it, Omar believed his society over the years became “Talibanized,” and his reaction was a natural result. The Sufi leader pulled him aside: “She is not a Kafir, she is human” the man calmly began to explain. “If you open your heart, you will find there is no place for hatred.” The man’s words resonated with Omar through the rest of the afternoon and, in fact, his entire life. “Thinking like a Sufi,” he explained. “Allows me to see the suffering I witnessed in my childhood and teenage years through a different lens. If I only think about hating the Communists, Mujahedin and the Taliban, then I will find only confusion. If you open your heart, you will find that there is no place for hatred. This is what I have done.” Poverty, boredom, and harassment aside, looking back on the days in university which he now tried to forget, one of Omar’s burning desires was revenge: From the physical, “I wanted to slap the D&J boys and make them dance for me,” to the emotional,

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

139

“I would speak with all of them man to man and try to see what exactly were our differences.” One day late in the fall, Omar and his friend Zand (at this point recuperated from the hospital) were out buying some spare parts for his car. Parked outside a garage, they noticed a man rummaging through the dumpsters nearby. He looked familiar but they couldn’t figure out exactly from where. When they peered closer, the man looked up and the radiance from his green eyes jolted through their bodies like a shotgun blast. There was only one other individual both of them had known in their lives with such malicious color in their pigments—the warden from the prison, the cat. Zand immediately hopped out of the car and screamed at the top of his lungs for all the shopkeepers and people on the street to hear, “Taliban, Taliban.” Crowds gathered around and kicked the man as he cried for mercy. Omar and Zand blindfolded him and threw his body in the trunk of their car. They drove to a house and locked him in a room for the night while pondering what to do. For Zand there was not much to be discussed—death—with a little torture and humiliation to get the party started. Although it was tempting, for Omar it just didn’t seem right. The famous lines of the Sufi poet Qaim began to repeat over and over in his head, “If you do a bad thing and I do the same, what good am I?” This was the new Afghanistan after all, and they were doctors. If they couldn’t act responsibility than what could they expect from others? Zand eventually came around to see his point and they decided instead to make him write a letter apologizing for his past deeds and vowing never to do it again. For Omar, the time of the Taliban had truly ended, for now. When people in the United States ask Omar if he is religious, he laughs and responds, “What does that mean, I can’t be an Afghan without believing in God.” When I asked for an explanation, he only smiled and began to quote a few lines of Persian Sufi poetry after taking a sip of wine. “You know”, he says. “The Sufis were right. Nothing soothes the soul like the blood of grapes.” MOHAMMAD Upon returning to Babylon, one of Mohammad’s first major projects is to set up a photo exhibit of the Holocaust with a small library on the side. “In Iraq, the Holocaust was not mentioned

140

Embracing the Occupiers

at any time whatsoever. I met a Fullbright scholar from Iraq last semester and she asked me, ‘what did you do this summer?’ I told her that I did an intensive semester of holocaust studies and she asked ‘What are holocaust studies?’ I told her it is a course about the Holocaust and she said, ‘What is the Holocaust?’ It just freaks you out, seriously. All the problems in the world you know, Jews were behind them—that is what you can find in the textbooks in Iraq. I remember that Saturday Night Live episode, the Mel Gibson one, ‘The Jews are coming and they are running or something.’ It was so funny! It sounded like Arabic TV. It was really just so crazy.” I asked Mohammad how people in Iraq would react to such an exhibit. “I won’t be surprised if there is a negative reaction because all these kids have learned all these bad things about Jews for decades. You cannot convince them, tell them that it’s all wrong in three or four days. What I am trying to do is link this whole thing, to show that neglecting this means that you are a hypocrite if you admit that what Saddam did to us was real. Let’s not put our religion and political backgrounds into this issue. It’s a human issue.” Mohammad sees this problem as part and parcel of larger issues of the Arab and Muslim world—lack of leadership and responsibility for what goes on around them. He used the example of Darfur. “I want the leaders of these communities to answer this. Why? Darfur is the genocide of the 21st century and it definitely is genocide, obviously. It is so clear that this is genocide; women getting raped, people getting killed because they are racially different. Hello, does this sound familiar? But no one in the Muslim world has a big voice against this. They are too concerned about the Danish cartoons. Hello, those people are Muslim too. I think there are a half million dead now. Do we wait until we hit two million? No, okay let’s like, move, let us do something! Oh by the way, I know that war is horrible and I know it is the most horrible thing ever. And I am talking here from experience, but do you think that someone who rapes a woman and puts two bullets in her head will sit down and make peace with you? Oh my God, get a psychiatrist. I am serious. If there is a monster that can do this to another human life he understands one language, the same language that comes from his gun—that is what he understands. He is raping

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

141

women, killing the infants in their arms and you are talking about that beautiful pinky world of peace and peace discussions? God, give me a break.” His quest for people to take responsibility for their actions and circumstances in life became fully exasperated after studying in America, but the motivation began at an early age, from the source that originally sparked his fury with life and society—school textbooks. “There was always this idea and I know some people will say its post-colonization and would not agree with me, but I understand. There was always that picture of the West, as the colonialists with no morals, who just came to our land to steal from us, destroy our morals, and destroy our culture and traditions. I would tell my teacher that the French built the first printing press in the Arab world. Ok, so they were bad, but at least it was a positive thing right? When you have a book to read, isn’t this a positive thing? I love reading books, instead of months spent writing books you could have it one hour. And she would say, ‘oh come on Mohammad. You know these things aren’t true.’ Everyone knew there was a hidden message in those history books we read, this idea that you are not responsible for your mistakes: It is the West, It is Israel, the U.S., Great Britain, this is who is responsible. I mean even if someone did a mistake in the past, blah, blah, blah, do you want to keep on weeping and waiting for a miracle, so that mistake will vanish? Someone will come to fix it for you? You need to be responsible and be a man.” NADIA The Islamization of Afghan society that would come with the Mujahedeen’s take over was slow and gradual, catching many by surprise in its path. The attempted kidnapping of her sister was perhaps the first dose of this new reality for Nadia. Being brought up in a secular household contained in one of Kabul’s more affluent neighborhoods perhaps blinded her and most others to this incremental force sweeping across the land. It seemed to happen so quickly at such a young age, so that before she knew it, her family was crossing into Pakistan without really understanding how this could have happened. Once they settled in the refugee camps, things slowly became a bit clearer. Her father’s family seemed completely different in every

142

Embracing the Occupiers

way—culturally, mentally, and most importantly, religiously. The men sat and ate in different sides of the house and communication between the sexes was always forbidden—even with her brother. Covering themselves was expected at all times, which made Nadia incredibly frustrated and annoyed when the heat would rise more than a hundred degrees. For a while, Nadia and the other women in her family did their best to make the most of the situation, complaining to each other in private. But things grew worse over time. One day several members of the extended family came with marriage proposals for all three sisters and brother. Apart from the rough manner in which it was demanded, the future mates were their first or second cousins. The situation was now truly out of hand and it was time to change. Nadia’s mother eventually made the tough decision that they would have to relocate and live on their own, which seemed to make their male relatives the most upset of all. How could a woman override their demands, they wondered? Nadia always heard stories about the traditional lifestyle of Afghanistan’s rural people like her father’s side of the family, but what was taking place in the current period didn’t seem to have any basis in tradition whatsoever. It seemed forced and almost staged. The political landscape that developed over the last ten years of war had now seeped into the psyche of everyone around it. Afghans like Nadia’s relatives had joined the Mujahedeen in the 1980s to fight the Russian occupation and the behavior she had witnessed seemed to be the result. The resistance in other words had backfired; it was now turned inwards. As these forces became stronger in the society, eventually giving way to the Taliban, Nadia realized that this new type of religious fervor had to have come from the outside—namely Pakistan. “When the contact between the Mujahedin and Pakistan grew closer, this radicalism became nurtured,” she explained. “Once the process changed in the countryside from collective decision making to the Mujahedin’s takeover, these ideologies were brought into power. The first victims were women because they were denied access to education and eventually became marginalized. More importantly, the radical ideologies of Islam valued appearance the most and changed the style of what women should wear and should not shake hands with men. This is how it happened.”

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

143

Nadia believed that what makes the situation difficult in the current time period, was the spread of globalization in Afghanistan in new forms of economic infiltration. She explained that although religion has always been an integral part of the country’s identity, the results from the past thirty years of war have made it incredibly sensitive as well, no matter how minor. The advancement of women in Afghan society may not be contradictory in nature, but when development enters from the outside, namely the West, it affects the dignity of the people making them more reluctant to see the positive benefits from these changes. “Their are very good aspects of my culture, but there are some parts that we really have to quit, we have to reform. I mean there is nothing written specifically saying you can’t do this. The Koran is our book and I have read the translation but I can’t find anything like this. Of course it takes time.” The only way for these problems to eventually disappear was through economic development, leading to inevitable educational advancements, but in what sense? How can it be managed correctly so Afghans can see it is not a threat to their system and stability? While studying economic development for two years at Brandeis, Nadia strategically planned her final move back to Afghanistan knowing full well that it was not an easy task ahead. ALI In Ali’s large family of ten, all (except for the one with Down syndrome) supported the U.S.-led occupation, whereas two of his older brothers shared the same “extremist” views that he despised about his mother. Politics aside, he truly loved them and spoke to them all the time on the phone. However, every so often they could really get on his nerves. In 2004, Ali made a documentary about the horrible abuses that took place by the government against the Sunnis in Fallujah. (It eventually won the Amnesty International film award.) Afterwards, both brothers called him a traitor. When he phones the house nowadays from New York a little small talk always seemed to precede any real conversation: The brothers would answer, “hey terrorist what’s up?” to which Ali responded, “hey extremist, how are you?” It’s mostly a silly game they played back and forth, but at times it could really piss him off. One day they were watching

144

Embracing the Occupiers

the news when the story erupted about the Iraqi (Sunni) girl who claimed to have been raped by American soldiers as she watched the rest of her family die in front of her. The brothers began to yell at the TV as if she could hear them, “terrorist, lying whore.” Ali was irate: “I said whoa, what the fuck, you guys call yourselves Muslims and this is how you speak about a female? How do you know if she’s lying or not.” It’s fascinating how both brothers came to act like this, as it seemed to be perhaps a common story for Iraq and other areas of the world. One brother had his metamorphosis in 2003 right after the occupation began, but the second oldest one, “had it coming for a long time,” Ali claimed. While he was in medical school at Baghdad University he used to be what they call in Iraq a “Michael Jackson guy”—really into break dancing, girls, nice clothes, and going to parties. But because Ali’s family was only middle class unlike the rest of his friends he didn’t have his own car and couldn’t participate in a lot of their activities—going out to restaurants, parties, road trips, and so on. Ali’s father was a taxi driver at the time and Ali became his mechanic. He would spend the entire morning driving all six of his sons to school that could take several hours back and forth, but it was really important to him that they got the best education possible. One time Ali came home early and found his dad crying on the bed as his mom stood beside trying to console him. His hands were shaking and waiving in the sky like he was almost praying. He later found out why. The brother had asked to be dropped off a half a mile from school so his friends wouldn’t notice that his father drove a taxi. This was the only time Ali ever saw his father cry and when his brother came home later on, he immediately tried to beat the shit out of him. As time went on, it turned out that his brother couldn’t keep up with his friends’ lifestyle, so they began to isolate him. Instead of trying to make the best out of things he became detached and stayed at home. “He decided to be the lazy man, like a cleric in a mosque, and just tell people, ‘ah, God, the sons of the monkeys, the pigs, the infidels, Americans, those Israelis, those Jews’ instead of going to work and being useful for society,” Ali recalled looking back on the situation now as an adult. His brother eventually met a new group on campus—the Islamists. As the government had banned these groups (whether

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

145

Shiite or Sunni) they used to meet in secrecy and spend hours practicing the Shiite rituals like one sees on CNN nowadays. So everything slowly began to change. He burned his Michael Jackson albums, wore religious clothes, and now worships the Shiite government, “where any action taken by them, has to be right the one. That’s just how it is nowadays for my family and for most Shiites—especially since the Americans arrived.” Ali claimed to hate both groups: Sunni and Shiites. “The last time I prayed was before my final exam for medical school. I swear I answered every question correctly, but I only got a 95%, not the 100% that I saw while praying. Oh well! That was the last time I prayed,” he laughingly told me. What Ali always found funny about both groups is their similar story about the end of time and one common enemy. “The Qu’ran says that at the end of days, al-Mahdi, the Muslim version of the messiah will come and help kill all the Sheiks and Imams because they are the liars and will then tell all Muslims ‘watch out, there is a Jew hiding behind the stone, you must go and kill him.’ So you see, both of them unite at the end—isn’t that wonderful? And as always, it’s the Jews. It’s the Americans. It’s the West! I don’t honestly know what they think they can achieve but as we say in Iraq, they are swimming against the current and the current is a wild one but sometimes it can be calm so pushing it from the left side and sometimes from the right you will not really go anywhere in the end. It is always amazing to me how we started and ended up this way because of these exile dreamers who wanted to build a democratic Iraq with these kinds of people. Their democracy is our destruction. This is really sad to me!” Ali proudly claimed that he would never let his own family act the way his did when growing up. Hiking in the mountains of Kurdistan some years ago, Ali grabbed Zena’s hijab and threw it into the air as she was holding onto him underneath a waterfall. It kind of floated for a while—almost like a scene from a Bollywood movie and then flew away into the distance. It was the perfect moment. She was angry at first, but he later told her, “my family will not be Islamists as your husband is a complete infidel and this is not the way we will think—not Sunni, not Shiite.” She said that if she went to hell she would tell God to blame her husband. “I said that would be fine but as long as in this lifetime you do not wear the hijab.”

146

Embracing the Occupiers

IDREES After taking the job with IAM, Idrees continued to teach computer lessons on the side. It was during this time that he would have his first official run in with the Taliban who one day barged in and demanded to know what these strange machines were. He explained the concept and assured them it was impossible to watch movies (TV and film were forbidden under the Taliban). They agreed to let it stay open as long as Islamic software could be installed. It was a deal and eventually several Taliban members came for private lessons. From this experience, Idrees began to slowly piece together new ways of understanding the Taliban, terrorism, and global Islamist movements—what is really behind all the hype and how the international community has been misled? But his path at this point had only been slightly christened. In the early spring of 2007, Taliban forces in the eastern part of the country kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo his Afghan translator Ajmal Naqshbandi, and their driver Sayed Agha, who was immediately beheaded. After a few weeks, the Italian government negotiated for the Italian’s release by convincing the Afghan government to swap for five Taliban prisoners and some cash. They, in turn, demanded two more in exchange for Naqshbandi. After being refused he was beheaded, leaving behind a wife and six-month-old daughter. Idrees and others circulated a petition among Afghan nationals describing their frustration and disgust with the government’s decision. The morality of the situation was appalling: a Westerner’s life was more valuable than an Afghan’s. Idrees made several initial predictions about how this crisis would eventually play out in the end. All were wrong. While sharing his colleague’s sentiments, he also learned a harsh but valuable reality, he told me. “I was shocked and surprised. It was a big lesson for me about how things are formulated. If this were a fight between the West and Islam then negotiations would not mean anything. The Taliban had Islamic motifs, so if you capture someone you kill them? Right? But this was not the case. The Taliban are crazy political animals concerned with oil and basic political survival and will do whatever it takes to reach that goal. Like two wolves fighting, they don’t care about anything other than the piece of meat in the middle. They got good money and soldiers in exchange for the

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

147

Italian journalist that they didn’t get for the Afghan guy, so they killed him. It was sad that the boy had nothing to do with politics but for those watching he left a big lesson behind.” What Idrees had always suspected from his days teaching computers to the Taliban was now a truth that he held as gospel—Islam was not the Taliban’s primary motivation. Apart from gaining a greater understanding of what exactly he would be dealing with back in Afghanistan, this incident shed some light on other realities that he believed today’s policy makers and American citizens would be wise to take note of. “If we look at today’s events as a clash of civilizations or only blame the religion of Islam than we are missing the real cause of this conflict. Everything goes back to political goals and control of territory. Once we ignore the real political nature of human beings than we use other secondary reasoning. The West and Islam . . . I mean come on, where do we go back and start explaining? This group pushed back this group who pushed back this group back to a time when Islam ends, and then what? The same struggle is there with other groups and then within the West you find it with Greeks and Romans and then different groups in the Roman empire, etc, etc. So there is no explanation with only Islam. Going back to Afghanistan: The majority of Afghans, even if they are extremists, prefer to work with international organizations rather than working or living with the Taliban. Why? One reason is they see their political and economic interests being on the other side. When they see it is being served by staying with Taliban they do it the other way. So at the heart, are realistic interactions.” When it came to understanding the West’s approach to fighting the “war on terror,” the example of Ajmal was even more revealing for Idrees. “This taught me something disappointing, that there is not a firm commitment to fighting terrorism. The understanding that western countries have of terrorism and terrorists asking for things and how we deal with them is not good. There is not a united goal. They just fight for their own best interests. We think there is commitment but clearly the life of one Western guy is more important. So Ajmal is kind of a hero because he lost his life by the Afghan government not negotiating with terrorism while the same is not true for Europe. So I am not sure if this is a “war on terror” since I thought we do not deal with terrorists. This is the policy right? But they do not care when it goes against their interests.”

148

Embracing the Occupiers

Idrees debated these points on several occasions and many disagreed with his analysis. Debate on the topic of Islamism and the Taliban in the United States seemed to have existed between two extremes: Is it a problem with Islam or is it a problem with American policy? Idrees was aware of the issue’s contentiousness but believed people needed to take a middle ground if they were ever going to come closer to understanding just what this perceived enemy was. For myself, the most valuable point I came to learn in his explanation was that nothing in life was certain—always question what you believe in and after you finish, question them again and then again. For Idrees, this was the only way of returning to the problem-ridden land that he will eventually come to lead. HAIDER When a would-be suicide bomber or insurgent was captured, hundreds of journalists flooded the police stations in Iraq and mostly took pictures. As the depths of their actions became greater and results fiercer, Haider realized a piece of the story seemed to be missing: What was going on in the minds of the individuals who committed these acts? Where was their true motivation? Instead of mimicking the status quo and joining the media brigade, Haider found ways to get interviews with the prisoners. The first thing he noticed was that not all of these individuals were jihadists or even religious. Over time, two other groups became more pervasive: ex-Baathists and criminals. He always feared the latter the most as a journalist. Apart from the different groups that these individuals came from, there was another surprise waiting—religion was hardly ever the reason behind these peoples’ actions. More so, it was barely even discussed. Haider would ask, “why did you try to blow yourself up?” and the man (or boy at times) looked at him like he was crazy and said the same thing almost 99% of the time—revenge, justice, retribution: “What do you mean, why?” they yelled at him. “They killed my father. . . . They took my land. . . . They took me captive, etc, etc.” Concepts like suicide bombing, jihad, and terrorism were originally so fresh and unclear, that the new wave of these actions took many Iraqis by surprise. Haider included: “I never knew anything about this except for what I saw on TV, mostly by the Palestinians,” he explained. “Israel and Palestine was always the most

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

149

popular thing in the news until we took over. I always thought these suicide bombers were just this weird group of extremists. When I saw them on TV blowing themselves up I would always say to my friends and family, ‘God what on earth are they thinking, they’re fucking nuts.’ But after the war in Iraq, I came to understand them. I in no way support it, but I could see how they would do that.” Many people, including myself, were shocked at how quickly the insurgency began to spread in Iraq and how horrific the attacks became. I have always wondered how other Iraqis viewed the metamorphosis. “At what point did it begin to dawn on you how an individual could take part in these actions?” I asked Haider. “I have seen what it means to not have basic needs for years. I remember one night I noticed my mom wearing jeans to go to bed and not her nightgown and I asked her why. She said that if the house gets bombed she wouldn’t want people to see her dead body naked so she wanted to be covered. Can you imagine going to bed with this idea? It struck me so bad. Hearing this from your own mother can make someone go crazy. But things like this are facts for years and years.” “So what exactly is the problem for Americans viewing these events?” I inquired. “People want us to believe it’s only about religion. It could never be their policies. ‘Its them, they’re crazy,’ saying things like this makes them feel better. Meanwhile some here, especially in New York, never blame the insurgency. They say we would fight as well, no one likes troops in their country, they were not invited etc, etc. Others say they are fanatics, it is about religion and that’s the end of the argument. People ask me ‘are you Sunni or Shiite’, and they have no idea at all what either of these mean. So why would it make a difference? It shows how limited people are here. Would you go around asking are you Protestant or Catholic? So I was shocked to see what people believe here.” “So what do you tell people?” I asked. “I always say that every case is different. You can’t say people blow themselves up because of this or that. It’s an illness. It depends on the background. Its like saying, America has the highest percentage of suicide rates in the world. So why do people commit suicide? Their boyfriends or girlfriends dumped them, or they are gay or they lost everything or they had an accident. Well in the

150

Embracing the Occupiers

Middle East it’s the same thing. It can be about religion, but it depends on the person; how they were raised, their social life, what the imam tells them, all these things. People in the U.S. love black and white, people love labels, people love personal characters: Are you republican or democrat, religious or non-religious, Christian or Muslim. Everything has to be labeled; there is never anything in gray. So with suicide bombing, people take the two extremes and nothing makes sense anymore. We need the middle ground.” “And what is the middle ground?” I inquired. “There are two things: Its not right for people to say they would never blow themselves up. Most would do so if they were desperate and have lost everything, but even that’s not enough, they are still oppressed. Suicide bombing is a violent form of expression. It’s a statement. Their voices are not being heard. If they do it at 2 p.m. they will definitely be on the headline news. So I blame the media. Perhaps if they covered them less and less then people would not do it so much. Of course there are different reasons: religion, personal, or drugs, but a lot of it is a form of expression. They’re putting a statement there for everyone to see.” “What kind of role does Islam play for these people?” we discussed. “It means different things to different people. It’s like saying what is right and wrong? Same thing with religion. Islam is not the cause. Religion is like nuclear power; you can use it for electricity and to bomb Hiroshima. So its how you use it. Any religion can encourage violence. Everywhere there are people who highjack certain theories for the marketplace. In the U.S. people choose their actions as democracy and freedom and this is what sells as a cover. In the Middle East they have religion.” ZABI Zabi considered himself a pious Muslim who followed all of Islam’s more rigid tenets: praying five times a day and abstaining from alcohol—even while in the United States. Throughout war and different periods of extremism in the name of his religion, Zabi never gave up his faith—on the contrary, he believed it made him stronger. Many did the exact opposite. The amazing thing about the Taliban’s rule was not how many people adopted their extremist version of Islam but the number who eventually left it

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

151

all together. The logic seemed fascinating: “One of the purposes of these people [The Taliban] was to come and say that they are the opposite of what Islam says, so they wanted people to get rid of it, but Islam is more powerful than that,” Zabi explained. On a trip to New York City for the first time, after being in the United States for over six months, Zabi had his introductory taste to a new reality of the American life that he read about and watched in movies but was now seeing in person—beautiful women—drunk, half-naked, dancing on tables, and loud as can be. As his previous nightlife in Eugene, Oregon, was mostly spent studying or out for a quiet evening with friends, this facet of America never quite became apparent, until now. It was a fascinating sight and a discussion broke out among the friends he was with who were mostly Afghans: “Is this the way Afghanistan will become in the future?” one of them asked. Most of them said it would, but Zabi felt otherwise. “Our culture is just too strong, it goes too deep. The structures of our society could never be broken to allow this.” Possibilities aside, I asked if this was something he would approve of in Afghanistan. “Well, if I agree that men and women should be equal, then yes of course, but I would never want to see this in Afghanistan, no way.” He was quite aware of the contradiction: Zabi and his friends had no problem visiting clubs in America (although he didn’t drink) and watching women protrude themselves in this nature. “With other girls it is fine, I don’t care. I can’t change them. But they’re not Afghan girls,” he explained. The discussion continued. The U.S. and international community were in Afghanistan to build democracy, but what did this really entail? Would the results bring about freedom of speech and elections, or would something else follow? Does democracy equal the end of Afghanistan’s precious cultural heritage? Zabi and the rest agreed to some extent that the scene they were witnessing before their very eyes was what the American government (and most citizens) expected as the ultimate outcome for Afghanistan and other Muslim countries under the spell of democracy promotion. Some of the paths along the way were perhaps useful. Working in the video shop in Pakistan and eventually returning to Afghanistan, Zabi slowly noticed a pervasive stigma in both societies—sexual frustration. It was like a plague. Anyone who

152

Embracing the Occupiers

had traveled across more traditional parts of the world in the last decade or so would easily notice the popularity of one movie that seemed to be the biggest hit—Titanic. The dramatic, action-packed scenes, captivating love story, and of course, Leonardo, only take a second seat to the film’s real draw—the one nudity scene. For Zabi it was quite comical: When families watched, everyone placed a hand in front of their eyes and pretended not to look. But on the outside, it was the talk of the town. “Did you see that girl?” people discreetly asked. Zabi explained to me, “Once they see it for the first time they are expecting to see it more and more since they don’t have access to girls and women and since they are not allowed to have girlfriends and sex, so instead of having a real-life adventure, they enjoy seeing someone else doing these things.” Talk of the forbidden pleasures was everywhere. When working for an NGO shortly after returning, Zabi concluded the long day by visiting his friend’s video shop. The gossip inside was palpable from the front doorstep: “Your working with foreigners right Zabi? What is happening in your office? You must fuck a lot of girls?” all the men sitting around the shop asked. Zabi would laugh and respond, “No man, this is not something that happens.” “What about the Afghan girls,” eyes now bulged. “Do they fuck the guys there?” The situation was funny but sad: “The reason they do this is because they have nothing to do all day, but if there were more job opportunities this will not happen,” he explained. Back at the bar, the discussion continued: Why do so many Afghan women become extreme in their beliefs when they return from studying in the West? It was a fact that all of his friends seemed to notice. Many reasons floated around, but the consensus seemed to be that they were protecting their future back in Afghanistan so people wouldn’t gossip about them when they go home. For example, even with the popularity of Titanic, girls in Afghanistan brought shame to the family name if someone found out they had watched it. Perhaps no one would wish to marry her. At a summer camp in Uzbekistan when Zabi was twelve, a young girl dragged him into the back of the auditorium and took off her shirt. He has been infatuated with women as far back as he can remember, but this event was perhaps the catalyst. At parties and family events in the future, Zabi noticed the women gathered

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

153

around. Expectations were low. The best one could hope for was a smile, but a conversation? Out of the question. In University, a date consisted of being with a group for tea—two guys and two girls—and the conversation went from there. Other girlfriends would follow that ended up being simple lessons in futility. His one true love that he hoped to marry was a different story. Both were hired to work for an NGO on the same day several months after Zabi returned to Afghanistan. Apart from the coincidence, there were other similarities, namely music. The girl’s brother also worked for the organization, which made getting her alone for even a short conversation all but impossible. But the flirting continued and Zabi had to act. He made her a mix tape with a little love poem tucked inside. When he returned the next day, he thought he was being rejected and almost threw the tape in the garbage, but before doing so, had the suspicion to look inside. A love poem in return came attached. It was a great feeling. The two “dated” in secrecy for a while and talked openly about marriage but things quickly took a turn for the worse: Zabi went on vacation for a month and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found in the office. He eventually found out from his friends, that she had gotten engaged. Zabi was traumatized. He discovered a way to meet her in secrecy where she confessed her love for him and displeasure of having the engagement forced on her. The other man was the son of the foreign minister and her family had to agree. Sobbing, she left Zabi’s car and returned home. A few days later Zabi heard she jumped out the window only to be saved by her sister minutes before dying. After she recovered, her explanation to the family didn’t suffice—she would marry the man they picked. Back at the bar in New York the conversation eventually turned to more mundane things like music and movies until the group parted ways. Afghan society might have been changing, but no one really knew what to expect. For Zabi, he would take things one step at a time. TAIFA Living under a dictatorship was a problem in itself, but being a woman in the Middle East was something else. The reality of the situation inflicted upon Taifa became so acute that she still

154

Embracing the Occupiers

struggled with the thought today. While grateful for her opportunity to have experienced the freedoms in the United States that she cherished, she knew there were others like her friend back home, who didn’t have the chance she believed they deserved. “Women in Iraq are a treasure that no one is looking for,” she explained. “Many of them are really smart, creative and very strong. But, because of society or because of their families they have to stay at home they have to just get married and make children. This is very depressing.” At the time of her post-graduation depression, nothing short of a full-fledged scholarship abroad would assuage Taifa’s state of mind. Regardless, she knew that if she was a boy, things could have been easier. There would have been more opportunities to find the job she wanted, even if it was still not the most ideal. There was also her family. Although liberal compared to most, there were always restrictions placed on her movements. Sometimes she agreed with their decisions. Stories were common of advert sexual harassment, which if they did not agree to, women were forced to quit and the man’s accountability was unknown. On the other hand were people like her best friend who was forced to stay at home and eventually succumb to the married life. When they commiserated together, the comparison to “the outside” always was invoked. She remembered the sentiments well: “She knows that somewhere else, women could work and participate in life. This just made us more depressed—comparing yourself with others which I think we have the right to do. Those people are not better than us, just more fortunate. You see that your life is pointless, you wake up in the morning and clean the house and listen to your mother trying to convince you of the same old traditions all day long and then you sleep and the same day happens again, for months, and years.” The thought of marriage was daunting—tantamount to defeat— but it was still always there and expected by the people around her. “I was always like, no, no way. I don’t want to marry someone that thinks he has a higher rank than me,” she would tell them “My mother always tells me to look at my father he is very educated, look at your brothers they are good, they treat their wife like a princess so why do you have this idea of men? I would tell her that it’s not easy to find someone. Like I told you it was hard to find a

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

155

friend who shared my ideas. I really can’t stand it. One of my best friends did it but I cannot.” Living in America, Taifa often noticed the fascination many have with marriage and divorce in comparison to other parts of the world—especially the East. She seemed to suspect a quasiorientalist infatuation with how Middle Eastern society was structured. The community was strong, tradition was pure, and the family was a tight, happy unit. For most people Taifa spoke with (Americans and Middle Easterners), the divorce rate in this country was a problem, but for her, it was a blessing and one of our greatest signs of strength. She explained: “In Iraq and the Middle East, being unhappily married is better than not being married at all. That is why there is not so much divorce in Iraq. If you compare it to USA, they always say the rate can reach as high as 50% of divorce and we seem to have more values. But no, it is not like that. Women here can live single, they can get rid of unhappy marriages when they want. They don’t have to stay put if they are tortured. That is what is happening. Yes divorce is very low rate in the Middle East, but this doesn’t mean they are happy for this. The society looks at someone like they are rejected, humiliated and a shame on the family and she cannot do anything else.” Finding a spouse would be difficult for anyone, let alone a woman from the Arab world. In her first year of graduate school, she met a man who was Moroccan and a recent American citizen. They started to date, but right off the bat she could tell things weren’t going to work out. As a friend, he was polite, kind, and charming, but as a boyfriend, the disrespect toward women became apparent. Taifa eventually asked if he would allow his sister to be in the same kind of relationship they were in. He laughed and said “of course not.” That was quickly the end of it and they remained friends after. On the other side of the spectrum, were those in America who constantly invoked sympathy toward the plight of Arab women— the downtrodden, the oppressed of the earth—and looked to console her. While adhering to many of the same sentiments, she had always tried to express that things weren’t exactly as they seemed. Espousing these viewpoints would only exacerbate the situation, she explained. Above all, Taifa blamed Arabs for not doing enough to help fight the reality of the situation.

156

Embracing the Occupiers

In the United States, she was always appreciative when Arabs she met tried to bring her into their community, but felt constant bewilderment, disillusionment, and at times disdain after they came to know her. Politically, socially, and religiously, she was not what they expected from a nice Iraqi girl. She could care less about having them as friends but was disappointed that even in a country like America, the beauty of individualism had not reached everyone just yet. She eventually shied away from Arabs and Muslims all together and laughed when I asked if she ever joined the Muslim Students Association at her school. She never drank or smoked, but tried to find other ways of breaking free from the enslavement that she believed her gender forced her into. With her studies completed, Taifa joined the rugby team at her new school in the city of exile. She always loved soccer back in Iraq, but playing it on a team was difficult. “People would think you were a prostitute if you ran around in shorts,” she said. In addition to the apparel was the tackling, grunting, and fierce flow of energy involved in the sport. However, rugby brought a new sense of liberation. She was a substitute on the team and when called in for the first time halfway through the season it seemed almost meant to be. During this game, the ball was caught and the opponent ran towards her. Without giving it a second thought, she bent down and landed her shoulder into the woman’s knee as she flipped her opponent onto the ground. It was a great moment and she wished others back home could of had a chance to capture the feeling themselves. “Perhaps one day they will,” she said smiling. SALIMI As far back as Salimi can remember the visible surroundings in his periphery were always seemingly plagued with taboos. Art was the antidote. Resisting the forces of religion, culture, and tradition seemed to be in parallel with his existence—never a dull moment, always forthcoming. It began at a young age but came most fully into his psyche around the time he entered the refugee camps in Peshawar. The first thing to strike the eye was how raw life was in this camp. The demons he had battled with were now a fiercer reality— ancient, intransigent, and all the more potent. The camp (although technically more of a small city) seemed like a singular planet

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

157

floating by the weight of its own gravity. The police rarely entered as rules and regulations stemmed from the tribal leaders. When a problem occurred it was solved on the spot. Space clamped inwards and the individual was chained. One man’s business was never his own. What happened in Peshawar, stayed in Peshawar. One’s presence at the mosque could be his most vital asset. It was expected. Those who refused must have been living a life of impurity and thereby a threat to stability. As one would presume, Salimi fit into the latter group. “It was not the way I was thinking,” he explained. “God is not in all of these rituals that they do all day. God is inside your heart. The concept was not clear. It was force not content.” Apart from the Peshawar community, there was the Pakistani police. Being robbed and harassed was one thing, but being called a Kafir by the same people who dedicated their lives to corruption was another. Salimi bit his lip when the police concluded their shakeup with a lecture on the virtues of Islam followed by kicking, spitting, and teasing. Giving a speech right back on the benefits of humanism was a hollow practice that could only land one in jail. Inside the camps, religion was the force—the glue that held the society together. On the outside it was downright absurd. Salimi dealt with the new and uncomfortable lifestyle the best he could—keeping his distance and gaining creativity. Then came the girlfriends. The experiences would serve equally important life lessons: The first girl he met while working with street children in 2001. They immediately fell in love and spent most of their time devising plans to meet. The one safe place was the restaurant—the fancy restaurant—where they would spend incredible amounts of money to order food just to have an hour or two to talk. When Salimi moved into his own room at a house she would come to visit, until the others found out what was happening and told her father. That was quickly the end of it. Back in Kabul, Salimi met a doctor who worked with women’s medical issues. She was beautiful, incredibly liberal, and highly intelligent. “So what was the problem,” I asked, after Salimi stopped his description short. “She was an atheist which I of course didn’t care about, but she spent all day bashing Islam and other religions—making jokes about the prophets and peoples beliefs. If someone found out, she could be killed—me as well.”

158

Embracing the Occupiers

After a few months, she had an affair with a married man, and was surprised when Salimi broke it off. When Kabul University re-opened six months after the Taliban took over, there was no telling what to expect. Back in the main auditorium once again, playing music, creating performances, and spending time with friends, the head professor entered with some bad news. The new dean of the university, a Taliban mullah, was going to be closing the Fine Arts department since art was now forbidden. The news was tragic. Destined to graduate in three months, the past three-and-a-half years would now all be for nothing. More importantly, the Arts department was home, not only for Salimi, but for many others as well. It was the last possible glimmer of hope in a land filled with destitution. The only place where they felt safe. Something had to be done. Salimi and the professor devised a plan: they would invite the mullah to come and watch a performance and see for himself if it was un-Islamic. Quickly, Salimi conjured up an idea for a short piece and spread it to a handful of friends. The next day, it was show time. The Mullah entered with six Taliban officials surrounding him—some police and some from the Ministry of Education. Their long red beards and empty faces were fierce and intimidating, but the show had to go on. Salimi came out and introduced his play, “Please Arrest Me.” A man entered a police station and told the officer to “please arrest me” for the murder he had just committed. He soon found out that the man was lying. “No, no, I have raped someone, please arrest me,” he responded back. But once again, he discovered he was lying. “Okay,” he said, “you’re right, I’m lying but I have no money, I am starving. Please arrest me so I can have something to eat.” The officer fiercely responded, “I hate people who have no money, get outta here.” When the lights went on, Salimi took a bow and noticed right away, the Mullah was crying, sobbing. He went to the stage, hugged Salimi and the others, and began throwing Pakistani rupees at them. “I thought this department was against Islam, but I was wrong. It will remain open,” he loudly yelled with his finger waiving in the air. Others in the Taliban government, especially the Ministry of Education, didn’t agree and pressed the dean to close it. He refused. Within a month, the Faculty of Fine Arts had its budget increased and was given a plethora of new paintings, equipment, and

Islam, Culture, and the “War on Terror”

159

furniture. The dean wanted to see more productions, and a few weeks later they performed a night of plays and slapstick comedies where Salimi and the others dressed up like women and made fun of the Taliban’s beards. The room was filled with the dean and other Taliban officials laughing the entire time. The moral of the story was clear: There was no love for the Taliban and their policies, but if one tried to fish just deep enough into the shallow pits of their souls, they might be able to reach some common aspect of humanity—somewhere at the right moment in time. When told to friends years later, Salimi always stressed that above all else the Taliban were just another destructive force in the society resulting from a system that never came to grip with its taboos. Creation was universal and for Salimi, it was the only true structure he knew for change.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 7

After? ABDU Above all else, Abdu always felt he was destined to become a teacher upon his return to Kurdistan, but when I asked him what his true life goals were, he saw things a bit more in the abstract. “I want to become a link between East and West. A source for different ideas—for people to see a different part of the world; a different opinion, a different opportunity that I did not have as a student. I want to make a change.” In building the bridge between East and West, Abdu would strive to be a new kind of teacher, one who can show the beauty of the West and its benefits to the world, without the knowledge becoming a threat to Islam. He explained: “In the Muslim world there were those who preserved the works of Plato and Aristotle but now why we are against it? Why at the time we were ruling the world and now we are in third world? Why at that time the leader of the Muslims, Haroon Rashid in Baghdad, was giving the weight of any book in gold for its translation? But now why are we so sensitive to change?” Luckily, he was incredibly optimistic—many youth from Kurdistan, Iraq, and the Middle East are open to change, he believed. “Almost too open to change,” he told me laughing. Unfortunately, the West was still a place laced with tales of exotic ecstasy, which

162

Embracing the Occupiers

Abdu wanted to counter with true human interactions and stories that could balance both the positives and the negatives. I asked how he would teach some of the more eccentric western philosophies to the Muslim world today, such as Foucault, Derrida, Nietzsche, and others that he learned as a student in the United States? With a determined smile he said, “I could teach these philosophers to students in Afghanistan, Afghanistan under the Taliban.” He explained that they needed to be posed in an Islamic context and invoke current issues of the day. Abdu gave me an example of one of his favorite western literary works. “If I say I’m going to teach Shakespeare’s Hamlet for example, and if I say that Hamlet, his problem is not that he’s crazy, but he is looking for God. I wrote this short paper about this, that Hamlet is looking for God and he knows more than the others and knows there is something that reason and philosophy and knowledge cannot stand up to, there is something else. Hamlet is a philosopher and he tells his friends that there are some things you can’t understand and when they see the ghost, Hamlet is the only one who initially believes in the ghost while the other ones think maybe he is asleep or something. So how come this reasonable philosopher immediately falls into the ghost? Because through his philosophy and his reasoning he knows that this reasoning leads to something unreasonable.” As our conversation continued, I kept having to remind myself that I was not speaking to someone who was necessarily living through these challenges, but returning to them, knowing full well what life was like on the “other side.” After being through this experience, how does one return home, I asked? “This [the U.S] is like being in a theoretical world, going home will be going to the practical world. My life is not here, I am out of my compass—Kurdistan is my compass. I am also sad. I’ve learned a lot, you can’t imagine. And so, I will miss these things. I am acting—this whole thing is acting. Back home it is so easy to be passive. There is not opportunity. You don’t have chances. It is hard to say certain things, hard to do certain things. Creativity is hard. You don’t have you know . . . the support: Like psychologically, emotionally, but at the same time, life is not as easy. Like, cars, TV, schools, accommodations, those things. You see life is a little hard there. I have this theory: People here live.

After?

163

Yeah, people here live. Life in the West is hard—existence is easy. To exist there is to be recognized—life is to live. But it is hard to exist as a different entity, to be there, to be influential, to serve, you know—this is to be active!” Abdu then asked me if he could give some departing thoughts— mostly for the American people who he may have not had every opportunity he wanted to engage with socially, but will deeply miss nonetheless: “I know happiness is there, but we’re knocking on the wrong door, not walking on the right path. We have a lot in common—more similarities than differences, but differences always speak louder. Its how we want to define ourselves—we want to be unique. It is much harder to be similar.” The tape stopped and I could see that Abdu was willing to take up my earlier offer for lunch. As he had been talking non-stop for hours without even so much a sip of water, his hesitation perhaps showed me that he was all too human after all. We ended up at some local tavern on Main Street where elderly couples were sipping drinks at the bar and watching the Sunday football game. The waitress took our order and I could immediately sense that after a year and a half of living here, Abdu hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of understanding the American menu. He reluctantly let me order for him and we got two burgers. Our conversation moved on to more mundane things such as visa regulations and movies. After lunch, I took Abdu to Blockbuster where he immediately grabbed The Last Samurai, something he had viewed more than ten times already but felt the need to see just once more time (cue Bob Dylan). As I dropped Abdu off at his apartment, I could sense he was a bit lighter, and it became clear how badly he needed to tell me his story all along. Dusk was slowly making its way onto the cold metallic streets of Quincy as Abdu serenely ascended the worn-out stairs of the beat-up white house on King Street. I immediately came back to the thought I had upon arrival: Did the neighbors have any clue who lived here? As I made my way out of Quincy, I couldn’t help but ponder Abdu’s future: How I hoped he crossed the border safely into Kurdistan. How I hoped the reunion with his wife was as majestic as his poems described. How I hoped he became the teacher in Iraq that he never had as a child. How I hoped!

164

Embracing the Occupiers

OMAR With Afghanistan now open for business, everyone seemed to have new use for the freedoms being granted. For Omar, this really translated into one special force entering the country—knowledge. He continued to work in the hospital as Kabul began to take on a new life with what seemed like endless possibilities. Apart from music and countless festivals, a new intellectual arena was opening up, where scholars began deconstructing this vast concept called Afghanistan. It was there that Omar would listen to a lecture about the people of the Khondoz province (where his father was from). The old man from America explained his father’s people in such precise detail that he had never quite heard before. How they thought and felt through different periods of history and where they saw their place in contemporary Afghanistan. The old man’s name was Dr. Whitney Azoy, an anthropologist who had been studying Afghanistan for several decades. When the talk concluded, Omar was enraptured and immediately introduced himself to express appreciation. Dr. Azoy was equally impressed with Omar’s zeal and wisdom for such a young man. He eventually asked him to assist with research. Omar was delighted and agreed on the spot. The two took a road trip to the north of the country, traveling through different provinces and meeting with various ethnic groups that Omar only knew from his history books as a child. Their project was to collect information for an oral history project that would showcase rural peoples’ lives over the last thirty years of war—the unknown and unspecified consequences. As Omar explained, it was truly an awakening moment: “I thought I knew about these things before and that I was a good historian. But after this trip, I realized I was blind. I saw the poverty. I saw destruction, pain and then I saw hope. I saw myself as a small person living in a city, who knows very little about the truth in my country and I realized I should not accept anything until I see it for myself.” His vision seemed brand new as he witnessed a country and nation being reborn. His experiences on the long road trip and others to come gave Omar the ability to see the lives of Afghanistan’s people as they truly were—filled with hardship and struggle, but simple and beautiful at the same time for what little things seemed to be valued most: the process of making tea, or witnessing a

After?

165

friend return to the village after many years away. Each experience helped bring him one step closer to understanding the life and mentality of the rural areas as the face of Afghanistan’s transition that he could now finally appreciate. He recalled speaking to a large, burly man who held a picture around his heart of his horse that was killed years ago by the Mujahedeen. He sobbed in Omar’s arms as he told the story. “Look what they did to my baby,” he screamed. On another occasion, he met a man whose brother died from some disease a few days before and was in utter agony. After speaking about his life and community, he told Omar “after meeting you my grief is gone.” After a long conversation with Dr. Azoy, Omar decided that becoming an anthropologist would now be his goal. The various trips taught Omar that above all else, anthropology would help him create a new way of writing history. “I realized if I was able to make them [rural people] known, to take their lives and put them into history, I can completely redefine the history we have right now, which is not told by those above but by those who made it. I thought, if this can be done, we would not have these ethnic problems anymore, these injustices, it would be based on science and truth.” A Master’s degree would have to come first. Studying in the United States would help Omar develop a framework for putting these problems into an action plan when he returned. For the first time in his life, he would have the opportunity to think freely with strength and clarity. Apart from gaining a greater understanding of America’s rural parts, his road trip also made the villages in Afghanistan take on a new sense of meaning for what he could do with anthropology. I asked him to explain: “When I go back to Afghanistan everyone in my village and province will ask me lots of questions and look at me with the suspicion of being totally Americanized. So I wanted to know what Americans think of us and based on that, I could tell Afghans how they are perceived. In the long term I want to let them understand what others think of them as Afghans normally don’t care—only what they think of others.” He admitted that such a task will be a challenge and he would have to take small steps along the way. Upon returning, he plans to begin working for the government or university in some capacity and write reports on different issues in Afghan society. His goal

166

Embracing the Occupiers

was to do something that he considered unique in Afghanistan’s history: Analyze Afghan issues for Afghans, especially the problem of ethnic fragmentation that has plagued the country for centuries. The key, he explained, was not to confront the people in the villages directly as this would only backfire like it did with the Russians and Pakistanis before him. He would need to be indirect and come from the inside: “I will write about who are the Afghans and what people think of them,” he explained. “In doing so, I will have the ability to open whole this crest that covers all Afghan personalities of always thinking about themselves and not considering the others’ idea. For instance if I define Afghans for Afghans, or Uzbeks for Tajiks, Hazaras for Tajik, they for the first time in the history of this country can read something about themselves. This will shatter their own source of pride and then hurt them— then they will change. When you learn something about yourself you have more appreciation, this way I will contribute to ethnic stability. I will uncover that. When there is a shared value among them, that will bring stability.” I asked how Afghanistan still being under occupation for the indefinite future would hinder stability? “It is not an occupation,” he fiercely argued. “And God have mercy for the souls of the occupiers if it ever becomes one. Right now it is the only way to fight the global menace that is imposed on us mainly through the game being played in the region by our neighbors.” It pained me to ask, but I was curious as to what he believed would happen if the United States one day departed. Would the Afghan people be able to fend for themselves? “I am sure we will win and if the Americans leave which will not be surprising, we will fight the global menace of Talibanization again. If you have such a menace that not only hurts me but threatens everyone, they will fight that menace. I’m quite optimistic, but it is not something that we eradicate in a year or three or five, but think about it: Six million children go to school and in some time, they will not be in favor of seeing their schools closed and women being beaten. So in 10 years perhaps, we will be strong enough to stand up to this menace ourselves.” MOHAMMAD At the time of my visit, Mohammad was wrapping up his last semester at school and appeared incredibly stressed about where

After?

167

he would end up. Mohammad’s mouth—which was once forced to be a sealed ensemble of pent up rage and energy—had been cut loose with the overthrow of Saddam. He was now ready to let the world know what he thought and nothing was going to stop him. Unfortunately, some events took a turn for the worse and at the moment, Mohammad’s future was uncertain. One can safely say it all started with the Iraqi reality TV show “M&M,” or Mohammad and Molton that was a huge hit in Iraq about a year after the Americans landed. The popular show chronicled the lives of an American soldier and his translator traveling around South Central Iraq, interacting with people, and discussing issues of reconstruction. In Babylon and beyond, Mohammad was quickly becoming a celebrity, “The show was pretty popular,” he explained. “If a cab driver picked me up he would say, ‘you’re that dude from TV. I will not take money from you, no way.’” Shortly after the series took off, phone calls began to come to the house warning his mother that if Mohammad did not quit the show, he would be killed. One day, several men in black masks showed up at the family’s house and slightly beat up his brother; leaving him with the message that Mohammad needed to quit the M&M show right away—or else? He didn’t, but bought a gun instead, and as if just coming out of a Hollywood western he told me with big eyes, “But I was thinking, what if there are like, four guys? I can stop one but not the other three guys.” The police and armed forces ended up tapping the phone line and would drive by his house several times a day. M&M ended after a year but the threats kept coming. Mohammad left for the United States in the summer of 2005 but didn’t tell anyone except his immediate family for fear of his safety. However, being well known for working with the U.S. Army and then suddenly disappearing, caused conspiracies theories to emerge—even among his friends. The biggest rumor of all was that he was sent off to a CIA boot camp. While in the United States, the frequency of the letters sent to Mohammad’s house increased while the content became scarier— bloodier threats dressed in Islamist garb. Not wanting to distract Mohammad from his studies, his family kept the barrage of notes a secret, until one day they stopped being mailed altogether and found instead attached to a knife that was stabbed through the front door. Mohammad had video cam talks with his family at least once a day during his first year in the United States, so when

168

Embracing the Occupiers

they began to cease he knew there was a problem. His family moved out of Babylon, feeling their house was no longer safe, but didn’t want Mohammad to know until he yelled at his brother one day to disclose the truth. Mohammad was clearly worried about his future, ending several sentences of our interview with, “And when I go back, well, if I am not killed first before that is.” In fact, he was pissed off about Iraq in general, not understanding how things became so bad. “Oh, I was so stupid,” he lamented. “I thought everybody would be excited when the Americans came, that everyone’s rights would be respected, no matter what their faith. I really thought this would happen. I was like, okay, we have this huge history and tradition and everything and we will have these principles in our community and we will be like perfect with this historical background and these new sets of rules and frames that will enrich our society. We will be the new paradise in the Middle East. That is what I thought.” Mohammad’s blame was fierce but at times faceless, “They need to begin making bold decisions,” he yelled at me. “They need to realize that we can’t live together.” I asked him to explain: “Iraqis think we can live together. They don’t want to admit that they can’t live together, do not want to live together. They don’t want to admit this because they were forced to live together and they will keep on doing this. The violence will keep on escalating and there will be no end to this problem. Unless Iraqis reach a point where they reconsider our history, reconsider what is going on, what happened in the past, nothing will change. This idea that Iraqis can live together—really—do they have the ability to live together? I really don’t think so. You want proof? After the fall of Saddam you have the south dancing calling him the criminal murderer and then you have the entire north, except the Kurds of course, calling him a martyr; doing all these funerals for him. And you want us to live together? People be honest! There is obviously no way to live together. This is what I think.” Apart from establishing a Holocaust museum, Mohammad dreamed of one day becoming a professor at Baghdad University where he could create his own lesson plans filled with drama and interaction. He wanted to make films, “about those that don’t have voices in the Middle East,” he explained. “Like the well educated man that has a horrible job and wants to make changes

After?

169

in his community but can’t. The woman that discovers she can’t have kids and her husband takes another wife. Or the girl who is 18 and her family refuses to send her to school because she is from the countryside. There are a lot of things we need to shed light on in the Middle East. A lot.” His family in the future would be large and whatever it took, he would make sure the children received an education in America— the dream that he had for his mother and aunt, if he could only go back in time and somehow make it happen. My trip to Binghamton was the last time I ever spoke to Mohammad. I never did quite figure out for sure where he ended up after graduation—exile somewhere in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, or perhaps back in Iraq. Wherever it might have been, I liked to believe it was a place filled with as much color and tranquility as that entrenched in his mind since childhood. If not, hopefully the environment allowed his imagination the ability to craft the ideal world that Mohammad always dreamed of. NADIA The hardest new aspect of life Nadia would need to get used to back in Afghanistan, she told me, was exercise, or lack thereof. Dressing differently, not walking alone, and not staying out late were things she could get used to. But the former, especially biking to work, would be missed most of all. For the time being, she would have to adapt—there was a country to rebuild and if she couldn’t make the necessary sacrifices, then who else would? For the time being, Nadia planned on returning to UNICEF where she would begin her plan of attack for the future. The most important step, she believed, was to start a system of campaigns to slowly change the culture needed for women’s rights to flourish: “Women need a political voice; it gives them stability and it even changes the culture around them. Why should we be dependent on men all the time? They’re a lot of forms of violence inside the house and the community because we don’t have economic stability? They have to tolerate this. Some of them don’t even know what is happening around them and they are very happy. If you go to the rural areas; a girl who is 12 years old, her biggest dream is that someone gets married to her and they have children. It is the worst form of poverty

170

Embracing the Occupiers

because people don’t even know what is going on in the world, how to live a normal life. Their biggest aim is to just make life and I think it has to begin by changing the critical consciousness.” In the short term, Nadia planned on using her job within the UN to begin advocating for new types of reform that will specifically target gender issues. She hoped that after some time it would eventually trickle down to other organizations and government bodies where she saw an absence: “I am always surprised that they never talk about these issues. I mean they are saying that they are doing a lot of things and I really appreciate that, but the problem is maybe, there are so many issues that they don’t see this part. Maybe their priorities are different and we have to reshape those priorities to see that it can benefit Afghanistan for the long-term.” On the side, she planned on establishing a think tank in Kabul University where, apart from analyzing specific women’s issues, she would aspire to engender the creation of gender specialists within various fields of development in Afghanistan. “When you don’t know about this portion of population, you will never be an active advocate of women and development and how to help their advancement. This is a huge gap of knowledge even among intellectuals. When they study medicine or science or engineering, I don’t see any gender specialists in these fields. I don’t see anybody and look, the population of women is growing so fast and their problems are never specifically addressed.” However, for Nadia, the most important thing was that it all began at home: “I want to take my nieces, my sisters to some places, to expose them to new things, to different issues. Many of them are pure Afghan with Afghan mentality; they were not given chances like me to work, to be an international student, etc. So I want to start with my family because I believe that you should turn on the light in your home first. I want to really change the mentality of women in my own family first so at the beginning I will take them out to reflect on what is going on in the world, how to learn to live like a woman, how to improve yourself, your competencies but slowly, slowly.” Nadia was modest in our discussion, but had to admit after some time, that her goals for the long term were a bit more magnanimous: Minister of Economy, President of Afghanistan, and finally Secretary General of the UN. Apart from the problem of gender,

After?

171

we talked about other important issues facing the future: Getting away from an international donor-based economy, increased regional cooperation, and enabling the youth to partake in decision making. With an economy primarily in the hands of international donors, Nadia believed, that Afghanistan needed to find ways of coping with its own domestic resources and capabilities, gradually leading toward a true system of independence. “We have to count on the local resources,” she explained. “We have to shake people from the bottom-up. We need plans. We need targets. It doesn’t require money; it is a matter of management: Power should be given to local organizations. We need micro-finance programs so that people can have small-scale businesses. We have to create recreational activities, like libraries and greater educational capabilities so they become engaged in the decision-making process. These are some examples that the current strategies are not addressing ” Equally, Afghanistan needed to engage the youth: “We need youth because they are building the future of the country. Unfortunately if you see the government policies there is nothing particular for youth. They have to be involved in everything, particularly decision-making. They should be heard.” Like many other Afghans, Nadia was confused about the role of other countries in the region. who were implementing their own policies, harboring Taliban and Al Qaeda, and stalling progress. She believed that the UN and U.S. government needed to begin working together to establish a regional agreement with Afghanistan’s neighbors that would create a conventional treaty specifying certain rules and regulations that the various countries would be forced to follow. “What would be the most important quality to have if you were president of Afghanistan?” I asked her. “I think the more you value people the more you gain, because people are the real runners up in every system. So it will be something that I will always reflect on in my speeches to the people that you are here because I’m here.” At times she fantasized about what she would say to people: “I will call both male and female equal forces within the society for everything, every single institution in the country and I will call on their contribution for the country. I would speak about man and woman in this country and would not say Pashton or Hazara or

172

Embracing the Occupiers

Shiite or Sunni. I will be there for them all the time so when you value people you redeem them all. So I will value them.” ALI As always, I kept track of the news coming out of Iraq on a daily basis. When a story broke about a journalist being killed—which seemed almost every week—I shuddered to read the names of the deceased and breathed a sigh of relief when Ali’s was not one of them. Though content for a minute, I had to remind myself that someone else’s name had been listed. Someone, maybe just like Ali who had a family, was a member of the community, and represented another small piece of Iraq’s future being literally chipped away by the minute. They would all be missed. Ali eventually returned in one piece. He e-mailed to let me know he had returned and in the same sentence informed me that “being in Iraq has made me more racist than ever before,” and wanted to talk about it. I was sure he was destined to have some fabulous explanation, but like always, he was extremely busy with school, articles, documentaries, awards, and, of course, raising a family in Brooklyn that was still not completely adjusted. My interview would need to wait. I ran into Ali one morning while I was getting a coffee in the East Village. Coincidentally, I had received word that this book was going to be published that very morning and had naturally thought about Ali and when we would finish the interview. I told him the news and he laughed, “In Iraq we have a saying that if you think about someone who you haven’t seen in a while and then they appear, then it means that this person is a great person.” We eventually made a date for a long interview in Starbucks—one last time. Apart from seeing his family, Ali’s trip to Iraq in the summer of 2007 was pretty much a let down—lacking the same countless near-death tales that he recounted for me over and over previously. I wasn’t sure if he was sad about this? He had signed a contract with HBO to make a documentary about an emergency room in Baghdad—one where he knew a lot of the doctors and staff from his days as a doctor. Due to some specific clauses about security, the contract fell through several days after he arrived. He considered creating the documentary himself but soon discovered

After?

173

that the Mahdi army had pretty much taken over security at the hospital. On his first day there, he was in the cafeteria when one of the young soldiers pushed the doctors out of the way who were waiting in line for food and proceeded to stick a gun in the chest of those who didn’t move fast enough. Subsequently, several doctors and staff threw the kid to the floor and beat him up. He ran out screaming that he would come back for revenge and later that week more Mahdi soldiers returned and established full control over the hospital grounds. Doctors standing in line for food would now move out of the way when the soldiers entered the cafeteria without thinking twice about it. Ali was naturally appalled by the situation. Apart from not having the ability to stand up for the doctors who he believed were one of the last hopes for Iraq, there were severe restrictions placed on when and where he could film inside the hospital. The documentary—for now—was officially cancelled. He visited a hospital only one other time that summer: to help his friend identify the body of his father who had been kidnapped by some random gang. Ali used all the contacts he knew to see if could help get him back but was unsuccessful. They were almost positive he had been killed but the information was lacking on where exactly the body had been stored. Those bodies dumped into the streets were periodically collected and brought to a morgue inside several of the hospitals, and so they went to various morgues in an attempt to find him. Each room had bodies piled on top of each other that went as high as the ceiling. Without a proper sanitation system, the blood level on the floors could rise to one’s calves at times. After a few days of searching, they found a man whom his friend was almost positive was his father. With his eyes pulled out, ears cut off, and body completely mutilated it was hard to tell. They took him away anyway for a proper funeral. In the end, they were only about 90% sure that it was him. But what else could they really hope for? After hearing this story, I asked Ali if he really meant “irate” when he originally told me that he had become “racist.” “No, not at all. What I meant is that I am tired of people not saying what they really mean. In Iraq, when you mention ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shiite’ everyone puts their finger over their mouth. Why we can’t we talk about this? This is the problem isn’t it—religion—so let’s talk

174

Embracing the Occupiers

about it. And it’s the same thing here. We can’t say anything about any group here even if its true. So I don’t mean I hate people anymore now than I did before but I’m willing to say what I feel and if it offends people, I don’t care.” In addition, Ali’s new “racist” views have not left out the United States. “When I first came here, someone told me that 90% of Americans didn’t own passports. At first I didn’t get why they were telling us that, but now it is so clear. I’m not afraid to say it: most Americans are idiots and I now see why America fucked up so much in Iraq” He used to believe there were a handful of Americans who were a bit smarter when it came to issues of Iraq, but now everyone is to blame, including most of the journalists that he used to work with. “Sure, they may know more than most Americans, but they still know very little. They go to Iraq for a short period of time and their perspective is from behind an invisible line that they don’t want to cross; that they don’t know how to cross.” Iraq, in Ali’s mind is doomed for the immediate future, with no end in sight. His family was eventually granted permanent residence in the United States and others, such as his brother’s and wife’s family, will soon follow. His wife Zena is slowly working her way toward becoming certified as a doctor, but is still depressed. “She never really had the American dream,” he explained. More importantly, she misses her family. They have tried to buy a house only to find that Iraqi refugees are not the most sought-after tenants on the marketplace—even with a Fulbright scholarship. His two children have started school and his daughter Sarah still has frequent nightmares from the night U.S. soldiers blew up half of their house. At some point, he plans to tell both of them about the real Iraq. Post NYU graduation, Ali spends his days working on various journalism and film projects and can occasionally be seen on Charlie Rose, NPR, or some random conference. He thinks about Iraq all the time—getting angry at the exiles and incompetent leaders who speak on TV and crying at each new round of meaningless destruction—never quite knowing who will emerge from the bottom. I have always hated Starbucks, but only Ali can somehow make a sip of their coffee seem surreal. And with the last sip, he slowly places the cup down on the table and looks me straight in the eyes

After?

175

with the same seriousness I have seen all along. “You know,” he says. “In the end, I am a man without a country. Most people will never know how that feels.” IDREES Apart from seeing his friends and family, the possibilities for the future of Afghanistan seemed endless and Idrees could barely contain the excitement. “If now isn’t the right time, then there is no time,” he yelled. “I feel so ashamed when students come here to study and then leave for good because right now Afghanistan is moving in the right direction. There is a lot of hope and there is a lot of need for people to go and contribute so if people escape now I think they don’t deserve even the name ‘Afghan’ anymore because they don’t have any influence in this country.” It seemed Idrees had more options for a job waiting for him in Afghanistan than Hendrix at a guitar shop, but would ultimately choose to become a senior advisor for President Karzai. “Working with national security issues,” he explained. “Working with the Taliban, all of my passions. I will go back and work with all of them and see whether I was right or wrong.” From the time he began working with IAM until the present, the problems confronting Afghanistan have constantly been on Idrees’s mind—evolving, transforming, and awaiting solutions. He essentially saw two groups of obstacles in his path: domestic and external. In the former, lack of capacity in all aspects and a culture of war have mixed into an ever-disastrous economy, preventing Afghanistan from moving forward. Meanwhile, the country’s geographic position (landlocked between three major areas of the world: Central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia) has made them an eternal center point in the region’s changing politics. “It’s a country that can hardly make its own choices because forces around us are always moving in different directions,” he said. “One neighbor [Pakistan] is a nuclear power with a very fragile state of domestic politics, while the other [Iran] is a theocratic regime trying to become one. Then we have all these Central Asian countries influenced by Russian politics that are all dictators. On the east we border China; a growing powerhouse and then India is right next-door. So it’s kind of a very unfortunate situation for Afghanistan in order to grow.”

176

Embracing the Occupiers

As Idrees spent almost two hours going through all of these problems in great detail, a signal of optimism in his voice seemed to always prevail, even with the bleak report he noted. Apart from education rates (up substantially across Afghanistan that have been helping children strategically assess mistakes of the past), there is the “push that people create,” what Idrees referred to and used as a continual source of motivation for himself and others in his line of work. He explained: “Each time I talk to people in the villages, each time I sit with them I see this great capacity for change. There is so much of a strive to find somebody who can lead them but as we talk in academic game theory when people feel they are in a situation that there is no leadership, its just like an intersection without traffic lights and everybody is associated with the behavior of the other person so everybody will just try their best just to play this game such that they advance their ends as much as they can. So that is something that drives my motivation. People have become so smart because in the last so many years they have been able to manage life without the institutional structures, without leadership and ones to help move forward.” Idrees brought up the example of a blackout that take took place when he was in New York City. “There was a blackout for a couple of minutes and the power went out and everybody was so nervous because it would be a disaster, people would go out and do crazy things but imagine the country for thirty years with no law and enforcement, no power so people always learn the importance of their cultural and personal affects otherwise people can do anything the powerful can eat everyone else but they don’t do it you really help each other to get away with this kind of things. So thirty years like this, later on people will notice in history that this is kind of a unique situation, even if you look at how people cope with the lack of food and lack of resources in the last thirty years. I love this great culture that we have in terms of sharing the final of the piece of food—you would not take it home without sharing it with neighbors if you knows everybody’s hungry, so there is a lot of potential in Afghanistan and not only inside Afghanistan but outside in the refugee camps. That motivates me very much when I sit and talk to people I get lots of energy to become part of this nation.” As one could expect, the prospect of becoming president of Afghanistan in the future is something Idrees and many other

After?

177

Afghans have considered. If the time is right and the people want him then, he believes, the possibility is entirely realistic. “What would be the most important quality needed to lead people who have had these types of experiences for thirty years,” I asked him. “Sometimes I think about how we can unite the country when people have lots of dark spots in the past and they cannot cope with them. I noticed that people make their judgments and decisions about their life and about their government system based on facts that exist in history. So Afghan leaders have to be able to actually cope with all of these important challenges that history created for some people who have had mistakes done to them. We have to clean them. Each time you go and talk to communities they go back to a very dark part of history when they were attacked or killed by one group or power and then you have to convince them to just start over. But it’s not easy, and people won’t do it just because you say so. Their needs to be some kind of motivation that actually enables them to overlook those kind of experiences they have had in the past.” Being president would be nice, but if not, other goals for the future seem just as appealing: “In the long run, my biggest goal is to leave some kind of legacy for the next generation. Leave an example of how we can deal with stuff that everyone thinks is impossible. Impossibility doesn’t sit with me. There are always possibilities and I will do the mission everyone thinks is impossible.” In 2004, Idrees called a friend from the IRC and asked if there were any openings for engineers and if so, could he possibly call his father and urge him to come on board? The father was reluctant, but eventually agreed to work for six months, which eventually became several years. When Idrees asked his father a few weeks prior to returning home, he finally admitted that he enjoyed the work, but would be retiring as soon as Idrees came back. It would seem that anything is possible after all. HAIDER After one long road trip across thirty states, numerous vacations, skiing, bungee jumping, cocktail parties, trips to the Hamptons, every kind of club there was, and the occasional sex party, Haider came with up one small truth about the question he arrived in

178

Embracing the Occupiers

America to answer: With the lifestyles people here were living, why would they care about Iraq, let alone the rest of the world? At the time of our interview he admitted that being here for only a little more than a year, he didn’t feel comfortable drawing any large conclusions just yet. But he did have a lot of thoughts and many surprises. The first was with regard to the American idea of always having two sides, especially when it came to Iraq. “People here have the understanding that there are two sides, Iraq and the American side, and you need to take one. I thought the whole point was Americans were going there to help the Iraqis since they’re on the same side against tyranny and dictatorship? So I find this very wrong.” The infatuation many seemed to have with “two sides,” went much further than simply placing America versus Iraq. It appeared to be an integral part of American culture and politics that inevitably would trickle over to debate about the war itself. After talking to people at all levels of the political spectrum, Haider quickly discovered that Iraq and the people of Iraq are mostly left out of the argument. What they really seemed to care about was being right, but more importantly, showing that others were wrong. “Each side generates the other sides’ misconceptions,” he explained. “So it becomes more personal between them and the whole thing about Iraq and the people of Iraq is simply forgotten. I don’t know if people truly believe what they say, or just don’t like those who believe the other way.” Both sides were to be blamed, although naturally Haider found more common ground with those who were against the war. But what exactly was the latter doing wrong, I asked him? “A lot are just trying to prove to others they are actually doing things. If you gave them a good job or something else to do they would probably stop. Everything is because of people they hate or are just trying to make a statement. I was looking at all the anti-war groups in America: If they sent all of the money they are using for their campaigns to Iraq it would become like New York City. What have they done, but what can they really do anyway? What can they offer? Nothing.” He liked to believe that there was still some hope for Iraq because, “things have gotten to the worst point they have ever been

After?

179

so eventually it will get better because it can’t get much worse,” he predicted. I asked him how long he thought it would take. “Until now I am watching this volcano of hatred just growing and growing. It will take at least an entire generation before any stability comes.” Ironically, the ideal image Haider envisioned was the state of Iraq before the war. “Yes it has to be,” he explained. “It’s so na¨ıve to think otherwise. The more you try to push for a transition, the more it will become exacerbated. It will eventually turn in its own way, but not till its ready. Why is dictatorship bad if it provides security? Why is democracy good? It gives human rights, freedom etc, but if can’t provide security then is it really good?” With sentiments like these expressed in his conversations with Americans, it surprised Haider less to hear peoples’ reasoning for why America had to go to war in the first place, then how they actually believed the United States could ever succeed. He described the most important misconception as lack of trust: “Americans can’t conceptualize facts or events. People have to understand that no one in the Middle East trusts the U.S. They have no liability and why should they? In Iraq, people know what they did: The Kurds know they supported Saddam. The Shiites know they didn’t give Saddam the red light or gave them the green light for their intifada. And everyone knows about the sanctions, which didn’t even hurt Saddam. People don’t forget this. People here forget this but they don’t there. So why should they trust America?” Something he was sure of was that the American people would not be able to stop the war in Iraq themselves. This was certain. One day in New York there was torrential rain and the subways flooded. The stations were packed with thousands of people crammed in and when the cars that did work eventually arrived, people pushed, shouted, and cursed to get in. Everyone in general seemed pissed off that day while Haider thought to himself, “Imagine how they would react after five years of not having electricity, running water, security and a curfew imposed? They would be chopping each others’ heads off.” The only logical solution for stopping the war, he believed, was for Americans to either visit Iraq, or live one day of their lives with similar conditions in Iraq. “The war would stop immediately,” he

180

Embracing the Occupiers

thought. “If Americans lived one day here similar to Iraq in the last five years, not a single person would be supporting this war. Every American would be barging down the front door of the White House.” With a year left to go in his master’s program, Haider was trying not to think about life afterwards. He was twenty-three, and worried that a quarter of his life was over and he hadn’t done that much with it, but what really seemed to bother him was his family back in Iraq. He wanted to be the breadwinner and give them the life he thought they deserved, which included allowing his siblings to study abroad. While indecisive, he would probably move back to Iraq and become a diplomat. It was the best option for life that he could think of because it allowed him to live abroad, travel constantly, have free time to pursue his various hobbies, but most importantly, not take a side like his father did years before him. ZABI Although it was to be a trip filled with danger and advised against by numerous people, Zabi set off back to Afghanistan in the summer of 2007 to direct a major documentary sponsored by an organization in San Francisco. The goal was to interview Taliban officials and attempt to provide a human face for America, while simultaneously bringing to life contemporary Afghanistan through the settings of the rural people often neglected in the Western media. After trying on several occasions that at times meant being blindfolded and driven off to villages in the middle of nowhere, interviewing the Taliban was unfortunately not going to be possible. As a journalist with a camera, there was always suspicion because two Taliban officials were killed in the past after giving interviews. Zabi was disappointed. He always suspected that the Taliban strove to bring world attention to their cause and this documentary would be an opportune moment. Instead, he focused on the other component—how the Afghan people in these areas have been dealing with almost seven years of reconstruction and war. He traveled to parts of Afghanistan that he never went close to in his life before—ones that throughout the past five years were only known as areas of insurgency and Taliban strongholds: Khost province, Paktia, Kandahar, and Helmand. It was an amazing

After?

181

experience that seemed all the more surreal after being in the United States for almost two years. The day Zabi was turned down for good in his attempt to interview the Taliban may have been a blessing in disguise. The same moment he learned two important realities that were almost taboo in western discussions of Afghanistan: The Taliban, or what the world thought was called the Taliban, is really an abstract concept. Zabi was surprised to learn this right away when he asked their spokespeople for an interview. “Which Taliban?” was the common response heard. The different provinces seemed to have their own systems of Taliban rule that could be completely separated from the main nucleus in the east of the country and Pakistan. Even within the different provinces such as Khost, various people considered themselves “Taliban.” But what exactly did this mean? Was there a common system of norms and unity behind the enemy they were fighting? Zabi never really found the answer himself, as discussion seemed to always be in flux and never quite spoken about openly. It is a question that he hoped to investigate more in the future. The second surprise came after he interviewed a 15-year-old Pakistani teenager who attempted to blow himself up and kill the governor of Khost and his interior minister. He ended up detonating himself in a bakery instead and injuring lots of people, but somehow survived. In the interview, the boy appeared to be almost shocked when Zabi expressed dismay at how easily he crossed from Pakistan. It seemed to be commonsense that the border was porous and anyone from Pakistan could enter as they wished, when they wished. In addition, Zabi interviewed different government officials and people in the rural provinces who had witnessed suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism. A common question from them seemed to be: “What and where exactly are the international forces fighting?” they told him. “Everyone knows Al Qaeda and the Taliban exist in Pakistan,” Zabi told me. “But what is America doing about it? It seems something is going on behind the scenes and people now doubt the goals and intentions of the international community. They are not there to help it appears.” At the conclusion of his project, Zabi was awakened to a whole new array of realities that confronted his country. The areas he visited had definitely become worse since he was last in Afghanistan two years before, but other places such as his hometown seemed

182

Embracing the Occupiers

to be completely secure and the community content with the development. Overall, the numerous people he met in the rural areas believed that the country was slowly moving toward peace but a continuous loathsome attitude toward the central government appeared in discussion that drew up adjectives such as “worthless” in their verbal attacks. Meanwhile, citizens were complaining about everything, all the time—development was not coming fast enough and promises were always left unanswered. “There were some schools in the rural areas,” Zabi noted. “But if the Western forces said they would build a thousand schools, they thought it should be done in one week.” Furthermore, the priorities set forth by the international community seemed to clash with the local governments. “For example, they think cultural centers are more important than hospitals, but I think they know best what is needed. It’s like me coming to New York and telling you where is good to eat,” Zabi laughingly explained. As a result of this delay and inability to provide security, Afghans Zabi spoke with saw themselves, once again, as puppets in an international production. The feelings toward the coalition forces were largely negative. Although everyone agreed that the Russians were invaders and murderers, the Americans and Western forces were described as more controlling, which increased the level of animosity. Their was perhaps no telling what the affects would be. Overall, Zabi sensed a lack of responsibility on the part of government and the implementation of its rule. “We have a constitution but no implementation,” he explained. “I remember the attorney general of Afghanistan went out on the street and threw water at people crossing the street illegally and other people in the government ignored him. What does this say? How can people be informed about rights and responsibility when this happens?” The answers to these questions were not easy ones but as a future journalist in Afghanistan, Zabi planned to slowly chip away at the puzzle in the best way he knew how—using the media to teach people responsibility. His expectations were high with aspirations that include expanding the latent independent media where topics, such as the ones covered in his summer 2007 reporting, could have a chance to be heard. Only through his education at Arizona—a

After?

183

school he once loathed—did his mindset about journalism begin to grow. “I see its so much more abroad,” he said. “You can be more creative; can craft it in better ways for people to see. You can follow your own style.” I decided to give Zabi one more chance to expand on his previous sentiments expressed. Laughing he confessed, “Despite all of the problems and so many weird experiences, I have to say that in the long run I learned so much from each step, each argument. Whatever comes my way now, I think of the positive aspects and eventually things seem to improve for the better of you. I had so many arguments but at the end there were always positive aspects to come from it. I was talking so much before but not thinking a lot. Now it’s the opposite.” With these words, I remembered my first impression. Two years later, I came to understand just a little bit more of the enigma named Zabi, but still, who was I to judge? TAIFA With four months to go before graduation, Taifa discovered that returning to Iraq would not be possible for the time being, or even in the immediate future. “You know it doesn’t make sense for me to go to a place where I would be killed,” she said. “It isn’t easy for a daughter to be killed in front of her family or something like that.” Exile would have to be home for now and considering the location, it was hardly a bad choice. Yet there was still some disappointment. Her education was supposed to be a vital asset for the future of Iraq that in Taifa’s case meant fighting for women’s rights and freedom of expression. Without a return date in mind, all she could do was further develop the skills needed for the great leap home to an undetermined future. She was originally selected to pursue a Master’s degree in literature, but with the wide range of exciting possibilities now available at her school in New England, she realized that there were perhaps greater paths of knowledge awaiting her. She switched to cultural studies, where students learned the art of bridging the differences between peoples of the world. “I was a victim of this difference,” she explained. In Iraq, she suffered because of her strong admiration for the values of the West and was often accused of being

184

Embracing the Occupiers

too “westernized” (A code word for too liberal). Different values threatened the social fabric of the society. But what exactly was the threat? In returning to Iraq one day, she hoped to analyze what really drove the fear in appreciating the cultures of the world—albeit in this case, ones from America and the West. “What I really want is for people to understand that something American has nothing against Arab culture. They really respect our culture.” For now, she chose to see the threat through the prism of women in the Middle East: Why do they suffer? What can be done? She had come to the conclusion that the liberation of women was tantamount to an acceptance of the West as an overbearing presence in people’s lives—“like colonization,” she said. If the West was already perceived as not having values, then this change became contradictory to the Middle East itself. She used the example of the hijab: “If there is a call for woman to not wear the hijab anymore, then this is rejected as colonization.” At the time of my visit, Taifa was putting together ideas for a new book: How women of the Middle East can cope with the modern age? She sought to analyze where physical and structural violence against women came from and argued that it was not necessarily religion but tradition. Going back to the hijab example, she explained: “Why would I wear something that is not needed? Fourteen centuries ago these laws were made to protect women’s rights to protect themselves so they don’t show an invitation to rape or anything like that. So now if I show my hair, it is not offense, everyone is doing the same. If I can be financially dependent now, why do I need to owe someone—as just because he is a man? Imagine the Qu’ran: Would it still want you to be restricted to the environment of such a long time ago? After the war happened, women were in danger: harassed, kidnapped, raped. I remember my co-workers were wearing headscarves, not for religious purposes just to protect themselves.” I asked her how her education in the United States had affected her views. “I had them before. But America allowed me to express them. In Iraq I wasn’t allowed to express them but here I can. I feel like a human being. I can write in books, and I can present my thesis to people and someday hopefully work somewhere to fight for women’s rights in the Middle East. And I know I am not offending their religion; they don’t know their religion.”

After?

185

When I asked if she expected people in the Middle East to read her book, she laughed and said, “99% probably won’t. But hopefully some will.” Apart from writing a book, Taifa hoped to use these ideas in her future career back in Iraq: “To work with women’s rights in the Middle East and hope to find a way of protecting women from violence, to escape their situation if it is abusive,” she hoped. There may not have been an exact title for this position, but if she ever did return, she believed, teaching at Baghdad University would probably be a good place to start. In Iraq, Taifa daydreamed about living in America, but when thinking about the potential impact of her work and life with her family back home, her mind occasionally fast-forwarded to an ideal time in the future: “I have this imagination, you know, like some day I imagine myself looking different. I don’t know how many years but I see all of my college mates and schoolmates there. I see my family there and our area and what it is like. I work as a free person in Iraq and help my mother with everything—let her feel she has a daughter who did not neglect her or something like that. I don’t want her to feel that I left her. I want to make her proud; show my family how different I am. I got a degree from the USA and they are all proud of me. I like that imagination.” Apart from their safety, Taifa rarely discussed her family. On the phone, there was nothing but joy in her father’s voice, as he couldn’t wait to get off and relay to his friends and colleagues every iota of information she was telling him. He wanted to know it all: What was she doing? What was she learning and who was the woman she had slowly become over the last three years since he saw her last? He was as proud as a father as could be. Her mother had other concerns: Was she eating enough? Did she dress properly? Then came the inevitable question: No matter how many times Taifa tried to pass off the hint, it never seemed to matter—she didn’t want to have children. “Forever?” I asked. “Forever,” she said. “Life is more open than this. I feel like there are many things I can achieve. Having children will prevent me.” As we parted ways, it felt good to know that at least part of Taifa’s dream had come true: She was an individual, she was unique, she became herself. Although there was really no telling what the future would hold, this point was certain.

186

Embracing the Occupiers

SALIMI “What exactly do you like about movies?” I asked Salimi. “I don’t really know how to explain it,” he said. “But it is my world, a subjective world that exists in my brain. I grew up with it and still it is still there. Sometimes I think there are some social or political objectives, but I don’t know what exactly. I think it is just a force that pushes me that says I should make something.” “What kinds of movies inspire you?” “I’m not really inspired by Hollywood movies. I like ones that are so surreal and abstract that you can’t watch without thinking. In theater I do not believe much in dialogue because dialogue solves everything and gives all the information away and nothing is left for you as an audience. But if I leave a place for you to think, there is a place for you in the process.” Surprisingly, some of Salimi’s favorite movies were musicals. One in particular was Fiddler on the Roof—discovered in Kabul from a dusty DVD stall. Apart from the sensational music, there was his love of the main character, representing an important symbol for the future of Afghanistan. “He is so nice and decent and realizes that this is the time to change, but can’t, and struggles with his conscience. It’s all about change whether it’s his religion or politics. There needs to be a change that you can’t accept at first but when you do it’s better to accept earlier because there’s the possibility of being a winner. But if you change the very last moment, still you are the winner, but at the bottom of the list.” Salimi hoped to see movies with these messages eventually appear in Afghanistan—ones with a sharp comical edge that could poke fun of religion and tradition without the drastic consequences. But for now he does not think this is possible. Cinema in the present needs to reflect upon the last thirty years of war. Salimi saw his contribution as one that can tackle current political issues in light of the violent history and struggle with the all too familiar problem—taboos. A film he was considering for the future was called, “Terrorism and Democracy,” in which an Afghan translator works with the coalition forces and was optimistic and thought he could bring peace and security to his country. But what does this contribution mean when he was under occupation and

After?

187

detained? He finds the answer to this question when he is captured by the Taliban and goes unnoticed by the international forces he was aligned with. The other Afghans there treat him horribly because he was working for the foreigners and he becomes confused about his identity. One side claimed they were fighting for peace, freedom, and security while the other evoked land and religion. Which side was right? What is terrorism and what is democracy? Salimi believed this question was the hot topic of the world today and one that needed to be explored from an artistic context. “Some people fight against terrorism and they have some ideology and believe people are in danger and need to fight. Some say you are invaders in my country, or my religion is in danger, my land is in danger, my ideology is in danger. I’m sick of it man. I open my eyes and there is war. I’ve grown up and there is still war, so when shall I be able to live? Is life only war? I don’t want terrorism. I don’t want democracy. I’m from the third party. I’m from the public. Why should anyone be killed for some mission or purpose? I’m a simple human being, so just let me live my life because it’s short, thirty, forty, seventy years? It’s like a blink. So just let me live.” Salimi referred to himself as an “Afghan artist,” one who will strive to connect Afghanistan to the rest of the world through creation. Not only showcasing the predicaments and violence that are the current problems of the day, but also helping Afghanistan become viewed as a body of cultures, wisdom, and an entire civilization. The knowledge and experience gained while studying in the United States will be used to help others back home by setting up workshops and festivals in the various provinces outside of Kabul and becoming a mentor to the youth—something he never had himself. Salimi’s first film in Savannah was a short piece about life and death: “A man chokes on an apple while reading a magazine and feels he is about to die but after a while begins to breathe again. He looks at his face in the mirror afterwards and dreams that two death angels come and give him sixty seconds to leave the world and in this time he realizes that he is dying and life will be no more. But he has a lot of things to do and he feels regret: Why didn’t he do so many things he should have done? Why didn’t he love people? Why did he do bad things to people? And then the sixty seconds is up and he dies and is carried to the graveyard and

188

Embracing the Occupiers

sees himself. He is carrying his own body and he is in the casket and looks at his own body. He tries to convince these two death Angels to let him go and live but it doesn’t work. He then shouts and asks for 9/11, he shouts for Jesus but it doesn’t work, it’s over. But finally they leave him in the graveyard and he disappears.” He never got a chance to finish the project due to the costs, so I asked Salimi what he would do if two death angels gave him sixty seconds to live? “I would go and make something. I would take the camera and film something and I would say I’m dying but this is my last piece and there would be another life after and I would make something in the grave, until the last moment. I would do something, something good. Not just do something good when you leave the world but have something that someone can get an advantage from. Somebody mentions you positively that you did something for the rest of the world. I would do something like this.” Savannah was my last destination. Each place visited along the way had its own equal quality, but I would obviously be lying if I said they would all be equally missed. Salimi hopped on his horse and me in my car—ready for the long trek up north. The world outside my window passed by in its usual slow pace that had become almost ingrained in my being after four days. I thought about life, I thought about death, but above all, I thought about change—it was now my time to do something. I looked up at the sky before turning onto the highway and tried to make out the shape of two death angels passing overhead. What would I do with my sixty seconds? The thought of gas, food, and coffee suddenly brought me back to reality. For the time being, it was still America at the end of the day.

EPILOGUE I thought to myself just how damp the air outside the psychiatric hospital seemed for a January morning as I waited for the signal. It finally came. The security women buzzed open the doors and I made my way to the third floor. At 7 a.m., most of the patients were still asleep, leading me to truly comprehend for the first time what “acute insomnia” really meant as I watched the awake patients prance around the caged lounge area. It all somehow felt like a dream. But I was quickly brought back to my senses once Abdullah slowly walked my way with four large nurses and the ambulance staff surrounding him. His torso seemed more stretched than when I saw him three days ago while the blackness in his pupils almost seeped out from their sockets. On my first visit, I tried to lighten the mood by telling him that he might be the first Afghan the psychiatric ward had ever seen. He didn’t quite see the humor. Two weeks later, any unique features he once had now seemed to blend in with the zombiesque modality of everyone else in the place. “How could it ever come to this?” I pondered shaking my head. Abdullah had arrived in America to begin studying economics at a small liberal arts college on the east coast. He was plump, jovial, and ready for anything thrown his way when I first met him in those early days of October 2005. But as time went on, things eventually took a turn for the worse. No one could really classify the problem when it all began: Anxiety always seemed to be

190

Embracing the Occupiers

apparent but the weight loss was gradual—becoming just a bit more obvious every time we met. In early January 2007, the call finally came. Abdullah had been sent to the psychiatric ward in Westchester after banging his head against the wall in his host family’s house. On top of that, he hadn’t slept in two weeks. The event went on for weeks as several colleagues and I traveled back and forth to visit the ward, each time noticing how all the more decrepit he was becoming. The unfortunate part of it all was that no one seemed to have a plan. The spring term was starting soon and the thought of missing even one day added to the stress and sleeplessness. People discussed his returning to Afghanistan for a semester before coming back but the idea only made things worse. Abdullah was the smartest student in his tribe and community while being the breadwinner for his refugee family in Peshawar. To enter Afghanistan without a degree from an American university was, in his mind, an act of extreme shame and embarrassment, so much that when the possibility was brought up as an option Abdullah pleaded with me, “Please Jeremy, just take me somewhere and put me in a cave forever.” “How about Guantanamo?” I responded with a straight face, hopefully letting him see the absurdity of what he was saying. “Fine, that is a good option,” he rapidly replied. The issue had eventually taken on what appeared to be a crisis of international proportions. Everyone in the office was discussing it while the big wigs from the Department of State spent days racking their brains on what to do. I didn’t really see what exactly was stalling a decision. I paraphrased the lyrics “should I stay or should I go now,” over in my head and dreaded to think how the Department of State would deal with a real international crisis such as evacuating 20,000 American citizens from a country at war? Oh yeah, this already happened in Lebanon last summer—in no less than three weeks. Nicely done. Eventually a decision was made and Abdullah was not going to be happy. He would be flown back to Afghanistan in a private jet with nurses ready to give him a shot if things didn’t go smoothly. Perhaps my Guantanamo advice in jest would now pay off (An Afghan Muslim freaking out on airplane was probably not a good idea). I was told to remind him that once he got better, he could always come back and finish his degree. The funny thing was, I actually believed them.

Epilogue

191

I’ve always found it interesting how the little things in our daily periphery can be taken for granted. My parents’ house for example, is located about ten minutes from the Westchester County airport. A place I had been at least a hundred times in my life but never quite noticed the private runway for smaller airplanes off to one of the sides. It was there that I would come to see Abdullah away on his journey back to Afghanistan. I followed the ambulance through the gate and parked next to the plane that to my surprise was smaller in length than my apartment. The doors opened and Abdullah was carried out on a stretcher with his arms tucked into the seat belt. As we loaded him on to the plane, he clasped his hands together in almost praying position as if to beg for mercy over and over again. With his short hair, black eyes, and emaciated frame, he looked almost like a Holocaust survivor and Abu Ghraib prisoner merged into one. The situation was now out of my hands and he knew it, but still continued to tug at my jacket and cry out my name, “Jeremy, Jeremy, please, can you do something?” Returning to my car I sat on the hood waiting for the plane to take off. I could see Abdullah’s face in the small window staring in my direction. Then the propellers turned on and I carefully watched their slow ascent into the air. I stayed for a little bit longer and contemplated the events of the day over and over in my head. What did it all add up to? From the little information that I did hear, Abdullah returned safely to Afghanistan and went immediately to his families’ home. I’d like to think that their presence potentially invoked some strain of new emotion in his depleted and warped mind upon arrival, but I guess I would never know for sure. His grant was revoked for good six months later—two months after I left my job at IIE. America ignites the passions in some and haunts the souls of others. Was Abdullah in the latter category? When discussing Sayyid Qutb’s turn to radicalism in light of his student days in the United States, people often refer to the fear that this country imposed on his will. In turn, Islam was threatened and he would be its defender. I never knew the man myself, and what I would have to say on the matter from a historical perspective would be no different than the hundreds of books written about his lonely days in Greeley, Colorado. But perhaps, just for a second, I can see another facet lurking through his mind at the time—besiegement—layered

192

Embracing the Occupiers

and unfiltered. Abdullah will not become the next Qutb, I am sure of that. I peered into his eyes many a time and became positive of one truth—he was gentle at heart. But where would he and others like him end up? This period of history is tumultuous and no one, including myself, seems to know just how it will unravel. As of this writing, the war in Iraq is at the most disastrous point it has ever been, while Afghanistan might slowly become just another “fucked up place”—eventually disappearing from the American psyche all together. Meanwhile, six years after September 11, Islamism is only growing in what seems like every corner of the globe. I don’t claim to have a grand solution to any of these issues that probably hasn’t already been discussed ten thousand times before in lecture circuits, talk shows, papers, and books. How we are so far away from even the slightest iota of a plan is another book and another time. In the interim, I will just have to keep my eyes and ears open for those who have become the missing act of this grand production. Some will shape it, some will create it, and some will imagine it. While others, like Abdullah, might simply fade out into a missing piece of a gigantic puzzle.

INDEX Abu Ghraib, 43, 100, 114, 127, 191 Afghanistan: Culture, 17, 28–29, 37–39, 41–42, 54–55, 70, 79, 105–7, 142–43, 151–53, 156–59, 164–66, 186–88; Era of Democracy, 41–42, 45; Future of, 18–88, 164–66, 169–72, 175–77, 181–83; People, 17, 37–39, 86, 105–7, 164–66, 169–72, 175–77, 181–83; Russian Occupation, 38–39, 45–47, 49–51, 59–60, 64–66, 70; Through the Wars, 16, 17, 59–60, 64–77, 70–71, 85–87, 91–93, 96–98, 101–3, 105–7, 157, 164; Women, 66–67, 91–93, 117, 142–43, 151–52, 170–71 Agha, Sayed, 146 Americans: Hypocrisy Towards Overseas War(s), 83–85, 86–88, 94–96; Ignorance of World, 10–11, 24–25, 82, 86–88, 99–101, 109–11, 111–14,

122–25, 125–28, 133–34, 148–50, 174, 178–80; Negative Sentiments Towards Islam, 24–25, 26–27, 112–13, 126, 148–50 Anthropology, 16–17, 38, 165 Assad, Al-Bashir, 69 Al-Jazeera, 5, 84 Al-Qaeda, 2, 3, 20, 102, 127, 137, 171, 181 Annan, Kofi, 93, 98 Arabs, 5, 44, 57, 70, 85, 94, 131, 136, 140–41, 155–56, 184 Arafat, Yasser, 85 Azoy, Whitney, 164–65 Baath Party, 48, 64, 69, 73, 78, 95, 99, 132 Babylon (Iraq), 17, 39, 88–90, 114, 139, 167–68 Baghdad, 18, 21, 25, 26, 27, 30, 35, 39, 43, 48, 49, 51, 57, 67, 77, 95, 110, 120, 121, 161, 172 Baghdad University, 48–49, 77, 144, 168, 185

194

Balkh University, 46, 50–51 Bamayan Statues, 106 BBC, 16, 64, 89, 105 Bollywood, 77, 101, 107, 145 Bush, George, 31, 94, 125, 131, 134, 136

Index

Graham, Patrick, 120 Guantanamo Bay, 190 Gulf War, 36, 39, 89

Halabja, 58 Hamlet, 162 Harvard Divinity School, 115 CARE, 97 Hazaras, 51, 61, 76, 166 Carroll, Jill, 22 HBO, 73, 172 CNN, 24, 98, 116, 145 Hekmatyar, 60 Communism, 42, 45–46 Herat, 60 Craigs List, 26 Holmes, Laily, 87 Holmes, Richard, 87 Dadullah, Mullah, 97 Holocaust, 115–16, 139–40, 168 Darfur, 140 Hussein, Saddam: Capture of, 70, Dawat O Jihad (D&J Boys), 93, 105; Execution of, 93, 168; 60–61 Living Under, 12, 23, 40, 44, Democracy Now, 23 48, 57, 58, 64, 79, 83–85, 88, Democracy Promotion in Muslim 89, 93–94, 95, 115, 140, 167; World, 2–3, 7–8, 32, 89–90, Reforms Made Before U.S. 102, 104, 113, 133–34, 142–43, Invasion, 72–73, 78; Rise to 151–53, 179–80, 186–87 Power and Iraqis Derrida, Jacques, 137, 162 Responsibility, 93; Role in, Dicaprio, Leonardo, 152 9/11, 79, 103; Tearing Statue Drugs, 33, 76, 150 Down, 94, 99; Understanding Duran Duran, 130 of, 73, 74, 83–85, 93–94, 101; U.S. Support of, 83–84, 179 Egypt, 136 Erbil (Kurdistan), 36 Institute of International Education (IIE), 1–3, 191 Fallujah, 120, 143 International Rescue Committee Fiddler on the Roof, 186 (IRC), 66, 96–98, 122 Foucault, Michel, 17, 137, 162 Iran, 36, 58–59, 73, 85, 175 Franks, Tommy General, 97, 98 Iraq: Culture, 4–7, 36–37, 40, Freud, Sigmund, 37, 137 48, 52, 63, 73–74, 100, Fulbright Program: Afghanistan, 110–11, 136–37, 140–41, 2–3, 7–8, 11–12; History, 1–2; 148–50, 154–56, 161–63; Iraq, 2–8, 11–12; Purpose, 2–3, Exiles, 22, 95, 145, 174; 7–9, 11–12, 189–92 Experience Under American Occupation, 22–23, 26, 27–28, Gay Marriage, 110 83–85, 88–90, 93–95, 99–101, Ghubar, Mir Ghulam, 38 103–5, 114–15, 119–22, Goodman, Amy, 23 148–50, 167–68, 172–74;

Index

Future of, 7–8, 11–12, 18, 140–41, 161–63, 173–75, 178–79, 183–85, 192; History, 43–44; Sectarian Problems, 5–6, 15, 42–43, 58–59, 120–21, 143–45, 172–74; U.S. Failures, 30–31, 83–85, 93–95, 99–101, 119–22, 125–28, 143–45, 167–68, 172–74, 178–79 Islam (see Islamism) Islamism, 135–37, 146–50, 192 Israel, 64, 84–85, 141, 149

195

Mazar e Sharif (Afghanistan), 46, 49–51, 71, 72, 75, 96, 103 Mousali, Abdel, 96 Mujahedeen, 45–46, 50, 54, 60–61, 64–66, 71, 72, 79–80, 85, 91, 105–6, 142, 165 Muslim Brotherhood, 57–58, 135, 137 Muslim Women, 20–22, 155–56, 184–85

Jackson, Michael, 36–37, 144, 145 Jash, 58 Jews, 62–63, 123, 140, 145 Jihad (see Islamism)

Najebullah, Mohammad, 75, 85 Naqshbandi, Ajmal, 146 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 13, 17, 137, 162 New York City, 18, 22, 25–28, 73, 111, 151, 176, 179 NPR, 120, 174 Northern Alliance, 50, 60, 80

Kabul: Period of Democracy, 37; Symbol of Afghanistan’s Modernity, 41; Through the Various Wars, 59–62, 75, 79–80, 85–86, 87–88, 106–7 Kabul University, 16, 39, 54, 60–61, 79–80, 158–59, 170 Karachi, 76–77, 101, 102 Khalizad, Zalmay, 25, 121–22 Kondooz, 37 Kurdish Islamic Union (KIU), 57 Kurdistan, 14–15, 35–37, 57–59, 67, 73, 109, 145, 161 Kurds, 5, 35–36, 58–59, 83–85, 179

Pakistan: Exile In, 21, 60, 65–67, 75–77, 80–81, 87, 91, 96–97, 101–3, 142–43, 151; Police and Harassment Against Afghan Refugees, 65–67, 76–77, 80–81; Policy Towards Afghanistan and Taliban, 60–61, 86, 91–92, 102, 142–43, 167, 175, 181–82 Palestinians, 84, 148–49 Panjshir (Afghanistan), 38, 61 Pashtons (Afghanistan), 37, 61–62, 86, 172 Peshawar (Pakistan), 55, 66, 80, 105, 156–57, 190 Powell, Colin, 24

Laden, Osama Bin, 87, 102 Lakhman Province, 40–42, 66

Qassim, Abdul, 43 Quincy (Massachusetts), 13–15, 109, 163

Mahdi Army, 173 Marx, Karl, 17, 137 Massoud, Ahmed Shah, 62 Mastrogiacomo, Daniele, 146

Rubin, Barnett, 25 Saladin University (Iraq), 36

196

Index

Savannah, Georgia, 10, 32–34, 81, 127, 133–34, 187, 188 Save the Children, 97 Sayyid Qutb, 2, 137, 191–92 September 11th, 1, 64, 87, 94, 110–11, 188 Shakespeare, William, 52, 162 Sharia Law, 61, 135 Shomali (Afghanistan), 38 Soft Power (Theory Of), 7–8 Shiites, 5, 10, 35, 39, 43, 48, 53, 75, 104, 121, 145, 146, 150, 172, 174 Spears, Brittany, 73 Sufism, 138–39 Suicide Bombings, 70, 148–50, 181 Sulaymaniya (Kurdistan), 57 Sunnis, 6, 10, 35, 43, 53, 104, 121, 144, 145, 146, 150, 172, 174 Syria, 67–70, 73, 122 Tajiks (Afghanistan), 37, 50, 61, 91, 101, 166 Taliban: Abuses Committed, 51, 60–62, 138–39; Rise to Power, 51, 60–61, 72, 75–76, 79–80, 85–86, 91, 96–97, 138–39; Understanding of, 85–87, 96–97, 101, 138–39, 146–48, 156–59, 181–83; Views Towards Women, 20–22, 75–76, 86, 91–93, 142–43 Tashid, Dr. Rihad (Dr. Germ), 73 Terrorism, 11, 85, 92, 123, 126, 132, 135–37, 146–48, 181, 187, TOEFL, 28–29, 51 United Nations (UN): 61, 91, 92–93, 97, 98, 170, 171;

Sanctions Against Iraq, 93, 179 UNICEF, 169 UNICORE, 87 United States (U.S.): Afghanistan War, 86–88, 92–93, 97–98, 101–3, 146–48, 166–67; Criticism of, 29–30, 88–90, 122–34; Culture, 6–7, 29–30, 111–14, 128, 130, 133–34, 137, 139, 151; Divorce Rate, 110, 155; Foreign Policy (criticism of), 83–85, 93–95, 128, 136, 147–48, 148–50, 174, 180–82; Iraq War, 83–85, 79, 88–90, 94–96, 99–101, 103–5, 119–22, 125–28, 148–50, 166–69, 178–79; Knowledge Gained by Living In, 101, 113, 115–21, 124–25, 137, 162–66, 168–72, 174, 175–77, 178–80, 182–85; Lack of Community, 13–15, 109–11, 128–30; Love of, 18–20, 31–32, 36, 52–53, 64, 89–90, 114–16, 117–19, 130–32; Media, 111–12, 120, 131; Racism, 33–34, 133–34 Uzbekistan, 49, 152 Uzbeks, 37, 50, 61, 75, 166 Virginia Tech Shootings, 125, 133 Wardak Province (Afghanistan), 62 War on Terror, 7, 11, 125, 136–59 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), 73 Yemen, 67, 69, 70, 93

About the Author JEREMY S. BLOCK was Program Officer for the State Department’s Fulbright program for Afghanistan at the Institute of International Education.