No Questions Asked

A beautiful piece of writing from the blog Baghdad Burning.

Syria is a beautiful country- at least I think it is. I say “I think” because while I perceive it to be beautiful, I sometimes wonder if I mistake safety, security and normalcy for ‘beauty’. In so many ways, Damascus is like Baghdad before the war- bustling streets, occasional traffic jams, markets seemingly always full of shoppers… And in so many ways it’s different. The buildings are higher, the streets are generally narrower and there’s a mountain, Qasiyoun, that looms in the distance.

The mountain distracts me, as it does many Iraqis- especially those from Baghdad. Northern Iraq is full of mountains, but the rest of Iraq is quite flat. At night, Qasiyoun blends into the black sky and the only indication of its presence is a multitude of little, glimmering spots of light- houses and restaurants built right up there on the mountain. Every time I take a picture, I try to work Qasiyoun into it- I try to position the person so that Qasiyoun is in the background.

The first weeks here were something of a cultural shock. It has taken me these last three months to work away certain habits I’d acquired in Iraq after the war. It’s funny how you learn to act a certain way and don’t even know you’re doing strange things- like avoiding people’s eyes in the street or crazily murmuring prayers to yourself when stuck in traffic. It took me at least three weeks to teach myself to walk properly again- with head lifted, not constantly looking behind me.

It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees. Syrians are few and far between in these areas. Even the public schools in the areas are full of Iraqi children. A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.

Within a month of our being here, we began hearing talk about Syria requiring visas from Iraqis, like most other countries. Apparently, our esteemed puppets in power met with Syrian and Jordanian authorities and decided they wanted to take away the last two safe havens remaining for Iraqis- Damascus and Amman. The talk began in late August and was only talk until recently- early October. Iraqis entering Syria now need a visa from the Syrian consulate or embassy in the country they are currently in. In the case of Iraqis still in Iraq, it is said that an approval from the Ministry of Interior is also required (which kind of makes it difficult for people running away from militias OF the Ministry of Interior…). Today, there’s talk of a possible fifty dollar visa at the border.

Iraqis who entered Syria before the visa was implemented were getting a one month visitation visa at the border. As soon as that month was over, you could take your passport and visit the local immigration bureau. If you were lucky, they would give you an additional month or two. When talk about visas from the Syrian embassy began, they stopped giving an extension on the initial border visa. We, as a family, had a brilliant idea. Before the commotion of visas began, and before we started needing a renewal, we decided to go to one of the border crossings, cross into Iraq, and come back into Syria- everyone was doing it. It would buy us some time- at least 2 months.

We chose a hot day in early September and drove the six hours to Kameshli, a border town in northern Syria. My aunt and her son came with us- they also needed an extension on their visa. There is a border crossing in Kameshli called Yaarubiya. It’s one of the simpler crossings because the Iraqi and Syrian borders are only a matter of several meters. You walk out of Syrian territory and then walk into Iraqi territory- simple and safe.

When we got to the Yaarubiya border patrol, it hit us that thousands of Iraqis had had our brilliant idea simultaneously- the lines to the border patrol office were endless. Hundreds of Iraqis stood in a long line waiting to have their passports stamped with an exit visa. We joined the line of people and waited. And waited. And waited…

It took four hours to leave the Syrian border after which came the lines of the Iraqi border post. Those were even longer. We joined one of the lines of weary, impatient Iraqis. “It’s looking like a gasoline line…” My younger cousin joked. That was the beginning of another four hours of waiting under the sun, taking baby steps, moving forward ever so slowly. The line kept getting longer. At one point, we could see neither the beginning of the line, where passports were being stamped to enter Iraq, nor the end. Running up and down the line were little boys selling glasses of water, chewing gum and cigarettes. My aunt caught one of them by the arm as he zipped past us, “How many people are in front of us?” He whistled and took a few steps back to assess the situation, “A hundred! A thousand!”. He was almost gleeful as he ran off to make business.

I had such mixed feelings standing in that line. I was caught between a feeling of yearning, a certain homesickness that sometimes catches me at the oddest moments, and a heavy feeling of dread. What if they didn’t agree to let us out again? It wasn’t really possible, but what if it happened? What if this was the last time I’d see the Iraqi border? What if we were no longer allowed to enter Iraq for some reason? What if we were never allowed to leave?

We spent the four hours standing, crouching, sitting and leaning in the line. The sun beat down on everyone equally- Sunnis, Shia and Kurds alike. E. tried to convince the aunt to faint so it would speed the process up for the family, but she just gave us a withering look and stood straighter. People just stood there, chatting, cursing or silent. It was yet another gathering of Iraqis – the perfect opportunity to swap sad stories and ask about distant relations or acquaintances.

We met two families we knew while waiting for our turn. We greeted each other like long lost friends and exchanged phone numbers and addresses in Damascus, promising to visit. I noticed the 23-year-old son, K., from one of the families was missing. I beat down my curiosity and refused to ask where he was. The mother was looking older than I remembered and the father looked constantly lost in thought, or maybe it was grief. I didn’t want to know if K. was dead or alive. I’d just have to believe he was alive and thriving somewhere, not worrying about borders or visas. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes…

Back at the Syrian border, we waited in a large group, tired and hungry, having handed over our passports for a stamp. The Syrian immigration man sifting through dozens of passports called out names and looked at faces as he handed over the passports patiently, “Stand back please- stand back”. There was a general cry towards the back of the crowded hall where we were standing as someone collapsed- as they lifted him I recognized an old man who was there with his family being chaperoned by his sons, leaning on a walking stick.

By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily… in the newspapers… hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own… especially their own.

We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.

The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too… Welcome to the building.”

I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

Write to Miami Herald reporter Nicholas Spangler and tell him he needs to show more respect to anti-war protestors.

This guy is goofy, but at least he is trying to express his disgust and anger about an unjust war. Take note of how Spangler describes why this lumberjack is protesting (in bold below).

Michael Tisdale runs near the Federal Building in downtown Miami in a small bathing suit to protest the Bush administration. The run ended at the Freedom Tower.

SOUTH FLORIDA, U.S.A. BY NICHOLAS SPANGLER

Making a run for freedom
By NICHOLAS SPANGLER
nspangler@MiamiHerald.com

The remarkable thing about running through downtown Miami at lunch hour in nothing but Nikes and a red, white and blue thong is how many people don’t notice.

They were talking on their phones; shuffling documents; concentrating on walking.

Not until he climbed the steps of the Miami-Dade Courthouse did a few lawyerly types point and smile at the nearly naked man. He was Michael Tisdale, a lumberjack hailing from the Redland, protesting the state of the nation.

This had nothing to do with his being a lumberjack.

Internet research had revealed what he took to be a sinister conspiracy of immense scale, linking the war in Iraq to the global military-industrial complex and profits for key figures in the office of the president of the United States, basically at the expense of young soldiers who are getting their arms and legs blown off on a daily basis, and nobody cares!

”I don’t get it,” Tisdale had said earlier over coffee at Diana’s, on Northwest First Street, clothed.

“Does someone in your own family have to be killed or wounded before it hits home?”

He has stewed for months. The memory of an event he knew only from newspaper accounts came back strong enough to be a vision: “I see this Buddhist monk — a man — pour a gallon of gasoline over his head and set fire to himself and sit there and burn. That’s a statement!”

His own statement was be less dramatic, maybe, but also much less fatal: a solitary man’s final desperate sacrifice, retooled for the age of irony.

So at noon, outside the federal building on the corner of Southwest First Avenue and First Street, Tisdale said to those around him, “I’m going, brothers.”

Then he took off his shirt and dropped his drawers. At this moment a man in a blue Volkswagen drove by and yelled “Freedom!”

One block north, outside the county courthouse, 50 demonstrators materialized with signs calling for the impeachment of the president.

PATRIOTIC THONG

Tisdale’s back wore a henna tattoo that read Freedumb Run and his nether-region a stylistically hideous but patriotic thong, bought some days in advance at a Lincoln Road boutique.

Tisdale is 44 and has gotten to this point in his life never having worn one. He’s the kind of guy who, should he get to the beach, would wear swim trunks down past his knees.

His job, which involves salvaging dead mahogany trees, keeps him in decent shape but he is by no means buff.

Also, probably, only underwear models should wear thongs.

Now he jogged north, with a short jogging-in-place interval before the light changed at Flagler Street.

The bells of Gesu Catholic Church pealed; the kids at Miami Dade College used their phones to take pictures; the Haitian cabbies outside the Holiday Inn on Biscayne Boulevard nodded, because nothing under the sun ever surprises a cabbie.

FREEDOM TOWER

The Freedumb run was 1.2 miles long and terminated, sweatily, at Freedom Tower.

”What’s going on here?” said the guard.

”Freedumb run,” said Tisdale.

”I understand that,” said the guard, who didn’t, “but this is private property you’re on.”

This might have been grounds for debate but before long, from out of nowhere, a beautiful woman on a black BMW motorcycle swooped down the boulevard and stopped next to the sidewalk.

Tisdale got on back and they headed south toward the courthouse on Flagler to the impeachment rally, already in progress.

E-mail nspangler@MiamiHerald.com

From a reporter in Iraq:

The shooting last month involving Blackwater security contractors remains big news in the United States. Not here though. Soon after the story broke, it faded from the front pages.

The truth is that no one in Baghdad was very surprised to learn that on Sept. 16 innocent civilians had been killed in a hail of American gunfire. They were more likely to be thinking, “Oh, not again.” Of course some were angered, but over the past three years too many like incidents like this one have dulled people’s outrage.

Besides, they have more pressing worries: how to run a household on two hours of electricity a day; what school will keep their children safe from ethnic bullying; which route home is best for avoiding kidnap. They aren’t outraged about these things either. With weary determination, they just find ways to carry on.

It’s true that the violence has abated somewhat. One set of statistics from Iraq’s Health Ministry — which gets its figures from by counting up corpses in the country’s hospitals and morgues — shows that the number of Iraqis who died violently dropped by almost half in September compared to August.

But people who live here believe that’s partly because the ethnic cleansers — the gun-toting militia thugs — have succeeded. Frightened Shi’ites have moved from their homes in mixed neighborhoods to new accommodation among other Shi’ites, where they find some safety in numbers. Sunni families have done the same.

Anyway, these new, improved low-death statistics still mean that, on average, almost 30 Iraqi citizens died violent deaths every single day in the month of September.

Thanks to CBS reporter  Elizabeth Palmer. Sometimes we need to be reminded about the challenges those living in a war zone face every day.  In war, humanity loses.