Gazing at hell without blinking
Iraqis in Egypt draw inspiration from the perseverance and spirited resistance of their compatriots back home, reports Gamal Nkrumah
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Nassir Shamma admiring the "Sumaryan Winged Taurus" at the Iraqi Antiquities Department of the Louvres Museum, Paris, in 1996
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Intense fear and anger welled up in one big rush among the Iraqi community in Egypt as news of the invasion of Iraq by United States and British forces hit the headlines. Even as news of the nightmarish bombardment of Iraqi cities was being broadcast, Iraqi residents in Egypt reached for their phones and called relatives and friends back home in Iraq. It is difficult for Iraqis in Egypt to contain their emotions. News of American cruise missiles hitting a particular suburb where family or friends reside instantly raises the alarm bells in Egypt's 10,000- strong Iraqi community.
Still, Iraqis in Egypt are learning how to overcome negative, defeatist and dead-end thinking. They are learning how to quell intense fear. The anger is often uncontrollable. Ironically, Iraqis outside the country are inspired by their compatriots' examples at home. National pride is of far greater importance to those inside Iraq than physical comfort.
"I am amazed by their self- possession. There is grief and sorrow in their tone but there is also defiance and steadfastness," Ferial Ghazoul, an Iraqi professor of literature at the American University in Cairo, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
"An elderly cousin wondered: 'If the Americans don't care about Iraqi lives, shouldn't they at least care about their own soldiers despatched to a futile war?' My cousin is an elderly apolitical and not highly educated woman, an ordinary Iraqi woman of her generation," she said.
Those living abroad are strengthened by the heroic resilience of those at home. "I derive the power to go on from their strength and steadiness. Clearly the sense of the tragic goes hand in hand with this sense of dignity in today's Iraq. What is extraordinary in Iraqi resistance is that it is by no means reserved for the exceptional few. It is a collective mood in which everyone partakes," Ghazoul said.
An estimated 7,000 Iraqis living abroad have returned to Iraq since the outbreak of hostilities to help in the struggle against the US and British aggression. Acts of bravery and good neighbourliness abound. Caring for the community has become commonplace. The dynamics of family togetherness are also at work.
"When members of my family express anxiety, it is mostly related to children. They tell me night and day have become one: a long succession of bombardments. They seem to be gazing at the hell which has been let loose without blinking," Ghazoul explained. More than 60 per cent of Iraq's population are children under the age of 16. There is no consoling story that can soften the harsh truth that children are most vulnerable in war situations.
Other Iraqis concur. "My aunts' gravest concern is the children's well-being. 'We have survived two decades of war. We adults know what it takes. We don't know what to tell the children,' they tell me," said Ranwa, who has two aunts in Kirkuk. Until the outbreak of the war, her mother, a pharmacist, commuted between Kirkuk and Al-Huweijah, a village 90 kms west of Kirkuk, where she runs her pharmacy. Many people have moved from cities to the surrounding countryside.
Even as Iraqis at home and abroad await the reversal of the cataclysmic conditions, the telephone has become the main method of communicating. "I phone Baghdad daily but was not able to get through last night (30 March)," said Leith Al-Hassan, an Iraqi who moved to Cairo three years ago with his Danish wife and two daughters. "It appears that the last telephone exchange centre in Baghdad has been hit," Al-Hassan said wistfully. "Communications with Baghdad have been severed. I do not know how to get through to my relatives anymore."
Al-Hassan, who has left his septuagenarian father, a retired pharmacist, a brother and a sister behind in Baghdad, says that he also has relations in Basra and Nassiriya. It is impossible to communicate with relatives who reside in provincial towns, Al-Hassan said.
Al-Hassan also said that there is an air of despondency among the Iraqi population at large. People have become accustomed to war -- endless, wearisome war. "Morale appears to be high, though, considering the grim prospects. My father says that he is no longer afraid. He was certainly more fearful of the outcome in 1991. It's not quite déjà vu."
Al-Hassan, who was in Iraq during the 1991 US-led attacks, said that his family assured him that they have enough food supplies to last them for about six months. But, hospitals are alarmingly short of even the most basic medical supplies.
"I advised my family to stock up on foodstuffs that would not go bad easily, such as nuts. Iraq has an abundance of pistachios, walnuts and almonds. I also advised them to stock up on tinned foods but warned them to check the expiration dates." Al-Hassan acknowledges that his family is among the privileged few. "My family, after all, is well- to-do. The poorer working class families are in dire straits. They have the basic foodstuffs like rice, flour, sugar and cooking oil. Fresh fruit and vegetables are in very short supply," he warned.
People with no access to potable or bottled mineral water are forced to distill and drink the murky, dun-coloured waters of the Tigris. Before the onset of the war, people fled the cities to the relative safety of the countryside, where at least some vegetables can be grown. But, as soon as the war broke out, people were not able to flee cities for the countryside. "There are military installations in many rural areas. We fear that the Americans and British might use weapons of mass destruction, even nuclear weapons, especially against Baghdad, a city of over five million people," Al-Hassan said.
Most of the Iraqis interviewed in Cairo readily admit that they are non-political. A majority are not particularly sympathetic to the Iraqi regime, and yet many are seriously contemplating returning to fight alongside their compatriots back in Iraq. Others, including Al-Hassan, are currently organising the dispatching of humanitarian assistance to their kith and kin.
The war has invaded the lives of Iraqis at home and abroad. "What people fear most is that with the cessation of hostilities, the country will degenerate into the kind of chaos [found] in Somalia," said Al-Hassan.
It is hard to break through the fear and anger. The air is acrid, the rancid smog overpowering. The skyline is black and the fumes from oil-filled trenches torched by the Iraqi army as a defensive mechanism against allied aerial attacks are suffocating.
Iraqis at home and abroad blame the British and the Americans. "Ordinary people do not trust the allied forces. There is a widespread belief that the US and British forces are in Iraq to secure control of Iraqi oil. The Americans are most unpopular. The people rose up against the regime in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 hostilities. The promised US help was not forthcoming. People are therefore deeply suspicious of the Americans," Al-Hassan said. "I am not a political person, but it is obvious to me that the Americans and the British are widely seen as an occupying force and that the ordinary Iraqis are determined to resist their unlawful presence," he added.
The Iraqi people are not fighting against the American invaders because they want to defend the Iraqi regime or Saddam Hussein. All Iraqis are resisting the invaders because Iraqi resistance is a question of national pride.
"We have to stand together as Iraqis in the face of this brutal aggression by the allied forces," said Nassir Shamma, the Cairo-based Iraqi musician.
Iraqis have forgotten the political, ideological and religious differences that divide them but are determined to stand as a united front in the face of the American and British attacks. The systematic destruction of Iraq is unacceptable. "The US tried to starve Iraq for the past 12 years. They now pretend that they want to save and feed the Iraqi people. What Iraqis are in most need of at the moment is moral support," Shamma stressed.
"I phone my relatives and friends in Iraq whenever I hear that allied missiles have targeted a city or a suburb of Baghdad. I phone the people I know in that particular suburb or town.
"I plead with the readers to pray for the people of Iraq. To pray in their own language and according to their own religion for peace, for an end to oppression in the world," Shamma told the Weekly.
"People the world over must acknowledge that smaller nations can stand up for their legitimate rights, for national self- determination and in defence of their countries and the wealth of their land. We do not want the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest," Shamma added.
"Iraqis have faith in their country and in its potential. But the heavy fighting has resulted in the loss of life. Since the outbreak of the war, I have lost a brother-in-law. My sister has been widowed because of this cruel war. My sister's husband, Nabil Imran, was 44 years old. He was killed on the fourth day of the war. I know of children of friends of mine who have been killed in the bombardment. A classmate of mine has been killed," Shamma said.
"What really galls me is that I cannot do anything. I cannot help my people back home. I can only watch the suffering on television. I feel I am choking sitting here incapable of fighting with my brethren back home." Shamma fought in the 1991 Gulf War. He knows what war is about. "It pains me to watch the aggression against Iraq today. It is difficult for me to describe the pain. I feel violated. I feel that my whole identity is under attack when I watch my flesh and blood, kith and kin, being butchered by the barbarous air raids and missile attacks," Shamma said.
"Sometimes I feel that I must go to Iraq and join forces with my compatriots at war to defend my country." Shamma, a proud father of a newborn, said that he is restrained by his familial responsibilities, but even so, he does not know if he can hold back for much longer.
