Amman, Jordan, Feb. 18th, Friday - It was nighttime in Amman. The setting was a hotel coffee shop where Kathy Kelly, myself and two others were to meet with two doctors (psychiatrists) from Baghdad. They were coming for a workshop on how to deal with traumatized children. They were late in arriving due to shooting on the road from Baghdad to Amman. The project involves the training of primary school teachers, many of whom come from conflict areas outside of Baghdad, to help them alleviate the stress of war for the children.
The shooting incident on the road led to other stories about recent killings of their friends and other civilians by U.S. soldiers on the highways and at the checkpoints in and around Baghdad. Some of the survivors are now in their care as patients.
The accounts were chilling and heartbreaking, very difficult to hear. At one checkpoint a car with a family was sprayed with bullets. The mother in the front seat leaned over her small daughter in her lap to protect her, and bullets passed the mother by inches. As she turned toward the back seat where her 10 year old son was sitting with her daughter, she screamed in terror “Where is his head, where is his head!?” He had been shot in the head and his brains were splattered on the floor. Her daughter received two bullet wounds, one in the lung. This mother is now this doctor’s patient. And this was only one of the stories that we heard.
At the checkpoints people are often so nervous, not knowing what to do, that they back up, or speed up, or take a turn to avoid the checkpoint altogether. Anything they do seems to put them under suspicion and cause the soldiers to open fire. The doctors looked at us searchingly, trying to make some sense of these events, asking us “Why do the soldiers do this?”
Not wanting to appear intrusive, I fought the urge to pull out a pen and pad and had to rely on my memory. About an hour into the conversation I did ask if I could take some notes. As the doctor had pointed out, many of the teachers come from outlying conflictive areas around Baghdad. One told of some of the older chilldren–maybe 14 or 15 years of age–having witnessed family members killed or arrested and taken away, said “Give us rifles; we want to fight!” This doctor said “Yes, you have a right to fight, but you have to think about how you are going to rebuild your country…We have to fight against fighting.” He continued “We have to try and give them some relief, some hope. We have to let them speak.”
Kathy and I share a room. It is so good to be together. This morning we had a long time of reflection and sharing aboout the conversations and experiences we have had in these first days here in Amman.
So many of the Iraqis we have met here feel “stuck.” They can’t go back (5 of those we’ve met have received death threats). And even if another country would take them, they lack the recourses to travel. It is illegal for Iraqis to hold jobs here, and they live in fear of being caught by the Jordanian police. Of the estimated 500,000 Iraqis here, only 14,000 have refugee status. On March 19, 2003 all applications for asylum were put on hold. They are identified immediately as Iraqis by their accents, and feel disdain and contempt from those around them.
Despite their fear and desperation, I am struck again and again by their lack of hatred and revenge. To the contrary we hear “We have to be optimistic, to wait, to work and fight against fighting.” Yesterday in a tiny decreipt restaurant where Kathy and I had an Iraqi “sandwich” and tea, the Iraqis there did not want us to pay. We argued lightly back and forth saying that we would not return if they didn’t allow us to pay. In the morning the police had come looking for the owner, but he had escaped.
Warm greetings to you all,
Cathy Breen
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