Friday, March 16, 2007
When Home Becomes Hell - Newsweek
As its middle classes flee, Iraq is losing skills, open minds and perhaps the hope of renewal. One family's story.
... There seem to be a billion obstacles between Brahim's family and escape. They're still waiting on their new Iraqi passports, even though Brahim applied months ago. And who will watch their house of 45 years and all their belongings inside? Then there's the question of where to go. Jordan and Syria are already swamped with Iraqi refugees and have tightened, if not sealed off, their borders. It's clear that Brahim and his family waited too long, and now things are desperate. "I think maybe we will try Bulgaria, Loreen," he says.
...
My late Aunt Fatima's son Sami fled to southern Iraq when his Baghdad home was seized by insurgents. He's now looking to move to Egypt or even Sweden. His brilliant geologist sister Silma left her upscale Baghdad home and is now stuffed into a tiny apartment in Amman with her husband, Omar, and three teenagers. Uncle Hassan's daughter Loubna, once a curator for the museum of Baghdad, fled to Syria. So did her brother. But their sister never arrived. She was killed on the road from Baghdad to Damascus. Three more distant relatives were never afforded the chance to flee—or turn 25. They were brutally murdered, their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad.
...
Once vibrant neighborhoods [in Baghdad], however, have become fearful redoubts; surrounded by members of their own sect, residents have developed a deep distrust of outsiders. Aliya can waddle out to the grocery store in her eighth month because her husband, a member of the Iraqi Congress, can lend her his bodyguards. But if the fighting is particularly intense that day, even the guards won't brave the market, so the family simply goes without milk or those tasteless, diabetic "breadsticks" that Brahim loves. "Saddam was bad, but this?" says my uncle. I can tell he's gesturing wildly when his wheelchair starts to squeak. "There is no clean water, people are killing each other like the animal, and I can't even go to the mosque to discuss this with God." ...
As its middle classes flee, Iraq is losing skills, open minds and perhaps the hope of renewal. One family's story.
... There seem to be a billion obstacles between Brahim's family and escape. They're still waiting on their new Iraqi passports, even though Brahim applied months ago. And who will watch their house of 45 years and all their belongings inside? Then there's the question of where to go. Jordan and Syria are already swamped with Iraqi refugees and have tightened, if not sealed off, their borders. It's clear that Brahim and his family waited too long, and now things are desperate. "I think maybe we will try Bulgaria, Loreen," he says.
...
My late Aunt Fatima's son Sami fled to southern Iraq when his Baghdad home was seized by insurgents. He's now looking to move to Egypt or even Sweden. His brilliant geologist sister Silma left her upscale Baghdad home and is now stuffed into a tiny apartment in Amman with her husband, Omar, and three teenagers. Uncle Hassan's daughter Loubna, once a curator for the museum of Baghdad, fled to Syria. So did her brother. But their sister never arrived. She was killed on the road from Baghdad to Damascus. Three more distant relatives were never afforded the chance to flee—or turn 25. They were brutally murdered, their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad.
...
Once vibrant neighborhoods [in Baghdad], however, have become fearful redoubts; surrounded by members of their own sect, residents have developed a deep distrust of outsiders. Aliya can waddle out to the grocery store in her eighth month because her husband, a member of the Iraqi Congress, can lend her his bodyguards. But if the fighting is particularly intense that day, even the guards won't brave the market, so the family simply goes without milk or those tasteless, diabetic "breadsticks" that Brahim loves. "Saddam was bad, but this?" says my uncle. I can tell he's gesturing wildly when his wheelchair starts to squeak. "There is no clean water, people are killing each other like the animal, and I can't even go to the mosque to discuss this with God." ...
Labels: war
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