My parents called me from our home in Baghdad a day before the first
Persian Gulf War to tell me the contents of their will. I had gone to the
United States on vacation and was unable to return because of the sealed
borders and the embargo that was imposed on Iraq soon after its invasion
of Kuwait. They wanted to make sure that at least one other member of the
family knew what we owned in case they died.
This time, in phone calls and e-mails from my father until just before
the war began last week, I heard something else: He no longer cares about
preserving property. Like so many of his generation, this time he conveys
a sense of resignation, a sense that he is tired.
I stayed in America and became a citizen, and 12 years on, I consider
it my home.
I visited Iraq this winter as part of my work and because I wanted to
see my family since I wasn't sure I would ever see them again. I heard
that same tone of resignation from many Iraqis then, and in conversations
and e-mails with my family since then: resignation because they had no
control over whether there would be war, because they feared they couldn't
protect themselves and because they felt vulnerable not only to the war
but to the chaos that would follow. Even in person, no one was willing to
be specific. You don't know what's permissible to say in Iraq and what's
not, so you're always careful, because all e-mails and all phone
conversations are monitored.
I last heard from my 62-year-old father, a retired commercial pilot, in
an e-mail last Monday. One of my brothers heard from him on Tuesday. As
usual, he was cautious, refusing to talk about the family's preparations
for war. But recent e-mails were full of advice. He asked that I take care
of my brothers -- one recently left Iraq for another Gulf country, the
other is in Chicago. He asked me to maintain the values that he and my
late mother had instilled in us. And he asked that I not worry about him.
"We all trust in our fate," he wrote. "There is no need to worry about me,
my daughter."
My aunt Sahera's attitude is similar. Her son, who moved to Ireland
after the first Gulf War, told me that she called him last weekend,
crying. She said she was no longer worried about her own life -- "We have
had so many wars I am used to it" -- but she was worried about her infant
granddaughter, who is also in Baghdad. She worries that there will be no
water, no electricity, no food and that the sound of missiles and bombs
will traumatize the baby. She reiterated my father's request that the
family always take care of each other.
Among the younger generation I hear frustration, not resignation. My
cousin Ahmed was angry and in mourning when I talked to him a couple of
weeks ago. He had taken his wife and three children from Iraq to Jordan to
wait out the war. And then Haider, his 7-year-old son, fell from the
balcony of the eighth-floor apartment they had rented as the boy was
playing hide-and-seek with his brother and sister. "Tell America that my
son is the first casualty of this war," he said. "We would not have left
Iraq if it wasn't for the war. And now we find ourselves losing
everything."
But Iraqis are not only afraid of missiles and rocket attacks, they are
afraid that the chaos and looting that erupted after the first Gulf War
will happen again. Those were not political attacks, they were economic
ones. People were searching for food, for material goods, at a time when
the government had lost all control.
My brother's fiancée, Rasha, told me last week that her family had put
their valuables in a room where they might have some measure of protection
if the family has to leave Baghdad because of intensive bombing. But that,
of course, won't protect their possessions from looters. When we spoke,
she, her three sisters and her parents were hiding in their house. They
were afraid -- five women with only one adult male to protect them. He had
armed himself with a gun, but there was no sense of safety.
Amar, a friend of my family, had bought a few wild dogs and some hand
grenades with which he hoped to protect his family. But he knows that the
dogs cannot protect them from a possible chemical attack. "We don't know
what to do if there is such an attack," his wife, Layla, told me. "We
don't have gas masks, no one does, and we can't even discuss this fear in
public. We were told that covering our walls with plastic sheets may help,
but would it?"
My family's house is in a civilian neighborhood and not near any likely
target, so the bombs are not what we fear most. While I was with my father
in January, we, like so many others, prepared the house against thieves.
We took all the family photographs off the walls. We couldn't bear to
think of them in strangers' hands. I have learned from my work with
refugees that, ultimately, pictures are the most important material
possession. I felt as though it was my turn to be a refugee -- again.
I have half of those photos with me in Washington now. My father has
the other half. He refuses to leave Iraq or even leave Baghdad for that
matter. "I was born in Iraq, I lived all my life here and I want the
dignity to die here," he told me.
I tried to call my family after the war began last week but have had no
luck getting through to Iraq. Nor has anyone else I know.
In the last e-mail I received from my father, he wrote, "Pray for us"
and "May God bless us all." It was the first time he had revealed that
they're nervous, and it broke my heart.
Zainab Salbi is president and founder of Women for Women
International, a Washington-based agency that helps women refugees in war
zones.
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