Between Two Worlds (39 page)

When I saw her again at that journalists’ gathering, the United States was on the verge of another war with Iraq. I knew there was a reason for that meeting as I hugged her and fought my tears at the coincidence of meeting the woman whose coverage helped sustain me during that time.

 

 

Days and months passed, and another war with Iraq was launched. Saddam was overthrown this time, and I decided to write a book about women in Iraq, as I felt very little was known about Iraqi women. I called Laurie and asked her to write the book with me. I didn’t think twice about it. I knew that was the reason why I met her two years earlier.

This book did not start out as a memoir. I did not want to write a memoir. Who was I to write a memoir? I thought to myself. I definitely did not suffer as so many Iraqi women had. I grew up in a privileged household and, if anything, I was isolated from the rest of the country. I wanted to write about what Iraqi women had suffered under Saddam Hussein’s regime. When I was asked to focus the book more on my own story, I resisted vehemently. I cried, I screamed, I kicked, I wanted to do anything but write my own story. I was afraid that my story had no legitimacy. I did not want to be yet another privileged person able to share my perspective with the world. I saw myself as a mere messenger, telling the stories of other women, in my work with Women for Women International. I did not want my voice or my story to take precedence over theirs just because I had access to the international media and they didn’t. And yet, in the end there was a point at which I felt that I had to take ownership of my voice, my truth, and my story. I felt I had lived through other women’s stories and through their courage in breaking their truths. Perhaps, it was my turn to take that jump and to speak up. So, here I am, taking ownership of my story by telling it.

The experience proved a humbling one for me. It was my personal decision to write this book and I could not write it without talking about my family and friends. To protect their identities and privacy, I changed the names of my family members and friends. My mother’s journal entries are taken from a series of notes she wrote to me over a period of months during her illness that I translated from the original Arabic into English and edited here for purposes of chronology and clarity.

It is difficult for anyone to retrieve memories from childhood and from life’s painful moments. One memory prompts another, then another. I have done my best to recall them accurately. I have tried to give Western readers a glimpse of Iraqi culture and religion, but these come only through a very personal filter. The last thing I would claim is to represent all Iraqi women, let alone all Arab women or all Iraqis. I am a mix of the cultures and times in which I have had the privilege to live.

I must have filled an ocean with tears in the process of writing this book, but at the end of it all I feel grateful for this experience. I came out of it with a better understanding and respect for my parents. I now have a better appreciation of my fortune and even my misfortune. And for the first time in my life, I am true to myself and the women I work with.

I couldn’t have gone through this process without the love and support of many people around me. I am incredibly grateful to Laurie for helping me through the process, for pushing me to dig deeper and deeper into my past and into my pain as I searched for answers, and for being patient and kind in the process. Special thanks to our agent Sandy Dijkstra and our friend Liz Bianco for their help, patience, and belief in this book and for the feedback and the support they gave me and Laurie. I couldn’t be more thankful for the staff and board members of Women for Women International for their understanding and support of the process I needed for writing this book.

On a personal level, I am grateful for the friends who were the first people—besides my husband—to whom I revealed part of the story told in this book. This process started with a group of strangers I met in the wilderness of Canada during a leadership retreat led by my friend David Baum. I learned from them that there are points in life where we need to take that jump off the cliff. It was at that retreat that I first heard the poem by the thirteenth century Sufi poet Rumi that inspired the title of this book:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field, I will meet you there
.

I am also thankful for the warm hugs and response I got when I first told my story to my close friends Hoda, Rene, Niraj, Amerjit, Narayan, Faith, and Farah. They helped me recognize that my past does not erase my present and that Saddam’s face does erase mine when I tell my story. Special thanks to my very dear friend Emad Fraitekh, who helped me so much in the process of writing this book by reading and rereading versions of manuscripts, giving me his feedback, helping me in some research, and, well, just being a wonderful friend in this process. Thank you.

Special loving thanks to my father and my brothers for understanding the need for writing this book. I love you so very much. Finally, I am incredibly grateful to my loving husband, Amjad Atallah, whose love and care helped give me the support I needed to become the person I am today. I am grateful for his patience, support, and belief in me, as well as his willingness to trust my instincts in the process of writing this book. Thank you, honey, for the beauty you brought into my life.

COLLABORATOR’S NOTE

THE VERY FIRST TIME I met her, Zainab Salbi stood out in a crowd, though she was just twenty-one. She had a presence even then that she has translated into an international organization that simultaneously brings to light the suffering of women in wartime and helps improve thousands of lives. Many women have trusted Zainab with their most intimate stories, and I feel honored that she trusted me to help her write hers. She has afforded me the privilege of watching another human being grapple with some of life’s most profound questions. I have learned so much along the way.

While this book was being written, Zainab was running a major organization, grappling with many other priorities, and somehow finding time to rethink her life and write reams of amazing insights on inconvenient deadlines. At one point after I asked her the same question over and over again, perversely trying to revive her pain, she turned to me and said, “Do you know that this is a certified method of torture in many countries?” Thank you, Zainab, for your patience and your insights, and for sharing your own journey with me. Your reservoir of strength is an inspiration to me, and no matter what you say in these pages, you are the first fish. That is apparent to anyone who meets you, including me.

I also am the lucky one. Thank you to perceptive and generous friends who offered significant suggestions for this book: Sandy Lowe, Phyllis Peacock, Kathryn Harris, Victoria Riskin, and especially Anne Roark, a friend and fellow writer who went beyond the call of duty in helping me sort through the myriad choices facing anyone trying to do justice to Zainab’s life. I also wish to thank, each for different reasons, Carty Spencer, Rocky Dixon, Julianne and Nicki Spencer, Bud Larsen, Steve Lowe and Marilyn Levin, Jeff and Susan Brand, Amanda Parsons, Hilary Terrell, Ted and LeeAnn Lyman, Greg Krikorian, and Ann Hailey. Dan McIntosh and Doug Mirell stepped forward at critical moments. Liz Bianco and Marc Green gave critical encouragement early on. Zainab’s family and her husband, Amjad Atallah, provided warm hospitality in Baghdad and Washington. Without JAWS, the Journalism and Women Seminar that brought Zainab and me together again, this project would not have happened.

I appreciate enormously the skills and personal thoughtfulness of our agent Sandy Dijsktra and her staff, including Elisabeth James, Elise Capron, Taryn Fagerness, and Jill Marsal. Thanks, Sandy, for your guidance. We are both grateful to our publisher, Bill Shinker of Gotham, as well as to our editor, Lauren Marino, for their support and vision and for recognizing that Zainab’s story is only incidentally about a famous tyrant.

Finally, I thank my family. My sister Julie Strasser Dixon, who helped teach me to write, co-authored my last book and made spot-on suggestions to this one. My sister Nancy Spencer, an insightful reader and observer of people, helped me understand that paragraphs market honest emotions. During the year I have been thinking about Zainab and her mother, I have had less time to spend with my own mother, the indomitable Elizabeth Larsen. It is to her that I dedicate my own effort in this book; it is she who has defined for me what being a mother means.

I have had at my disposal the two best editors of all, my husband, Henry Weinstein of the
Los Angeles Times,
and our daughter, Elizabeth Weinstein. Henry brings not only his wisdom but his heart to every professional challenge he takes on, including mine; he has never once given me a single piece of bad advice. Elizabeth is not just a peer editor, but a peer whose sophistication as a young writer amazes me and whose very existence buoys every day of my life.

 

Unforgettably powerful,
Between Two Worlds
is Zainab Salbi’s true story of growing up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, her family’s relationship with the Iraqi dictator, the repression she witnessed in Iraq, and the mistreatment of women by the regime.

 

The powerful and ultimately liberating story of one woman’s search for truth, her fight against tyranny, and her struggle to forge a new identity,
Between Two Worlds
is the first inside account of modern Iraq by an Iraqi woman.

 

This is a mother-daughter story like no other and a riveting quest for truth that deepens our understanding of the universal themes of power, fear, sexual subjugation, and the question one generation asks the one before it: How could you have let this happen to us?

 

 

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www.womenforwomen.org