The Middle of Everywhere (26 page)

"
Is there a marriage broker in Lincoln?
"

On a March morning, I interviewed three men from southern Iraq. We sat by a window as we talked and watched the harsh Nebraska wind blow crab apple blossoms from the trees. Soon the sidewalks were covered with what looked like pink snow.

Mamduh was a small man with sallow skin and bad teeth. He had a shy, engaging smile and he worried that his English wasn't good enough for our interview. Hamid was pudgy, but elegantly dressed in gray slacks, a gold vest, and white silk shirt. Saif wore a brown-and-gold ski sweater and tan slacks. He was tall and slim, with a Valentino elegance.

All three men were deeply religious, but they had very different personalities. Hamid was articulate and outspoken, the leader of the three. Saif was dignified and deeply sad. Mamduh was gentle and eager to do the right thing. They all had been in America for three years and in the camps of Saudi Arabia for seven years before that. Hamid worked at the same factory as Mamduh. Saif was visiting from Sacramento.

We talked first about Mamduh's life in Basra. His father had been a truck driver and he was the oldest of six boys. They lived in a big house with his grandparents and uncles. When Mamduh was thirteen, his father made a joke about the government; someone reported it and his father was taken to prison by Saddam Hussein's soldiers. Two years later he was released, but he was physically and mentally destroyed. He never worked again and soon died.

After his father's arrest, Mamduh supported the family by working construction. Often he got dizzy and passed out from heatstroke. Meanwhile, Iraq became more oppressive and Mamduh feared for his life. Almost all the men he knew were "drafted" by Saddam into an army that they hated.

During the Gulf War, there was a brief time when the Iraqi people believed the United States would help them overthrow Saddam's tyranny. While Saddam's armies were tied up in Kuwait, many people in Iraq hoped for a new government. But after the war, the Americans let Saddam alone. Mamduh felt President Bush had changed policies and betrayed the Iraqi people. He believed that American soldiers even helped Saddam kill Iraqis.

After the war, Saddam ordered his soldiers to kill anyone who helped the Americans. He said, "Even their blood is filthy." People were made to drink oil, or they were shot and their stomachs were split open. The streets were filled with the bodies of the dead.

Mamduh knew that unless he left the country he would be killed. He couldn't tell his family he was leaving because they might accidentally betray him or be tortured later for information. So he slipped quietly away. He walked for two days until he met an American soldier and asked for refuge. He was treated as a prisoner of war and sent, like all the Iraqi soldiers, to a camp in Saudi Arabia.

The camp was supposed to be temporary, but it still exists today and is still filled with Iraqi men who turned themselves in during the Gulf War. It's located in the desert, fir from the eyes of outsiders, and run by Saudis who these three men believe have contempt for Iraqis.

I asked Saif and Hamid how they had arrived at the camp. Hamid dismissed the question. "His story is my story. We all had the same story."

Mamduh said, "Over 54,000 young men were in the POW camps. There was no work and the water was salty. We went for years without seeing women or children. In the night, men were taken from their tents and shot."

Saif said, "I would wake up in the morning and the friend who slept beside me would be missing. I wouldn't even ask where he was."

Hamid said, "The soldiers called us dogs, camels, or donkeys."

This was upsetting to all three men. In fact, the worst damage seemed to be a loss of their dignity through this seven-year process of being herded from place to place without respect or choices. Many men in the camps committed suicide or escaped back into Iraq. Others just died because, as Saif put it, "They got tired of it."

I was struck by how different their version of the Gulf War was from the one I had seen on television and read about in the newspapers. I realized I knew very little about what our president had promised the Iraqi people or what consequences followed our policies after the war. I reflected while these three men watched their friends being killed, I was reading books and going to the movies. While they were being bombed by American planes, I was drinking coffee with my friends. Long after I had relegated that war to the dustbin of history, they were imprisoned in a camp, fighting for their physical and psychological survival.

Finally in the early 1990s, several prisoners slipped under the carriage of a supply truck and rode to a city. There they managed to speak about conditions in the camps to the BBC. After that, the UN sent observers and things improved slightly. By April of 1993 the men decided to go on a hunger strike and risk death rather than be treated like dogs. This strike forced the UN to allow some men out of die camps. But the process was slow and arbitrary. Many were refused permission, and this triggered suicides. Others went crazy from despair and stress. Many were still there. Saif said, "We hear from our friends that it is still terrible."

In 1997 these three men were released from the camps, arbitrarily assigned a country, and put on a plane. In New York they were met by immigration officials who gave them plane tickets to their assigned cities. Hamid and Saif, close friends since boyhood, were sent to different parts of the country. (Saif's forced separation from Hamid reminded me of the Ellis Island story of the man sent to Houston, Texas, instead of Houston Street. Now, as then, hurried officials, more concerned with paper than people, can wreck lives.)

At first, life was hard. They had nothing—no language, no money, no connections, no education or job skills. They didn't get much help finding work or places to live. No one explained about rental deposits or credit ratings, things they hadn't experienced in Iraq.

Saif worked first as a dishwasher, then in a fast-food place. I winced at the image of this proud, debonair man washing dishes. Mamduh and Hamid got jobs in a factory in Lincoln. Mamduh made a joke that he would always work with Hamid, who took care of him. Hamid put his arm around Mamduh and said, "I protect my little brother."

Now Hamid lived with an American woman that he met at the factory. Hamid said his "wife" had become Muslim because she liked how women were treated in Muslim culture. She even wore a head covering when she left their apartment.

Saif had a turbulent relationship with a California woman and he felt that their cultural differences were insurmountable. He said, "When I was growing up in a little village in Iraq, she was in San Francisco. When I was in the camps, she was in a rock and roll band. We do not think alike. Whatever I think is natural, she thinks is unnatural."

Mamduh desperately wanted to marry a woman from his own village. But he knew he would never have the money or the connections to find a bride and bring her to Nebraska. He asked me quietly if I could help him find a wife in Nebraska. I said I doubted I could be of help.

He asked, "Is there a marriage broker in Lincoln?"

Talking about women led the men into an animated discussion of the way American men treat women. They were outraged that, in America, women get pregnant without husbands and that many children don't live with their fathers. They compared our high divorce rates to the much lower ones of Middle Eastern countries. Hamid talked of the men at his factory who go to the bars on Saturday night and find women to "do dirty things with." He said, "An Iraqi man would not do that. He would respect women too much. We only want to marry and have families."

Saif told me a story to explain how different the rules were in Iraq. His uncle fell in love with a young woman he'd seen in a shop. He waited seven years for his family's permission to marry her. Meanwhile, he had no socially acceptable way to see her. So his uncle actually opened a store that sold women's products so that this woman would come to his shop and he could visit with her.

Mamduh said he encouraged the American men at his job to respect women and to marry. Hamid and Saif were so upset by the topic of how American women are treated that they were shouting. Mamduh had tears in his eyes.

I reflected how the two cultures have mirror-image beliefs about each other. Americans often see Muslim men as disrespectful of women, and Muslims see American men as disrespectful. These men clearly believed that Iraqi culture was better for women and children. They also felt that in Iraq, families were closer and happier.

In fact, to these men, life in Iraq was very good except for Saddam. People took care of each other and were trusting and generous. The men talked about how in America people were obsessed with "mine, mine, mine." There was such an emphasis on property and individual rights. They joked about how Americans worried over who paid what on a restaurant bill. Even though people were rich, they debated about pennies.

Saif marveled that Americans teach their children to guard their toys. Iraqi children were taught to be generous. He said that in Iraq, there was really no concept of private property, only the concept of need and distribution. Hamid told me, "If you need something, everyone, even strangers, will give it to you."

Saif told me a story to demonstrate Iraqi generosity. When he was first in Sacramento, he slept in the bed of a countryman who worked nights. He said, "When this guy had a night off, he would make me sleep in the bed. He slept on the floor beside my bed. He didn't even have a cover for himself."

The Iraqis laughed about how some Americans didn't want others in their driveways or on their property, or were afraid of each other. Once Hamid tried to help a man at an ATM. As he moved near him, the man looked scared and ran away. They had all been warned to lock doors and watch out for criminals. In Iraq, they all passionately assured me, except for the government, they could trust everyone.

These men seemed sad as we talked of Iraq. No doubt they had idealized some, but they also genuinely missed their homeland and their families. They all wanted to go back, but they felt it was unlikely they ever would. In America, Saif wanted to become a home health aid. He spoke earnestly of his desire to make the world a better place. Hamid and Mamduh wanted eventually to run a business together. Mamduh joked, "He will be the boss; I will be the employee."

Hamid said that working in a factory he felt like a person of no real value. Mamduh said that none of them could make enough money to buy a house or a car. They were trapped in poverty.

I feared this was true. In spite of their good manners and nice clothes, the feet that these men couldn't read or write in English condemned them to menial work. They had no family or community support and were working at difficult jobs for less than a livable wage. Yet, they were generous with what they had—time and stories. They had lost so much—their homeland, their youth, their language, and their hopes for a traditional life. What was striking was that they had held on to their humanity.

On a snowy night in late November, I arrived at my favorite conversational Even Start class. This class had three Vietnamese women, Yen, Ha, and Bao, and two Latinas, Rosa from Mexico and Maria from El Salvador. Even Start is a program offered by our public schools to teach English to the parents of ELL students. It is an expensive program, involving transportation, child care, special materials, and ELL teachers. Classes are held in different schools at different times of the day.

I attended an evening class of mothers from Latin America and Vietnam. They arrived on a bus with all their kids in tow and, while they studied and recited, their children played in the next room. Most of the mothers had been in factories all day, but they were happy to be in class and eager to learn.

Ha's husband was disabled and she supported him and five children by working at the water-bed factory. She was tired but good-natured, except when she talked about her teenage daughter. Bao was older than the others and she looked it. Bossy, funny, and filled with newcomer zest, she had most of the attributes of resilience, plus a close family and a community of friends. With her ponytail and makeup, Yen looked like a teenager, but she had six kids and worked full time with Bao and Ha. Rosa was fresh off the bus. She was shy and didn't work outside the home. She had two preschool-age children and was pregnant. Maria, from El Salvador, had six kids and cooked at a Mexican restaurant.

The teacher, Miss Wendy, a redhead from Montana, was all smiles and greetings. Tonight after she welcomed her students, she asked them to tell the class what they had done over the weekend.

Yen spoke first. She looked too pretty and peppy for someone with a full-time job and six children. Yen said she had taken her daughter to the emergency room because she had a sore throat and fever. Wendy expressed surprise because the emergency room is so expensive.

Yen said, "I called Ask a Nurse and she said I'd better go."

Wendy said, "Then you did the right thing. Is your daughter better?"

Yen nodded proudly. "I bought her medicine."

Wendy pointed to the thick bandage on Ha's hand. Last week she had injured herself when a sharp tool slipped as she worked on a bed frame. Wendy asked, "How is your hand tonight?"

Ha answered, "Not too bad. The doctor said I should rest, but I am the only worker in my family."

Wendy asked, "Could the doctor write you a note for work?"

Ha vigorously shook her head no. "I don't want any trouble. Good job." She changed the subject. "An American lady invited me to a candle party on Saturday."

The others looked impressed, but Wendy only said, "Hmmm." She asked, "Do you know if your friend will be selling candles at the party?"

Ha looked confused. Wendy said, "Sometimes Americans sell things at parties. Remember you do not need to buy any candles. You can just enjoy the party."