One of the teachers in Baghdad to participate in 121Contact disappeared one day. So let’s make believe this is true. That way I don’t have to change names to
protect the innocent. It’s all like fiction: too hard to believe anyway. It seems
we have been using wooden boxes to house prisoners since at least the Spring of
’05, but we are only hearing of it in our media now…
It was way back, let’s see, in the Spring of ‘05, when Haythem stopped
writing to us. He had been a mathematics teacher in a boys high school in a
relatively quiet neighborhood in Baghdad. Growing up on a farm across the river
in Diyala gave him a love of the countryside he never lost. After his capture
and release he fled there. His grandparents still live there.
In our early emails we joked about his bravery in keeping in touch with
Americans and steering his students in this direction of understanding the
invaders. He said he was the Lion of Baghdad, joking that such a thin man could
be so strong.
He was beloved by his students, and his tales of teaching were an early
lesson to me (my teacher-self) of how very much alike we all are; teacher and
student, Iraqi and American. I remember how vividly he wrote of his teaching
days…One email described a day he was fooling around with his students—shaking
a can of soda. Everyone in the class was laughing but then the headmaster opened
the door and entered the room. The soda can hissed quietly beneath Haythem’s
palm.
An instantaneous silence fell and the headmaster, scowling with hands on
hips said, “Who is making this noise here?”
No one answered. “You will come to my office,” he growled at Haythem, “when
this session is ended,” and he left, slamming the door behind him.
The faces of the students were sad. Their teacher and friend was going to be
in trouble. Slowly Haythem allowed a smile to come to his young face, and then
the students, one by one, smiled softly also. It would all be OK. It was always
thus. A scolding and then it would all be OK.
And one day he stopped writing. After months of emails he stopped and the
emails from his students to students in Brooklyn stopped also. I didn’t know
why.
What happened to this young man? Why did he break off he relationships with
Americans? Why did he refuse to have anything to do with anyone who had
anything to do with Americans? Why were there rumors that he had joined the
mukawama to take part in the resistance army that vowed to kill all occupiers?
His last email to us:
Dear Bruce,
I didn’t stop thinking of you
yesterday night as I was trying to write poetry. That was too difficult to do
one line as there are too [many] things in mind that I’m too busy with.
One of my students got killed a few
days ago. He is Ha’al. Do you remember when I told you that so as to give a
sense of humor I gonna divide my students into groups? I mentioned the fattest
one, he was Ha’al, one of my lovely students, always on the first desk, always
smiling and joking. I can’t understand how he died. I have read the black
banner in which they wrote his name and address. They made a funeral for him.
Myself I was lucky twice to be alive.
I came too late from Baghdad when I found the market of [my town] was shut. No
one was there but few Americans. In the darkness beside the police station I
felt strange. The bus driver refused to complete the way. He decided to go back
so he stopped in front of them. They were scared as they were attacked so they
started shouting [shooting] at the bus. When I got down, I was running, towards
the market, but I felt that my running is useless as the market is too long. So
I shouldn’t make them angry I decided to walk. I saw a few people running far
away, then they shout [shoot] at me. I decided to cross the street, to their
side. So they can’t see me, I would be behind the walls. When I arrived to the
bus station, I found someone got killed with the same bullets that shot at me.
My family was too worried about me and
I was in danger another time when I was standing on the wall of my brother’s
house watching an attack at night, when two Humvees came by and start shooting
at me, so I lied down in a very quick movement and waited them to leave.
Next day I found out that they killed
someone who was driving by. Anyway it
sounds normal to me, this is a part of my life, as Iraqi. Hope to be in a good
spirit.
In solidarity,
Haythem
And he never wrote to me again. Here is what I could piece together from
friends of his:
He was in the street with a Spanish journalist when there was an explosion.
The soldiers came quickly and rounded up all the men in the area. They took
them to [Abu Ghraid?]; all under arrest. He told them he was an interpreter for
the journalist, but they didn’t believe him. The journalist was released and
Haythem was held for 10 days. They put him in a wooden box, for days, without food.
After 10 days he was released, angry. He said, “Why did they release the
journalist? Why didn’t they believe me?” He was totally wounded, angry. He
spoke to the other teachers in the 121Contact program and said they should
break relationships with the American students and teachers. The Americans are
evil. There is no sense to doing what any of them ask of us. It would not do
anything for Iraq but only help the Americans.
---
So this man of peace, who bravely kept himself and his students in touch with
Americans in order to help each understand ‘the other’ was converted. Converted
by cruelty. Converted by the incredible-made-credible horrors of a violent
occupation.
A man of peace converted to…we are not sure what direction he took. Perhaps
he has become a man of violence willing to kill the occupier rather than sit
quiet and see his nation destroyed, a member of the Mukawama? A logic born of
pain.
Perhaps he has become one of the pathetically depressed Iraqis, unable to
take care of themselves. A life devoid of logic in the face of the insanity of
violence.
Perhaps, perhaps,…who knows?
Does he still live? We don’t know. I hope someday to meet him, to kiss his
face, and see him live finally in peace. Inshallah.
Bruce
----
Untitled Aug .2004
By the Lion of Baghdad
Deeply we think, “Why is the dream gone?”
Why is peace just a word if the war is done?
Why is the white now black, and the dark is light?
Why is love a fish with the teeth of a shark?
Why is the dove a snake and the lake is of blood?
And the rose is a thorn that cuts the butterflies?
Deeply we shout, “Do you have replies?”
Deeply we dive into the ocean of grief.
With the pain inside the death of relief.
How proud is he?
How brave is he, the commander in chief?
Deeply we ask, “How does happiness taste?”
How can hope be smelled, and love be painted?
Deeply, at home, the is oil located.
Shall we change the land or change the fate?
We wait for time. We have to wait.
Waiting for time the we catch the train,
That will take us to the place where we are not insane.
Deeply with hope we will dig the well.
We ask you, God, “Would you change the rule?”
------
