Iraqis in Jordan Part 2

Jan 1st, 2008
Amman, Jordan

The weather cleared up. I look out the dirty taxi window, catching glimpses of shops opening their doors in the morning cold. It’s a lazy start to the first day of the new year. All the hotel parties were canceled last night, a gesture of mourning for Israel’s war on Gaza. I slept early the night before, but still find myself tired. Deeply tired. My mind swims in stories of loss and suffering, and the eyes of the children I am meeting are starting to haunt my dreams. I think back to the young children at one family’s shack, and their stories of kids at school who put bugs and ants in their underwear, beat them up in packs like wolves, and throw stones at their homes. When I asked them why the other children were hurting them, the young girl responded simply, “We are Iraqis”.

But I can’t judge the kids whose bigotry finds this violent expression, they are obviously picking up their hatred from their homes. I can’t even judge their Jordanian parents who are passing down such hatred, because I too have witnessed the same behavior back in my home in the USA. The 30 years of America’s policies towards Iraq – the propping up of unfavorable regimes, the orchestration of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait followed by the subsequent demonization of its actions and the Iraqi government, which “justified” the Gulf War, the years of bitter food and medicine sanctions that cost millions of lives, and this final illegal war, Operation “Freedom” – has all been largely tolerated and supported by the American people. Whether or not they justified such brutal actions on a defenseless people because of faulty information, apathy or ignorance, does not in itself absolve their complicity with America’s foreign policy towards Iraq. It other words, saying you “didn’t know” doesn’t mean you weren’t involved in the destruction of Iraq, and part of the overall effort that displaced, injured and killed millions of Iraqis. My own tax dollars are involved in these children’s misery, their tears quietly dropping from their eyes as they stare towards countless more years of uncertainty and hunger, unsure even if their loving father will be around to help soften the blow of the world’s neglect and inaction.

Without proper treatment and diagnosis, his war injuries are slowly killing him.

I was in Amman last summer trying to find an organization to help connect me with the Iraqi refugees. I spoke to my regular taxi driver, Amed, a kind fellow whose family originally came from Sudan although he himself was born in Jordan. I asked him to help me find such organizations, or even struggling Iraqi families that might be willing to talk to me. He laughed at the suggestion, declaring that all Iraqis in Jordan were millionaires. He then bitterly spit out accusations of them destroying their economy, driving up the prices of food, rent and utilities. I knew the roots of Amed’s bitterness quite well. Like most Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians who traveled to foreign countries for advanced degrees, learned to speak nearly perfect English and came back to their country for a perceived destiny of the major life improvement, he found nothing much had changed form him. Work was nearly non-existent, and if one found work as civil engineers or IT professionals, the pay often was far less than what could be earned driving a taxi. These young men were unable to improve their lives, live up to their parents’ expectations and sacrifice, or contribute to their families needs. They could not raise the funds to pay a dowry or cover the costs of the costly Arabic wedding (the groom pays for the wedding in the Middle East), nor build a home for a bride and a family, leaving him in precisely the same situation he was in before obtaining a degree. Education no longer held the same promise as it once did in the non-oil rich countries of the Middle East, and the bitterness of that reality now manifested in the current scapegoat, the Iraqi refugee. When not driving his car, Amed can be found at Jaffra coffee shop smoking shisha, bitching, staring…waiting.

Amed wasn’t entirely incorrect either. The first waves of Iraqis that fled before America’s invasion or soon there after were often well to-do, many former corrupt Ba’athists who were given amnesty or sought refuge before the Americans came. They brought with them their millions and were granted residency status because they were able to deposit the obligatory $150,000.00 JD’s in a Jordanian bank (which they cannot touch for three years). These transplants, however, are not the norm for the millions of others who fled with only their clothes on their backs, and a few family pictures stuffed among passports and birth certificates.

I told Amed that I wasn’t looking for the millionaires, but those who came because they had no choice. The refugees. He shrugged his shoulders and declared them all “gone”. He said all those Iraqis were relocated weeks after coming to Jordan, and I wouldn’t find any. I still don’t know if Amed really believed this or if he was simply trying to dissuade me from attempting to tell their stories of hardship here, or that he really couldn’t see them because how low a profile the refugees keep here. The refugees don’t like to attract attention, especially the single men. They face massive discrimination; people here often believe they are terrorists and militia deserters.

Amed (like many others I have met in Amman) made comments that the Iraqis didn’t belong in Jordan, that Jordan didn’t have the ability to take care of them. I pointed out that his own family came to Jordan many years ago seeking refuge and opportunity.

“That’s different.”
“How so?” I asked him.
“We didn’t come with millions of others.”

Amed appeared satisfied with that answer and turned up the Quranic prayers on his radio, and lit a cigarette. He hummed as he drove. The conversation was clearly over. But this conversation doesn’t stop in my head. Just as millions of illegal immigrants try to cross into America, and the millions more who have applied for Green cards (my own family included), everyone feels their own entitlement to a better life and more opportunity is unique and deserved. At odds are the millions more who truly believe that their country can’t sustain any more transplants, that their own opportunities are compromised by the infusion of competition – those who will work for less and drain all the welfare programs, tipping the balance into the grave unknown. So here we stand, with people at odds and in competition for basic resources, stoking the flames of fear and hatred, while our leaders start wars in order to “protect” and forward their own interests in the region, displacing millions and offering no reasonable solutions out of the mess they made of our lives. And so millions of children in Gaza, The West Bank, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt (as well as countless other countries across the globe) go without. But when the cruelty bestowed upon the children of Iraq and Palestine is directly tied to our own failures and aggression, we are responsible for them. All of us, every single private citizen.

We cannot bury our head in the sand, nor shrug our shoulders at their dire misery. We should stop circulating letters defending the actions of American troops who have stolen from families, tortured, and indiscriminately unleashed their fury at those who don’t want them in their country, and never asked to be “protected” or “freed”. And America should not be the least generous country in the world towards the Iraqi refugees they accept, providing only a few meager months of income, no furnishings, or any real way to succeed in the resettlement process. Falling behind all of Europe, Canada and Australia in the shared responsibility of mending the broken lives of ordinary Iraqis only adds insult to injury. But still, all the Iraqis I have met here said they would take the chance to move to America in a heartbeat, if given one. Faced with the prospects of deportation to Iraq if they work in Jordan (where surely they would be targeted for leaving in the first place), or living without ANY means in Jordan, they would welcome the opportunity to take their chances and relocate to America, even with the stingy offerings that accompany it, even in a terrible economy.  The cooks, the dentists, the maids, the doctors, the teachers…all of the Iraqis I met say that just given the chance to work legally, they can make it. They are Iraqis. They have survived wars, Saddam, two Bushes, sanctions, and poverty. They have suffered greatly, but they believe in themselves. They believe they can make it if just given a real chance.