The Blame Games

I have pages and pages of notes I don’t know what to do with. I have had one post idea for some time now: a collection of funny moments from the trip. Nothing like a little humor to break up the culture shock blues, you know. I also had a post brewing in my head about the people I’ve met here; people that have truly been part of my whole experience: Scott, Marie, Josh, Husna, Mark, Abdu, Hawhzen, Waafa, Salim, the list is getting overwhelming. While I’m sure most casual readers don’t want me to go into that much detail, I hate leaving out people that, at least in terms of my own emotions and gratitude, deserve mention. It occurs to me that I now get why those who win Oscars or Emmys rattle off such ridiculous lists of names. Names mean real moments; the kind of moments that matter.

I’ve especially grown to appreciate Scott’s ability to turn a fine phrase into fine comedy (my favorite: “There isn’t many places in the world where you are happy to be greeted by a large Ugandan with a gun.”) And Marie’s spirit and ability as a teacher deserves mention, too. She is truly a testament to youthful living regardless of age. She also has that unique ability to tell a story and get so wrapped up in it that listening is almost a bodily experience for the audience (most definitely a bodily experience for her). She, like my sister-in-law Lana, has that gift of sharing a story with such excellent delivery that you are actually excited when she starts to tell it again. I find myself waiting for my favorite parts.

And I have funny little experiences that would make a fine post, too. Like the fact that the checkpoint guards, mostly Peruvian, have gotten so friendly with us (I speak Spanish to them) that they actually approach me for lessons each day. Eduardo moves his automatic rifle out of the way as he reaches for a little notebook of English phrases he is composing. Imagine, if you will, a group of guards listening to me enunciate the difference between “buddy” and “body.” After answering questions, they thank me as I leave, and I can hear them trying out the two words from behind me as I move back into the armored van.

“Bahddy,” they sing in chorus.

“Bahddy,” they sing again, the second word sounding identical to the first. Scott and Marie are smiling. I love that I have this with them. Complicit smiles are so welcome in a place where humor is key to survival.

Survival. That’s the reason that I can’t seem to write the light-hearted post or the overdue homage I’d like to write. This place, this city, this country, constantly reminds me that there is something so much more real going on than our cramped teaching quarters and our short two-week training. So now let me write the post I have to write.

We have been teaching our second group now for 4 days. We were relegated to an upstairs room that I imagine would fit 25 comfortably. We have 37 participants. Just adjacent, a small, seedy-looking side room is the place we put our books and materials. There is a low-hanging low-watt shakalaka lamp (my term) in it that has raised our suspicions as to what kind of activities went on in there. I’ve gone ahead and dubbed it the “opium den.” Enough said.

Overall, in our new teaching quarters it has been hard to create the emotional closeness that we had with the first group. Instead of teaching 3 groups of 15, like we had the previous session, we are forced, because of the single room environment, to teach all 37 at once. For communicative language teachers, that’s like asking an acrobat to perform in a straitjacket.

But we have gotten by. And in fact, I am beginning to feel closer to a lot of the Iraqi teachers. In the classroom, I have learned to appreciate the infectiously pleasant Jamil, who creates and then recites his poetry. “I wish I were a cloud,“ he rhymes, “and water all the world’s land/ Anyone ask me/ and I’ll give him a hand.” Ali Hussan and I discovered that we had a common acquaintance, and we spoke in some detail about the joyous impossibility of it all. Nawaf is the PhD from Nineweh (yes, the actual Nineveh, you Bible scholars) who discusses a point of grammar with Scott and Marie at the end of a particular session. He has obvious gifts and abilities, and I am later told that he attended the finest of all the universities in Iraq.

But the time to really get to know students, is when we leave this cramped room and head to the hotel restaurant for lunch, which we have had daily from 1 to 2 p.m. Great mounds of rice, meat, fish, and chicken await us daily. To arrive at the restaurant, we head down the stairs to the lobby, move past the lobby to the main entrance, and turn left down a hall just before the large glass doors of the formerly 5-star hotel. We see the occasional soldier, be it American, Iraqi, or Triple Canopy.

Paintings are for sale and line the walls down this final hall to the restaurant. Here, just off to the right, is the dining area that has been set up to cater to our group. At lunch, I always try to sit down with someone new. This time, I sit next to the pleasant Tawadud, who is the supervisor of one of my favorite Iraqi teachers from the first workshop, Waafa. Tawadud, like Waafa, is from Basra, and she explains to me in some detail how she tries to train and teach her students. I like her. I like her even more as I see her counsel a younger teacher about how to interact with administration. She seems wise to me.

Another teacher, a Kurdish physics teacher named Kosrat, approaches our table and asks if she can sit down in an empty chair. We say yes, of course, and she begins to unravel a particular question to me. Meanwhile, I notice that Nawaf had slipped out of the dining area and is just now walking back into the room. Not paying too much attention, I begin answering Kosrat’s question, and in the middle of this discussion, I am tapped on from behind. I don’t know how to explain it, but the tap feels urgent. I stop my discussion and turn. It is Nawaf. He leans low behind my chair and I turn to see Marie and Scott nearby; they have also been tapped and are waiting to listen to him. It appears that he has summoned us three together to tell us something.

“I don’t want to say anything bad about you,” he says, with a feeling that has a force I still don’t understand, “but if you go back to the United States…” he trails off. He composes himself and then continues, in what I can best describe as quick huffs.

He states, “I want you to tell that Bush he is a war criminal.” This last sentence he says with his head down, nearly in tears.

I am surprised by all of this, of course, and am searching for the context that would make this kind of an outburst reasonable. I see now that he is visibly shaking, and that two of the Iraqi teachers are holding him on either side. He gets out a few more words, words that express how he loves us and doesn’t blame us. And then he tells us the reason for his unexpected request and condemnation.

“I just got off the phone,” he says almost flatly. “My brother is dead.”

I’m unprepared to hear this news. He is unprepared to share it. He can no longer speak and walks swiftly away with a trail of people following. Later I hear that he cannot be consoled and has left the hotel. I am left in the wake of his absence trying to figure out what to say and what to do. Other students help me out by forming small groups. A group clusters around me and they begin the process of grieving for him, even though he is not around to receive the sympathy. They speak of the sadness of it, they talk of the inevitability of such things, and they speak reassuringly of their feelings for me, Scott, and Marie.

On the way home I am still in a somber mood. We share the news with our U.S.-loving escort. He seems saddened by it as he reflects for a moment, but then quickly composes his thoughts and tries to explain his view on this terrible matter. I think, as our escort, he wants to give us the larger picture as he sees it, perhaps as a way of putting emotional boundaries around it. He explains that the area Nawaf lives in, Mosul, is filled with radicals, Al Qaeda and the like, that will kill almost arbitrarily. There are those in power, he explains, who will regularly round up people, especially those who are educated. Just yesterday, Mosul was involved in just such a round up. Nawaf’s brother, he believes, was likely among those taken.

Our escort continues his view by stating that he disagrees that Bush is a war criminal, and speaks of how the factions and internal struggle are, rather, to be blamed.

“Bush gave us the freedom. Would Iraq be able to have freedom without him? No,” he states with a swing of authoritative intonation.

To date, I’m relatively uninterested in a political discussion as to who is right or wrong in this whole mess. I guess, for clarity’s sake, I should mention that I don’t blame Nawaf for his feelings, even if we are to discover he is facing the wrong target for his anger. For whether or not the U.S.’s entry into Iraq was justifiable, a hornet's nest has been kicked, and people are suffering because of it.

This time, people I know.