Between Two Worlds

by Zainab Salbi

  “You had a chance to leave and you didn’t?”

  He told me a story I vaguely remembered hearing years before, though I couldn’t have pinpointed when, about a Boeing executive eager to sell airplanes to Saddam Hussein. Once, when Baba was in his office, the executive had signed a blank check and pushed it across the table to him. “A million? More? Write what you like!” the executive had said.

  “I pushed the check back across the desk,” Baba said. “To take it would have meant losing everything I had: my ethics, my principles, my self-respect. I couldn’t do that, Zainab. I don’t regret it. I never did. Staying in Iraq came at a price but it was better than the price of losing who I was in my own eyes.”

  I was reminded of the same stubborn man who wouldn’t let Samira in our house on principle. For the first time in many years, I felt sympathy and enormous respect for my father. His integrity had come at a price, but at least I understood why he felt he had to pay it. What did courage mean in his case? Was it not compromising his own ethics? Despite the price our family had paid, I realized as he spoke that I would rather be the daughter of a man who made such a choice than the daughter of a man who took a bribe and sold out his country. Who said courage was defined only one way? That the only smart fish was the first fish? Oh God, I thought as I sat with my father, who gave me the right to judge my parents at all? Each of us had to find our own way. I saw that now, and I needed Baba to see it, too.

  “You named me after a figure that was known for her courage and for her speaking about injustice,” I said. “I used to think about myself as such a person until it came down to the question of me speaking out on behalf of me and our own family.”

  And I began talking to my father about the most intimate parts of my life. I told him about Fakhri and how I had gone back and forth debating whether to speak out about what he had done to me. I told him I felt I had lived two lives and that to bring the two back in focus, I couldn’t keep silent anymore. I didn’t believe that a family’s honor should be borne by women when the price of that honor is their silence about things that hurt them and their families. I was worried that raising my voice about family concerns, not just those related to sex, could cause some to consider me to be dishonoring my loved ones. But if there was anything a woman owned, wasn’t it her voice? And if I wanted to raise mine to tell my own story, how could I possibly separate it from the stories of the ones I love?

  “You made your choices to be true to your values, Baba,” I said.

  “Today it is my turn to do the same, and I need your support. I need to take control of my own voice, and that entails breaking our family vow of not talking about our relationship with Amo. Our family has always been lost between two worlds, Baba. People inside the palace considered us outsiders and people outside considered us friends of Saddam. If we remain silent, people will think our silence was agreement. I can’t remain silent anymore. If we don’t write our truth, history will write it for us.”

  He had remained quiet as I spoke. The furrow between his eyebrows deepened.

  “This is your decision, Zainab,” he said finally. “I just want you to know that I always tried to be a good father to you.”

  I could ask no more of him than that.

  “I know, Baba,” I told him. “I love you.”

  And we reached over and held onto each other trying to understand each other’s paths and the price each of us paid for taking them.

  When I was little, my father showed me what it meant to fly. Later, my mother pushed me out of the cage. I didn’t take the flight path either laid out for me, but between them they gave me wings.

  We opened our office of Women for Women International in my grandfather’s house. Mama had always told me that the house she had grown up in was a house of charity, and I went back to look for it after I arrived in Baghdad. The neighborhood was impoverished and wary of outsiders. The streets were filled with uncollected trash and sewage—part of Saddam’s institutionalized ghettoization of predominantly Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere. As I walked up Mama’s old street and tried to identify which house had been hers, I felt myself being watched from windows.

  “What are you looking for?” a man asked me warily.

  “I am the granddaughter of Hajji Mohammed,” I said, using my grandfather’s name. “I am his granddaughter.”

  His expression completely changed. He opened his arms.

  “Of course!” the man said.

  Suddenly I was surrounded by a flock of children and I felt myself being swept along by strangers and into the old house. A homeless family had been living there watching the house for our family and they gave me tea. Pigeons were nesting everywhere and the windows were shattered. But, we rebuilt Mama’s childhood home into a place where women could meet and learn new job skills and organize. We filled rooms with cushions on the floor where they could talk about their social, economic, and political roles in society, as well as just share laughter and tears. I remember in particular the day we held an event to celebrate a small but critical victory: a neighborhood organizing campaign in which women had overcome a cultural proscription against women cleaning public streets. Hundreds of women in black abayas filled the courtyard. I couldn’t help myself; tears started dropping from my eyes. The house looked as I had imagined it from my mother’s stories about Ashura and other times when my grandparents used to open their home. We brought out that day the same pots my grandparents had used, only instead of fasenjoon tourshana and rice, they were filled with kebab sandwiches, pizza, and cans of Pepsi.

  “I am back, Mama,” I told her. “I wish you were here with me.”

  I went upstairs to her old room, an office now, and walked out onto her balcony. I looked over the river that was rising once again and breathed in air that was free of Saddam. I followed the shadows of the gulls scatter-flying the clay-colored water and reminded myself that our choices were not easy ones. Amo had commanded fish to swim in his lakes. He had reduced the Tigris to a trickle and drained the ancient marshes that led to the sea. When did our choosing times come? I heard the call to prayer from a mosque near the ancient shrine of the prophet Khedir, also known as Elijah. I looked across the river to the spot where the boatmen could moor once again and saw one of the world’s oldest universities. Beyond, in a troubled afternoon sky, I could see a cloud of black smoke rising. How many cities on earth were so desperate to survive they nearly tore themselves apart trying? How many were so old and yet unborn? The damp fresh smell of the Tigris took me back to my childhood. I remembered my mother’s eyes rimmed with kohl as she had stood on this balcony years before. Terrible things are happening, Mama, but Amo is gone. Between the world of right-doing and the world of wrong-doing there is a meeting ground. There is a garden where women no longer need to whisper, I know it. Your real country is where you’re heading, Mohammed said, not where you are.

  AFTERWORD

  AFTER I FINISHED GIVING a speech about the journey of women refugees at a gathering of women journalists in the fall of 2002, many of the audience members came to the stage with questions and comments. One of the women standing around the podium looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had met her until she introduced herself as Laurie Becklund, a journalist from Los Angeles. I immediately interrupted her as she started to ask a question. “I have a newspaper story written about me during the first Gulf War in the Los Angeles Times. It was by a reporter named Laurie . . .” She took a step back and looked at me. “You’re not that same Zainab, are you?” she asked, incredulous, with a surprised look on her face. “Yes, I am. I look different now. I am different now,” I responded as chills spread all over my body.

  Laurie covered Iraqi Americans during the first Gulf War and had met me at a press conference held by the Iraqi-American community in Los Angeles. She noticed a young woman who was constantly crying on the sidelines. She wrote a story about how I had been stranded in America while I didn’t know whether my family was dead or alive in Iraq. T
hat was the first of several stories in the Los Angeles Times, and led to a series of interviews I did on U.S. and international television networks about life in Iraq through my eyes, about how Iraqis had normal families and professional lives, and even about a letter my mother had sent me during the war describing the hardship they were going through as they tried to survive. While many Iraqi-Americans were being harassed because of their national heritage, I saw the most kind and generous side of Americans, mainly due to her coverage. People would stop me in the mall where I worked, asking if I needed anything, giving me hugs and sharing their prayers for my family’s safety.

  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.

  READING GROUP GUIDE TO Between Two Worlds by Zainab Salbi and Laurie Becklund

  ABOUT THE BOOK:

  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.