. Each member of Uncle Tariq’s family found time to go to the mosque 5 times a day to pray and out of respect for my religion always disappeared discretely, never interfering with whatever it was I had going. Apprehensively, one day, I asked Islee if I could accompany her and she asked first her mother who sent her to her father. The answer came back a tentative yes as long as I showed respect and followed their traditional customs, which Uncle Tariq explained: wearing the traditional white prayer clothes, and keeping my mouth shut and saving my incessant questioning until after we were back home. First we washed. Islee said that we needed to be clean before God would hear our prayers. I watched and followed as she scrubbed her hands, arms and face. As Islee and I walked to the neighborhood mosque, for the first time I looked like everyone else and felt a small part of this wonderful culture. This mosque was much smaller than some that I had seen from the car when I was riding with Uncle Tariq. It had a single small dome with a long thin sphere on top, and one tower that looked kind of like one of the posts from a four poster bed that I guessed (but couldn’t ask) served the same function as a church steeple without the bell. Some of the other mosques I had seen were much larger with huge domes and as many as four of these steeples. I guessed (once again I couldn’t ask) that the size had to do with the population center that surrounded it. I had a very hollow feeling when we walked up to the mosque and felt a little shaky as we approached the door as if I was committing some sort of sacrilege or blasphemy against my Christian God that would somehow damn my virgin soul. And the feeling didn’t get any better once I was inside because it felt as if I had entered a tomb or a vault with nothing but people on their knees, touching their foreheads to the floor chanting words in a morose and monotone fashion that I didn’t understand. There was a minister or a priest or some holy leader in the front, reading verses from the Koran. The Arabic words echoed through the hollow building and were followed by the prayers of the 15 – 20 bobbing Iraqis that were on the floor. It was certainly the weirdest experience of my life, one that didn’t fit into any of my religious references. I was surprised at how plain the mosque was on the inside, almost stark naked in interior design but it had the same reverent feeling as some of the other sacred places I had been in my life, like the Alamo and Notre Dame. When I entered I felt quite awkward as Islee dragged me by my elbow despite my feelings and fears to the place reserved for me before a God I didn’t know. I was extremely self-conscious of my every move, but no one paid any attention to me because they were all busy attending to their own souls.
Islee motioned with her eyes and head telling me to copy her and get on my knees and put my face down on the mat, which I did. Then, for about the next 5 minutes, I stayed there with my heart racing, and stared wild eyed at the mosque and tried to find some kind of harmony within the spooky chorus of chants. “Soon it will be over,” I thought. “And then I will never have to come to this awful place again.” I copied Islee as she placed her forehead on the floor and then lifted it up, only to put it down again, one, two, three, four times. As I waited for Islee to finish, I peeked around and noticed several things I had missed when I first walked through the door. There was not an elaborate altar, or woodwork or stained glass. Soon I began to recognize the beauty of this little temple in the simplicity of the architecture and the ornate tile and marble on the inside of the dome. And then I heard Islee’s delicate young voice blending with the others, and it had a profound effect on me. Even though I couldn’t understand her every word, I knew that she first prayed for forgiveness and then was praying for me. It touched me to my core. I was overcome with a burden, my own personal burden, that I wanted to share with God, a prayer of West vs. East of my mother vs. my uncle and everything that I was taught to believe vs. everything my own eyes saw to be true. There was so much inside me that didn’t make any sense. So with my carpet facing toward the Holy City of Mecca, I uttered a prayer to a foreign God that I didn’t know.
Dear God, please help me sort out the mess in my life and this world. True to my family and my people and true to you. Please use whatever gifts you have provided me to further peace and not war, forgiveness and not violence.
I don’t know how long we were there, but it wasn’t very long. Islee was finished before me, but lay there quietly until I lifted my head and caught her glance, which included a wink and I’m sure a smile under her veil. Then we both stood up together and we went home.
When we were back at my uncle’s house, my uncle came and sat next to me on the couch with a grin that hid a huge smile.
“Okay, young one, you were good to your word. Islee has told me that you didn’t ask a single thing. Honestly, I didn’t think it possible. Now, I know you have questions, and as they would say in America, ‘let them rip,’” he laughed.
I shook my head no.
“Come on, you’ve got to be kidding me. You have entered the holy place of another religion and have seen things that you’ve never seen before. Let’s have it.” He looked very concerned when I didn’t ask any questions.
“I believe God was in that place. He is going to have to answer my questions.”
“Did you ask Him?”
I nodded my head yes.
He sat back sensing that I had had a true spiritual experience. He answered in a very serious tone, “Then you’re right, only Allah can answer matters of the heart. You should change your clothes now, it’s very hot out today.”
“If it’s okay with you, I’m going to wear this for a while, I’m quite comfortable.”
He put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze and then smiled. “Of course, but you need to put on an Abaya. Islee will get you one.”
Chapter 5
With only a few days left before I was to return to school, I felt a deep sadness in my spirit that also seemed present in my uncle and aunt and my new best friend Islee. I simply didn’t want to go, but knew I had to return to a place that now seemed almost make-believe. How would I be able to listen to all the ignorance about a civilization that was so benign? How far would I have to go to find a mosque to pray in and would anyone understand what was going on in my soul like my new family. Every day, Islee and I returned to the mosque and I prayed for understanding. My melancholy deeply bothered my uncle because he could sense my inner conflict but didn’t know how to help.
Every day Uncle Tariq tried to approach my dilemma in a different way; often his words sounded like babble, answering questions that I didn’t ask, as if he was shooting blindly at a target he couldn’t see. I went for entire morning hikes without saying a word, just silently praying. Finally Uncle Tariq figured it out, “I think I know what’s troubling you. Your mind has been programmed to believe one way and now you see that you have been duped.” He laughed out loud (which I didn’t at all appreciate). “Don’t feel bad, it happens everywhere, even here. Saddam is conning people every day into thinking that the western world is the enemy. Look at Iran, China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba…it’s everywhere. How do you think Hitler convinced an entire nation to go to war, and kill the Jews? Do you think the German people were stupid?”
“They should have known,” I answered.
“Impossible,” answered my uncle. “If you expose a person to one thing, and do it properly over and over and they have no other input, they will start to believe it. Whether it is Muslim extremism, Christian evangelism or Judaic zeal.”
“The people responsible are evil for doing that,” I replied. “It’s simple manipulation.”
“Unfortunately, in most cases the leaders believe it themselves, they are the most ignorant.”
“So, the masses are simply sheep or cows that are herded wherever their masters want.”
“Unfortunately yes.”
“And we are all guilty?”
“Please don’t take offense, but right now America is the worst because it has the greatest propaganda machine. I don’t know if you realize this but the Western media control most of the propaganda of the world, throug
h CNN and Fox News and MSNBC and the BBC. What you believe is free press is really controlled by the political inclinations of the owners of these networks. And they have confused the world by only showing the extreme actions of violent Muslim governments such as Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq. Saddam Hussein has only helped their cause with his tyranny. Now the world is confused and has stereotyped the entire population of Muslim people as terrorists.”
“Does it always have to be this way? Generation after generation, it would seem that someone would catch on. Isn’t it time for someone to say enough!”
“Ah, a coup d’etat, tried many times, but the passion required accomplishing the coup, turns into the same brainwashing afterwards. It’s always been this way.”
“Isn’t there any way to fix it? Why hasn’t there ever been an ambassador, someone who thoroughly understands all cultures and acts as a conduit of peace and understanding?”
Uncle Tariq looked at me and said candidly, “For that to work, both sides need to want it to work.”
“And they don’t?”
“No, they don’t. Let’s take America and Iraq as an example. America wants to make us like you and that will never happen. We want to be protected from foreign ways of life, so we are not open to compromise. You do not want us, and we do not want you. Can I put it any simpler?”
“But you’ve accepted me and respected what I believe.”
“I am one man and a very progressive man, if I do say so myself. Most Iraqis are not that open. They will be nice to you and respect you, but they do not want to become like you, except maybe Islee and she is just a child. The best way I can explain this to you is through the situation in Iran, you know what’s going on there right?”
“Of course, everybody in the world knows about the hostage crisis.”
“But it’s the perfect example of how America sees its role in the Middle East. Why do you have to always be the bully, the one that has the only perfect government and way of life and feel that it needs to be imposed on everybody else in the world? Your government brings all this terror upon itself by trying to impose its ways on countries and cultures that don’t want it. Whether you like it or not America screwed up Iran. It was like you were trying to dress up a baby doll.”
My mind scrambled to pull together historical facts as my uncle continued pontificating.
“The American government supported the Shah, and put a non-religious aristocrat in power, and forced all the political clerics out. Then you gave the Shah billions of dollars to build a Western Army and Air Force, develop new helicopters and bring in Western industry, because that is what you believe to be Utopia, what you feel is required for everyone to be happy. The problem was and is and will always be that the Muslim culture is different. Soon, Iran became a clone of your society, your fashion and your capitalism. However, underneath the superficial cities and the modern assembly plants of Ford, GM and Bell Helicopter was a culture that could not be suppressed and was bubbling like a volcano. Even though America guaranteed the success of their economy by buying all their products and their oil and made the Shah one of the richest men in the world, he could not hold his throne. All the money and armies of the world couldn’t change a 5000 year old culture and rid the country of Muslim orthodoxy. Now, look what happened….boom! The volcano has exploded and the red hot truth has surfaced and melted away your utopia.”
“I can understand why they wanted Khomeini back, but I can’t understand why he would take innocent civilians hostage.”
Uncle Tariq smiled, “It is very simple. He needed someone to blame. The Ayatollah is not stupid. He needed something to bring quick cohesion to the masses and knew that hatred is the super glue of passions. By focusing on the Americans and taking them hostage, he threw gasoline on the passion of the government, of the Iranian students and the military and brought the whole country together.”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
“It’s far from over. Taoism teaches that, “For every force there is a counterforce.” America will get even.
“Will we try to take it back?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what’s so terrible about violence, it always rebounds on itself. And there are always more ramifications than anyone can think about, even the spiritual Ayatollah. What I hear is that Saddam is going to try to take advantage of the new government in Iran because the Ayatollah has put into prison all the former generals and pilots and Saddam is going to try to capture their oil fields.”
“Doesn’t he have enough problems here?” I asked.
“He does, but Saddam is an opportunist and he has a strong Soviet supported army. If he can do it quick, he just might win and double our country’s wealth.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I asked.
“Then we will be in for a long war. Iran and Iraq have always fought you know. The Iranians are Shi-ites and Iraqis have a majority of Shi-ites but are governed by Sunnis. The Persians and the Mesopotamians have never been able to get along.”
“Now you’re really confusing me. If you don’t get along with the westerners and you don’t get along with the east and you don’t get along with the Middle East, whom do you get along with?”
Uncle Tariq pulled a videotape from the shelf and handed it to me.
Lawrence of Arabia?
“Yes, Peter O’Toole, it won several Academy awards. Watch this movie and then we’ll talk some more. It will show you in a crude way, why the Arabs can never be governed by the West. And, that the various Arab tribes can never get along with each other.” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s just part of our make-up.”
“Uncle Tariq are you going to tell me about my mother before I leave?”
“What would you like to know?” he answered.
“Why you and she are so different.”
A painful expression came to his face and it looked as if he was going to cry.
“We are not so different.”
“From my perspective you are. Sonda told me that you were very close with her and now you don’t even speak.”
“She had to make a choice and she made it.”
“Do you mean leaving Iraq for America?”
“No, it’s much deeper than that. I left Iraq and went to America, many people leave and go to your universities.”
“Is it because she didn’t come back?”
“No, child….please another time.”
“Then, what, what did she do that was so awful?”
“Your mother is not an awful person and I hesitate to say anything to you, because I don’t want to change your opinion of her. Can’t we just leave it that she made a choice?”
“I still don’t understand, is it that she chose to become a Christian, a Republican, an American citizen? Is that it?”
He became very irritated, “knotting it all together, you will not understand.”
“Please let me try,” I pleaded.
He looked away and started slowly. “Your mother had been given to another man, and she disgraced your grandmother and grandfather by falling in love with an American.”
I began putting it all together. “Certainly, you couldn’t expect her to marry someone she didn’t love.”
“This is what I was afraid of; you are too young to understand. The Muslim religion is different, there are things that you just do not do! A child should never disgrace parents. It is a damnable sin! And the way that she did it killed my father.”
“Marrying an American?”
“No, becoming pregnant out of wedlock to an American! She humiliated our whole family!” He blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
He was talking about me. I knew that I was a honeymoon baby….but their anniversary was only 2 weeks after my birthday. They must have adjusted the anniversary date for my benefit.
Uncle Tariq continued, “When Islee told my father, rather than face the ridicule of the village, he hung himself in his bedroom. I found him. I was just a boy of 16,” he starte
d to cry. “Your mother killed him! Was it so important to move to America that you would murder your own father?” I asked her. “She left before the funeral and I never saw her again.”
Chapter 6
Over the next 10 years I spent at least one vacation a year in Iraq. My mother and father seemed to resign themselves to my new found independence which included a formal conversion to Islam. During those years I watched my cousin Islee blossom from a teenager into a woman and as she got older the emotional years between us became fewer and we became closer still.
It was interesting for me to be able to experience the events of the 1980’s from both an American and an Iraqi perspective. My uncle was never bashful about sharing his views which were surprisingly objective. Islee didn’t seem to care and my aunt listened, but seldom voiced an opinion. Together we watched the effects of Saddam Hussein’s, Ronald Reagan’s and George Bush’s administrations on the people of Iraq and America. My uncle was right about the Iraq and Iran war. Iraq tried to win the war quickly and almost did, until the Ayatollah freed the military generals and pilots from the jails and prisons. I was very surprised that after being jailed they still would want to fight for him, but my uncle wasn’t surprised at all, saying, “All Muslims are willing to leave their blood in the soil of their country. They are not fighting for the Ayatollah, who is but a man; they are fighting for Allah and Iran which is their heritage.”
The Iranians dusted off their American military equipment, bought spare parts and munitions on the black market and brought in specialists to maintain and repair these machines of destruction. Within a month the Iraqis were facing a superior Iranian Air Force with F-4 fighter jets and American trained pilots dropping modern day weaponry on their oil fields and refineries. The Iraqis last generation Soviet MIG fighter jets were no match for the newer American equipment. The Ayatollah also proved himself to be quite the diplomat, convincing his Syrian ally to shut down a major oil pipeline that flowed through Syria, strangling a major artery that pumped the lifeblood out of Iraq without letting the oxygen rich blood (cash) return. And the war turned ugly for Iraq. Soon the Iranians were invading Iraqi soil with what the Ayatollah called holy waves of humanity and Saddam was trying to negotiate peace, but Iran now had the upper hand and would have none. The war went on for nearly a decade and Iraq resorted to the use of chemical weapons to keep from being overrun. The effects of war devastated the Iraqi economy and cut their oil production by nearly two-thirds. Every Iraqi citizen, including my uncle and his family, felt the drain of wealth from their country as their standard of living continued to decline; food became scarce, energy costs soared and even some of the basic necessities of life like electricity, telephones and water, were often interrupted by the surgical bombings that were never far away, sounding like thunderstorms with first the thunder, then the flashes of lightning on the horizon. What really surprised me, but not my uncle, was that America actually allied themselves and supplied aid and weapons to Saddam Hussein. The results of their aid helped Saddam maintain power by crushing insurrections with brutal executions. “Birds of a feather,” my uncle explained. “They both care only about money and making more of it. Follow the investments of your American leaders and you will find the trail of their alliances.”
Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist Page 14
