Two lives, two courses changed by war in Iraq
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By Scott Peterson
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD –
Not long before the fall of Saddam Hussein, the two Iraqi men frequented some of the same intellectual circles in Baghdad.
They drank tea with friends at Shabandar Cafe, holding long discussions near the Friday book market in the heart of Old Baghdad. They attended the antique auction - where this reporter first met them - held every other Friday night in a dim but inviting shop crammed with dusty artifacts.
But three years later, their lives have been touched very differently by the US occupation, and by its soldiers. The men's trajectories have forced them to confront a wrenching decision: whether to reorient their lives in a radically changed Iraq - or to leave their homeland.
As US forces rumbled toward Baghdad, Esam Pasha al-Azzawy, with his thick beard and long black hair, was gaining ground as a young artist who talked up his paintings as the auctioneer gaveled gilt chairs and old swords. [
Editor's note:
The original version misspelled Esam Pasha al-Azzawy's name.]
Bassim Sulaiman was an established antique dealer with an air of high learning, who chain-smoked his way through each auction, seeking out customers and friends, as well as deals for his antique shop.
The artist
Today, Mr. Azzawy says he is fully experiencing the American dream - a rare enough event these days for any Iraqi. But after three years of violence in his homeland, Azzawy says that the promise of freedom carried by US forces when they invaded Iraq can only be found in one place: America itself.
Azzawy left the car bombs, killing, and chronic danger behind, and was invited by a Minnesota gallery to visit last spring. Earlier this year he exhibited work in New York - as part of the first east coast showing by Iraqi artists. He has spent the past six months living in New London, Conn., in a "dream" studio as an artist-in-residence at the Griffis Art Center.
"This is a great experience; the horizon is wide open here," says Azzawy, in a telephone interview. "People are very nice and cooperative. Iraq is also a melting pot, with so many religions and ethnic groups. So in Iraq nobody is a foreigner, and it's the same in America."
Azzawy's grant ends this month, and he will apply for asylum in the US. But the path from his tiny Baghdad apartment and studio has been difficult and dangerous.
Azzawy had mixed emotions about the US arrival, and what it would mean for his beloved city. But just after the regime fell, he said it felt like "my first time in the outside world."
His first contacts with American troops were "gentle" because "we [Iraqis] were gentle with them." But he warned then that "hoping is not enough. We must act, and take [government] out of the hands of the Americans before it is too late."
An optimist by nature, the tall, barrel-chested Azzawy is a former Iraqi national judo champion. He began working as a translator for US units a week after they arrived, quickly picking up the nickname "Jesus" because of his looks. His job with the 101st Airborne and later the Florida National Guard, was made easier because he was with "good units," he said at the time, which did not partake in heavy-handed raids that alienated many Iraqis.
But the close calls began to add up, as Iraqis working for Americans began to be targeted by insurgents. One fellow translator was killed. And besides working nights for US units at five dollars a day - raised later to $12 a day - Azzawy also worked for Western journalists.
One incident in Najaf in August 2003 sticks with him, and has convinced him not to "try his luck again" by staying in Iraq. While working with this correspondent in the aftermath of a car bomb that killed a ranking Shiite cleric, we were first trapped in a hotel by an angry mob, and then escaped - only to have an Iraqi point toward Azzawy and yell "Wahhabi!" because of his looks.
Believing that Sunni Wahhabi extremists had killed the cleric, Shiite crowds chased us down narrow alleyways. Eventual rescue by Iraqi police took more than an hour to arrange, as crowds threw stones into a courtyard where we had taken shelter. I had to wrap my arms around Azzawy, and we were ringed by police with bulletproof vests, as we made our way through the irate crowd to waiting police vehicles.
"In Iraq, either you work and be in danger, or you stay at home and do nothing," says Azzawy, who changed his routine every day in Baghdad, leaving and arriving home at different times, and changing his routes. "People even get killed going shopping, so you may as well work."
But Azzawy's art suffered, even though he had realized one aspect of his post-Saddam dream, of painting a large mural at the Labor Ministry on an edifice that before had lionized the dictator with a 3-by-4 meter portrait.
Also tough has been the deteriorating situation in Iraq. But, he says, "It's not the Americans or the Iraqis to blame, or the soldiers and politicians - it's everyone." Having seen the US occupation from the inside, as a translator, gives Azzawy pause, before voicing the knee-jerk opposition to the US presence heard from most Baghdadis today.
"The necessity of the situation makes you act a certain way; [sometimes it] forces you to be rude, and there is no time to win hearts and minds," says Azzawy. Iraqis and Americans need to learn more about each other, he says, and to meet each other.
"I have more friends in the US than in Iraq," laughs Azzawy. But ironically, it is Azzawy's time in America that has made it more dangerous for him to return to Iraq. He has been the subject of a handful of stories on Western and Iraqi TV channels, about his art and the start of a new life.
"People in the street will recognize you, and say: 'You worked for the Americans! You were in America!' " notes Azzawy, who says he is already 10 chapters into a book about his experiences. "Now the threat [in Baghdad] is more and more for me than before."
Continued on Page 2
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