Saturday, July 28, 2007

The Illumination of Hate Email

One of the last emails I received before I left for Amman was from a peace activist who had seen me speak the night before at a fundraising show of my photos arranged by a gallery that represents my work. Although I repeated a minimum of 5 times that Iraqi people hate being occupied, yet he seemed to take his own meaning from my words and create a new reality. He went so far as to insinuate that my photos were perhaps not mine after all.

It went like this:
“Ms. Tychostup:

Tonight I listened to your presentation at the strip mall out in Delmar. I was the one who asked you to reconcile your contention that Iraqis were happy to have an occupying force in their country with the well-known data about Iraqi opinion and estimates of the Iraqi death count since the invasion.

I was stunned and appalled that you dismissed the famous Johns Hopkins estimate of Iraqi dead as "propaganda."

http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html

I did not challenge you because I did not have the facts in front of me, so I am sure that you would have easily out-talked me. But there is one thing I could have said to you if I had been as sharp a talker as you are. I could have pointed out that your dismissal of the Johns Hopkins study is remarkably reminiscent of George W. Bush's dismissal of the study:

http://www.newu.uci.edu/showArticle.php?id=5002

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/11/bush-iraq-tolerate-violence

Until you let slip this one blazing error I was willing to overlook all the little red flags in your speech. Up until that point I saw no reason to assume that you were anything but what you claimed to be.

When I came home my wife asked me how was your presentation. Forced to sum up in a few words, I replied, "The woman was phony baloney."

Perhaps I could have more accurately said, "She is very, very slick."

I tell you this because I want you to understand that while you may have fooled and befuddled most of that audience, there is at least one person who sees you in clear focus.

Your photographs, though, were excellent, quite extraordinary. That is, if they were yours.

-Dan Van Riper
Albany”

Oh well. You can’t please everyone.

Right before I left the US, I contacted Judy Meeker in Tennessee. She makes handmade quilts with children – peace quilts – and sends them off to far corners of the world where children are in need. I have taken her quilts with me on at least 3 trips now. I asked her to send me some more – over might them because I was leaving the next day. The quilts arrived by way of miracle and early this morning, my 4th day in Amman, Judy put an email exchange up her internet newsletter that spoke of this miracle: http://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:8831.674014312/rid:64e14311fb54cb64d3b905c87101e135

Approximately 5 minutes after I read her newsletter I received this email:



“Dear Lurna
I have checked your website
what are you doing?
trying to help Iraqis , or just making propoganda for yourself?
where is the refugees you visited?
and to whom to gave the blankets or quilts?
if you are activist, you need to help people on ground, for their basic needs like education
for their kids here in Amman,
do you know whats the needs of Iraqis here in Amman?
have you met families and write down on your notebook?
I dont know what to say, another naive American trying to bring lights on herself under the name
of Iraqi refugees?
how much you know about the suffering of Iraqis?
4 times you visited Iraq?
how?
by hiding inside American tank?
who protect you?
have you seen the mess, your government done in mt country?
is your quilts , the solution for what happened in Iraq?
are you an American dreamer?
please ask your government to pull out its troops from Iraq, leave the country to its people,
I dont think that Iraqis need your quilts or pity
thank you
Faiza Alaraji
an Iraqi mother”

Unlike the first writer, an angry American person who calls himself a peace activist and thinks sending an angry hate email is taking action, an angry Iraqi I can deal with. Iraqis have a right to be angry. There is a lot to be angry about. I forwarded the email to Judy and wrote Faiza back:

“I am here in Amman. Would you like to meet?

Lorna”

Apparently, Faiza traveled to the US with the help of Code Pink. Judy Meeker wrote of Faiza: “She went to California- around Santa Cruz and spoke. She was blown out by the people of the US mindlessness about what was going on. After, she was given a quilt by my friends. She was inspired that American children cared about her people and had her son take it to his school to show.”

I’d be interested to hear what Faiza has to say about Code Pink. Just about every international and Iraqi person I know who worked with Code Pink and Global Exchange in Iraq does not have anything positive to say about the experience. One Iraqi woman formed her own NGO after working with them, she was so disgusted. They are known as media hounds. Coming to Amman for photo ops with Iraqi refugees, not daring to step foot in Iraq themselves. Collecting money for their own coffers by way of the Iraqi poster child they choose for the moment who must support their agenda.

I am waiting for Faiza’s reply. I hope we can meet. I’ll keep you guys posted.

PS One of the Iraqi refugees I was taken to meet was Haj Ali. Apparently, Haj Ali claimed at one time that he was the man in the infamous Abu Graib photo with the hood over his head and attached to electrical wires. He later said that he was not that person, but that the same thing had happened to him. But that is another story.

First Night in Amman

I have to admit to a little bit of the jitters just before I left. The unknown loomed ahead. But as soon as the plane landed I realized I was back to yet another “home” of mine, one that is experiencing extraordinary development, and growing and expanding at a seemingly exponential level. Palm trees now line the road leaving the airport and billboards proclaim that Dubai and Jordan are partnered in some way. Huge condos, both new and under construction, fill the cityscape. One massive hole we passed – and I mean massive in both depth and breath – is being readied for yet another construction project. In the dark of night, a new expansion bridge lined with rectangular lights connecting in a long streaming line all along its cement guardrails, gives one the feeling of gliding along on an indoor Disney ride.

I hope to re-connect with the bright young Syrian Kurdish man I sat next to on the plane, if and when I get to Damascus. Moving from Syria to Pittsburgh when he was thirteen years old, Kawa (“like ‘Kawasaki’” he told me) flew on to his homeland to marry his childhood sweetheart. He will bring her back with him to his new home in Pittsburgh where she will go to school and he will continue working on his doctorate in child psychology. We talked at great length about the human rights abuses perpetrated on the Kurds by the Syrian government. Last time Kawa visited Syria, he was prevented from boarding his flight to the US and not allowed to leave for two months. A lengthy process of meeting with officials - sometimes 3 in one day - and the paying of a bribe each time, finally bought him his freedom. A fan of American psychologist/psychiatrist, Milton Erikson, Kawa is an extraordinary positive thinker, and although a little trepidatious at entering Syria once again, he is convinced that no matter what happens, all will be for the best.


After settling in to Anna’s enviro’s NGO office/apartment, I went with Anna and her American-born Iraq coworker, took a taxi to my favorite Amman restaurant. Amal (not her real name), now thirty, was born in Nebraska and lived there for one year before her parents moved back to Baghdad. She arrived in Amman yesterday from Iraq and is beginning the process that will hopefully allow her Iraqi-born husband and two children to migrate with her to the US for the purposes of attending school and working. Not only did she get royally ripped off today by a slick Jordanian taxi cab driver who obscenely overcharged her, Amal’s effort to begin her family’s US immigration process today was somewhat stonewalled by folks at the American Embassy. Tomorrow Anna will accompany her. Amal speaks excellent English, is an American citizen and carries an American passport and it will be interesting to see if Anna’s “American” presence tomorrow will help facilitate Amal’s immigration process.

Once at the restaurant, I ordered ouze, a boiled and delicately seasoned lamb shank served over a bed of raisin-filled spiced white rice smothered in a curdled yogurt. Yum. Kathy Kelly, a long-term peace activist working in Iraq since the early 90s under the now defunct Voices in the Wilderness she helped to found, joined us for dinner. It was good to see Kathy, who helped me (and Anna and many others) enter Iraq that first time back in February of 2003, and who has kept her finger, as best one can without entering the country, on the pulse of the situation in Iraq. We mostly reminisced, caught up on the whereabouts and activities of Iraqis and others we had met and/or worked with and around, and began to compare notes on issues facing Iraqis today.

I asked Kathy what she thought were the most pressing issues regarding the Iraq refugees in Amman. Education topped her list. “Education matters very much to [the Iraqi] people who know they will be here a long time. They want their kids educated. Health care is another issue. There is a lot of neglect regarding health care. People come here with huge trauma. Within Iraq, it is very, very dire regarding food, water, transport, and insecurity.” In Kathy’s opinion, the UN should declare Iraq an emergency zone, but the US is blocking such efforts because if the UN were to declare Iraq an emergency zone, the US would have to accept responsibility for the war.

I asked Kathy if she thought the health care here in Jordan was any better for poorer Jordanians than it was for Iraqis. Her consensus was that it was probably about the same.

Tomorrow I will visit with Mazen, the manager of the dilapidated, 5-blanket hotel (I named it so due to the fact that 5 heavy wool blankets are needed in order to keep warm in bed during the colder months) where many of us independents, peaceworkers, internationals, NGO staffers, Iraqis and others have frequented over the years. I also hope to meet with an Iraqi videographer friend and an Iraqi interpreter recommended by Mazen, and go off to the Iraqi refugee neighborhoods and interview people living there.

It is good to be back. There is much more happening here than I having been hearing about in the media. So many stories….so many angles and views. And I have been here less than 24 hours!