Iraqi Refugees in Syria : Make love your aim

All photographs courtesy of the Syria branch of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

The original walled city of Damascus still stands and its kilometres of narrow streets with overhanging balconies and street level shops is a strange and wonderful world. Some of the original gates to the city can still be seen and as one walks through Bab Touma, the Christian quarter, it is easy to imagine the adventures the Apostle Paul had in his day. My road to Damascus experience was less dramatic though full of blessings – but it was also a window into a tragedy of enormous proportions.

In the spring of 2007, I worked with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Syria interviewing refugees and writing their stories of persecution – the reasons they had fled their countries. These reports were then submitted to countries of resettlement, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and others. Our hope was that they would all be accepted by one of these countries and the refugees could start new lives in safety.

In the five years since the invasion of Iraq by the multinational forces, more than 2.4 million Iraqi refugees fled to the neighbouring countries of Jordan and Lebanon with the majority fleeing to Syria. Syria now hosts approximately 1.4 million refugees and Damascus has received the vast majority, swelling its population by about 30 per cent.

It is known as the Iraq refugee crisis and it is the largest urban caseload that the UN refugee agency has ever dealt with. There are no camps to shelter these refugees, except ones for Palestinians and these are located in the desert regions. For those who wish to register with the UN, the long wait in the hot sun is a reminder of all they have lost. Iraqis living in Syria are forbidden to work, even if they could find employment. Most have been living on savings which are vanishing. Some work in the underground economy.

There is evidence that some women and young girls are being forced into prostitution and other forms of exploitation. Kids support their families by selling items on the street. Few children go to school – unable to afford the fees and the schools have limited places. In a reversal of the usual situation, it is Iraqis inside Iraq who are sending money to sustain their family members in neighbouring countries, often risking their lives in the process. Of the 90,000 Iraqis who were registered with the UN when I left in July 2007, 10,000 had cancer.

Syria and Jordan have closed their borders, effectively imprisoning people inside Iraq – people who have been wanting to flee. Syria and Jordan are carrying the burden of this crisis with little support from the international community. That includes Canada.

Let me share a few stories. They are not extraordinary; in many ways they are typical. But for some reason they have stuck with me. I have changed names for the sake of privacy and security.

Amad is a 40-year-old man of the Mandaean faith. Mandaeans are a minority and they have a particular reverence for John the Baptist. They were persecuted under Saddam's regime, and still are. Amad had owned a liquor store in Iraq, which was destroyed by a bomb. Following the loss of his shop, he went to work for a relative who was a goldsmith. He had not been married long when he took a walk one day with his wife and brother. They were recognized as Mandaeans and threatened by a gang. They turned and ran but his wife was not able to run fast enough and was shot dead. Amad and his brother fled to Syria.

Amad

On the day I met him, Amad had a protruding eye, which I learned was the result of a growing brain tumour. He was going blind and required the assistance of his brother and sister-in-law to manage daily activities. He begged me to get his brother interviewed for resettlement. As family members do not automatically get interviewed, I asked him what had happened to his brother. I learned his brother had co-owned the liquor store, meaning he too had experienced persecution on the basis of his profession and fit the refugee convention definition. Amad's story does not stand out because of what he had suffered, as sadly so many have similar stories. I remember him because he had been dealing with a life threatening illness for years with no treatment because nothing was done for Iraqis until recently, except to register them.

This gentle man had carried into exile his burden of illness and the loss of his beloved, with no help from anyone. His disease was advanced. We immediately referred his case to Norway where medical cases are taken without interview, relying on the medical reports provided. After several weeks, the decision on resettlement came back: refused. No reasons given nor required. Did they believe he was too far advanced to make it worthwhile to perform the risky brain surgery? Who knows? When my colleague phoned him with the bad news, adding how sorry we were for the decision, he graciously replied that he knew we were doing all we could.

I thank God that the Netherlands interviewed and accepted Amad and his brother, and he is there now.

I remember leaving the room to see whether I could find his brother's file number and mentioning the dilemma to one of my co-workers who had worked with me as a translator for a short while. Nida, a Muslim, is one of the kindest and most professional women I have worked with and I shared in passing that I was worried Amad's brother would not fit the criteria. When I returned later to say that his brother had co-owned the liquor store that had been bombed, meaning that he was eligible for resettlement, we simultaneously made the familiar thumbs-up "Yes!" sign.

Ninewah

A young woman and her brother, both in their twenties, entered the interview room on a particularly hot afternoon. Their parents had left Iraq in 2004, arrived in Canada to make a refugee claim and were accepted. Their younger sister was with them. Ninewah explained that her parents were now citizens but under Canadian law they were unable to be sponsored by their parents as they were over the age of 22. For years they had been in Syria hoping for an interview. Ninewah added that her mother had cancer with only months to live. I told them to return with photographs and we would help complete the myriad extra forms that Canada requires. I asked my supervisor if their cases could be accelerated. I am happy to report they are now in Canada, having arrived on the day their mother was scheduled for surgery. I pray this family has at least a little while together.

There are countless horror stories that could be told. Some days I felt there was nothing new that I could hear – but there always was. How many more children would be kidnapped? Or a father killed in front of his child? How many more letters with a single bullet inside would be left on the doorstep? Or a streak of blood painted on the wall of a home?

If I keep telling these stories, you might be moved for a time, but what then?

How can we make sense of the brutality unfolding in Iraq? This was a once secular country, where intermarriage across faiths was possible. Neighbourhoods were mixed with people living side-by-side from diverse backgrounds. Kids played together and visited in each other's homes. This was a country with a well-educated population – many Iraqis were obsessed with education, even venturing back into Iraq in spite of the danger so that their children could sit year-end exams and receive their diplomas.

For me the biggest challenge is how to make sense of this horror in the context of faith. War is the breakdown of human community, the intentional dividing of the world into the weak and the strong. Those who provoke war believe their cause is just and noble, against foes that are evil or sub-human. Professional armies are not the only ones who fight wars; war empowers those with a desire to murder.

Listening to the stories of Iraqis, it became apparent that people in certain neighbourhoods were being driven from their homes which were then occupied by families of another ethnic religious community. Sometimes it was the militias operating in that area that occupied the homes. Many people simply grabbed their documents and personal items and fled for their lives leaving all their belongings behind. There was no time to pack up.

In situations like this, you relocate to where you have family or where trusted community members live. There is safety in numbers as the cliché goes. There is safety in being with those who identify themselves as you do. Your world is reduced to those who are just like you.

Persistent fear destroys trust. The seeds of the current violence were sown by Saddam Hussein who relentlessly persecuted political enemies and groups that threatened his power. Now the violence is justified on religious grounds. Mixed marriage couples who have lived together happily for years are told to convert or to divorce the offending spouse. Threatened with death, it is hard to stand up to this. The tragedy is that in some cases one partner starts to believe this lunacy, or sometimes it is their family members who pressure them. Families may split or they flee the country as refugees in order to resist this fanaticism and stay together as a family. Imagine the effect this has on children.

This is religious fundamentalism manipulated by criminal forces and Jesus speaks to this religious worldview.

Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan is powerful. The Samaritan, considered by Jews as a religious heretic, the man of the wrong faith, sees a hurting human being on the ground. He does not see the person who will make him unclean and therefore unacceptable to God. The Priest and the Levite, on the other hand, the two men of the right faith, cross the road and walk by. Their religion will not permit them to stop. Jesus' message here is incredibly simple, unbelievably beautiful and as difficult to put into action as anything we will ever have to do.

Paul captures the simplicity, the beauty and the difficulty of Jesus' message in 1 Corinthians 13. "And now faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love." He begins the next chapter: "make love your aim." Not biblical inerrancy, not purity, nor obedience to holiness codes. Love.

What a radical statement of ethics: if we fail in love, we fail in all things.

One man and his family stand out as an example of Jesus' compassion. Every day there were refugees who were asked to come as standbys, in case there was a no-show among our scheduled interviews. It was mid-afternoon and the interviews were exhausting but an old woman, a couple and their child were sitting in the waiting room. The translator working with me agreed to stay late and what unfolded stayed with us both for a long time.

The tall, thin man had been a human rights advocate during the time of Saddam. His mother said Naim was a spokesperson for a human rights association which gave him a national profile. Eventually Naim was arrested, tortured and left to die in prison. For many months his family did not know where he was being held. His mother was a seamstress for a distant relative of Saddam's and this woman used her connections to find out where he was held. With a combination of bribes and a sympathetic officer, he was able to escape. He was almost dead from starvation and his wounds. At over two metres in height, he weighed less than 60 kilos, about 130 pounds. He fled Iraq, landing in a Syrian refugee camp that he described as inhuman. He fled to Turkey and later Greece and learned both native languages. Naim worked with refugees, translating documents and interpreting during interviews. He also studied theology.

Hearing of his father's poor health, he decided to take his chances and return to Iraq. He started to work in the church as a deacon and he married.

One day, armed masked men entered his Baghdad home and kidnapped his two-year-old daughter while his wife was alone at home. Later that day a ransom demand of $10,000 was received by phone. As he tried to sell things and accumulate the money, he suffered a massive heart attack and was hospitalized for several days. He was frantic with worry.

After one week the ransom was exchanged and in a complicated drop-off and pick-up arrangement, Naim and his daughter were finally reunited. Shortly after the child's release a car bomb destroyed her father's car parked in front of the church. The church was likely the target but who could know for sure if this was not another tactic to intimidate the community and make him leave?

In Syria, Naim is a priest in the Assyrian church in the densely populated area of Damascus known as Saida Zeinab. Towards the end of the interview, when I was explaining that his case would be submitted to the United States, he expressed concern about leaving Syria. He said 2,000 people in the church were counting on him. He spoke of the needs among the refugees. Later I learned that this church, known as Ibrahim Khalil, was not only providing spiritual nourishment but also real food to hundreds of refugee families: Christians, Muslims, Mandaeans; anyone who needed it. He felt that leaving would be abandoning the people.

How can we do any less?