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The Hanoudiletter: The Story of My Friends, the Tomas |
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Saturday, 22 September 2007 08:38 |
Updated on September 25, 2007
This blog has been dominated since its inception by postings about the current situation in Iraq. In the beginning I said that I would be talking about certain subjects which are of a special interest to me like history, ethno-religious conflicts and geopolitics, but with the incredible changes which were taking place in Iraq after the 2003 war I started to do a lot of writing on the Iraqi situation which was already very serious and deteriorating rapidly. The current situation at home has dominated this work because of its increasing complexity and the dangers it is posing to its people especially those who are still there and have not joined the millions who are living in exile. The Iraqi mess has developed into an extremely multifaceted and a terrible nightmare, which is defying all attempts at explaining or analyzing which is deterring me from writing about. But as I have very often pontificated on this website the Iraqi mess has a certain dynamics of its own which constantly attracts you to it, last month's events in Iraq, the almost total collapse of the political system, the incredible deterioration of the security situation and the story of the Blackwater security agency have attracted me to it again. I am writing today about the astonishing story of my friends the Toma family.
The Tomas are a truly astonishing family and very treasured friends. They are Catholics in an extremely small Christian minority who were living for the last more than twenty years in Fallujah, yes the famous hotbed of the insurgency a Sunni Muslim small town of less than half a million and very conservative religiously and culturally. The Tomas were able to survive in that environment and fairly happily with a 70 years old mother, three daughters and a younger son. The mother is a very kind and loving person and the girls are intelligent educated and very friendly, two other sons the eldest has already left the country one to finally settle in the United States and the other one has landed in Brazil. I met these lovely people two years before the current war when I was doing some ophthalmology in their town, they were always very kind and helpful and in a very short time we became very good friends. Hana the eldest daughter spoke excellent English and was working in a translating government department the two younger daughters were a teacher and a computer specialist. I helped the son establish a small medical spectacles shop which very nicely cemented our friendship. Life went on like that reasonably prosperous and happy which included a weekly journey from Fallujah to Baghdad to attend a Sunday mass in one of the capital's churches and sometimes a short visit to us in my own house in Baghdad.
And then fate struck a very severe blow to our two families, the girls were suddenly kicked out of their jobs with the tens of thousands of other Iraqis. It was war and as the French say, cela' guere, and the cela guere resulted in the family loosing the money the girls were earning which was their main source of survival. In spite of their difficulties these compassionate individuals were a great source of help and support to us when fate struck us a bit later when my son was shot at by an American soldier, which left him in a very agonizing vegetative state and hurled us into our non-ending nightmare. I am going to stop my part of the story of the Tomas now and reprint almost verbatim the text of an online article by Sharon Abercrombie that appeared on the Christian Charity Publication without permission from the writer or the family, I am sure they are Christians enough to forgive me, the following is what miss Abercrombie wrote on the 17th of September:
Their family home in Fallujah was shelled, burned and looted. They languished for two years in Istanbul within the cultural and vocational limbo accorded to refugees who are waiting to be permanently resettled somewhere, sometime. Now that Hana, Wafa and Sana have found a permanent home in the east bay, they speak with a single voice "we want To work. Now". Wafa and Sana have spent their adult lives as educators, Wafa was an English grammar teacher at a technical institute and Sana as an elementary school instructor near Fallujah. Hana worked for many years as a journalist covering culture and archeology for a daily newspaper before becoming an Arabic/English translator at the ministry of culture in Baghdad. The three sisters arrived at the Oakland airport with their 71 years old mother, Samiya Bashir, close to midnight on august 27. Waiting to welcome them were their brother Shamil Toma, his wife Suha Yosif and Dominican sister Elisabeth Lang director of Catholic Charities of the east bay refugee resettlement program, the catholic charity is serving as the family's sponsor. Their arrival marked the first time in 15 years that the separated family members have seen one another. Shamil fled in 1993, paying a guide to lead him and a cousin through the mountains of northern Iraq to the Turkish border, "I couldn’t leave the normal way with a passport because I was not allowed to leave the country since I had worked at a military factory" the brother explained during a recent interview at catholic charities. He and his wife are members of the catholic community of Pleasanton. He spent a year in Istanbul before emigrating to Canada to stay with sponsoring relatives. In 2000 he was hired by a Fremont computer company as a senior test engineer.
The four-bedroom home in Dublin he shares with his wife and their two sons, tom 10 and Sam 6 has stretched itself to accommodate his mother and sisters. Meanwhile Sister Elisabeth Lang is helping the new arrivals to find their own apartment nevertheless they are happily settling in their new homeland, "we are glad to be here to see our brother, we are also glad to be in a safe place and to live in peace", said Wafa Toma. In Turkey we were safe. The people made us feel welcome, but refugees don’t have all the rights the Turks have. I had to work as the sales manager of a cosmetic shop, said the teacher, and we were always waiting to come here. To help pass the time while living in Turkey, Hana volunteered as a home visitor for Istanbul caritas. She blinked back tears, America is the reason for us to leave yet America brought us here. Their mother does not speak English but she began wiping away her own tears away as well. The terrible memories of Fallujah remain fresh for this lifelong resident of Iraq said her daughter, it has been very difficult for her, she has been uprooted from everything in our culture explained Hana, my mother, a stay at home housewife told us many times I will never leave my home to go to a place where cant speak Arabic to my neighbors. The homesick mom speaks fluent Chaldean, Kurdish and Armenian even more languages than her new neighbors in the east bay.
Hana described what it was like living in Iraq before and during the war, the Tomas were one of only three catholic families in fallujah, a town slightly smaller than Oakland but despite their minority status they had many good Muslim friends and neighbors. While he was alive their father worked as a civil servant in Baghdad but he had to commute from fallujah just as Hana herself would eventually have to do,"we were not allowed to have a house in Baghdad because none of us had been born there" she said. The family also drove the 60 kilometers to Baghdad to attend mass at our lady of peace parish, one of the many catholic churches in a city which had between 200,000-300,000 Christians before war, almost half of them have fled the country now that the Christians are being targeted by the indiscriminate culture of hatred which is sweeping the country. But although the war was an ever present reality for the family the situation became increasingly threatening in the aftermath of the war, Hana said, "everything collapsed , fanatical Islamic fundamentalists from neighboring and not so near countries got the upper hand in the name of jihad and fighting the infidels, it was very much like the Taliban's Afghanistan, the former status of the Tomas as well-respected Catholics living among Muslims became iffy, the prospect of the girls having to wear burkas and chadors loomed uncomfortably close and as if those weren’t worries enough "there was non-stopping bombing", Hana said.
In 2004, after four Americans blackwater workers were brutally killed the us army came into fallujah in full force with bombing and shelling to cleanse the city from the fundamentalists, the Tomas gathered their precious passports and other family documents and fled in a car to Baghdad, they stayed with relatives fir a month, their house was miraculously untouched." We thought everything would get back to normal" Hana said, but two weeks later the insurgents regained the upper hand again after the American army left the place and during the next six months the family had to leave their home twice the last time living in a school in Baghdad from October through December, they couldn’t get back to fallujah that winter, their house was damaged its façade was demolished, our furniture was burned the house looted, it was the end for them they couldn’t stay in Iraq there were no signs of things changing for the better, Hana said. In April of 2005 they fled to Turkey where they waited to be taken in by another country, their brother Shamil was working hard to get them to the east bay. Shamil Toma was referred to the U.S. Catholic conference migration and refugee services which has a contract with the state department to resettle refugees, but as the Tomas were finally settling in their new lives thousands of miles from the chaos bloodshed and heartbreak still raging in their homeland the girls and their mother wonder if peace will ever return to their own country, a place renowned for thousands of years for its rich culture the home to the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians with their art and their culture, the cradle of civilization.
Shamil smiled sadly, war is business, there is a lot of free money with so many contracting and subcontracting positions in Iraq. Shamil's brother Raed is still in Turkey waiting to be cleared to join his family in America, the family's re-union is still not total.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007
Amman/Jordan,
Email:
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