Baghdad Journal

Neeran Saraf & Farewell Dinner for Hind Makiya, Falls Church, Virginia, July 9

Hopped a train from New York to meet up with Imran in D.C. We were scheduled to interview and photograph Neeran Saraf, an Iraqi-American who owns a computer software company in Falls Church, Virginia. Neeran has plans to visit Iraq in August or early September. It will be her first time there since 1990, just before the first Gulf War.

"I personally feel the U.S. is home for me now," Neeran told us at her office, just a couple miles from her home.

For a couple decades she floated around Europe and the Middle East, before she finally settled here, close to her mother, a brother and two sisters. Her family left Iraq in 1970, after her father's bank was taken away from him as the Iraqi government begin to seize control of all of Iraq's money. He was arrested for a few days. The family was terrified. Soon after he was released, the family moved to Beirut.

After spending a few hours with Neeran, we let her get back to work. Imran and I then grabbed some Thai food across the street from Neeran's bricky office complex. Afterwards we drove into D.C., and because we had time to kill before took Imran to the airport, we walked around the Mall and up to the Lincoln Memorial.

It was a muggy day, the tourists around us looking weighed down, heavy in the heat.

At the end of the path below the memorial there were military advocates sitting in booths. "These people are scary," Imran said. You could buy buttons and bumper stickers if you wanted to show your support for the troops in Iraq, if you wanted to show you were behind Bush.

We walked past the booths onto the concrete platform overlooking the Mall, the Washington monument in the distance. There was grass growing through the cracked pavement of the platform.

I imagined a hijacked airplane dive-bombing the monument -- part of a kind of 9/11 syndrome, I guess, my mind occasionally exploding planes when I see them.

Looking out over the Mall, Imran and I both thought of the television footage and photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic speech here. In my mind I could hear is voice, 'I have a dream...,' and it rang louder than, 'Four score and seven...,' the voice whispering from within the memorial behind me.

We walked up the steps and into the Lincoln memorial. The air was stagnant. People sweat through shirts. Families posed for pictures in front of the colossal statue of Lincoln. A man with a southern accent explained to his six or seven year old son how Lincoln liberated the slaves. His son wanted to know what slaves were. The father told him they were blacks who at one time had to work without pay.

Imran and I sat on the steps outside the memorial. We spoke to Brandon via cell phone. Brandon asked Imran if he would go with him to El Cajon, California, to attend a celebration of Iraq's independence day, July 14, 1958, when Iraqis wrestled their country back from the British. Soon after I took Imran to the airport. He and Brandon would leave the next morning for southern California.

I was staying in the D.C. area a few more hours. Neeran invited me to a traditional Iraqi dinner at her mother's home in a condo back in Falls Church. They were preparing a farewell dinner for their family friend Hind Makiya, who was leaving for Baghdad the next day.

I arrived in the rain, and the gigantic condo complex seemed out-of-place in the flat surroundings typical of suburban sprawl. I met Neeran in the lobby. When we walked into the large condo three of Neeran's eight sisters, Venus, Laheeb, and Thuraya were sitting in the livingroom with their mother, Shukria, and Hind. They stood up to greet us. Neeran left immediately to go home, which was just across the parking lot, because she wanted to change our of her work clothes. I sat in the livingroom, and listened as the women talked about their families, about Iraq. Much of it was in Arabic, so I didn't follow much of the conversation. They watched Al Jeezera on a muted television. News from Iraq and Israel. Images of Bush in Africa, shaking the hands of African dignitaries. Images of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and retired General Tommy R. Franks in front of the Senate reviewing military operations in Iraq.

"Was that today?" Laheeb, 44, asked. She has lived in Falls Church since 1998.
"Yes, in Washington," Venus, 55, said. She lives in Potomac, Maryland.
"What were they doing?"
"Briefing the Senate on the military."
"Didn't Tommy Franks retire?"
"He's looking like he gained some weight." The women laughed.
"Yes, he's getting soft, I think." There was more laughter.

Shukria smiled, sitting in a Lazy Boy in a white nightgown. Thuraya tells me her mother's health isn't so great.

"Do you mind if we put my mother's feet up?" the eldest sister, Thuraya asked. She's in town visiting from Baghdad, where she lives with her husband. He owns a sock factory. "My mother needs the blood to flow back out of her feet," she said. "Elevating her feet will help this."

No, no, go ahead I said, a little confused about why they were asking me.

"Because in Arab society you normally wouldn't do this, it's considered not to be polite, to put your feet up when you have visitors over," Thuraya explained.

Thuraya showed me around the kitchen, introduced me to their Eritrean housekeeper, Aba Nagash, then lifted the lids of pots to show what we'll be eating. The kitchen was filled with the smell of onion, mint and dill.

At dinner Neeran and her sister's insist I put down my camera. They want me to eat. They fill my plate with traditional Iraqi food: tashreeb, a stew of meat, onion, potato, and chickpeas poured over hard toasted bread; kuba, a boiled meat pressed between two wheat pancakes; pickled vegetables; and a dill-green rice served with homemade yogurt with mint. Everything is delicious. When my plate is empty, they insist on filling it again.

Two of Neeran's nephews, Sheer and Hedeer El-Showk have also come for dinner. Their mother lives in Morocco. Sheer, 24, a Berkeley graduate, told me that if I let them, his aunts will feed me until it hurts. But his jubilant aunts insisted. "You can lie down on the couch afterwards," Laheeb said. Everyone laughed.

Aba walked into the dining room from the kitchen. She chewed on a small piece of bread. She sat down behind Venus. She has a toothpick thin body and sunken cheeks. She is quiet, though a strong presence in the room.

"Aba, come come, eat something," Laheeb tells her. Aba has worked for the family for a long time. She helped the Saraf's when their father was ill and dying.
"She's fasting," Venus says. "She's a Christian."
"She's always fasting," Laheeb says. "Easter is over."
"She's begging Jesus to give her something, so she's fasting," Thuraya says. "For one month. She wishes something, so she fasts."
"How long has she been fasting?" Hind asks.
"Every time I see her she's fasting," Laheeb says. "I have no idea."

Close to 9 o'clock at night. I had to leave soon. The table was covered with platters of fruit and baklava and Iraqi desserts I didn't know the names of. The women were debating Iraqi politics, debating the details of what is happening in their country -- who is still fighting, who is still attacking American forces, who will have power -- debating their own memories. I didn't want to leave, but my train departed from Union Station at ten.

Before I left Neeran told me I should travel south of Baghdad to see other parts of the country. Her sisters agreed. Thuraya told me that I must see the place where the Tigris meets the Euphrates. They told me I should visit some of the mosques in Najaf. As long as I wear traditional Iraqi clothing, they said, I will blend in. They told me how beautiful their country is, and how beautiful it was. They want me to see it, experience it, to have some experience of Iraq other than war, than Saddam. "Iraq is not Saddam," Laheeb said. For Neeran and Laheeb -- she left after the first Gulf War -- they are still trying to negotiate their memories of the past with the reality of the present. And Neeran, like Hind, is anxious to return.

Posted by Adam Shemper at July 17, 2003 01:25 AM | TrackBack