Maine’s Iraqis watch news of war with anxiety, hope

loading...

PORTLAND – Ali Al-Faisalawi has been on a steady diet of Al-Jazeera newscasts and Marlboro Lights since the United States launched strikes on Baghdad.

Al-Faisalawi is a political refugee from Iraq who was jailed for his refusal to join the military. Although he managed to flee Saddam Hussein’s regime, he left behind family and many friends.

“I didn’t sleep a lot, just watching the news, going crazy,” Al-Faisalawi said from his Portland apartment on a day off from his job at a Hannaford Bros. warehouse. “I don’t want to leave from the house.”

Feelings about the war are mixed among the smattering of Iraqis who have made Maine their adopted home. Some were jailed for their opposition to Saddam’s government and have lost family members to political violence. They fear for their loved ones in Iraq and anxiously await word from them as U.S.-led troops try to force Saddam from power.

“I can’t say I’m happy. They’re going to take care of Saddam Hussein. I’m glad about that. But I’m worried about the people,” Al-Faisalawi said. “I feel sorry for all the people dying, all the children in the hospital.”

Al-Faisalawi, 33, longs for the dictator’s ouster. He hopes that day would herald his reunion with his mother, who was seized as Saddam’s army crushed a rebellion during the 1991 Gulf War.

For more than 10 years, the family did not know whether she was alive or dead. They learned only last year that she was in prison, but no one has been able to see her.

Many of Al-Faisalawi’s family members are in the southern city of Basra, which he hopes will be safe because of the proximity of U.S. and British troops.

Abbas Alhamdany, 32, of Windham is trying to spread the word about the atrocities committed by Saddam. His regime is one that would gas its own people, drop bound dissenters into the ocean and force young men to choose between death and killing innocents as military conscripts, said Alhamdany, who runs the Friendly Discount store in Westbrook with his brother and wife.

“I want to tell the people. I want them to understand,” Alhamdany explains as a television behind the cash registers broadcast news from Iraq. “The people against the war, I think they are wrong. They don’t know what Saddam is. If they knew what Saddam Hussein is, they would support George Bush 100 percent.”

Alhamdany welcomes the war as an opportunity to topple Saddam. He believes that others feel the same, particularly in the largely Shiite south, where he is from and where opposition to the Sunni government is strong.

“If the people get the opportunity, they’ll try, try again,” he said.

Khalid Al-baidhani, 35, prays for the safety of his family, including his sister in Baghdad. He has faith that U.S. and British troops will keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

“I hate war because I’ve seen enough in my life. But some people will get killed, that’s the reality of it,” Al-baidhani said during a break from the production job at H.P. Hood, the dairy processor. “Saddam Hussein, he’s the cancer inside the Iraqi body. So he’s got to go.”

Once Saddam is gone, Al-baidhani said, he will be able to take his wife and children to see Iraq.

“I miss everything in my country – everything. I cannot wait,” he said.

Al-baidhani said he doesn’t resent those who oppose the war.

“They don’t want to see people get killed or suffer, but sometimes we have to sacrifice something. The cost of freedom is hard,” he said.

Unlike the others, Maged S. Khoory did not come to the United States as a political refugee. He left Iraq in 1963 for his medical residency and settled in the United States.

Now a visiting hemotologist-oncologist at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Khoory, 65, said his opposition to the war does not stem solely from the fact that he has family in Baghdad.

“My family is really everybody. … I’m a humanist,” Khoory said.

In principle, Khoory said, he would like to see any dictator deposed – but not if the human cost is the destruction of so many lives.

The attack on Saddam is representative of misguided U.S. foreign policy that targets some despots while tolerating or supporting others, Khoory said.

U.S. support for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war helped build Saddam, he said, but now, after helping him and tolerating his abuses, it is time for Saddam to go.

“How come all of the sudden now? Because it’s his turn … to show the rest of the world that you don’t mess with Texas,” Khoory said.

Al-Faisalawi also takes issue with U.S. policy. After Iraq was routed from Kuwait in 1991, he said, Iraqis had the chance to rebel against Saddam but did not stand a chance after the United States pulled out.

The current attack in Iraq is just the latest hardship on a people who have been cursed with war, he said.

“All the human beings there, they don’t have a life – just war, war, war,” he said. “I’m just hoping this war is going to end soon. I hope my people – Iraqi people – have good destiny, future. And I wish God bless everybody there.”