Damascus, Syria
May 19, 2009
Did you or did you not cook?
It seems like such a harmless question, but the simple yes or no answer to that question can determine the fate of an Iraqi family longing to join their relatives in the United States.
I would ask you to take a moment and try and put yourself in the shoes of an Iraqi family. They could be your family or mine. The parents are about 50 years of age, and they have seven children. They have three married daughters in Iraq. Their oldest son is married and together with his wife and two little girls share the parents’ modest apartment here in the city. Their oldest daughter, three years old, is severely handicapped. The parents have two more daughters and their youngest son, a 13 year old, who complete this household of nine in Damascus.
The father has an aunt in Detroit, Michigan and one of his sister’s was resettled to California over a year ago. She uses crutches as she had polio as a small child. She is lonely and very anxious for her brother and his family to join her.
This family fled to Syria in the summer of 2007 after receiving threats from the Mujahedeen and a kidnapping attempt on the wife and one of the daughters. As a Christian family they were and continue to be, particularly targeted. They left everything behind to save their lives. They feel they have nothing to return to except certain death.
Now I will ask you to shift gears to the present time. Before an Iraqi individual or family can be accepted to the US for resettlement, they must undergo an interview with a representative from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Iraqis know that this meeting is decisive, a one-shot deal which will determine whether they can reach a place of safety, where they can work, educate their children and pick up the pieces of their lives once again.
More and more attention is being placed in these interviews on the issue of military service, the length of time served, location and duties. In the military document of the above mentioned father, the word “cook” was clearly written. He explained however that when his military supervisor noted that he had a university degree in Hotel Management, he assigned him to an Air Force base to work in a cafeteria. His work was strictly clerical, doing tally sheets and paperwork. It was not uncommon, my Iraqi Muslim translator told me, for Christians to be assigned as cooks. They have a long tradition of not taking up arms.
The DHS interviewer kept putting the question to him “Did you or did you not cook?” Shrugging his shoulders in resignation, the father looked at me sadly and asked “What could I tell her?” He didn’t cook. The family was denied resettlement on the basis of “credibility.”
I cannot describe my feelings to you at hearing one such story after another. As I visit with families in their apartments, holding their rejection (form) letters in my hand, I am always served coffee or tea with a graciousness that is hard to describe. Often it is one of the older children who bring the refreshments, a young person who has now missed a couple of years of school. Too often the mothers can not hold back their tears. Their last hope to move on has been crushed. They look to me for some word of reassurance, and I long to tell them there is yet hope, that everything will be alright.
