Mother, Son Tell Of Family Life During War

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

It's our Thursday International Briefing, and we're going to ask if the full body and face coverings worn by some Muslim women, especially the burqa and niqab, are symbols of piety or oppression and who gets to decide that. We lift the veil on that debate among Muslim women in a few minutes. But first, this week Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from their cities.

Though more than 130,000 American troops will remain in the country, many Iraqis see this as a critical first step toward regaining control over their nation. This is an important milestone. But while much of the conversation about it has focused on what it might mean for the U.S. presence in Iraq, we wanted to talk about what the U.S. presence in Iraq has meant for Iraqis. So we've called on the members of one family who've been writing about the war since its beginning.

Faiza Al-Araji and her three sons. Faiza's blog, "a family in Baghdad," was the basis of the book "The Iraq War Blog: An Iraqi Family's Inside View of the First Year of the Occupation." Faiza is with us now along with her oldest son Raed Jarrar. Also for a current perspective on the reality on the ground in Iraq is NPR reporter and translator Ghassan Adnan. And he joins us from Baghdad. And I thank you all so much for being with us.

Mr. RAED JARRAR: Thanks for having us.

Ms. FAIZA AL-ARAJI (Author, "The Iraq War Blog: An Iraqi Family's Inside View of the First Year of the Occupation"): Thank you.

GHASSAN ADNAN: Thank you very much.

MARTIN: Faiza, I'm going to start with you. Recently on your blog you wrote, I can't believe it has been only six years that passed upon us since the 2003 war. Why does it seem like it happened 20 years before? Why did sorrow accumulate upon our hearts as if we had never lived in comfort and happiness before? As if the beautiful events of our lives were just dreams gone by, leaving nothing but memories. And this is beautiful writing…

Ms. AL-ARAJI: Yeah.

MARTIN:…but it sounds very bleak. Has it been all darkness in all these years?

Ms. AL-ARAJI: Sometimes when you have like a happy time with your family, with your friends and relatives, you have your job, you have your stable life and suddenly something happens, change everything to be dark. And sometimes you lost hope that the things would be back again like it was in the past. The basic human needs, you know, even most of the Iraqis, they lost it and this is really hard.

MARTIN: And when you think about the troops leaving now. This is a war and we often - in a war we think in terms of victory or defeat. When you think about the troops leaving the cities, does it feel like victory or defeat?

Ms. AL-ARAJI: It is like a moment of (unintelligible), you know, it like (unintelligible) exactly. Because all these troops with the huge tanks and heavy weapons and it is affecting the lives of civilian people. When I went last time to Baghdad in the end of 2006, I saw Baghdad as a war zone. It is not a city anymore with the high blocks, with the, you know, high walls with barriers of concrete in the street. That you can see it is not a normal life. The people, it affected their lives. They feel frightened, you know.

MARTIN: Raed, what about you? When you think about combat troops leaving the cities, they're still in the country, but when you think about them leaving the cities how does it strike you? Does it - feel free to reject my language if you like, but does it feel like victory or defeat?

Mr. JARRAR: I don't think about it in these terms. I think about it as maybe one major step towards a solution. Now I've been putting my career as an architect on hold for the last six years and working on politics, just demanding that the U.S. leaves Iraq. This has been my life for the last six years, just working to ask for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as a whole.

So what happened this week, I think was a bit significant not because Iraq is a sovereign state again, Iraq is still under occupation. But, I think it was important because number one, Iraqis will stop seeing troops and living this daily humiliation under foreign occupation. And number two, it gives an excellent sign that the Obama administration is serious about implementing this agreement of all troop withdrawals. I think it's just one step in the right direction, and now I have more hope that Iraq will become a sovereign country within the next couple of years.

MARTIN: Ghassan, will you give us the - your sense of things from there? What are the views of the people that you're talking to there?

ADNAN: It's historical day. It's a very happy day that we are seeing that no more foreign soldiers, U.S. soldiers on Iraqi ground. This is the way that people see it, because for me as a journalist, talking to people on daily basis, they feel happy. This kind of happiness is something very rare to be found here in Iraq and is something very rare also to find people dancing happily for an act of government, and people chanting, singing happily, praising the government for doing it. When you see such a scene, you'll be amazed.

I'm not going to exaggerate when I tell you that tears filled my ears. So I was almost crying. Wow, my people are happy again, regardless whether the results or the consequences are going be good or bad, but for sure I'm going to tell you something good, and something really, really, really excellent.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We're talking about the reactions to the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. And we're speaking with bloggers Faiza Al-Araji and her son Raed Jarrar. They've been writing about the impact of the war for the last six years. We're also joined by NPR's Ghassan Adnan.

Ghassan, there are reports that there is some trepidation about this in that there are some who fear that the violence - the ethnic violence that we've seen off and on over the last six years might then resurface, true, not true.

ADNAN: There are some people who do not feel optimistic about the American withdrawal. They are saying that whether the insurgents or the militias, they are very quiet right now because American soldiers with their heavy power is on the ground. But once they leave things would be resumed because Iraqi army is not that much capable of facing such challenges.

Others are saying no, it's the contrary because militias, insurgents are causing such troubles, problems or killings, because they say that the Americans are here, Americans that invade us, so we have to resist. Once the Americans leave, no more legitimate reason for resistance. So it's a controversial issue but you find people will still fear violence, especially sectarian violence to be resumed. And they've got all the right to because, you know, things here were very, very much difficult. You can never imagine or even you don't want to imagine that such thing is going to be repeated at all. Never ever.

MARTIN: Raed what about you, as you've said you spent the last couple of years focusing on this day - at least getting to this day where at least there is a beginning of the end. Would you consider going back?

Mr. JARRAR: Of course, at least going back to Iraq will become an option. For more privileged people like myself who has the option of staying in the U.S. and becoming an American or staying in other countries or for the less privileged Iraqis who are displaced. We're talking about five million Iraqis who were displaced in the last five years. This is one of the reasons why many people including myself were saying the occupation must end, the U.S. must withdraw, not only because I'm against occupying Iraq, but also because I thought the end of the occupation is important for getting Iraqis back to their country.

MARTIN: Can you help the Americans understand? We wanted this conversation to be focused on the views of Iraqis and how they feel about their country, but can you help Americans understand? There are some Americans who do find it hard to understand how it is that living under U.S. occupation could be worse than living under the dictatorship of Saddam, who was a dictator, who was erratic, who many people believe, forgive me, was psychologically disturbed. So can you help Americans understand that, why it would be worse living under U.S. occupation than it would have been living under those previous circumstance?

Mr. JARRAR: I mean, to tell you the truth I hope Americans will never understand or experience occupations. One of the things that I do during my job is that I travel and speak to students at schools about the occupation of Iraq. So of course the first question that they ask is, do you know what an occupation is? And no one knows. And this is really heavy, you know, I hope that in Iraq one day someone will go to an Iraqi school and ask children, do you know what an occupation is? And people will say, what do you mean by an occupation? Because occupation is really humiliating. And it's very hard and painful. And people who live under occupations can't even describe their feelings of having to live their life under these foreign troops, foreign tanks coming around their blocks and controlling the cities. Humans don't like occupations, whether they were Iraqis, or Americans, or French or whatever.

MARTIN: Faiza, I want to go back to one of your earliest blog posts. This is from December of 2003 and you wrote, to make us even happier, there was no electricity, no gasoline, no cooking gas, no any sort of oil product. An innocent question presents itself, we're an oil rich country, so where is the oil? Things are difficult to get and the promised beautiful future is still far away. Do you feel that the promised beautiful future is in sight? Do you think you'll see it?

Ms. ARAJI: Well, I feel like, after six years of occupation, always we're asking ourselves, what have we gained? You now, because when (unintelligible) in 2005 and 2006, there was an Iraqi delegation and we have been invited with the global exchange organization here to meet people in different communities and also in the Congress. And we talk with the people in the Congress and asked them, what have you done in Iraq? Please pull out. They said no, no, we will stay, we will fix everything. It was in 2006. Now you can see, as long as they are staying, nothing had been fixed in Iraq. Even part of the Iraqis at the beginning of the occupation, they thought the Americans will come to bring the technology. They will build the new bridges, new schools, new hospitals with computers and the hi-tech, but look what have we gained.

If we have a highway, they destroy it. If we have a hospital, they keep it like a deterioration in the health sector and the education sector. This is what we have seen on the ground, from their acts on the ground they gave us this bad feeling.

MARTIN: So, you don't feel optimistic at this moment?

Ms. AL-ARAJI: No, no, no…

MARTIN: You do, you do?

Ms. AL-ARAJI: …yeah, still the hope. First time, when I meet the people, they ask me, are you Sunni or Shiite? I said, I'm Iraqi. Nobody talk about Sunni and Shia before the occupation. It means they create this story and this false image about the Iraqis. So we said, as long as they are in that country, it means that things are complicated and it's better for them to pull out to keep Iraqis, they can't fix their lives. They can't fix their future as any other nation.

MARTIN: Ghassan, I'm going to ask you for a final word on that point. What is the next milestone that Iraqis are looking for?

ADNAN: The main fear that I see, I feel from Iraqi people is that, what's going to happen with the Iraqi forces. Are they capable enough to do it? Are they professional enough to do it? So for elections and other political stuffs, I think it can be done everywhere in the world. But to have disciplined security forces, disciplined army and police and other division of security forces, this is the main thing right now. Because if you have someone who knows nothing about discipline, who knows nothing about order, about law, you cannot lead or live this peaceful life. So in my opinion or as I get it from people, discipline, disciplined security forces are the most important thing right now.

MARTIN: NPR'S Ghassan Adnan, he joined us from our Baghdad bureau. We are pleased to be joined here in Washington, D.C. by Faiza Al-Araji and her older son Raed Jarrar. They are Iraqi bloggers. Their early diaries from the war were compiled in the book, "The Iraq War Blog: An Iraqi Family's Inside View of the First Year of the Occupation." I thank you all so much for speaking with us. And good luck to you and your family.

Mr. JARRAR: Thank you.

Ms. AL-ARAJI: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.