I arrived near
the end of boarding time to my aisle seat (Thank you Steve) for our 11 hour
(ugh) flight to Chicago. I normally put
out a “don’t talk to me” vibe on planes and enjoy the private time.
The woman
next to me was an attractive, well dressed, 50 something with Hijab and not
looking to be that social. Before long
we began to talk. She told me she was a computer programmer originally from
Baghdad. She has an adult daughter who is married and lives in France with
husband and two children. Her son is finishing an undergraduate degree at a
college in Atlanta. She now lives in Atlanta and was returning from her the
home in Baghdad she still maintains.
Asking how
she got to Atlanta she proceeded to tell me about being a working single Mom in
Baghdad and getting a good job with an American company doing programing of
some sort. Eventually she was sought out and threatened …being seen as a
“collaborator”. Her son was out of the
country in school. Her mother and father had died. She decided to leave Iraq and
join her son.
She was
recently hired by an American company in Atlanta and is looking forward to
getting back to work.
I asked
about her children’s father.
She told me
her husband was an Iraqi Airways pilot and 18 years ago, when her children were
young, was taken by Sadam’s “people”, tortured and killed. He was accused of doing something against the
regime which she said was not true. She
told me if anyone wanted to cause you trouble they just report to Sadam’s
people and the people would be eliminated…no trial, no collaborating
evidence…just an anonymous report. Huda
went on to tell me that she too was put in jail for 5 months for “failing to
report her husband”. She said he was
doing nothing against the regime so
“What could she report?” I asked
if she was tortured. She nodded
affirmatively and said she tried to not think about it.
After our
extensive conversation we journeyed to the US in friendly silence. She watched
a couple of movies, as did I. She was barefoot and never left her seat. She took my card and said she’d look up IARP
on the web. She said if we had a group
of woman from Najaf visit Minneapolis she’d come and help us host them. She was sympathetic to the woman of Najaf who,
she said, lived a more restricted life.
