Zina Bhaia '09 MS JOURN

Iraqi woman relates tale of her 'rebirth' in America

By Zina Bhaia
Date of publication in the Champaign, Ill., News-Gazette: April 26, 2009
Copyright 2009 The News-Gazette

So many lights!

I knew that America would be big, but as I looked out my Royal Jordanian Airline window at the sprawling nightscape of Chicago and the towering cityscape of its downtown, I thought, "Oh, my God, it is huge. And Lake Michigan, why do they call it a lake? It is like an ocean." I had flown into Baghdad at night many times, and Baghdad was but a speck of light compared to this glaring city below me.

"What am I getting myself into?" I thought. "I will never find my way around."

My unlikely journey to America had begun nearly a year earlier. As a 28-year-old woman working in the United Nations human rights office in the Green Zone and living with my father and mother in a Shia and Christian neighborhood in central Baghdad, I had seen too much in the four years since Saddam Hussein's fall began: The terrible U.S. bombing; my looting neighbors stealing computer monitors, believing they were TV sets; people giving cookies and tea to the U.S. troops as the tanks bellowed past. Then came the car bombs; the bloody bodies in the streets; my Shia family being driven out of our mostly Sunni neighborhood and our house stripped bare of even its windows; the kidnappings for retaliation or terror or ransom, even my own beautiful, happy, spoiled 16-year-old brother – kidnapped and never seen again, breaking my parents' hearts forever.

I had graduated from Baghdad University in 2002 with an English-language degree and had been hired to translate English movies into Arabic, supposedly for Iraqi TV audiences, but really for Saddam's son Oday, a crazy man I fortunately never met. After the American invasion, I worked for a French organization distributing artificial legs to Iraqis maimed in the war. My spine was curved badly from having had polio as an infant, and, for the first time in my life, walking with crutches actually helped me get that job. I eventually landed my U.N. job working to expand government services for Iraqis with disabilities, literally a foreign idea in my country, where people with birth defects are routinely abandoned, ignored and mistreated.

Zina Bhaia, of Iraq, enjoys a cup of coffee in her room as she watches the 'CBS Early Show' at the Urbana home of University of Illinois journalism Professor Lynn Holley. News-Gazette photo by Heather Coit.

On the side, I volunteered at Al-Mahaba radio, a new Baghdad station self-described as "the voice of Iraqi women." This, too, was a foreign idea in my country, where speaking out for more rights, education, influence, freedom and independence can get a woman harassed, hurt or even killed. Yet that is what we did every day for 16 hours – interviewing the few Iraqi women with high positions in government or business, discussing the substantial rights of women in other countries, taking women's call-in comments about their abusive husbands, brothers and fathers, lobbying for better government benefits for widows, interviewing lawyers and judges to teach women about their legal right to divorce or protection when they are mistreated by the men in their lives.

Al-Mahaba was not loved by everyone, particularly conservative Islamic men. Death threats came by phone. Extreme religious conservatives who did not like our broadcasts got our fuel allotment cut. Government agencies repeatedly denied our grant requests, and the station lived hand-to-mouth on small donations.

Yet it was Al-Mahaba that brought me to Illinois.

When the fledgling station's broadcast tower was destroyed by a car bomb, one of our founders, Bushra Jamil, a 59-year-old Iraqi schoolteacher with a master's degree in biology, traveled to the United States to raise money for a new tower. While on the visit, she was interviewed for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and told Al-Mahaba's story. Way off in Urbana, a University of Illinois journalism professor, Lynn Holley, was touched by our tale. She collected money from her faculty colleagues, bought two laptop computers and several digital tape recorders, and shipped them to us.

So when Ms. Bushra, as I called her, passed through Professor Holley's central Illinois town, she stopped to thank her and met Walt Harrington, then head of the UI's Department of Journalism. Before Ms. Bushra was done describing the woes of our free-thinking, iconoclastic radio station, Professor Harrington was brushing away tears and offered on the spot to have his department fund one of our station's aspiring journalists to earn a journalism master's degree at Illinois.

It took a year and more red tape than even we in Iraq – who are, believe me, used to red tape – could imagine. Yet finally, there I was, landing at O'Hare International Airport, as that aspiring Iraqi journalist.

America in my mind

I was an Iraqi woman traveling without a brother, father or husband, something forbidden by Islamic law. I was nervous about what awaited me. But, truthfully, I was thrilled. I had always been fascinated by American life. I had eagerly watched the TV shows and movies that the Saddam regime allowed on the air – "Full House," "Boston Public," "Remington Steele," "Titanic," "Braveheart" and "Lord of the Rings," which I had personally translated in my work for Oday.

What a place America was in my mind!

"Cities, tall buildings, busy people saying whatever they want," I thought.

In America, I believed, no one was discriminated against because of their thoughts or ideas. And the women – like Laura in "Remington Steele" – were strong, as strong as American men, not like in Iraq, where women are treated like cattle, always a man's property, always the shadow of a man. Most important to me, though, was that in America and all the Western world, people like me – people with scoliosis, or amputees, blind and deaf people, those with a stutter, people in wheelchairs – are treated well. In Iraq, they are called names, locked away in institutions, left to rot in their families' homes. No special buses, no elevators, often not even crutches, certainly no decent medical care.

"People in America will not stare at me on the street," I thought.

This I knew from watching Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot."

I had so many ideas about America, all of them taking their meaning from my ideas about my own country, ideas that my father – a traditional Muslim man – often warned me against. I complained about our government's terrible corruption, about people blindly taking orders from religious leaders without thinking for themselves.

"How ignorant!" I cried.

"Don't talk in public," my father told me again and again. "You are going to get killed."

Two new friends

My journey's first good sign: At O'Hare airport, a polite man in a uniform met me with a wheelchair. What shock! I don't believe Baghdad Airport even has a wheelchair, much less someone to push it for you. At International Terminal 5, Professor Holley was waiting for me, along with Falaah Falih, a 36-year-old Iraqi-American research scientist at Honeywell outside Chicago, a man I had met online at "iraq4u," a Web site connecting Iraqis around the world. I did not know then that meeting Professor Holley and Falaah, whom I nicknamed "My Angel," would change my life forever.

"Hi, finally you are here," said Professor Holley. "Welcome."

She was blonde and beautiful, smiling – and then she hugged me, a warm, strong hug.

"This woman is a professor?" I thought. "This woman with a nice heart?"

In Iraq, professors are somber and formal, even mean. They would never be friendly toward a student, much less hug you. I didn't know what to call Lynn Holley – Professor or Ms. Holley or Lynn, so I didn't call her anything. I just said, "Thank you for being here."

Falaah helped us pack my bags in the car, gave me a cell phone and said goodbye until I would get a chance to visit him in Chicago to tour the city.

My next American surprise was the drive to Champaign. Flat, empty land rolled off in every direction. No tall buildings, no lights, no people, not even animals. And no bombed-out cars, no military Humvees or cement walls or police checkpoints. Only one police car the whole way – and it had stopped someone for speeding! In Iraq, people drive without driver's licenses and drive the wrong way on one-way streets. Nobody gets tickets for anything – it is a free-for-all.

The almost-empty Illinois land in December was buried beneath 4 inches of snow. I had never seen snow. I wish I could say it was beautiful, but it was not beautiful to me. Iraq is warm year-round and snow is cold. My light shoes would not do in America. I also walked with a crutch and, as I rode to Champaign, I worried that I might slip, fall and hurt myself badly.

"It will look different in the summer," Professor Holley assured me. "Full of corn."

I settled into a room at Professor Holley's house – a house that I thought resembled nothing so much as the homes on Wisteria Lane in "Desperate Housewives," which I watched on satellite TV in Iraq. I had my own bathroom. Everyone in Professor Holley's house had a bathroom of their own! And hot water all the time, not just on the rare day when there is electricity for a couple of hours.

Although the university was on winter break, I went with Professor Holley to her campus office. A student or two dropped in to visit, and I noticed they called her "Lynn." That would never happen in Iraq, but I figured it was normal in America, and I finally had a name to call my hostess.

Many things struck me. For one, the University of Illinois is not like an Iraqi university. Baghdad University is surrounded by a tall wall and protected by armed guards. One circular street takes cars through the campus. The University of Illinois is like a town itself, or maybe it is just all over the town. On campus were churches, flower shops, clothing shops, drugstores, bars, restaurants, even a graveyard.

Champaign-Urbana had restaurants of all flavors – Chinese, Thai, Korean, Italian, Indian, Japanese, Greek, Mexican, even Arabic. In Iraq, we had only Iraqi food: rice, vegetables, tomato sauces, chicken, lamb, beef, fish, cheeses and breads. I love Iraqi food. I came to miss Iraqi food. But all the restaurants meant more than food choices to me. They meant that in America, people were open to the gifts of other nationalities, and they were even willing to pay to try them. I was surprised at the many students from foreign countries and how welcome we were made to feel. American students asked me so many questions about my country. They were interested and sincere, and they wanted to listen, not talk. I had heard many, many stories in Iraq about how Americans hate Arabs and don't want us in their country. When a woman said to me, "I'm sorry for what our president did to your country and we are ashamed of it," I was amazed. America was a far more complicated place than I had known.

Yet most of all I was amazed at the many students with disabilities. I saw students who could barely move either hand and used only their fingers to work their wheelchair controls, students with full-time personal helpers to push their chairs, take their notes, help them to the bathroom. At no cost to the students! I learned of blind students who are given guide dogs so they can go anywhere they wish – the dogs are even allowed in restaurants. I did not know about the university's Disability Resources and Educational Services, known as DRES, before I arrived at Illinois. But DRES sent a bus to pick me up one day so I could visit its offices. A nice lady there told me about how the local bus system and a special university bus accommodate people with disabilities. She showed me the DRES gym. She told me that DRES offers free physical therapy to its clients. I discovered that students with disabilities have special dorms and people to help them get into and out of bed, make meals and do their homework.

"What kind of country is this?" I thought. "What kind of humanity?"

I'm sad to say that this does not exist – and is unlikely ever to exist – in Iraq. I'm sad to say that people in Iraq seem just not to care, or not to care enough about those who are weak. People with so-called flaws are thought never to be able to amount to anything, so we do not try to help them. In Iraq, I was the only student with a disability in any of my schools all the way through college. It was because my parents, both high school teachers, insisted that I be allowed to attend school. At Baghdad University, I struggled up three flights of stairs to attend classes. It took me 15 minutes. Anyone with a worse disability just couldn't go to class. I know that Iraq isn't as rich as America and that such humane services are expensive. Yet I do not believe that is the explanation. In Iraq, even if it were as rich as America, people would simply not think about doing this for people.

I'm sorry, we are a selfish people. Why, I don't know. I just know it is true.

The America I see

I have been in America a year now, and still my head spins with impressions. College students come to class with coffee and laptop computers. In Iraq, students are not even allowed to chew gum. Students in America argue with professors. That is strange to me. In Iraq, nobody argues with a teacher. If you do, you are likely to get low marks, even fail. No appeal. American students come to class looking as if they have just rolled out of bed, looking like street people. And, I'm sorry, but so many American college kids are brats. They care for their friends more than they care for their parents. They argue with their parents and disrespect them to their faces. They take money and cars and clothes from their parents, and they still whine and complain about not having enough or the best or the most popular. This would never happen in Iraq, and I think that is good. I can't imagine raising children such as those in America. And some things in America were too much like those in Iraq. For instance, the bureaucrats at the U.S. Social Security Agency were about as rude and lazy as the bureaucrats in Iraq, although I did not have to pay a bribe to get my paperwork processed as I would back home.

The famous American malls did not impress me. They were filled with nice things, yes, but so many unnecessary things. People cannot wear so many clothes – Americans must forget what they have in their closets. The malls also are boring. In Iraq, we do not have so many choices, but our marketplaces of small shops, restaurants, coffee shops, hair salons and food stores with live chickens, sheep and fish are teeming with people talking, laughing, mingling, catching up on the gossip. We know the shop owners, and we know the people shopping next to us. Everyone is bartering for better prices. For Americans, I can compare it only to the characters in the American movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." The Greek family is like all Iraqi families – loud, pushy, opinionated and always fun, always teasing one another about the dumb things we have done over the years.

Yet so wonderful about America is that everyone is left alone to live their beliefs – Christian, Jew, Muslim, Baha'i, Buddhist, Sikh, atheists, even Satanists. People live and let live. During the U.S. presidential election, Americans hollered, ranted and criticized during the campaign and then, on the night Barack Obama was elected, hundreds of thousands of people of all ages, colors and religions gathered in Chicago's Grant Park to celebrate his victory. His opponent, John McCain, gave a touching, heartfelt speech of congratulations, asking Americans to unite behind Obama. As I watched the evening on TV, I was glad for America, and I was terribly, terribly sad for my country.

Never could that happen in Iraq. Not in a hundred years.

I am reborn

That first day when Professor Holley drove me to Champaign, I worried that I might fall on the ice and hurt myself, and indeed that happened twice in the coming months. The falls put my back in constant and excruciating pain – and led to the greatest miracle that could ever have happened to a young woman from faraway Baghdad. Falaah, my friend in Chicago, insisted that I see a doctor about the pain. I hate doctors. In Iraq, doctors never did anything for me, only looked at the S-shaped X-ray of my spine and told me nothing could be done. But the American doctor, Steven Mardjetko at the Illinois Bone & Joint Institute, was not discouraging.

"We will fix you," he said.

It was a risky surgery with a 20 percent chance that I would end up paralyzed. But Dr. Mardjetko said I would be in a wheelchair or confined to my bed in five years without the surgery. I trusted him. My friend Falaah pored over my UI graduate student insurance policy and determined that it would cover most of the surgery's cost. I was afraid but I was certain. The two surgeries took Dr. Mardjetko and his team of doctors and nurses a total of 15 hours. I was in the hospital or nursing care for 100 days, and Falaah visted me almost every day. The pain was so bad I cried many times.

"You are going to hate me now," Dr. Mardjetko had told me before the operations, "but after six months you will thank me."

He was right. Six months later, I thank him. The S-curve in my spine is gone. I stand straight now, 4 inches taller than I was. When I saw my body in the mirror for the first time after the surgery, I felt as if it was not me, as if this body belonged to someone else. I was so happy. It was me! I no longer wear bulky clothes to hide my misshapen torso. I wear Size 2, petite. I will always walk with a cane, but I will always be able to walk.

I did not tell anyone in Iraq about my surgeries ahead of time. I knew that my father would try to talk me out of the operations. So, after the second surgery and more than a month in the hospital, I text-messaged my parents and told them the doctors said I needed surgery. As expected, my father was in a panic when he called me. I told him to calm down, that I had already gone through the surgeries and that I was fine. He did not believe me until Falaah told him the same thing.

"You are reborn," my mother said.

So it has been quite a year. I was plucked out of Iraq, flown to America, educated and then saved from a life of physical pain and misery. God must have been at work. He made Lynn Holley hear the NPR report. He introduced me to Falaah. He made me fall. He sent me to Dr. Mardjetko. I am not a religious zealot. But I believe God rewards people, and I believe he has rewarded me.

I returned to Champaign and my classes to one more surprise. Professor Harrington had arranged for me to visit the Bush White House and State Department in Washington last fall, so I could see how press operations worked in those institutions. As I walked through the White House's northwest security gate, my mind was racing. I was entering the White House! How many Iraqis will ever visit the White House except for the prime minister? Then, as I sat in the White House press briefing room, the president's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, actually welcomed me by name.

"We are also honored to have Zina Bhaia with us today," Ms. Perino said. "Where is she? There she is. Hi. ... So, welcome to you. We're glad you're here."

I nodded a silent thank-you to Dana Perino – and to so many others.

My mother said, "You are reborn." I believe that I am.

 

Date of publication in the Champaign, Ill., News-Gazette: April 26, 2009