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KEEPING UP THE FIGHT:
EXILE'S DETERMINATION TO BRING FREEDOM TO IRAQ IS FORGED BY A PAINFUL PAST
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By Tina Cassidy
The Boston Globe - April 7, 2003
CAMBRIDGE - The thin scar on her cheek, where a bullet fired by a Saddam Hussein loyalist shaved away skin, is nearly imperceptible. Instead, one first notices Zainab al-Suwaij's big, almond-shaped eyes, apple cheeks, and lingering smile, which fades only when she talks about the uprising she participated in against the Iraqi regime.
During those days 12 years ago, Suwaij ignored Muslim tradition, took off her head scarf, and pulled on pants and boots to join the throngs of men on the streets of Karbala, hell-bent on seizing their freedom. They were convinced that President George H. W. Bush, who had just routed Hussein's forces in Kuwait, would support the rebellion after encouraging Iraqi citizens to overthrow the dictator.
"The men said, 'What are you doing?' " she recalled. "I said, 'It's my fight, too.' "
Armed with sticks and kitchen knives and, later, with a single grenade that she lobbed from a rooftop at a tank, Suwaij wanted to believe the rebels would succeed. They certainly came close, nearly toppling Hussein's weakened regime after the Gulf War. But American bombs, guns, and fighter jets never came. The uprising unraveled, and government troops executed her comrades in arms: friends, neighbors, and strangers.
She was shot at by Hussein's security forces, who were trying to clear the streets, and felt the warm trickle of blood slide down her cheek. She fled, slipping into Jordan months later after bribing a border guard to overlook her name on a blacklist.
Now, Suwaij is 32 years old, a wife and mother of two living a typically American life in suburban Boston: juggling her children's soccer games with her full-time job. But as head of the American Islamic Congress, she's scheduling meetings with other Iraqi expatriates and speaking out in favor of the war. On Saturday, she traveled to Washington for a meeting with President George W. Bush at the White House, imploring him not to let down her people this time. She has also retold her own gripping tale, which includes seeing a human meat grinder in a Karbala prison and witnessing dogs gnaw the corpses of insurgents left in the streets. The soldiers who killed them kept relatives from claiming the bodies, a grisly warning to would-be rebels.
"I think America should support any opposition effort" for democracy in Iraq, she said at a news conference following the White House meeting. Still, "[America] should be very careful about promising freedom. America's failure to support the people of Iraq sent a negative message throughout the Muslim world. The scar has not healed."
For the last decade, Suwaij has kept quiet about her ordeal in 1991. She got a college degree in the United States, volunteered with immigrant organizations, and tutored students in Arabic in suburban Connecticut.
But then, after watching the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfold on her TV screen, she thought, "The terror I Ieft in Iraq is following me here."
She sprung into action once again, cofounding the American Islamic Congress, now relocated from Connecticut to Cambridge after her Iraqi-American husband began teaching at Harvard University. The organization, which aims to promote greater understanding between Muslims and others, has given her a platform to write opinion pieces in newspapers across the country. She's delivered lectures at schools, implored the Muslim community to police itself against radicalism, and helped bureaucrats at Boston City Hall grapple with the post-Sept. 11 issue of Arab racial profiling.
Now, as war rages in Iraq, Suwaij is granting newspaper interviews, writing editorials, and dashing with some regularity from her tiny Kendall Square office to a studio in Watertown for live interviews with CNN. On TV, she is generally supportive of the US-led coalition's invasion of her homeland, strident in her remarks against the regime, and clear that Iraqis "would like to rule themselves, by themselves."
She's certainly struck a nerve with some viewers.
"Your support for this war is disgusting and shameful," one woman who sounded American hissed in a voice mail after one of Suwaij's television appearances.
"I understand their concern about innocent lives, as well, and my people," Suwaij said in an interview last week. "The difference between me and them is that I lived through it." She wants to know where the antiwar protesters were 12 years ago, when Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds and other Iraqis.
"I am for ending the war Saddam has been waging inside Iraq," she says. "No one likes wars. I've been through war two times in my life," she said, referring to the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War. "But this is the only option."
What about diplomacy?
"I don't think it leads anywhere," she replies. "Under [President] Clinton, for so many years, we tried and tried and tried. It's not working," she says.
Don't the peace activists mean well, opposing the inevitable deaths of innocent Iraqi citizens?
"They don't know the real situation inside Iraq."
Yet for all of her outward optimism about Hussein's downfall at the hands of US troops, Suwaij is worried. About many things. As she hears orders emanate from the Middle East for jihad, or holy war, against Americans, she is saddened but isn't convinced the coalition's attack of Iraq will bear a new generation of terrorists. Those willing to fight and die in the name of Islam, she says, were ready to do so before the bombing started in Baghdad.
"To do that, if this is something planted inside them, they will do it no matter what," she says softly, riding in the back of a chauffeured Lincoln sedan last week, heading back to Kendall Square from the CNN interview. "It's a threat to all of us. We need to eliminate terror from its roots, starting with Saddam."
Meanwhile, she cannot reach family members, including her grandfather, a popular imam who raised her in southern Iraq, a place where she says she had everything but freedom. She was denied a high school diploma because she would not sign papers joining the ruling Ba'ath party and could neither get a job nor go to college. "I didn't want to stay in a dictatorship," she says. "I'm the first woman in my family who works."
She continues to wear a hijab, or head scarf, traditional attire among Muslim women, although she says even her husband, Ahmed al-Rahim, who teaches Arabic and Arabic literature at Harvard, believes it's not necessary for her to wear it. "People see me in my hijab talking about freedom," she says, "and they don't want to hear that."
But she's worn it for most of her life and is as comfortable in it as her own skin. As for her own daughter, the girl's decision about whether to wear a hijab will be hers. She will be free, Suwaij says, to make that choice.
Tim Cassidy is a Boston Globe staff writer.
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