This week marks the 20th anniversary of the poison gas attack on the city of Halabja, Iraq. If circumstances in my own life had been different, the headlines today probably wouldn't have grabbed my attention, but this event touched us because a dear friend of ours is a survivor of this attack.
The attack was waged by Saddam Hussein against his own citizens in March 1988, as an attempt to suppress the Kurdish resistance in the city. At least 5000 died immediately on exposure to various chemical weapons, and in total possibly 30,000 died of the effects.
On the night before the attack, word leaked somehow to a few people in Halabja, who then tried to help people flee. Our friend, Ameena, a widow with three small children, got the warning and fled up into the mountains to cross into Iran. She told us she could hear the screams as she ran. After some time in Iran, she and her children crossed back into Iraq and resettled in Suleymaniye. More time passed, and after the first Gulf War the allies established a secure area in the north of the country, permitting relief agencies to assist in the reconstruction of villages and infrastructure that had been destroyed by Saddam's army.
Among those relief workers were my wife's parents, who coordinated mobile medical services and the drilling of new water wells to replace those poisoned by the Iraqi army. My mother-in-law hired Ameena to help with housekeeping and to cook for the other employees. A few years later, the Iraqi forces re-entered the region and those who had worked with foreigners suddenly needed to evacuate. Again.
Ameena, her children, and several of her former co-workers arrived together one night in Houston to start their lives over again. JoNell and I were there at the airport to greet them and take them to their new home. We had just moved back to Houston ourselves after I finished my master's program, and had volunteered to sponsor Ameena and also Fouad and Bahar, a couple from the now famous multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk. We spent hundreds of hours on real life lessons in shopping, bill paying and parallel parking.
Our help mattered, but fell very short of what was needed to heal and overcome. We learned from their frustration with hugely generous Americans who responded quickly with furniture and cars and jobs, but never had time to sit and drink tea with people who had practically invented hospitality. So we took the time, and we became richer.
We deeply admire those who rose again from the ashes, especially Ameena. She quickly began to work cleaning houses, and soon built that up into a thriving business. A couple years ago when we went to Houston for a visit, we were amazed when she told us she had bought her own house, and that Fouad found his dream job, driving an 18-wheeler all across the US.
George Santayana wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Memory is elemental to learning. Even painful memories of war and lost homelands have something to teach us, which we in turn must teach to our children. Fouad and Bahar were blessed with their first child, a boy, while in Guam during the processing of their assylum. He was born a US citizen, a sign that the future did not have to be like the past. But also as a sign that the past lives in us as well, they named him Yad, which means "remember".
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