Barefoot in Baghdad Read Online Free

were pockets of poverty in Iraq. Not everyone was rich. And in the impoverished areas, fifteen dollars was the difference between starving and feeding your family.
    I cried, not because of what my father said, but the way in which he said it. For the first time, my father’s face was filled with disappointment when he looked at me. The whole time I had been fighting to go to Iraq, I had believed the only obstacle was my personal security. I began to realize that I was in the midst of an ideological battle as well. For my Palestinian family, the Iraq War hit a raw nerve. My parents saw the war as a reminder of what had happened to the Palestinians in 1948. It was another humiliation of the Arab world at the hands of the West. And as far as they could tell, I wanted to be a part of it—and I was on the wrong side.
    The disappointment my parents continued to express pained me deeply. My mother cried every night and took every opportunity to wail her woes at community gatherings. At several family events my mother would complain about how her daughter was punishing her.
    “If I only knew what my crime was, I would try to make amends,” she said. “But I did all I could to give her a better life. I just do not understand it. We sacrifice everything to take our children out of a war zone, and this one keeps running back in!”
    My father’s suffering was less open. He would pull me aside and talk to me; he would say he was trying to talk some sense into me. In one of our conversations, he lectured me about the wiles of the CIA, who he said had a history of recruiting idealists like me. At one point he actually believed I would be working secretly for American intelligence.
    “You may think you are helping, but you are not,” he warned me. “The best way to help our people is by getting the best degrees and being the best at what we do. That way we earn respect that nobody can deny. Your success here is more valuable than anything you can do back there.”
    A part of me wanted to pull back and be a good Arab Muslim daughter, but something inside me refused. I had an opportunity to make a difference. I was frustrated with watching people sit on the sidelines and complain about George Bush’s war and the destruction of Iraq. I had seen the same passivity during the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. By 2003 the sanctions had crippled the Iraqi economy and devastated the infrastructure. UN agencies had reported the deaths of approximately half a million children as a result of the sanctions. There was a ton of rhetoric about crimes against humanity, but little action was ever taken. Now—after the U.S.-led invasion—Iraqi civilians were left once again to suffer. Malnutrition, illness and disease, inadequate housing. The people lacked the basic necessities of life.
    I wanted to stop talking and start doing.
    We hit a crossroads as a family. Nobody was willing to back down. My father would not agree, and I would not stop trying. It was getting closer to the end of June, and I was scheduled to leave in two weeks. My brothers and sister were angry with me for what I was doing to our parents. But I couldn’t let that stop me from lobbying to make my case.
    In the end, I would not go if my father did not give me his blessing. This was a line that would never be crossed. I knew it, and my father knew it. Yet my father never used his veto power casually. It pained him to stand in my way. I was resolved to listen to his final word, but I also owed it to myself to try everything I could to convince him up to the last minute.
    Apparently my parents had the same strategy. Wherever I went, family friends pulled me aside and lectured me. “Do you know what you are doing to your mother?” they would ask. I would nod, listen to the lecture, and walk away more determined than ever.
    I had grown to expect such encounters. What I hadn’t expected was that my close friends began to confront me as well. Most of my friends