|
| November 20, 2006 | Basim Mardan | Lost After Translation |
The New York Times
The
United States Marines entered Mosul from the north. I lived in the
northern suburbs, so I saw the first American flag. When the Humvees
stopped, I shook hands with the marines, and I told them: “You are
mostly welcome here. Why don’t you come to my house and drink some cold
water?” They offered me a job.
I was the first or second
translator to work with the coalition forces in my city, the first or
second Iraqi to set foot on the American base in Mosul. The Marines
paid me $150 a month, which was better than the $2 I was making as a
librarian. So I didn’t see weapons in their hands, I saw flowers, and I
took them all as friends. I loved what I was doing because I thought it
was a good thing for my country.
My family was nervous. They
told me things would change. I needed the American money to get
married, but my fiancée said, “We don’t need to get married now — just
quit.” But I wanted to work with the military forever; I loved it.
The
unit I worked with was training and equipping the Iraqi police,
teaching them about human rights. I translated textbooks from an
American police academy into Arabic. The Americans taught Iraqi
officials to exercise their authority without taking bribes or
humiliating employees.
Iraqis needed this education, and the
unit I worked with was awesome. At one point, they did two or three
patrols to clean up garbage from the streets. In our culture, cleaning
garbage is a low-level job, but when we saw a captain and a general
doing it, that gave us a very great feeling. I threw away my helmet,
took a shovel and started working, cleaning up garbage.
But even
as we cleaned the city of garbage, we forgot another kind of garbage
that was accumulating. The way the Army reacted to the insurgency was
not perfect. The Americans did many foolish things. When I saw the
pictures from Abu Ghraib, I thought, we are teaching Iraqi policemen
not to do that — do the Americans really do that?
I grew sad,
and I didn’t know what to believe, because the people I worked with
were great. I’d told the officers at our camp’s detention center, “You
are treating those prisoners better than their own mothers.” It’s not
normal in our culture for a policeman to come and feed a sick prisoner
who is so dangerous that you have to keep him chained.
But I did
it myself. I was very kind to Iraqi people, to my own people, and I
think Americans taught me that — the American Army that I was working
with, not the American Army that was in Abu Ghraib.
In the
second year, when we were processing the release of prisoners from Abu
Ghraib, I read out a list of names of prisoners who needed to collect
their documents. One of them said to me, “You are all going to be
killed.” I thought he was referring to the Americans, until he said,
“No, I mean you.”
I didn’t translate this for the soldiers who
were with me. I was thinking, “This person just got out of prison, and
I don’t want to be the reason that he goes back to prison.”
About
a month later, a message was fixed to my door, full of verses from the
Koran and threats and curses. They gave me about one week to quit what
I was doing.
A week later, a CD was fixed on my door, picturing
one of my best friends, Nabi Abul-Ahad. It was a video of them
beheading him, with the message that I would be next.
I was
kicked out of the house. My family didn’t want me there any more. They
said, “You’re going to get us all killed.” I had to leave my wife, who
was pregnant. Baghdad was a real hell, so I hid in Najjaf.
After
my wife gave birth to our son, her father told her, “If your husband
doesn’t come to Mosul now, even if he’s going to get killed, then you
are not his wife anymore.” This can happen in our society. I didn’t
want to lose my wife or my son, so I went back to Mosul.
In
Mosul, I had to stay hidden. I walked for about three hours in the
dark, after curfew, when anybody can shoot at you, including the
Americans, just to see my wife and my newborn son. Then I went back to
my family’s house and hid for three months.
The American Army,
or whoever’s in charge, has badly disappointed the translators. When I
told them I was under threat, they said I could come and live on the
base. I told them I had just been married, and my wife was pregnant,
and my family needed me. They said I could live on the base and they
would drop me by my house to visit my family at night.
Imagine
if somebody saw me dropped by an American convoy near my house. The
house would be burning the second I was inside. These were not logical
solutions.
They could have helped my family move to Kurdistan,
helped find me a job with the government there. Or, if I’d escaped to
Jordan, they could tell the American Embassy there: “This is a
translator who has been working for the United States Army. He’s just
like an American soldier. Treat him well.”
But I’m not going to
be ungrateful to the people who were fighting and dying for my country.
I have friends in the American Army who died in front of my eyes.
I
remember one of them, a dear friend to me who died stopping a car bomb.
He was a hero. He was guarding the police academy in Mosul, which was
full of new recruits being trained by the Americans.
My heart
broke when I saw this: an American, coming from another continent, who
died to protect Iraqi policemen. This was a good message, and I would
never say that those people exploited me or exploited my thinking.
The system did. Not them.
Basim Mardan is a poet and translator.
Copyright © 2006 New York Times. All rights reserved.
These contributors are
Iraqi writers and English translators,
two of whom worked for the
American military. Because of
their work, they were hunted by
death squads and only escaped Iraq
with assistance from PEN and the
Norwegian government. Larry
Siems, director of the Freedom to
Write Program at PEN American
Center, interviewed them in Norway,
where they have political asylum.
These essays are adapted
from his interviews.
|
|
| November 20, 2006 | Omar Ghanim Fathi | Republic of Dreams |
| November 20, 2006 | Waddah Ali | Fear of Freedom |
|
|
|
 |
