Living Through War, Times of Trouble in Iraq

Waseem Khaleel (COL’12) has watched soldiers die, awaited his kidnapped father’s return and lived in constant fear. Khaleel grew up in Iraq and has recently moved to the United States to study at Georgetown. He sat down with THE HOYA to discuss some of his memories from his home country.

How long have you been in the States?

Three months. I came directly from Iraq. The first two weeks were very depressing because I had no parents, no friends; it was a different culture — but then it got better with time. My language was weak. It’s improved a lot. Like the first two weeks, you know, being with American students and everybody knows the American students are smart. So it was like a competition for me.

Are there big differences between American-Iraqi cultures?

Yeah. Like the girls here wear, let’s say, shorts or [clothes that] don’t cover all parts of their body. While [in Iraq] most of the girls wear something on their heads called a hijab [so that they do not] show their hair. They also wear skirts — there are no shorts. So it’s very different, and here it’s very free; there it wasn’t. Well, I mean, you get used to it. Also the development [is different]; let’s say internet connection — [here] you have it 24 hours and very high speed. There, it’s very low speed, so you don’t really use the internet connection that much. Also here I go to take a hot shower any time I want, while there you have to heat the water in winter and you depend on electricity, which doesn’t come that much so you have to wait. Here it’s warm in the dorm, there it was cold, even if you put heaters [on], there’re not enough because [there is no] oil and electricity. Electricity didn’t come that much; oil was very expensive, although we have the oil [in our country], but it’s a bad government. In summer you can’t sleep in the afternoon if there was no electricity because you just sweat all the time and get dizzy, so here it’s very comfortable — you just have to work hard and that’s it, you have everything.

So before you moved to the north [of Iraq] you lived in Baghdad for 18 years? How was life there before the fall of Saddam Hussein and after?

Well, the income of my father wasn’t that much. Before the war the income of most people wasn’t that much. So [we] were kind of poor, but there was security. There was security all the time. But you couldn’t say anything bad about Saddam Hussein. So we just lived in peace [by] shutting our mouths without complaining.

After the war things got better for most of the Iraqis — their incomes increased, so the income of our family increased — but security was declining. Most of the Iraqis wished that Saddam Hussein came back, to save the security. We said sometimes that we wished that the American troops put Saddam Hussein into the government, just [to] get the security back. He never forgave anybody. Nobody went into public and said, ‘I hate Saddam’ because [that person] would be killed the next day or the same day. When you got into a taxi and the taxi driver starts talking about politics in the last year, in the last months before the war, it was very scary to participate in the conversation because maybe he is one of the government people. He would just want to know what you think about the American troops, do you like the [United States] or not, so yeah there wasn’t freedom in Saddam’s reign — never.

What are a couple of your most remarkable experiences or memories?

We were planning to go out of Baghdad [and] move to the north of Iraq. We couldn’t live in this place anymore; we were just very scared, so we just decided to leave. It was just one week before we had to leave; I was in school, and my father told me that he would come after I finished my classes and take me home. We were waiting for him, waiting for him about half an hour and nobody came, and it’s kind of scary if you wait a lot and nobody comes. I called my father, but he didn’t respond. His phone was switched off, and that doesn’t happen. My father never switches his phone off. Then I called my mother, and she didn’t know what was going on. I waited for another 15 minutes, then I went home. I took a taxi, although it was scary to take a taxi because maybe the taxi driver is a kidnapper, you don’t know. But I got home safe. I asked my mother what’s going on. She didn’t know. She started crying. She kept trying to call [my father], but there was no response so I got worried. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to cry like her. I went upstairs and started praying. I started crying, too. I thought [that at] 18 years old in Iraq you should be a man or something, you shouldn’t show emotions that much, but I couldn’t do it, my father was kidnapped. I felt it. I mean, it was obvious. The most pitiful thing you can say is that we had everything packed up to leave in a few days. So in these final days they would kidnap my father, take our money — most of the time they [would] take $50,000 from people. Then there was a phone call, and it was my father. He said I’m just sitting in this shop buying this stuff. So when he came home my mother was very angry. She said, ‘Where were you? We were very worried about you.’ He said, ‘I was kidnapped.’

He went to this place which was dominated by the Shiite people. There was a fake checkpoint, and they saw him. They got him out of the front seat, put him in the back seat and then drove the car to some place. He didn’t know anything. They started investigating him: Are you Sunni, or are you Shiite? What are you doing here? He kept saying that he’s a Christian. But they didn’t believe him. They kept pushing him, but he couldn’t do anything. Finally they went into his car, saw that he had a cross, and he had some records about Jesus. So they believed he was a Christian. And he also showed them evidence that we were about to leave and he had no work — he showed them the new SIM card that worked in the north of Iraq only. So finally they believed him. They took him to some place where they gathered together, and they gave him chocolate and Pepsi. They had no problem with the Christians. They just had problems with the Sunnis.

That day was very shocking to me. I couldn’t study that day. I couldn’t do anything that day because my father was kidnapped for four hours and came back in the same day. So thank God. A few days later we left.

Many of my friends are still in Baghdad. There’s a wave of Muslims killing Christians because they think we are agents for the American troops, which is wrong, there is no basis for this belief, but that’s the way it is. So now most of my relatives are in the north or out of Iraq. When the American troops first came in with their technologies and developments and stuff we thought that it would take them one year and we would be just like Saudi Arabia, you know wealthy because we have the oil, we just need culture and guidance. But it has been five years and things are getting worse every day, so many Iraqis lost hope. I don’t think any Iraqi has hope anymore … I don’t know what the solution is, really. I hope with Obama, things get better. I don’t know how.

Since I’m culturally Christian, I had no problems with the American troops. Actually, I pitied them when they were killed. Many of them were killed in front of my eyes, like on the highway they get shot and I’d see them die. I was very upset about that. Many Iraqis thought they would lead us to an evolution in culture, you can say, or the good life, but they just can’t control it because it’s a street war, you know. I mean it’s not their fault. I can’t blame them. If just the insurgency stopped, we would get better. But the insurgency will never stop, so I don’t know what the solution is. If the American troops now retreat, the government will be down. The insurgents will take over the government. That’s what everybody knows. I never recommend that the American troops leave. I recommend that they stay, although it’s bad for them.

After graduation do you plan to go back to Iraq?

After I came here and have seen the technologies and culture and stuff, I don’t think so. Let’s say I graduate and become a doctor and I go back — what’s the purpose of going back? Why do I want to go back to Iraq, which is uncultured, undeveloped, and I wouldn’t be respected for my Ph.D. because I would just end up working in a hospital getting about $500 to $700 a month. Meanwhile if I stay here and work in a hospital and get a lot of money and maybe I can get my family over here and make them live in this culture, in this cozy life. You just have to work, really.