Iraq the Model: The Eid of Liberty

An Iraqi man explains why April 9 is his "brightest day" (use title link).

I didn't know what his title meant, but according to The Penguin English Dictionary, Second Edition, Eid is used to refer to both Eid-ul-Adha, which is a Muslim festival celebrating the strong faith of Abraham, and Eid-ul-Fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan.

(As I mentioned in an earlier post, this dictionary has been worth every penny I had to spend to import it from the UK. The ISBN is 014051533X. Overall it's been invaluable for reading international writing.)

Many years ago, I was in Nicaragua with a group of college students.

I think it was Nicaragua where this happened. We were visiting all the countries of Central America in one winter, and like in any whirlwind tour, some of the memories from one place get muddled up with memories from another. (And I haven't seen my diary from that trip since about three houses ago. Isn't moving fun?) Certainly it was one of the countries where people were under the boot back then. El Salvador, perhaps?

I think it was Nicaragua where this occurred. Let us assume it was. It doesn't really matter. It was in a very bad corner of Central America, in any case. That I'm sure about.

Many years ago, back in the 1970s, I was in Nicaragua with a group of college students. We were confused. Our impression of the people where we were was that they were all retarded. Literally. At some point it dawned on me that the reason everyone was coming across as stupid was because people were not communicating with each other on the street. People were not making eye contact, they were not chatting. When they came across us, they wandered off with dull eyes, as if they didn't notice that we were in any way different or otherwise possibly interesting. They did not seem to pick up on our hints that we thought that they might be interesting to get to know. Offers of friendship went unacknowledged. No one showed the open curiosity that we had met with elsewhere in our travels - not about us, not about their neighbors, not about what was going on around them. It was this lack of normal connectiveness that made them seem stupid.

When they couldn't avoid talking to us, they shouted what they were saying. It took a while to understand that they were being very careful to make sure that everyone in the vicinity knew exactly what they were saying to the gringos. Exactly what they were saying, and everything they were saying.

Something curious happened there. Some of us, myself included, did wind up talking to people, but only after someone smuggled us into his or her home and closed the curtains as well as the doors. (I would like to thank my guardian angel here, for getting me out of Nicaragua. In hindsight, being talked into going alone into a private home, much less one in a foreign country lorded over by a ruthless police state, was not the sort of thing conducive to survival. What can I say? I was a college student, from a nice family, going to a nice school, and I had not a street smart in my body. Yikes.)

I don't know about how things went for the other students, but as I remember it my smugglers mostly looked at me. A family gathered and then just sat there and cried and looked at me. You don't know what it's like, they whispered, to finally have contact with the outside world. You have no idea.

Being a sophisticated college student, I thought they were the ones who didn't understand. Oh, those poor, uneducated urban peasants.

Later, after I was out of the country, later, when I was older and had seen more and had more time to put things into perspective, I realized that I had been a world-class fool. Indeed, they were right. Unspeakably right. I had had no comprehension of how valuable, how rare, how precious it was to have contact with the outside world, or to live in a place I could say hello to anyone on the street without worrying that thugs might then target my family to shove me back into line.

I guess that I see Iraq through that prism, shaped by that small, short glimpse into what life is like under oppression.

I am in awe, quite frankly, of the people of Iraq. How much courage must it take to face down what has ruthlessly trampled them for generations? I can't fathom it, not really.

I am sure I have no idea, none, not really, of how important April 9 must be to them. But I'd bet my frightened citizens from Central America - who risked who knows what just to sit with a free person for a while - I'd bet they'd understand.

Don't try to tell me the Iraqi liberation wasn't worth it, or wasn't the right thing to do. I have seen people crying just because they met a free person who did not understand what it means to be free.