What's in a name?

I can’t imagine myself with a name other than Kalyanee. Many people mispronounce it. Some refuse to say it. Some have even asked if they could call me something else. I had people want to call me Kali and here in the Middle East, some have even suggested changing my name entirely – perhaps to something simpler, like Sara. But I always refuse. I lure them with an excuse that Kalyanee is such a beautiful name and how could anyone want to change that?

When my family and I immigrated to the US from Cambodia, all of us had difficulty with our names. In a state like Texas, names like Sok Sann, Vann, Sophaline, Makkara, Kunthear, Phalkun, Kalyanee and Sihakmony were not frequently heard of, but frequently made fun of. Jokes abounded and many feelings were hurt. It was no surprise when our family naturalized as American citizens, my father and a few of my brothers and sisters decided to change their names. Sok Sann became Peter, Makkara became Alex, Phalkun became Jacqueline, and Sihakmony became Jonathan.

Another family, also moving to Texas, is facing a similar problem and asking similar questions.

Mohammed and his family, mentioned earlier in the blog, is finally being resettled in Texas with his family, after waiting over a year in Jordan for the final good news. When we met with them in Jordan, they looked happy, but also a little worried.

Mohammed and Zina told us the family had been thinking a lot about whether or not they should keep or change their names. The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) officers in Jordan suggested that it might make their lives in the US easier if they changed their names. They even strongly advised persons with names like Saddam, Husssein, or Osama to change their names completely.

Their sons Saad and Ali were already determined to change their names to Cedric and Alex. They even have new email addresses to reflect their new names. But Mohammed is still hesitating whether to take the big step. After everything he and his family have suffered, he doesn’t think it’s such a big deal. It may make it easier for him to be considered at a job interview, to be hired, or even to step on a plane without stringent security checks. The only problem was that he had no name in mind to change his name to.

Mohammed looked at us and begged us to help him. David and I looked at each and wondered if Mohammed was doing the right thing. What’s in a name anyway? Everything. One’s life, one’s dreams, one’s identity, one’s past. His family and his parents, when they were still living, all knew him as Mohammed. He married as Mohammed, he became a distinguished lawyer in Iraq as Mohammed, he gave birth to his children as Mohammed. Now his life will change and his memories and his past will change with it.

When we arrived in the US, my family changed their names to fit in, to assimilate, to accommodate, to be American, and to make life just a little bit easier for them. When Mohammed and his family come to the US, they will also do the same. In Iraq, Iraqis are also changing their names to avoid being targeted for being either Sunni or Shi’a depending on the neighborhood they live in.

These days, it seems the changes of names say more about the societies that we live in than the people themselves who have been forced to change their names.

Saoud

Saoud has curly and bushy hair, dark eyes and a curious smile that puckers when he laughs. Saoud has been drawing and painting since he was seven years old. He is now sixteen. When he was younger his drawings depicted cartoon characters and pencil portraits of his brother and sisters. Now his oil paintings portray the aftermath of war and his personal perspective on beauty and suffering.

All his paintings are dark.

"I can’t express Iraq in a way…in a way…with happy colors. Or in a way with bright colors or flowers. You have noticed that all my paintings are without flowers. I didn’t even draw a bird that stands alone because I don’t feel there is freedom; there is democracy. No, there is only a prison. Even if I tried to draw a bird and I draw it very well, I draw it with chains. I don’t draw it as being free."

One of Saoud’s paintings detail a story he had heard on television of a young Sunni boy that helped save the lives of drowning Shi’a victims in the Tigris River. For Saoud, the event illustrated the power and tenacity of Iraqi nationality and human relationship despite the rising sectarian divide between the Shi’a and Sunni sects. The painting shows the victims drowning, while government leaders, depicted as women with long, white hair watched on, unwilling to do anything to help the Iraqi people who are imprisoned in tombs stacked one on top of the other.


Saoud’s other paintings are equally sad and tragic. In one painting, he depicts Iraq as a baby but also as a bare and naked woman curled up in a fetal position, abandoned by her parents and left with no government, no freedom, and no democracy. Another painting is of a woman’s face painted blood red, sad and fragile, whose dark eyes face an unclear and uncertain future.

A month ago, Saoud finished a painting of his grandmother who died a year ago in Iraq. Saoud and his family could not be with her when she died. He painted a picture of her to remind him of the grandmother he loved so much. He tried to capture her expressions, but he also wanted to express the current life around her and around all Iraqis now living in Iraq. Her portrait is surrounded by small images – a chained pigeon, a little girl burned by the war, a prison, and the staircase they used to climb up and down at home. He also drew a chair, to represent the simplest things he and his family are now deprived of.

Saoud and his family live in the outskirts of Faisal, a suburb of Cairo. Every day, Saoud makes a ritual of walking into town with a red bucket he fills up with drinking water. They have no potable water at home. Saoud says he wishes he could fast and not have to drink water or eat food. And he could save the money they spend on water for other things he feels are more important.

"I wish we could save the money that we buy water with and we can stop drinking water and even stop eating, so that we can see our future. But we won’t be able to live without water or without food. We have to eat and to drink and to walk
and we have to do everything."

Saoud’s father worked as bodyguard for Saddam Hussein’s brother-in-law. When Saddam Hussein murdered his brother-in-law, his life was also threatened. He immediately fled to Jordan with his family, where they were offered an opportunity to resettle in Australia. But they had to turn that down. Saoud’s grandfather proclaimed he would die if the family moved away. The family returned to Baghdad, this time to face a US occupation and an impending civil war, which made it all the more easy for different groups to settle old scores and for Saoud’s father to be a target.

Saoud and his family faced two attempts on their lives, both times while driving in their car, surrounded by people dressed in black. After the two incidents, Saoud drew a painting of a head checkered black and white. The white refers to peace and the black, to destruction. He used those two colors to also illustrate how Iraqis are now being played like a game of chess.

After the incident, Saoud’s family could not remain in Baghdad for long. Saoud and his family finally fled for Egypt in 2005, where they are now finding it difficult to live. Saoud’s father worked in a restaurant for a little while but after suffering two strokes, was forced to stay home. Neither he nor his wife are able to find work here in Cairo, where the unemployment rate is high and the competition to find work among local Egyptians is also fierce. The family is also unable to afford to send the children to school, as government schools are only open to Egyptian children.


Saoud spends most of his time attending workshops and volunteering as an assistant at Townhouse Gallery downtown. The gallery hosts works and performances by local artists but also has an outreach program for young Egyptian, Sudanese and Iraqi children. The program introduces and teaches art to young children but also aims to foster relationships between local Egyptians and the burgeoning Sudanese and Iraqi refugee communities.

But Saoud’s father does not approve of the direction Saoud’s life is going. When he was a young boy, he taught himself how to drive a car. He put a pillow on his seat to disguise his small figure. He was strong and tough and knew how to take care of himself. Saoud’s father wants him to work, to be a man, and to help support the family. Accustomed to a better life back in Iraq and to money and position working as a bodyguard under the Saddam regime, Saoud’s father is unable to accept his new, emasculated life, in which he does nothing but sit at home.

With pressure and tension escalating between Saoud and his father, Saoud tells us he may soon leave for Iraq, where, even caged and imprisoned, he is at least free from the tyranny of his father.

Books and Ashes

Maysoun and Bassim met one day after Bassim came home from working as a geologist in the oil fields of Iraq. His hair was scraggly, his clothes drenched in oil, so it was to be expected that Maysoun would not spare him even a second glance. But when Bassim mentioned that Herman Hesse was one of his favorite authors, Maysoun changed her mind. The wild and unkempt hair and clothes no longer mattered. She had found her soul mate.

Maysoun and Bassim now live in a suburb an hour away from Cairo with their three young children Hadir, age 16 and Ramy and Fady, both twins and age 12. Maysoun works as a fashion designer, designing and sewing clothes inside their small apartment. Maysoun supports the entire family with her earnings.

Bassim volunteers four hours a week as a professor of math and science because the university will not hire him. Although unpaid, the work is good for him, to help keep up his morale and to keep him active doing something during the otherwise uneventful and monotonous days that fill up their lives. Bassim also cooks for the family while Maysoun works and boasts he can cook the most delicious Iraqi meals. But he is also careful to tell us that if they were in Iraq, Maysoun would be doing the cooking.

Hadir, Ramy and Fady are all going to private school, costing them 5,000 Egyptian pounds or about $US 1,000 a year, paid for by the family savings, which are fast dwindling. Unlike Jordan and Syria, Iraqi children are not permitted to attend primary public schools in Egypt. The only option for free education is the Al-Azhar school, which is devoted to Sunni religious teachings and open only to Sunni Iraqis.

Shi’a Iraqis are having a difficult time in Egypt, a Sunni majority country. Sudanese, Somali and Eritrean refugees are able to develop aid and service organizations to assist their communities, but not Iraqis. Fearful that the Shi’a sect would gain hold in Egypt, Iraqis are not permitted to build mosques or develop organizations and associations in their communities.

Here in Egypt, Maysoun and Bassim are finding it difficult to keep the family together. They used to live in another suburb with other Iraqi families, but have been forced to move to a less desirable neighborhood, due to dwindling savings.

Their lives in Baghdad seem only a distant memory now. In Baghdad, Bassim and Maysoun had a library, the shelves stacked to the brim with thousands of books, Eastern and Western, although Maysoun has a particular weak spot for German writers.

Before they fled Baghdad, Bassim offered his books to friends and neighbors but no one would accept his gift. He couldn’t understand why. Unable to imagine his books destroyed by strange hands that would occupy his home in due course, Bassim burned his books, one by one. Only ashes remained to remind him of the letters, the words, and the phrases strung together by great writers that inspired and touched his soul.

I cried when I heard this story. I could feel his passion and attachment, not just for the books, but also for what the books represented – a past life, a glorious life, of thought, study and reflection – all shattered by this tragic war. I imagined my own library of books destroyed and all the great libraries and museums that I loved since childhood burned to ashes and I cried for the tragedy that has befallen all of us.

That evening, Maysoun and Bassim and I recounted all the books we loved by writers that we cherished – Herman Hesse, Gabriel Garcia Marquéz, André Gide, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Yukio Mishima and so many more. The words that touched me also touched them once upon a time. We are not so different after all – seeking truth and beauty in life.

Now in Egypt

It's been a few months since we've updated on our progress and months since the blog has been updated as well. Our journey took us to Jordan from April to May, Syria in June and now we will complete our filming in Egypt this July.

It was a challenge for us to get permission to film in Syria. Due to current and recent political developments it took us two months to get a visa to go to Syria and later, weeks to get permission to film. We were recently granted permission to film, but for only one week. We decided to focus on only one story in Syria, a story that has actually taken us to Egypt to complete. While we are here, we also plan to cover our third and last story. Please feel free to email us if you have contacts or friends in Egypt you think we should get in touch with.

It was very difficult for David and I to leave Amman and Damascus and all the Iraqis that have become our close friends, many of whom also consider us as part of their family. Neither of us has ever met a people more open, more kind or hospitable and willing to do all they can to help make us feel welcomed. It is a tragedy what has happened to Iraq and to the people of Iraq. In the last few years thousands of years of art, history, and culture have been destroyed and millions of lives shattered or halted, forgotten by the world as we move on with our own daily lives, half questioning the rise in food and oil prices and perhaps unaware that what happens in the Middle East and all over the world affects all of us at home.

Coming to Jordan, Syria and Egypt and meeting Iraqis have been a journey and enlightening experience for both of us. We have learned so much about this region and its people and we have also learned a lot about ourselves, and how we can improve in our own lives. We have learned to be more patient, more open, and more tolerant. We have even learned to be stronger. Despite everything that has happened, despite the daily suffering and wondering of what the future will bring, Iraqis continue to persevere and have hope that, in God's hands, life will be better.

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Same but Different

It’s been a while since we updated this blog. We thought we would be able to write more and write every day, but each day has been spent trying to just deal with the day – either filming or meeting with Iraqis or just spending time and getting to know people we have come to care for very much.

People here in Syria think we are journalists. It’s difficult to explain to people the kind of work we are trying to do. To explain we are not journalists and, practically speaking, not even documentary filmmakers, but simple, ordinary people trying to learn and discover the truth and trying to meet and connect with Iraqis the way we would normally meet and connect with our own friends – drinking in a café, watching a soccer match in a restaurant, or just talking late into the night, about our life and our dreams.

And then it hits us somehow that although the Iraqis we meet are the same as us – we are about the same age, we share similar hopes for the future – we have become different because of where we come from and the situation that we are in.

We met Rahman and his friends Saif and Ali almost two weeks ago, but we feel we are good friends. We joke and laugh over mouthwatering dishes of Iraqi kebab and biriyani. They tell us about their dreams for the future – Rahman wants to become a cinematographer. Saif wants to write screenplays like his uncle and Ali wants to perform in theaters. They also want to get married one day and raise children with security, a good job and a nice home. David and I have similar ambitions. We all want to do something with our lives.


The fan whirs slowly above the four twin beds crowded in the tiny studio apartment Rahman, Saif and Ali share with another friend in a run-down neighborhood in Damascus, known for the thousands of Iraqis that have settled there and for the Sayyida Zeinab mosque generally frequented by Iranian tourists. They pay about $100 a month for the place. But it is high tourist season and due to scarcity of hotels and high demand for empty rooms, the price of the apartment threatens to skyrocket.

Late last night, the landlord knocked on their door and demanded, that unless they can pay three times their normal rent, they must pack up their bags and leave that very night. No due notice; no advanced warning, only a simple threat. Young, single, male and Iraqi, they have nothing and no one to protect them in a country in which they cannot even rent an apartment based on a signed contract or even work for local wages. Without work permits, most Iraqis in Syria work illegally or serve as “volunteers.”

Despite events of the night before, Rahman, Saif and Ali still manage to get up at 6:30am, get dressed in their clown suits and put on a happy face for the children they perform for at the UNHCR registration offices. They perform every day, except Friday and Saturday, and sometimes twice a day. While the parents wait to be registered as refugees at the UNHCR, Rahman, Ali, and Saif bring smiles and laughter to children who have only seen war and violence until their families fled for Syria.

We wonder how they do it; how they can maintain such optimism and how they can manage to make others laugh while they struggle to maintain normalcy in their own lives.

But despite their strength and perseverance, many Iraqis, including Rahman, Saif and Ali, are approaching the edge of their ability to withstand a life without work, without study, without family, and without a secure future.

I went to say good-bye to an Iraqi friend this morning. We will leave for Jordan on Friday to spend some time with Haneen’s family before heading to Cairo on Monday to finish our last story. We had not seen each other for a while. I asked if everything was okay. She said it’s hard to be happy, hard to smile and have fun when life is so difficult. She was smiling and so hopeful when we first met.

We wonder what will happen if nothing is done to remedy, alleviate or assist in this crisis. The UNHCR and other organizations are able to provide some assistance, but their resources are limited. There are not enough funds to fully support educational and vocational training programs necessary to help, especially young Iraqis, move on with their lives.

There are approximately 1.2 million Iraqis currently living in Syria. Approximately 207,548 are registered with the UNHCR. Only 3,710 Iraqis in Syria have submitted applications to be resettled abroad, a decision not dependent on the UNHCR but on the capacity and willingness of sponsoring countries. The majority of Iraqis remaining in Syria and neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt are left without any durable solution. They must either find a way to survive in these countries or return to Iraq.

One of our friends, a renowned Iraqi scientist, will be returning to Baghdad in a few days. His family left a week before him to assess the situation and recapture their home previously taken over by another family. They must request and even beg and plead to have their home returned to them.

As we walked Abu Mayada to the gate, we wished him a safe journey back, not knowing what else to say or when we would see him again. In a resigned and matter-fact tone, Abu Mayada told us he would surely be killed once he returns to Iraq.