The perfect match

When I first started thinking about my then husband to be as a potential husband one of the things that pleased me most was the fact that we had met, got to know each other, discovered our shared likes and dislikes, and started to fall in love long before anyone else knew.

What displeased me most was when I introduced him to my mother, and she looked at him sidewise, and said "are you related to x and y?" turned out his parents and mine had been college friends and had kept in touch intermittently, they knew that their first borns where both medics, but had not been aware that we had met.

My desire to decide my destiny without familial interference was only partially met.

Times have moved on since, and it seems to me that finding the perfect match just keeps getting more complicated, finding a partner when you are living in a foreign land is difficult enough. Add to that an increasingly restrictive list of prerequisites and it becomes almost impossible.

For years my parents worried about my brother's future, and having chosen to become increasingly more "Iraqi" as time went by, the search became ever more desperate, daughters of friends, sisters of friends, and friends of friends where all considered and rejected for one reason or another, it took a decade before someone suitable was found, a successful marriage but one very much arranged.

And for the past three years a second search has been on in ernest for yet another ideal wife for someone else, the internet is scoured, his mother joined "elderly Iraqi community" groups to meet mothers, and conversations that start with "how many children do you have" are had both with people working at the embassy, and those protesting and waving placards outside it.

He is intelligent, funny, a successful academic, so what can possibly be the problem?

Well like all potential wives she needs to young but not too young, pretty but not too beautiful, intelligent but not too clever, successful but no more than him, add to that the Arabian requisite of being born and raised in the East away from the temptations of the West, being religious but maybe not too much so etc etc.

But the main stumbling block is that she must not only be a Sunni, but ideally should also be from a family who feel persecuted by the Shiite, a pre-requisite that is only discussed openly in private, and yet this shared persecution has become the mother of all pre-requisites, this shared belonging a requirement so basic that it somehow manages to be the starter of every "do you know any eligible women" conversations without it ever being specifically mentioned!

Dr Q

I remember Alaa' as being one of the most decent of the bunch of people in my year, an outsider from Najaf, very bright, quiet, polite and very generous, he went on to become Dean at one of the newer medical schools, and when he contacted me and asked for my help with one of his trainees I did not hesitate.

Telephone calls, emails and contact with my own ex-supervisor, an Italian medic, and an international research expert in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, I reassured her regarding the finances, told he came recommended by someone I trusted and eventually an agreement was reached.

The university is pleased, he is pleased, he and his family arrived, a fully paid three year PhD programme starting in September, preceded by a language course and unbeknown to sponsors and supervisor plans to take the registration exams that if passed allow medical practice in the UK.

I had just poured my first coffee of the day, and turned the screen on to scan a few emails before the day started, when the phone rang, no caller ID I answered expecting the on-call doctor updating me on the bunch of in-patients, instead it was Dr Q

"Sorry to call so early, but I need your help...am meeting the head of the department for the first time today and need to write her an email..you understand I am sure, when when I met the team at the institute it seems they did not understand and it was awkward....how do I phrase it to explain I cannot shake her hand..."

I remember the first time a man refused to shake my hand, I was shocked, and deeply offended, to me it felt like a personal snub, I was not good enough, not clean enough... how dare he I wondered.
I am still uncomfortable about that first meeting, he was elderly and thankfully his son and grandson both of whom studied in the UK were different.

I gave a few words of advice.. don't say I am sorry...the British don't start letters in that way, explain that you don't want to cause offence or embarrassment....say that your religion prevents it...
all the time I am thinking back to that meeting in Baghdad, that elderly man who had refused to shake my hand....an experience I would rather not repeat.

"Thank you so much dictora... I am so grateful... really you must come to visit us some time..."

I am sure we will meet one day, maybe at the institute, maybe at a meeting..good luck with your meeting.

The embassador

Many years ago I entered into a rather unpleasant online dispute with an Iraqi doctor who had been plucked from a rather mediocre job in the British health service and appointed head of the Medical City teaching hospitals in Baghdad, I was angered by the lies and exaggerations, and following a post here exchanged several emails with the since obscure surgeon

I remembered those feelings last week

Someone had started a new Facebook group, and I had been included in the invitees

These were some of my fellow university students, a list of a hundred people, some instantly recognisable, others rather less so, photos and families, memories and anecdotes, I found myself smiling and clicking on the little red numbered messages that kept popping up

Until...

People started to write resumes of their lives over the past twenty-five years since we graduated, medical specialities, children in universities, travels around the globe in search of safety and career, struggles with new languages and cultures, so much success all around the world, and a lots of congratulations and reflected glory

And then he placed his resume....

The fifth top graduate...travelling to the UK ....consultant position....head of department... followed by a change in career....and current position as ambassador of Iraq in....all interspersed with the political jargon- the -previous criminal government- the recent dramatic changes-his excellency the so and so-

The theme is religious rather than nationalistic but the general feel was all so familiar it instantly took me back thirty years

I instantly google the name (and initially find nothing from his medical background because like so many of us he has changed his surname to emphasise his religious subgroupe) I eventually find the hospital but very little else. 

But I do find the youtube that apparently went viral of his bodyguards manhandling a young cyclist who came too close to his diplomatic car.

Unlike previously I did not enter into debates, I didn't send him this http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99f970bc-a4c9-11e3-9313-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2vIbqcXUM

I simply left the group and unfriended the people who felt obliged to congratulate him

The F word

While the world is watching Kiev intently, and occasionally remembering Syria

Somewhere else is close to exploding
The most feared city in the world
The birthplace of my children's grandfather

Haweeja is the new Halabcha

The mass deaths there changed the balance, the protracted and mainly peaceful sit in became more than just that, and in all likelihood the calls for "revenge" in a land where there has never been any justice made the "fighters" more welcome

The websites are active again (between episodes of hacked shut down), and in addition to the words we now have images
Filled mortuaries, crowded hospitals, and mutilated bodies in the streets

The videos are multiplying, with or without the insignia or the haunting music, planes are downed in the dark, tanks emptied and burning, military positions vacated, and rockets blaze over pedestrians in the streets, all with the common commentary AllahuAkbar...and Baghdad we are on our way

Rumours are rife, "anyone trained by the Americans is to report to F.....""Defections are becoming more common despite the death sentence", tapped phone call of farewells, of resignation to fate mixed with fear of execution

The prime minister calls the events "the battle between the grandsons of Hussain and the grandsons of Muawyia", and now his government has lost control over a strip of land extending from the western border to Abu Ghraib on the outskirts of the capital, passing via Ramadi, and it is spreading; a few shots in Mosul, a few skirmishes in Yousifyia "the city that according to the song penned for the elder Hakim was a source of fear to other Iraqis"

To the outside world this is not happening, not a word of it is spoken, because in the centre of all the events, is one city, a city no-one dares even mention, not even in a whisper, F........

Wait

I slept in the sleeping bag, on the floor in N and A's flat
I slipped down before they woke, unable to sleep
Waiting for the envelope
That dropped through the letter box
-I can work-

I returned to the room several times before lunch
Checked the post room again
Waiting for the brown envelopes
That were delivered by the warden
-I can progress-

I watched the phone in clinic
Desperate for it to ring
I had even visited the multi faith room
Pinned a prayer on the notice board
-She had crossed-

And now I am waiting again
Watching the phone for three days
Willing it to ring
Desperately waiting

Worse than all previous waits

I have to convey

-It has not arrived-
-You have not been selected-

I am alert to the phone's sudden jolt
Hidden caller ID
She is eleven, previously well, bleeding and pale, there are no blasts, but nothing else either

They always present to me
These sickening reminders
The worst results you will ever receive
Are the one you were not waiting for

You are

You are five or six, and he is your idol
You love it when he tells you stories
Of kings and princes, brave warriors, and devoted foot soldiers
Of dynasties and palaces, intertwining the past with the present
And in your dreams he is the hero of every battle

You are ten or twelve, and he is seldom there
You love it when he arrives home at night
You love that he hugs you tight, his clothes full of dust and sweat
His rough chin scratching your cheeks
You love it when he tells you about his day, the narrow escapes, the great deeds
And in your dreams he is the hero of every battle

You are fifteen, and things are different now
He comes home less often
You hear him wearily climb the stairs
He talks less, you listen less
He can't wait to get out of the suit
You can't wait to leave the room

You are old now, and he is older still
You love it when he tells his stories
But you don't fill the gaps
The images are duller now
The kings less benign, the princes never kind
The warriors cruel, the foot soldiers cheap
The dynasties brutal, and the palaces murder grounds

You both believed

You both trusted

Because

You so wanted it all to be true

Günaydın

"Günaydın" he greets me as he descends the stairs
He would like "süt" with his rice crispies and he says "teşekkür ederim" when I bring it into the living room for him
He practices on his grandfather who corrects his pronunciation, and tells him stories of belonging

We browse the maps, and images of beach resorts, deciding on the August trip
Different interests, opposite dreams, arguments and he is close to tears
Why cant we just do what all my school friends do
Just go to our "home"

He downloads the official travel advice, the map is filled with colours
There are no green areas, it is mostly red, but there is a yellow patch
And from the north there are pictures

He scrolls down very slowly

Gradually relaxing

Look Mama

A whole page

No dead people