The Baghdad I Knew

It was like a scene from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," except with Arabs. Dozens of my dark-eyed relations were gathered in my uncle Ibrahim's front yard to celebrate yet another Ali marriage. They skewer-cooked fish, argued politics and kicked a soccer ball around in the 125-degree Baghdad summer heat. It was 1976; I was 11 years old and had never been to Iraq; my dad had immigrated to Los Angeles before I was born. The kids treated my sister and me like novelty items--they couldn't stop fighting over us. My feisty cousin Afrah threw a Sadoon Jaber record onto the ancient player and the girls tried to teach us how to "dance like the Arab." We shook our skinny kid hips, never quite catching the beat. My sister then popped her own Elton John cassette into a clunky tape player we'd lugged all the way from L.A. and shimmied like Cher to "Crocodile Rock." They laughed so hard someone actually spit up a date. That's how I want to remember Baghdad.

Last week President Bush's speech at the United Nations almost guaranteed that my country, America, will soon be engaged in a battle with Iraq, my ancestral homeland. Military analysts on the evening news are already speaking of bombarding Baghdad first for a "strategic edge." Never mind that the densely populated city is home to 5 million people (about 100 of whom I am related to), or that my cousin Zaniab or her baby or my uncle Hassan are far more likely to be taken out than Saddam himself. To be an Iraqi-American right now means to be on edge, to cry a lot, not to sleep at night. I need to hold on to those sweet and simple images.

Believe me, I would like nothing more than to see Saddam's regime fall, but I do not want the Iraqi people crushed under the rubble--again. As concerned as I am about smart bombs' going stupidly awry, I also worry that in a crisis, Saddam will turn on his own countrymen as he's done in the past. There are more than 400,000 Iraqi-Americans, most of whom live in Detroit, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Without exception, every one I've talked with--in fact, every Arab-American--wants Saddam out. "I don't think any Iraqi is really sorry that he is going to go," says Hassan Fattah, 31, an American-born journalist of Iraqi descent. "The issue is, at what cost?" We are facing a deadly drama in which there are no perfect alternatives.

Since we implemented sanctions against Iraq in 1990, the child-mortality rate in this once prosperous state has doubled. The World Health Organization estimates that 5,000 Iraqi children die each month due to malnutrition and lack of medical care; by another estimate, the sanctions cost 250 lives a day. As for the economic fallout: the Iraqi people (not Saddam) became destitute overnight. In 1989 the Iraqi dinar was worth $1.25. Today it's 2,500 dinars to $1. That means a dozen eggs can cost a month's salary. It's hardly a tactic that's weakened Saddam's resolve. He's now had a decade to manipulate a starved nation that at one point was strong enough to rise up against him. We should have finished what we started in the gulf war, or at least backed the Iraqi people once we encouraged them to stage a revolution.

My cousin Sami, who lives in Abu Dhabi, told me of a nephew who almost died of an asthma attack because the family could not afford one lousy asthma gun. I should do more. I should fly there with boxloads of Primatene Mist, I should save every last dollar I now spend on eBay crap and movie popcorn and send them to my family. It's guilt: from being American, from being healthy, from being alive. I've been here before. During the gulf war I was horrified that my tax dollars were used to bomb the markets where my cousin Samira shopped. But all I could do was glower at news footage of U.S. pilots referring to a military operation as a "turkey shoot," or stew in traffic behind a car whose bumper sticker read KICK THEIR ASS, TAKE THEIR GAS.

This year I'd been planning to go back to Iraq to see my family for the first time through adult eyes. It's been nearly impossible to stay in touch otherwise--phone calls, letters and e-mail don't flow easily in a totalitarian regime. I would see my cousin Heider (with any luck, he wouldn't throw a lizard at me this time) and my uncles Salah and Ibrahim. They would be old now, feeble, but at least alive--unlike my aunt Fatima. She died seven years ago, of complications from diabetes. She was in her early 60s, and couldn't afford the now scarce insulin. So I will stay here in America, wondering how any of us--me, my sister, my cousin Afrah--can live through this, let alone dance together again.