US-taught Iraqis feel war's weight

These Iraqis proved that for themselves in January, when they hosted the group of US academics, from a range of disciplines, who had never visited Iraq.

Some said they were unaware that the US bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. The group also told their Iraqi hosts that they had received a warning from the US State Department not to travel to Iraq, and that they could be fined $10,000 for doing so.

"They were against war - that's why they came," says Al Azzawi. "But they had to see, to check if they were on the right side. After five days, they said they would certainly now be stronger in rejecting the war."

"They didn't know what to expect," adds Kadhim. "They had never met an Iraqi, and you could feel that they were frightened, terrified, because they were the 'enemy.' Someone on the street gave one woman a flower, and she was shocked. They were amazed that they were treated so well here, and not as villains."

The visit ended with tearful goodbyes, which the Iraqis say reminded them of their own experiences getting to know Americans on their home turf. They tell stories about digging deeply into American culture, and laughed about Americans' infamously poor knowledge of geography.

"We know you more than you know us," says Khadim. She once told someone she was from Baghdad, and they replied that they, too, were from Bagdad - Bagdad (without an 'h'), Texas.

Numa Hamad Imara, a civil-engineering professor educated at Utah State and New Mexico State Universities, shared that experience. He once told someone he was from Baghdad, Iraq, prompting the reply: "Oh, I should go see your country in South America."

Today, Mr. Imara's time in the US has given him an acute feel for the country's post-Sept. 11 sensibilities. But he says issues like the Patriot Act are eroding the ideals that many non-Americans hold dear about the US.

"It's the American people who feel that American ideals are being betrayed by this administration, but only they can change that," Imara says. The drive toward war with Iraq, he says, is "like an obsession, not a policy."

Still, Imara says that "America makes many beautiful things," including movies that play on Iraqi TV almost every night. "My kids get upset if there is not an American movie," he says, making a groaning sound to mimic them.

A war aside, these Iraqis note a "hardening" in the US since most of them were there - a proclivity for violence that many children are also exposed to on TV.

"What happened to Tom and Jerry?" asks Khadim. "Now cartoons are so dramatic, with good and evil, and kids are brought up to think the US is the savior of the world. Is it still the land of freedom? Sometimes we wonder.

"Have you seen the Dustin Hoffman film, 'Wag the dog'?" she continues. "I mean, do I look like a terrorist? If you didn't see us, you could believe it. But we are people with kids in school, who go to parties. We don't go around with bombs in our pockets, or chemical weapons."

When the laughter subsides, the gravity of impending war leads this group back to more sober thoughts. Memories focus on the first Gulf War.

Imara remembers seeing the results of five missiles that landed in Babylon. "We went to investigate, and found palm trees cut like cucumbers," she recalls. One house was destroyed, killing a family, with the refrigerator thrown one way, and a pajama-clad man fallen in the other. "I will never forget that scene - and America could do it again."

"The term 'collateral damage' to me means a neighbor lost a leg," says Abdul-Ilah Younis Mohammed, a civil engineer who studied at UC-Berkeley and Mexico State University, and spent 15 years in the US. His two children were born in Las Cruces, N.M. "For an American, 'collateral damage' means it doesn't matter, it's irrelevant."

Similar sentiments affected Kadhim during the 1998 bombing of Iraq. To her 6-year-old son, America meant "the place where all the goodies come from," since Kadhim's mother was from Texas. But just after the US bombing, he told Kadhim that all his friends at school "talked about hating Americans, and how could people be so evil?" Kadhim had to explain that the war was governments, not people. "My mother cried on the phone, when I told her," she says.

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