There can be good news, even in the worst of times. Small, magnificent happenings have refreshed me. Percolating beneath heavy, too-familiar narratives of human disaster and despair hope is alive.
The cup, miraculously, is half full.
I’ve hunkered down over the last few years. I’ve given up, to some extent, on trying to touch people with stories of human suffering in Baghdad. I’ve been concentrating my time and energy on my long-time partnership with two pediatric oncologists in Baghdad and watching in wonder as one resilient, strong young Iraqi woman makes her way through Smith College. She will graduate Sunday, having successfully navigated the challenges of culture, language and academics. Both of these seemingly disparate activities received significant institutional and systemic support right here in our fair city at critical moments. This support enabled the hospital project to expand and paved the way for a talented student from the Middle East to get a first-class college education. This gives me hope.
I was moved years ago by a 2010 article by Alexandra Fuller in National Geographic about Deon Snyman, a young white man coming of age and becoming a minister in South Africa just as apartheid was ending. He took a job in a Zulu village to live, learn about and work with “the others” who lived in that country but about whom he knew almost nothing.
“In the dozen years Snyman lived among the Zulus as a minister, it became clear that the lesson he had to take back to his own people was this: ‘Those who supported the system of apartheid need to apologize in a way that will feel sincere. Then they need to make amends in a way that restores some of the dignity and some of the material opportunities that had been eroded under that system. Snyman started to think about the idea of community-led restitution — the creation, he says, of such emblems of remorse as a school, a clinic or a skills training center. Something everyone could point to and say, Here is our symbol of true sorryness, here is a symbol of our decision to build a new way to work together.”
In the summer of 2014, the Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange, partnering with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, planned to bring a team of two pediatric oncologists and two nurses from Baghdad to Boston for a week of observation and training and to attend an oncology nursing conference.
The opportunity presented itself quickly, without enough time to accomplish one critical step: getting visas for the Iraqi medical team. We approached U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, whose office is conveniently located about five minutes from my house. It was his concern and timely intervention that quickened the visa process and enabled the team to come, and to arrive on time in Boston. They would not have come without the efforts of McGovern and his local and Washington, D.C., staff. And, if they had not come, they would not have made those important connections in Boston, connections that enabled us to harness broader personal and institutional support for our medical project in Baghdad.
Then there is Smith College. When approached by the Iraqi Student Project five years ago about granting a full scholarship to Taleen Dilanyan, an Iraqi student living in Syria who had met Smith’s high admissions standards, they said yes.
And so this young woman, who had lived in Baghdad until age 13, whose family had fled to Aleppo, Syria, to escape the dangers in Iraq, came from Aleppo, via Damascus to Northampton.
Friends and neighbors created a supportive and welcoming community for Taleen, but it was Smith that created the opportunity and it was Smith that has provided the human, financial and academic resources to support her through four successful years of study.
The Grand Solution, an end to war in Iraq and Syria, continues to elude us. The question “What can I do?” looms large as the wars rage endlessly on.
Sometimes I feel exhausted, without energy or options. There are protests but they are not massive. Obviously, we need to regain and rebuild momentum against the ongoing wars and the institutions and corporations that support and sustain them. But as we fight that battle, we can wage peace, working to initiate and implement the ideas of Deon Snyman for community-led restitution, working right here in our community to develop concrete “symbol(s) of our decision to build a new way to work together.” Thank you, Congressman McGovern and Smith College, for your contributions. Thank you.
Claudia Lefko is the founder of the Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange.