Hope Is Alive
The Hard Life of a Christian in Baghdad
The story of Andraus, one of the best interpreters available to the
Italian journalists in the Iraqi capital. A look at his family’s safety,
food to buy, the information in the newspaper, and the information that
isn’t written there. Sunday Mass, where one prays and listens to
hope
by Toni Capuozzo*
His name is Andraus. At times, in public, he’s called Yussuf,
so others don’t know that he’s Christian. He’s the best
of the interpreters who work with the Italian press in Baghdad. His accent
reveals his French studies at school, and this, together with his good-natured
appearance, a bit chunky, his lively gaze, and pallid coloring, would make
him seem at home in any little square in Provence, absorbed in watching
a game of bowls, or crossing the road with a baguette under his arm. There’s
only one detail that gives away his belonging to Baghdad: his smile, the
shy and crooked smile of someone who’s lost a few teeth, and this
isn’t the moment for perfect smiles.
Things to do
There are other things to do: two children to bring to school and pick
up afterwards, because kidnappers might even be attracted to the few dollars
of an interpreter. There’s food to buy in abundance, as if a reward
for so many years of scarcity. This is Andraus’ only weakness, and
perhaps that of his wife as well. He brings her, as if on a royal platter,
whole cartons of eggs, packs of margarine, and everything reappears in
the complicated dishes that only women shut in at home can prepare, and
that provoke in Andraus various stomach aches, insistent headaches, and
heaviness in his back, about the level of his kidneys. Other than that,
Andraus is perfect, a small man who crosses the hotel hall every morning
with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. He reads them with two different
approaches. The first is that of his Italian clients, the news that will
end up in their stories, the background that explains an attack in Falluja,
the car bomb to kill a minister, the negotiations with Moqtada. The second
is his personal approach to information that won’t end up in the
news, and that constitute a kind of personal horoscope, brief glimpses
into a fate that is familiar to him: the terrorist attack on a bus in which
seven Christians were traveling, the closure of another liquor store, the
writings on the rolling gate of a modest beauty parlor. Only rarely do
these two approaches coincide; it takes an attack on a church, a declaration
of the Nuncio, or a bishop’s prayer for hostages. And then, when
the newspapers are closed, ready to besummarized , there is the unwritten
news, the news that is only Andraus’ personal diary: the Christian
family that’s preparing the papers to leave the country, the news
that even his new identification documents will indicate his religion,
the rumors about the health of Tareq Aziz, who for a long time was a kind
of guardian angel for the minority, and now seems a prisoner doomed to
pay not only for the regime’s evildoings, but also for the touch
of presentability that he could give it, and the meager privilege that
spared his minority the persecutions visited upon others, others who today
are ready for a reckoning.
A nationality, a curse
“
You’re happy when you see the Americans, aren’t you?” his
neighbor asked the other day. “No,” Andraus responded, without
comment. “Aren’t they Christians like you?” the neighbor
asked. Sometimes, I tell him about the Christians of Beit Jalla and of
Bethlehem, in Palestine, who don’t have it any better, to console
him. Sometimes I remind him about the new constitutional charter, with
group and individual rights. Sometimes I tell him he could start a new
life in France or Italy. He shakes his head, as if belonging to Iraq were
a curse that can’t be lifted, and instead follows the moves of Christian
families who change neighborhood or province, and blend in elsewhere, far
from their only familiar pleasure, the Sunday morning Mass. There, their
children play on the church steps, before their parents call them back,
fearful of bombs, where everyone lights a candle to the Virgin Mary in
a cave that seems like a giant Christmas creche, where the girls look at
each other’s new clothes, and the old people count the absences from
the community, and then everyone goes in together to pray and listen to
words of hope, like on any given Sunday.
*correspondent for Tg5
in Baghdad
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