Posted on 11/29/2003 10:10:41 AM PST by Ex-Dem
BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the table by her bed, Najat Saleem keeps two precious items.
One is a worn Arabic-English dictionary. Before she goes to sleep and as soon as she awakens, Najat memorizes a few English words. She wants to be fluent so she can move to America and leave behind the country she in many ways has grown to hate.
There is also a faded photograph of Najat at a party with a handsome man. Her husband. The last time she saw him was April 7, the day he left for work and never came home.
In her living room, Najat has new photos, but they are of a different man at a different party. This one is an American captain. The pictures show him holding her 9-month-old baby and eating the cake that Najat baked specially for him.
The captain's name is Richard Graves. He is responsible for the 10,000 Iraqis who live in the "Green Zone," a residential area that since April has been headquarters for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. It is Graves' job to protect the Americans from the Iraqis, but also to help the Iraqis learn they can trust the Americans.
Najat trusts him completely.
He found her a house. He has become almost a surrogate father to her four little girls. Along with his men, he stops by at least once a week to make sure she and the children are safe.
Graves has helped many other Iraqis, too. Last week, he spent three hours handing out toys to dozens of kids. But there is a special bond of respect between this American officer who hasn't seen his own family in months, and a strong Iraqi woman who lost almost everything during the war, yet is determined to maintain her dignity.
She calls him Capt. Graves. He calls her Najat.
"All you hear abut the Americans is negative," she says. "But Capt. Graves and the Americans, they help me more than my own family, more than my own sisters. They do nothing for me. The Americans do everything for me."
"I heard her story and I wanted to help," he says. "She is a nice lady and I love her kids."
"My heart told me' Last April, as American bombs and rockets pounded Baghdad, it looked as if Najat Saleem's comfortable life might have ended forever.
She did not like Saddam Hussein, but she and her husband Allah were among the thousands of Iraqis who worked for the government and reaped benefits others could only imagine.
Tall and striking, she traveled the world as a flight attendant for Iraqi Airways, sometimes on VIP trips with Hussein himself. After the airline was grounded during the 1991 Gulf War, she began to raise a family and pursue a master's degree in communications.
Allah, fluent in English and Spanish, worked as translator in Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The job came with an apartment overlooking the Tigris River, right across from Hussein's Republican Palace.
On April 7, as American forces neared Baghdad and the bombing intensified, Najat begged Allah not to go to work. He, too, seemed nervous, but he got in his Toyota Corona and left for the ministry. He never returned.
For days, Najat searched through Baghdad trying to learn what had happened. Then this: An Iraqi translator working with the Americans had seen a car similar to Allah's. But it appeared to have been hit by a missile and was nearly incinerated. Could Najat bring the vehicle identification number so soldiers could make a positive ID?
When the St. Petersburg Times featured Najat in late April, she was still waiting to hear about the car. Her mood swung between hope and despair. In the postwar lawlessness, thugs had forced her at gunpoint from her apartment. All she had left were a few clothes and photographs.
"I don't know how to continue my life," she said then, dressed in a shapeless black abaya. "I have four children. I cannot go to work because I have a baby 2 months old. In a way I am lost."
It was not until after the journalists left Iraq that soldiers finally let Najat see the car. It had almost melted; the hood couldn't be opened enough to view the identification number. But a burned body was inside, and Najat knew her search had ended:
"My heart told me, this is my husband."
She never got to bury him. When she returned a few days later, the car was gone.
At first, Najat and the girls moved in with her parents. She was determined to finish her master's degree, so she took the kids with her to Baghdad University, which had reopened after the war. She completed the course work and got the degree.
At home, things were not going as well. The house was crowded, and Najat and her mother did not get along. Then fate intervened in the form of an American officer with a shaved head and a habit of calling most women "ma'am."
Capt. Richard Graves, in his mid 30s, comes from a military family. He went through ROTC at Northeastern Louisiana University. Now he is based in Germany, but in the last 38 months he has spent only six at home with his wife and two kids.
As the officer in charge of Iraqis in the Green Zone, Graves is the most important American - at least to Iraqis - after L. Paul Bremer, who heads the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition troops. Iraqis constantly appeal to Graves for jobs, money, housing.
Graves has let several Iraqis in dire need move into houses once occupied by important members of Hussein's regime. One house went to a man with a flesh-eating disease; he had been living in a generator room. Another went to a schoolteacher whose daughter has serious medical problems.
"I don't give them out to people who work for the coalition because they have jobs," Graves says. "If we did that, we'd be just like the regime where people who work for you get nice houses."'
Najat, proud and independent, didn't ask for anything. But Graves heard about her plight and decided to help.
He took her to a villa in the Green Zone that once belonged to an Iraqi security officer.
"All this is for you, Najat," she remembers the captain telling her.
The villa was furnished in expensive, garish style - ornate mirrors, massive chairs and sofas. As they looked around, four men came in. One, showing an obviously fake contract, insisted he owned the house, and said he had come to get the furniture so he could sell it.
"Capt. Graves said, "Go and don't come back.' When they leave, he say, "These people scared you?' And I say, "Yes.' I cry, I say, "I just need a house, not furniture because these people will make more problems for me.' "
Graves gave the men two hours to clear out the house. They returned with 10 workers and left only cheap, broken pieces.
The villa is spacious, with a big kitchen, living room, TV room, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The ceilings have exquisite crown moulding and the floors are tile.
But the place was filthy and in need of repairs. Najat didn't want to ask the captain for anything more, so she sold some of her gold jewelry for a thousand dollars. She fixed the wiring, put in a new sink, fan and air conditioner. She bought curtains and used furniture.
In July, she and the girls moved in. Because the villa is in the Green Zone, all Iraqi residents must pass through a checkpoint and show a coalition-issued picture ID.
Najat Saleem became Resident No. 226, in House No. 22.
To celebrate, she had a housewarming party and invited Capt. Graves and several of his men. She took photos of him cutting a blue ribbon across the door, and slicing a huge cake decorated with a heart, a bird, a key.
"The heart is love for children," she told the soldiers, "the bird is for peace and the key is for safety."
Today, Najat looks much different than she did in April. She has lost several pounds, started wearing makeup again and trimmed and colored her hair. She has shed her abaya in favor of stylish clothes.
In short, she looks like the modern, self-confident, Westernized woman that many Iraqi women once were. And again yearn to be.
But she is scared.
The secure, if totalitarian, world she knew is gone. Even within the relative safety of the Green Zone, she is afraid to let her older daughters - ages 3, 6 and 14 - go to school or play outside their walled garden.
Someday soon, she plans to sell more jewelry and move to Kuwait or another Persian Gulf country. With her looks and degree, she hopes to work for a TV station and save enough money to go to America.
"I must be strong for my children, but here I am always scared. Here I am always afraid inside. This is why I must leave Iraq."
Najat doubts she will ever remarry. Who would want a 39-year-old woman with four children, one with Down's syndrome? But she knows she is attractive to men; Americans and Iraqis alike often call out to her as she walks.
And she knows the neighbors talk.
"I don't like it because many people when they see me they ask, "Who is this woman?' Now in this area there are many stories about me, that I ran away from my husband and I came to this area because it is blocked."
At night, Najat cries alone for Allah. During the day, she looks forward to the brief encounters with Graves and the other American soldiers, who tease the kids and coo over Tina, the baby. Although their father has been gone just seven months, only 3-year-old Asal seems to think much about him. Tina smiles, showing a single tooth, when someone says, "Capt. Graves."
On a recent evening he stopped by for the first time in days. Other Iraqis in the Green Zone constantly invite him to lunch or dinner; he is so busy, he turns down each invitation five times before accepting.
"Twenty to 30 percent of the people in here really like and respect me. Forty percent are neutral about me. And the other 30 percent would probably like to slit my throat."
He gulps down a few mouthfuls of salad, bounces Tina on his lap, then heads back out to his unit. "Got to go," he says. "The men don't eat till I get there; they don't get their mail either."
As he leaves the house, an Iraqi woman is waiting. Like so many others, she wants something from him.
Najat disapproves.
"The captain, sometimes he ask me, "Do you have a problem, you tell me anything you need.' I say to him, "I have many kind of problems but I can't tell you anything because I want you to respect me.' "
- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com
Hmmmmm.
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