Tamara Jafar '09, Deena S. Shakir '08, and Randall S. Sarafa '09 (left to right) stand in front of Widener Library Monday afternoon. All three discussed the effects of their Iraqi lineage on their current lives, thousands of miles away from the battlefiel

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS APPENDED

Sitting in her spacious single in the Jordan section of Pforzheimer House, Tamara Jafar ’09 talks to her great-aunt in Baghdad on the phone. Her mind travels to the house she shares with several other relatives.

Although Jafar’s great-aunt does not speak English, she does say, “I love you!”

“There’s no explaining of that feeling having someone you’ve never met tell you that they love you, and never being able to see them and never being able to have that connection,” Jafar said.

Jafar and other young Iraqi-Americans at Harvard are trying to help put together the pieces of broken families and a broken country—all from thousands of miles away.

“It’s crazy for this group of old people to be taking care of each other—and isolated,” Jafar said.

“You ask how things are with them, and they joke about it,” Jafar said. “But at the same time, when you’re there on the line, it’s hard to joke about something when you’re afraid for them.”

CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Deena S. Shakir ’08, who visited Iraq twice as a toddler, said she only has "watercolor memories" of the land where her parents were born.

She said that she hopes to live there for some period of her life—once the violence dies down.

"I really hope things get better because I’m dying to go there," Shakir said.

Meanwhile, Shakir has received a citation in Arabic and traveled to the Middle East every summer, recruiting Palestinian students to Harvard, working for the prime minister’s office in Dubai, and researching in Egypt for her senior thesis. [CORRECTION APPENDED]

"Who I am informs what I study," Shakir said.

As a freshman, she also helped Baghdad University students attend the National Model United Nations conference in New York City. [CORRECTION APPENDED]

Other Iraqi-Americans have traveled to the Middle East as well, including Randall S. Sarafa ’09, the vice president of the Undergraduate Council (UC).

Sarafa, who is half-Iraqi and half-Palestinian, said he speaks only "kitchen Arabic," since his parents chose not to teach him the language for fear that he would not learn English well.

"I love Arab culture," Sarafa said, despite having been deprived of its language. "I love every part of it—the people and the food and everything."

But reconciling the two cultures has not always been easy. Shakir said that when America first invaded Iraq, she felt conflicted about the war.

"It’s obviously difficult," the Leverett House resident said, "because my country is invading my country."

Shakir, a joint concentrator in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, is finishing her senior thesis which explores the difficulties first-generation Arabs face when returning to the Middle East. [CLARIFICATION APPENDED]

"You feel like you’re a tourist everywhere," she said. "You might feel you’re too Arab for mainstream America—if that even exists—and they [Arab-Americans] feel too American to live in the Arab world. So they end up living with globalized people like them."

"That’s their place; that’s their country," Shakir said.

LEAVING IRAQ

Shakir’s parents, who now live in California, are not enthusiastic about returning to Iraq.

"Imagine going back to the town I grew up in—Los Altos—and to see it completely destroyed: the people to be different, the food to be different. It’s really traumatizing," Shakir said. "I think they’d both go if the opportunity came and it was very safe, but it would not be an easy experience or a vacation by any means."

Shakir said that her father had difficulty leaving Iraq.

Seeing that the country was going downhill, he escaped in 1974 to Lebanon, Shakir said, hiding in a rolled-up rug in the back of a truck. The doctor has not returned since.

"You’re cut off from a piece of you that you can never go back to, so it’s really hard," Shakir said.

Jafar’s parents had a similar experience escaping Iraq—three weeks before the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War. Jafar’s father would have been drafted into the military.

Less than four months after their wedding, Jafar’s parents left behind their family, friends, possessions, and homeland for a new life, knowing they might never return.

"They had to pretend they didn’t know each other," Jafar said. "The entire plane ride, they didn’t even speak to each other or have eye contact until they had left Iraq and landed in another country."

Jafar said that it was hard for her parents to leave their own parents behind.

Jafar’s father found out that his mother had passed away on New Year’s Day last year—the day after he and his wife had been celebrating Saddam’s execution on the streets of Dearborn, Michigan.

"You can’t really go to her funeral. There’s no closure—there’s no saying goodbye—so that was difficult for my parents especially," Jafar said.

ROOTS

Shakir said she felt ambivalent about the results of the invasion. [CLARIFICATION APPENDED]

"I would blame Saddam as much as America for the way Iraq is now," she said.

"I know what my family had to endure under Saddam," Jafar said. "As an American, you wonder why it’s in American interests, and as an Iraqi, you understand that your parents and your family and your extended family endured hardship under this awful dictator."

Sarafa said he did not encounter such inner conflict—though he did find himself in conflict with his high school classmates.

"I remember sitting in my American history class in my junior year of high school—so the Iraq war had been happening for six months—and I remember being the only kid in my class who was so against that war and sitting there debating, and I was the only one there being like, ‘Oh my God, this thing is so awful!’"

Sarafa has not engaged in activism against the war, but he said that he would "definitely facilitate" activism on both sides with UC financial support.

"If a group wants to have a rally, we would help fund them," he said.

Like other Iraqi-Americans, Jafar is hoping to help ameliorate the situation in her parents’ homeland.

She is currently organizing a campaign called "Rally for Iraq," where she will sell vintage T-shirts with the words "Baghdad University" stamped across the front. The proceeds will support Iraqi students hoping to pursue higher education.

Jafar is also helping Hassan M.H. Al-Damluji, a Harvard graduate student, organize an Iraqi film festival in April.

Shakir said that she is hoping to pursue a career somehow involved with the Middle East. She is also going to be a member of the Arab Alumni Association Board.

"That’s what I’m going to do till I’m old," she said with a smile.

Like Shakir, Jafar said she sees her Iraqi heritage influencing her future.

"I hope to raise my kids with some sense of an Iraqi identity and hope to be able to give them a little bit of Arabic, cook Iraqi food for them, tell them Iraqi jokes, tell them Iraqi stories, tell them about my parents," she said.

"You can always change things about yourself. You can change beliefs, you can change your concentration, you can change who you date. But you can’t change your family, and you can’t change where your family’s from," Jafar added. "You can try to deny it, but that never really works out. Your roots are always going to be a part of you."

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.


CORRECTION: The March 18 news article "Watercolor Memories" gave an incorrect location for a 2005 model United Nations conference, which was held in Cambridge and not New York City. The article also stated that Deena S. Shakir '08 has completed a citation in Arabic. Although the joint Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations concentrator has taken classes in Arabic, she has not received a citation in the language.

CLARIFICATIONS:The March 18 news article "Watercolor Memories" did not completely represent the topic of Deena S.Shakir's '08 thesis. Although Shakir did interview first generation Arab-Americans as the article stated, her thesis is focused on the change in Arab identity since Sept. 11. The article also provided an incomplete view of Shakir's opinion of Iraq. Although she did say, "I would blame Saddam as much as America for the way Iraq is now," Shakir is not "ambivalent" about the "results of [American] invasion," as the article stated, but places blame for the state of Iraq on the invasion.