Iraqi Voters Look Homeward

They fled war and repression in Iraq. They renewed their lives in America. Now they stand ready to help recast the destiny of their embattled homeland after decades of dictatorship.

Three Iraqi immigrants in Southern California -- Maha Yousif, a Muslim orthodontist; Father Noel Gorgis, a Chaldean Catholic priest; and Saman Shali, a Kurdish telecommunications entrepreneur -- are among those poised to vote in Iraq’s landmark democratic election. Three days of overseas balloting were set to begin today in Irvine and four other U.S. cities, along with 13 other nations.

All told, 280,303 Iraqi expatriates worldwide have registered to vote in Iraq’s election for a transitional national assembly, a right granted to those born in Iraq or the children of an Iraqi father. The U.S. registrants totaled 25,946, including 3,903 from Western states voting in Irvine.

Although the U.S. numbers are small -- 10% of the estimated eligible voting population, election officials said -- they represent giant hopes and dreams.

“This is the first time all Iraqis are coming together under one agenda,” Newport Coast resident Yousif said. “These are people who have been pushed, crumbled into tiny little pieces, and finally they feel now there is hope for justice, truth and fairness.”

In Southern California, there is little agreement about the size and composition of the Iraqi community, which is thought to be the second largest in the nation after Detroit’s. The U.S. Census five years ago counted 20,000 Californians of Iraqi origin, but community leaders dispute those numbers as much too low.

About 25,000 Chaldean Christians live in the San Diego and San Fernando Valley areas, leaders said, with many employed in the retail market business.

The Kurdish community is newer, with many of the about 8,000, mostly Muslim members arriving first in San Diego as refugees since 1997. Activists said that many are students, mechanics and owners of small businesses, such as day-care centers.

Most Iraqi Arab Muslims, mainly Shiites, live in Los Angeles and Orange County -- estimates range from a few thousand to 30,000. Many work in engineering and medical fields.

Yousif, 52, symbolizes a classic immigrant roller-coaster ride. Daughter of an Iraqi diplomat who owned four homes and worked in five countries, Yousif saw her family fortunes plummet when Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party took power in 1968.

Yousif had graduated at the top of her class in dentistry but was fired from her government job for refusing to join the Baath Party. She was threatened with exile to remote villages. Fearing the future, she and her husband, Musabahia, fled to London in 1977 on the pretense of taking a vacation.

“We knew this country was being ripped into pieces by thugs and criminals,” Yousif said.

After earning her doctorate in orthodontics, Yousif and her daughter, Dahlia, came to the United States in 1981 for a dental training program in Nebraska. Her husband, who was also a dentist, took a teaching job in the Caribbean for a year to support them, sending them part of his $20,000 annual pay.

Somehow, they scraped by.

A weekly trip to McDonald’s was a splurge. They visited the market to gawk at the food they couldn’t buy. The biggest culture shock, she said, was moving from cosmopolitan London to Lincoln, Neb., where the hot topic -- almost the only topic -- was the University of Nebraska’s football team.

A son, Omran, arrived. As they moved to Connecticut and four years ago rejoined family in Southern California, the couple worked hard and saved money. They began with a $57,000 home in Nebraska; they now live in a $2.7-million, ocean-view home in Newport Coast.

As the family prospered, Yousif said, her thoughts turned to her suffering homeland.

In 1997, she helped form the anti-Hussein Iraqi Forum for Democracy and later became vice president of a lobbying group to press for Hussein’s ouster. Her father, now deceased, was her inspiration.

“My father believed in the truth ... to stand upright and be proud of what we believe in,” she said.

Yousif plans to vote Saturday for the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition supported by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite leader. The orthodontist said the group recognizes Iraq’s Islamic heritage but promotes the rule of law and respect for minority rights.

Father Gorgis, 38, is pastor of St. Paul Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church in North Hollywood, an ivy-covered brick parish featuring inscriptions in Aramaic, the ancient language of Christ. A slim man with intense brown eyes, Gorgis was born in the northern Iraqi region of Zaho, the son of a farmer and brother to 10 siblings.

When Hussein began destroying neighborhoods in Zaho, the family left for another Christian village nearby. There, at age 12, Gorgis met the priest who would draw him into religious life. The next year, he began studying to be a monk.

But Gorgis was not able to practice his dream vocation. In 1987, he was drafted into the Iraqi army. As combat duty against Iran loomed, he deserted a year later and then was ordained. He was briefly jailed, rejoined the army, but deserted again for good in 1991. He fled on foot to Turkey.

In Hussein’s Iraq, Gorgis said, he was unable to practice his faith, speak his language or honor his culture. The Baath Party tried to Arabize the nation, he said, a campaign that he fiercely resisted.

“You can’t make me Arab. I may not have rights as a Chaldean in Iraq, but this is my identity,” he said.

In December 1992, the United States admitted him as a refugee. He went to San Diego, where the Chaldean church took him under its wing. The church sent him to serve in Chicago for two years, then Arizona for seven years, and, in 2002, to Los Angeles. Today, Gorgis tends a congregation of 400 families.

He revels in the cultural diversity of Los Angeles. Thai food and sushi are among his favorite foods. Gorgis, who is a celibate monk, frets a bit that U.S. life seems to weaken family ties. But he pours out gratitude to his new country.

“To me, it was like I was a newborn,” he said. “I couldn’t live in my own country to be a Chaldean and speak my own language. For 20 years, I didn’t find myself a free man to ... serve the church and the people of God. Thanks to this country, now I could see my future was more bright.”

He plans to vote for the People’s Unity Party because he supports one of its leaders, a Chaldean expert in international law, and the party platform calling for a secular constitution.

Asked if he supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he quickly corrected the questioner.

“I don’t see it as an invasion; I look at it as liberation,” he said.

Shali, 54, is a telecommunications entrepreneur from the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. His father owned a transportation and construction company, and, Shali said, he grew up fairly peacefully.

Even when Hussein took power in 1968, Shali was far from the Baath Party action as a university chemistry student. Still, party officials offered him such perks as overseas study to join. Shali refused. Asked why, he replied, “I’m not Arab. How can you deny your own identity? Why should I do that for my own personal gain and forget about my nation?”

Instead, Shali joined the Kurdish Student Union, where his activism began to blossom. In 1973, after his studies, he was drafted into the Iraqi army. He deserted after a year to join the Kurdish revolution to win autonomy. For a year, Shali said, he worked mostly in hospital labs, helping care for wounded freedom fighters.

In 1975, Hussein offered an amnesty to Kurds. But Shali said he was repeatedly denied jobs because of his activism. Facing a bleak future, he left for England in 1976 and earned a doctorate in chemistry.

In 1985, Shali went to Penn State University as an assistant professor of chemistry. Two years later, he relocated to Anaheim and joined a wireless telecommunications firm. In 1999, he started his own company. And, in 2000, he set up the first wireless Internet network in Kurdistan, an area that has been protected as a “no-fly” zone by the United States and Britain since the first Persian Gulf War. He has formed a consortium with Korean firms to expand wireless communications in the region.

Materially, Shali said, his life in America has gone from “good to better.” His first U.S. address was a $300-a-month apartment in Pennsylvania; now he owns a four-bedroom, $800,000 home in Lake Forest near Irvine. He and his Iraqi-born wife, who wed in 1993 and have three children ages 5 to 11, can afford vacations such as a recent cruise to Ensenada with 40 other Kurdish families.

Despite those successes, Shali said, he remains worried about the fate of Kurdistan, which suffered chemical weapons attacks and the demolition of villages under Hussein. As president of the Kurdish National Congress of North America, he has visited the White House to press for Kurdish autonomy and to thank the Bush administration for ousting Hussein.

Shali plans to vote for the Kurdistan Union slate. The elections, he said, may finally usher in the freedom for his homeland that he has marveled at in the United States.

“Americans who live in this country don’t treasure this freedom,” he said. “Americans take it for granted. If only they came from somewhere that’s oppressed.”