Transplanted Chaldean Community Is Thriving in El Cajon

In 1959, Wadie Deddeh, an ambitious young Iraqi emigre living in Detroit, found himself broke and out of a job when a business deal went sour. Casting about for an opportunity that would get him back on his feet, Deddeh drove cross-country to San Diego to visit an old university friend from Baghdad, who knew of an opening for a teacher at Sweetwater High School.

“I was totally distraught, and I had nowhere else to turn,” he recalled. “When that happens to Chaldeans, though, another Chaldean will always be there to help out.”

For almost a year, Deddeh was jobless, and his young family was separated when his wife took a teaching job in Sacramento so they would have some money coming in. But eventually, he was hired at Sweetwater and later began a long career in politics as a Democratic state senator from Chula Vista.

Success stories like Deddeh’s would be repeated in San Diego County by scores of young Chaldean men, Roman Catholic Arabs from the agricultural town of Telkif in northern Iraq, who also moved from their native land to Detroit to escape religious persecution, then came here when the job market and economy waned in the Motor City.

Deddeh and his brethren are only the latest of his people to flee persecution. Chaldeans of the Roman Catholic persuasion have been a persecuted minority since they pronounced their unity with Rome in the 16th Century. The Chaldeans, descendants of the inhabitants of the ancient land of Chaldea mentioned often in the Old Testament, are a close-knit people who count among their ancestors the famous Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.

When descendant Deddeh settled here and began excitedly writing friends in Detroit about the agreeable life style and boundless economic opportunities in San Diego, his was one of only four Chaldean families in the area.

Since then, the Chaldean migration here has resembled, Deddeh said, “the spread of ripples you see when dropping a pebble in the ocean.”

There are now about 5,000 Chaldeans in San Diego County, the great majority of whom have chosen to settle in El Cajon and its environs. They were drawn here by the climate, which resembles that of their native country, and the pace of life, which is slower than that in Detroit, where about 60,000 Chaldeans still live. As their numbers grew, they were also attracted by the prospect of living in a tight-knit but rapidly growing community of their own people on the West Coast.

Virtually all of the county’s Chaldeans are descendants of Telkif families who find themselves in the delicate balancing act of attempting to assimilate rapidly and profitably into the American way of life while preserving time-honored Chaldean cultural values.

“Most people from the old country want to go to a community where some of our people are already living and established,” Deddeh said. “In San Diego, it all really started with about half a dozen men who came out here to explore. Then, when they got started, they brought their wives, mothers, brothers, sisters, parents. For that reason, we all know each other, and, if you go back far enough, almost all of us are related.”

Amer Karmo, a Linda Vista liquor store owner and president of the Chaldean-American Assn. of El Cajon, one of two Chaldean social clubs in the area, says that Chaldeans here stress their culture at least in part because of its contrast to American life.

“The habits and the culture here are 100% different from what we learned back home,” Karmo said.

“We try to emphasize the old habits to our young people--strict about things like sex, the importance of keeping all of your family together, the idea that you share with your people, help them out when they need help. All of us who came here benefited from those values, and we want our kids to share them.”

“Even though we have left the old country, we have the same traditions within us,” Deddeh said. Those traditions are reinforced in the Chaldean social clubs, at St. Peter’s Chaldean Catholic Church, and in the three Arabic-language newspapers circulated in San Diego.

One of the strongest of those traditions--and among the most foreign to this country--is intermarriage. Old-timers estimate that more than 90% of San Diego’s Chaldeans have married other Chaldeans, and though the list of families here numbers more than 800 (most have at least three children), nobody can remember a divorce.

“I’m one of the only renegades you’ll find--I married an American girl,” Deddeh said with a laugh. “But it is our tradition that we marry within our own; often, second or third cousins are married to each other. That’s why so many of our people are related.”

Predictably, in a culture with such strong emphasis on traditional family values, the Roman Catholic Church remains paramount among the Chaldeans. Indeed, St. Peter’s, where the Masses are conducted in Chaldean and where the modern architecture gives no hint that the Chaldeans have such an ancient heritage, was an early cornerstone for San Diego’s Chaldean community.

“You can’t overemphasize the importance of the church in our lives,” said Deddeh. “Without the church, the Chaldean community is lost. No Chaldean community can do without a church of its own. It’s much more than just a place of worship.”

St. Peter’s was founded in 1973, after about 75 Chaldean families had set down roots in San Diego. The Rev. Peter Kattoula was brought west from Detroit to head the church, now at Jamacha and Chase boulevards in El Cajon. A new church was built in 1981, and the Iraqi government donated $250,000 of the $1-million construction cost.

“I think the church has been a unifying force in the community, particularly as it has grown so much larger,” Kattoula said. “In such a modern society, the church serves as an important reminder of our links to the past.”

Other Chaldean traits are a strong work ethic and an independent entrepreneurial spirit dictating that a man should be his own boss--and that his wife should not work at all, unless it’s for the family business. Karmo said with pride that “most all of the Chaldeans here are at least in the middle class, and many are very wealthy. We are good at making money.”

“We have always been an enterprising people--we love to be challenged, and we love to compete,” Deddeh said. “Long hours are nothing to us. In the old country, we worked 10, 12 hours a day and we had nothing. When we came here, we found we would still have to work long hours, but we could buy property, build a home with air conditioning, drive a car.

“Especially in San Diego, the opportunities were so enormous that our people were just naturally attracted here.”

When Chaldeans began coming to this country from Iraq, many of them took jobs in Detroit grocery stores. Many were familiar with the grocery trade, although most had left Telkif after attending universities in Baghdad because they felt that their native agricultural town limited their opportunities for social and economic advancement.

“We left Iraq because our hometown did not offer us a chance to live in the modern world we experienced when we went away to get our educations,” Karmo said. “We found those jobs (in Detroit markets) because we knew how to do them and you didn’t have to speak English right away,” Karmo said. “There weren’t many other opportunities like that in a big, American city, except in the factories and auto plants.

“In many cases, fathers started working for grocery stores, then opened their own, which they would pass on to their sons. And the entire family usually was involved in running the store then.”

The Chaldeans moving to San Diego County have kept alive the tradition of running food and liquor stores. Pete Case, head of the local state Alcoholic Beverage Control office, estimated that 70% of San Diego County’s independent, so-called “Mom and Pop” liquor and food stores--200 in all--are owned by Chaldean families.

“They’re tough businessmen, very dedicated and hard-working,” Case said. “Most of the time they charge higher prices than their competitors--in fact, I’ve heard it said that Chaldeans rarely shop in a Chaldean store. But they make no bones about the fact that they’re out for a profit.”

About five years ago, several Chaldeans were implicated in a widespread investigation into improper use of food stamps at smaller San Diego area grocery stores. “The ones that were caught came forward and paid their fines, and we haven’t had a problem since then,” Case said.

Karmo, who has owned nine liquor stores in the county, said a domino effect of the tradition of Chaldean helping Chaldean led to their domination of the small market trade. “Our people have never been afraid to move when our opportunities seemed better elsewhere,” Karmo said. “That’s what led us to the United States.

“It also has been important to help the new arrivals get started--it was the same here as in Detroit. I came here alone in my car (from Detroit in 1971) and never went back. I got loans and co-signers from my people so I could start my own business right away. Since our families go back so many years, we do not hesitate to do these things. We know our people are good for their debts--they always pay.”

With so many Chaldean, family-owned businesses (pizza parlors and gas stations are new ventures for Chaldeans), unemployment is negligible. “There is always a job to be found for our people,” Karmo said.

Although Karmo and others are proud of their businesses, they want more for their children. “I doubt if they’ll be running these stores like we did, because we had to work to support the kids, so we couldn’t go to colleges here,” Karmo said.

“But I want my kids to go to college, not work in a grocery store. That’s natural for a Chaldean--we have always been ambitious, always wanted more.”

Whatever their fate in the professional world, Karmo and other leaders hope that their children

remember the importance Chaldeans attach to keeping the extended family together. “That’s something many of the American people have lost, but we intend to hold onto, no matter how fast they become Americanized,” Karmo said.

“It’s my responsibility to help my parents out--that’s the way our people have always felt. It’s a big reason why we don’t have any poor people.”

Karmo and other native Chaldeans say they repeatedly remind their children of relatives left behind in Telkif, particularly now that it is difficult for Iraqis to get in and out of the country since it has been at war with Iran.

Harry Haisha, a founder of the Chaldean-American Assn., said none of his children speak Chaldean, but his entire family continues to communicate with extended groups of relatives in Iraq.

“I’ve been corresponding regularly since I left home for Detroit in 1952,” said Haisha. “That’s important so that our people are always together, growing with each other and keeping our background and culture alive. Only, now, instead of sending letters back and forth, we send videotapes.”

The Chaldean American Assn. is making an aggressive effort to keep the community’s children aware of Chaldean traditions. “It’s not easy when our children grow up in a world that is so different from the one we knew,” Haisha said.

When teen-agers stopped coming to the association’s Friday night family get-togethers, rock music and break dancing were added to the program to keep them in the fold. Arabic dancing is still featured at the club on some nights, and every night the club’s restaurant serves Arabic delicacies.

The club was established in the late ‘70s, and members hope to raise money to move to a bigger location, where a recreation center, convalescent home and private school might all be located together in one facility.

“Plans like those are the keys to keeping our people together, even as we progress,” Karmo said. “We must keep growing as one.”

Despite the efforts of the club, however, modern American culture is a powerful lure for the Chaldean-American children. “I don’t come down here very often,” said Velma Dekhi, 12, at a recent family Chaldean American Assn. family night.

Dekhi, a symbol of pride in the Chaldean community, having recently traveled to Washington to compete in a national spelling bee as the champion representing San Diego County, said children her age and older “are a little bored when we come down here, unless there’s a rock band. We can play bingo at home.”