CRISIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF : Iraqis Who Are Americans : Immigrants: San Diego has the second-largest community of Christian Iraqis--known as Chaldeans--in the country. They are torn between their loyalty to their adopted country and their fear for their homeland and their loved ones there.

For many of the 8,000 Christian Iraqi natives who have settled in San Diego over the years, these are excruciating times: Their adopted country is poised to do battle with their homeland.

Over newspapers and television news in their living rooms, over the backgammon boards at the social hall, over the cash registers at their markets and gas stations, and in the pews of their church in El Cajon, these Chaldeans are frightful and anxious, and trying to balance their civic loyalty to the United States with their ingrained love for their homeland.

“We are feeling hurt for both sides,” says the Rev. Michael Bazzi, pastor of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church, which with 3,500 families is the focal point for the largest Chaldean community in the United States outside of Detroit. They are most heavily concentrated in El Cajon, La Mesa, Spring Valley and East San Diego.

Like Bazzi, other Chaldeans talk tactfully and cautiously, weighing their words for fairness and wary that their thoughts might be misconstrued and turned against them, as they assess, both intellectually and emotionally, what they see happening.

Some don’t want to talk at all. They fear repercussions against loved ones in Iraq, or say they are caught between and betwixt.

“We are Americans, but my relatives are there, in Iraq,” Bazzi said. “Anything I say, I will be hurting one side or the other.

“We are praying. What else can we do?” he asked. “We have people in our community going to Saudia Arabia (as American troops), fighting their cousins across the border.

“So what is there to say? Our cousins, our friends, our people are now in trouble, yet the Americans are also our people. We are troubled.”

San Diego’s Chaldeans are relatively tight-knit; although they dominate no one corner of the community, and although the names of their businesses and retail stores give no hint of the owners’ heritage, they feel a sense of unity as a subcultural segment of the local population.

Many say they spend such long hours to make a success of their businesses, working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, that they don’t have time to socialize with one another.

Others do, meeting at their private El Cajon club, where on Friday nights they wear their own Western clothing but enjoy the strains of Middle Eastern music and delight in the authentically dressed belly dancer.

“We tell our members they can wear Arab clothing, but they wear regular Western clothes,” said Sam Hirmez, who owns a San Diego convenience market and is president of the 350-member Chaldean American Assn., a social club.

But they are reluctant to abandon their heritage. Middle Eastern dinners are served at the club, and backgammon, their traditional board game, is enjoyed by the regulars. At the nearby Cuyamaca Community College, a course is taught in Chaldean culture and language.

Detroit was the first and most popular settling area for Chaldeans emigrating from Iraq, given its employment base and the opportunity for non-English speaking Chaldeans to find work on the assembly lines. But some looked directly to California and settled in the quiet town of San Diego in the early 1950s, and, as Detroit’s economy and crime problem worsened, many have since relocated to San Diego.

Kamil Salem was born in Iraq and worked as a housing and commercial contractor in Kuwait, when he decided in 1980 “there was no room for me in the Middle East.” He came to San Diego, where today he is a residential developer.

“This is a terrible, horrible struggle emotionally,” he said. “I’m an American citizen, and so is my family here. We are loyal to our new home. We appreciate everything in the United States of America. We care, too, about our old country, and we don’t want anybody to get hurt there. But we have to be sure where our loyalties lie--and they are with this country. We appreciate everything here. We are the refugee of that (Iraqi) system.”

As a whole, the local Chaldean community shrugs off what prejudice they say they feel here against them. There’s the infrequent crank phone call, the offhanded remark in a store, even the occasional caller to a radio talk show--like the one on Friday who suggested that local Iraqis be sent to their homeland, and be allowed to return as long as they brought captive Americans with them.

Many of them worry that Americans don’t understand that they are not Arabs, but are Aramaic-speaking Christians who were natives of Iraq but who fled to America, especially in the 1950s, in search of political freedom and economic prosperity.

They are, Chaldeans realize, caught in the middle of pitched emotions.

On Thursday, for instance, state Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Bonita)--a native of Iraq who emigrated to the United States in 1947--told his legislative colleagues in Sacramento that he backs President Bush’s military actions in the Middle East. But he emotionally urged the President not to create “further enmity toward the United States in that part of the world.”

Other Chaldeans are less supportive of the White House.

“For the last two years, the world was going toward peace. Then, all of a sudden here’s a big mess which could have been avoided by diplomatic channels, by politics, by peaceful means,” said a Chaldean businessman in San Diego who refused to identify himself. “Yeah, the Iraqi president started it, but the reaction by the United States was abnormal. They magnified the problem. They make it sound like Iraq is some huge, great country but they only have a few airplanes to be defeated.

“It’s not clear yet, what the actions are of the Iraqis or the Americans, so it’s not easy for me to take sides yet. Yes, we are Americans and we live here, but that doesn’t mean that everything America does is right.”

Whatever their leanings, it is clear that the Middle Eastern crisis has permeated Chaldean daily life, dominating conversations and becoming the focus of prayer.

“Everybody is sad,” said Hirmez, the social-club president.

“I’ve been here since 1969. This, the USA, is my country. But my second country is Iraq. I lived there all my life until I came here,” he said.

“I want to see peace. I don’t want to see any life in jeopardy, to see anybody dead, because of this invasion (of Kuwait). I pray for peace.”

Salem estimated that 95% of the Chaldeans in San Diego are businessmen, most of whom own food markets, liquor stores, gas stations and other small, family-run retail operations.

“They know they can make it a success by working the business themselves, and with their wives and kids. They keep the payroll in the family. That’s how they make it, and everybody’s successful,” Salem said. “One character of the Chaldeans is that we are a very hard-working people. We sacrifice, and build our fortunes.”

Some have so thrown themselves into work and have lived in San Diego so long, that their bond to their native homeland has weakened.

“I’ve been here so long, I don’t know what’s going on back there,” said Jimmy Brikho, 38, who left Iraq 22 years ago and now owns a market in Lemon Grove. “But I know I don’t agree with war at all.”

Brikho said he has a sister living in Iraq, who is married and has eight children.

He is especially concerned for her, right?

“Yes, but I worry for the people in the United States, and the people everywhere. I don’t like seeing war go on anywhere. We are just ordinary people, and this is out of our hands, so all we can do is pray.”