Confusion and Anger Mark Mood as Iraqi-Americans Fear the Worst

Edward George Issaian, an Iraqi-American printer who lives in Glendale, was stunned when a co-worker joked to him this week that Iraqis are going to save money on calendars this year--they won’t have to “bother” with any days after Jan. 15.

“They thought it was a good joke,” said Issaian, 48, who has lived in Los Angeles since 1975. “But I have three sisters, two brothers, many cousins and nephews and my whole country over there.”

Issaian stared at his television as American warships “moved into position” against his homeland.

Confused, angry and frustrated to the point of desperation at their inability to do anything to avert war, many of the estimated 150,000 Iraqis living in the United States could only sit and watch, helpless, as events proceeded.

Potential victims of the American firepower are the parents who sacrificed to send them to school in the United States and the teachers who taught them English.

In Baghdad--the city an American general had threatened to “flatten”--are their children, their aunts and uncles and friends, and the old neighborhoods where they were raised.

One Iraqi woman living in Detroit has four nephews--two in the American Army and two in the Iraqi army. “For which side,” she cried, “do I pray?” Afraid to identify herself to a reporter, she spoke only through a relative. In her dreams, the relative said, she imagines the boys facing each other and firing.

In Los Angeles, another Iraqi woman who did not wish to be identified, hid herself in her bedroom, away from her children. Their father is an American GI in Saudi Arabia and she, their mother, is an Iraqi-American. Was their father going to start shooting their relatives in Iraq? they asked. She turned on cartoons and left the room in tears.

Akin Krikorian, a Glendale accountant who is a U.S. citizen, called in sick at work in order to watch the news and be with her young son.

A Republican, she voted for George Bush. “Because he was strong, “ she said, her voice thick with irony. Like all the two dozen Iraqis interviewed, she does not believe President Bush tried hard enough to avoid war.

“I was a young girl with so many hopes when I came to America,” she said. “I was raised with American ideals. I went to American schools and American college. Now I look around me and wonder if I’ve been fooled all these years. All the things I admired, I loved, I adored, they are all going down the tube. For what? To ‘flatten’ Baghdad? To get oil?

“Why is it ‘too late’ to talk peace and not too late to kill thousands of people?”

Krikorian, a single mother, said her 7-year-old son asked, “Is Uncle Aram going to die? Is Uncle Faisal going to die? Are all their children going to die too?” She could only answer, “I hope not.”

Fuad Killu, a journalist who edits an Iraqi section of the Los Angeles-based weekly Beirut Times, estimated that perhaps 15,000 Iraqis live in and around Los Angeles and a similar number in San Diego. Nearly half the nation’s Iraqi-born residents live in metropolitan Detroit, where many Arabic-speaking immigrants gathered to work in auto plants, he said.

Ten Iraqis gathered at Killu’s Glendale apartment to watch Cable News Network into the early hours Tuesday morning. They included Muslims and Christians, a Kurd, an Assyrian and three Armenians. Most left Iraq for economic reasons. All have family or friends still there.

Killu has three grown children in Baghdad whom he has been unable to reach by phone for weeks. His wife, Ayda Rashid, has one son, 18.

“I left the most important things in my life to come here, to study, to improve my life,” said Rashid, a bank officer. “For what? My son is back home. My homeland. My family. And I am here.”

She and others said they spend hours on the telephone trying in vain to reach relatives. Those lucky ones who get through say it is only to reassure themselves that at that moment their loved ones are all right. When they hang up, the worry comes back.

As scenes of tanks and fighter jets flashed by on the television screen, they kept saying how needless they think war with Iraq would be.

Imagine, they said repeatedly to a reporter, what you would feel if there was talk of bombing the city where you were born? Though they clearly are not all partisans of Saddam Hussein and disagree on many political issues, they are unanimous in their belief that the president of Iraq is not a “madman” or a “Hitler.”

It is this central misreading of Saddam Hussein in Washington, they insisted, that lies at the root of the problem. Hussein is not crazed but merely stubborn and proud, they said. This stubbornness is a character trait they say they all share. After centuries of being dominated by different invaders, Iraqis do not take disrespect lightly.

While most disagreed with Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, they were uniformly horrified at the disrespect they felt Bush has shown Iraq by referring to its president by his first name and saying publicly that Saddam Hussein will “get his ass kicked.”

“I understand that Saddam started this,” Killu said. “But Bush doesn’t have to end it. Trust me, Mr. Bush. Saddam will listen. Even now, if you pick up the phone and talk directly to Saddam nicely, he will leave Kuwait.”

Even as he spoke, Killu kept his eye on a clock that sat on his television, next to a commemorative plate of the Statue of Liberty. The plate is a memento of the day he became a U.S. citizen.