Iraqi Exiles Cast a Hopeful Eye on Homeland

At a rotund 73, John Kalabat makes an unlikely revolutionary. But the poet and Iraqi exile snacking on pita bread and hummus in a local nightclub said that he wants to help bring down Saddam Hussein and rebuild his shattered homeland.

“I can be a translator,” he said. “A guide. I’m ready to participate.”

Kalabat’s view is widely shared -- though not universally -- in this San Diego County community. It is home to what local leaders say are 30,000 Iraqi immigrants, including about 20,000 Catholics, about 6,000 Kurds and 5,000 Shiite Muslims.

From liquor stores to university offices to auto body shops, news of Friday’s U.N. Security Council vote calling on Hussein to disarm or face consequences whipped through the Iraqi community and provoked a range of emotions.

Some were fearful of what punitive military action could mean for relatives in Iraq who have already suffered much in the war- and sanctions-ravaged country. Others believe that war is wrong or that Hussein might back down and thus hold on to power. Still others allowed themselves to hope that they may one day go home -- if only for a visit.

“We are really happy that eventually this will result in a changing government,” said Arkan Somo, an Iraqi Catholic who was born in Baghdad and now lives in Rancho San Diego. Somo is president of a trade association that represents hundreds of Iraqi Christians, or Chaldeans, who own liquor shops -- as many did back home, where Muslim custom frowns on it -- and grocery stores.

“The concern we have is the innocent children,” he said. “The fathers and mothers and families will be bombed, and will be homeless and will die and suffer.”

Beginning with a trickle in the 1950s, and in great waves in the 1980s and 1990s, Iraqis have been drawn here by relatives who helped ease the way. The language, the culture, the whizzing cars and fast-paced life took some getting used to. The welcoming climate, at least, was familiar, a daily reminder of their beloved homeland.

The largest concentration of Iraqis in the U.S. is in Michigan. In California, in addition to the San Diego community, which is the state’s biggest, Iraqi emigres have established sizable enclaves in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Most of those are Shiite Muslims who chafed under the rule of Hussein’s Baath Party, which is dominated by another Islamic sect, Sunni Muslims.

Most of the Kurds who settled around San Diego have come since the mid-’90s, according to Alan Zangana, program director for the Kurdish Human Rights Watch office there.

Catholics, who have lived in Iraq since antiquity, fled by the tens of thousands around the time of Iraq’s war with Iran in the early 1980s. Thousands more came after the 1991 Gulf War, and they are coming still, pushed by continuing discrimination against Christians and a search for a better life.

And they have found it. The close-knit community revolves around two El Cajon churches, where established immigrants offer a network of social and economic support to new arrivals.

“We came to America with nothing, just basically our family,” said Leanne Barbat, 23, a law student. “But everyone knows everyone, and if anyone has a problem ... we always have a family member there.”

Up to 80% of independent liquor stores in San Diego are run by Chaldeans, according to community estimates, and new arrivals quickly find work in them. Established proprietors co-sign loans for the newcomers, and “after that you start working every day, seven days a week,” said Leslie Barbat, Leanne’s mother.

The Barbats immigrated in 1977 and started a grocery store. “You save up,” Leslie Barbat said. “You buy a house. You buy a car.” And you can pay for your children’s education.

“When my daughter graduated from college, it was the happiest day of my life,” she said. “When you are young in Iraq, the girls get married fast, and they don’t have the opportunity to go to school.”

Community life here revolves around the church and social clubs. Father Michael Bazzi, a priest at St. Peter’s Chaldean Catholic Church, where Barbat’s family worships, said new families move to the parish each week. They come directly from Iraq or from other countries where they stayed while waiting for permission to immigrate.

Last summer, St. Peter’s became a cathedral after the Vatican made San Diego the second Chaldean Diocese in the United States (the first is in the Detroit area), responsible for Chaldeans from Alaska to Nebraska. Services are held in English or Aramaic, which many members proudly note is the language that Jesus spoke.

For Chaldeans who were forbidden to study Aramaic in Iraq because of anti-Christian dictates, the church offers twice-weekly Aramaic lessons and provides translation services.

The church also has a bustling community center, which Bazzi said he helped build. “I came here in 1985, and I said ... ‘You have to have a community center.’ I went to every store, and I just [pointed] my finger to say: ‘You give me $500.’ ... In three months, I had more than $300,000.”

When not at church or work, many Chaldeans gather at the Crystal Ballroom, a club in El Cajon, where they can eat hummus and salads and sip cocktails. On a recent evening, members pointed out men who were doctors, lawyers and architects in Iraq who now run stores or pizza parlors.

Sabah Sadik, 63, was a journalist back home. He fled in 1978 in fear for his life because he criticized the Baath Party in print. Now he runs New York Giant Pizza in La Mesa and in his spare hours writes for expatriate publications.

Lately, Sadik has joined Kurds, Shiites and fellow Chaldeans in Tuesday night meetings to plan what they hope will be a democratic future for their home country. Last month, the group, which calls itself the Iraqi League for Democracy, held a march in downtown San Diego protesting Iraq’s recent election. Many of the members believe the polling was a sham.

Last week they met with local antiwar activists and pleaded with them to include anti-Hussein placards in their peace marches. They told the activists that Iraqi television is broadcasting their protests to suggest that American people support the current Iraqi regime.

Life is not all politics, though recently it seems to seep in everywhere. In the Crystal Ballroom, under a mirrored disco ball, men play Wishlyiai, a card game similar to gin rummy that many brought from their native village, Tilkepi, in northern Iraq.

Between hands, they are only too happy to discuss politics, though few want to be quoted for fear of retribution against loved ones in Iraq. But later by phone, Somo is happy to discuss his support for the Republican Party (including Bill Simon’s recent run for governor of California). He likes President Bush’s hard line against the Iraqi regime.

“I am a strong believer in our president,” Somo said. “I think this time around we’ll finish the job.”

The younger generation joins the elders at the club, but they have cell phones arrayed on their table instead of playing cards, and their talk runs more to their work as lawyers and other professionals. Most of their memories of Iraq are hazy, if they have them. They would not go back. Their lives are here.

“We might have 900 liquor stores in this community,” said John Attiq, 39, “but the younger generation are all striving to be professionals.”

Steven Ilia is a 26-year-old lawyer who sometimes visits the ballroom. He left Iraq at age 3 and can remember hiding with his family in the basement during the war with Iran.

He has no desire to return, he said in a telephone interview. He is American. When it comes time to marry, he is willing to break tradition and choose an outsider. “This is a tight-knit, close community and people like to marry other Chaldeans,” he said. “I would probably marry whoever I fell in love with.”

Still, even as they fall in love with cell phones and other Southern California accouterments, many maintain close ties to Iraq, talking by phone to relatives weekly or monthly. Somo, who immigrated in 1982 and is president of a local trade association, said his brother in Baghdad is fearful of what the near future will bring.

“I tell him that nobody knows how this [political standoff] will end,” he said. “But it is my dream to one day have dual citizenship

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Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.