Nine Parts

Funding for this program was made possible by Kumi and Bill Martin, People's Light and Detroit Public Theater.

- [Echoing Voice] Josephine, doubt, Georgia, Josephus, Josephine, Robert, Philip, Robert, Iman, Mary, Selma, Bernard, Selma, Mary, Philip, doubt, Georgia, Josephine, Bernard, Robert, Georgia, Iman, Sohar, Sasha.

(gentle music) - [Reporter] The hospitals are overrun.

What we're seeing is like a war zone.

The fact is that people are dying across the country.

More than 1000 Americans a day, and in Michigan we've been hit as badly as anywhere.

People can't even mourn their loved ones with funerals not being available.

So, I understand why folks are upset and feeling isolated, but at some point we're going to need to grieve this together, not descend into chaos.

We've got to end our division, our anger and come together.

- [Narrator] Early in the morning always, early in the morning I come to throw dead shoes into the river.

- Daddy.

- [Narrator] Without this river there would be no here, there would be no beginning.

It's why I come.

Take off your slippers.

Take off your sandals.

Take off your boots, appease the hungry or the river again will flood.

The river again will be dammed.

The river again will be diverted.

Today the river must eat.

(gentle music) When the grandson of Genghis Khan burned all of the books in Baghdad the river ran black with ink.

What color is this river now?

What's the color of old shoes?

Color of distances, color of soles torn and worn.

This river is the color of worn soles.

This land between two rivers, I only see the one.

Where's anything they said there would be?

We were promised so much, the garden of.

Let me tell you I've walked across it.

The Garden of Eden was here, its roots and its rivers.

But, our marshlands now are different.

They've been diverted, dammed, dried.

I have walked from there to here, from the flood to the highway of death collecting, carrying.

My feet hurt.

I have holes in my shoes.

I have holes now even in my feet.

There are holes everywhere, even in this story.

I don't want new shoes.

I would rather swim than walk.

Bring me back the water I was created in, the water in which I woke each morning and went to bed each night, the water in which I swam to school and milked the buffalo.

I would rather swim than walk.

But now the river has developed an appetite for us.

Its current runs back beneath Iraq to where Apso and Tiema are cradling still.

Underneath my country there is no paradise of martyrs, only water, a great dark sea of desire and I will feed it my worn sole.

Nave Iraq.

- It's a shame if all the artists leave.

Who'll be left to inspire the people if all the artists and intellectuals run?

Most of them already have, my sister included.

I don't judge.

I mean, foremost they feel they cannot express themselves because always it's life and death.

Even I should've been dead twice before I tell you, but I'm not.

Death is only teasing me.

Besides, what's to paint outside Iraq?

Maybe I'm not so good artist outside Iraq.

Oh, this is us, our bodies, isn't it?

Deserted in a void.

I think we're looking for something always.

I think it's light.

Always I fight to keep transparency because once a painting goes muddy I can't get it back.

It's not oil.

God, with oil you paint over what you've done.

With oil light's the last thing you add, but with water color light is the space you leave empty from the beginning.

(gentle music) Oh, I think I help people maybe to be transcending, but secret.

Always I paint them as me.

Or as a tree sometimes.

I don't ever want to expose exactly another woman's body, so I paint my body.

But, it's her body, her self, inside me.

It's not me alone, it's all of us, but I am the body, I take the experience.

I very much feel this void.

I have no peace.

Always I look for peace.

Do you know peace?

I think all other mans have real peace, woman she cannot have peace.

What do you think?

I see with my heart, not with my eyes.

I am Bedouin and I cannot tell you if a man is fat or if a man is handsome.

All I can tell you, I love this man honor.

Your experience, yourself, I take it.

Only you and I, we will know who it is and the other is okay.

Let them say Lela again, she's obsessed with her body.

I think you see with your heart like a Bedouin.

My mother, my mother when I come home she is so happy to see me she sing to me.

She sing, Amal, my beautiful girl.

Amal, who's body is strong for her love.

My voice, I have to sing to my mother.

I'm home again.

Now you're home again.

(gentle music) I did a painting once of a woman eaten by Saddam's son.

That's how I describe it.

Beautiful young student from University of Baghdad.

Uday asked her out and she can't refuse.

He took her.

He beat her brutally, it's his way.

She goes back to campus, her classmates saw the bruises and things and asked her what happened and she's so stupid, innocent girl told her the truth.

Why she talk such things.

Iraqis, they know not to open their mouth, not even for the dentist.

Of course, Uday, he took her back with his friends.

They stripped her, covered her in honey and watched his dobermans eat her.

See, in my painting she is the branches blossom.

She leans over the barking dogs.

They cannot reach, no matter how hungry they are.

Not unless they learn to climb her.

They are dogs, they never will.

You see, nobody knows the painting is her, but I believe somewhere she sees.

Isn't everything in this country a matter of survival?

I don't care if you're with the government or a prisoner of it, even loving, the simple act of loving, it can make you suffer so deeply.

Tara.

(gentle music) My husband, first husband, he was Saudi.

He is now in London on the big road they call it where all those famous plastic surgeons are.

I like London.

I studied there.

I left him.

I was feeding my daughter, Tala, at the time and driving my son, Omar, to school, but I forgot papers for Omar so I drove back home to get them.

I saw my husband in bed with my very close friend.

Really, I am shocked because he is Bedouin, but Saudi Bedouin.

I told my neighbor, "you go into my house, "you get my passport and the children's passports" and I left.

I never told him why I left.

I came back to Iraq.

I didn't like to live in our town, it's too small.

No, I don't feel free even.

So, I went to Israel first.

You see, a tribesman came to visit from the same Bedouin Tribe as me, but born Israeli.

And always when I am a girl I think, oh, to marry one from my tribe.

We have the same eyes, same accent, same nature.

It's very big heart.

I marry him, it's my second marriage.

I went to his village in Israel.

He promised me we move, we go to Europe somewhere or Canada, but we never move because his wife didn't want it, his other wife, number one.

She make him stay.

And I takin' care of all of her eight childs.

I mothered one of her child.

I fed her son.

Quran, you must know if you feed more than seven day full feeding, that child is like your child.

But, number one, she was very skinny.

Not well, she goes away for such a long time.

I am looking for this freedom.

Him says no, no, we're not going to Canada.

So, I care very much for him, but again, I left.

I came back to Iraq with my children, but to Baghdad to be in the city.

I come here and my family don't like, they don't support me, but.

I got some money.

I got some money from a friend of my first ex-husband.

This friend, his name Sad.

We start to talk on the phone, this friend Sad.

He's in London and me here.

We talk for one year.

I am very honest person.

I told him exactly everything from my heart and everything I hope.

I felt peace.

It's beautiful to talk so much.

He told me from inside himself, too, very deep.

Very sincere, I felt safe the first time in my life.

I felt myself with this man.

I love him.

(gentle music) We told, we say we will get married.

Third marriage.

Whew, he says, let us meet in Dubai because the water it was then.

So I left my job, I left everything.

I telephone his family, congratulations.

We go, we meet in this hotel in Dubai.

We go to dinner.

After dinner I telephone him, it's 2 a.m.

Him says, no no no, not now, I'm drunk.

I said, I want to talk.

We spend one year on the phone talking everything.

Finally we see each other.

My heart's so full to share.

He say, no, Amal.

No, he say, it's over, don't talk to me anymore.

I'm crying, I don't understand him says this thing, but him say, "you're too pure for me.

"What you do with man like me?

"I'm 20 year older than you "and soon I'll be very old man.

"You have to take care of me.

"You're too good, too innocent for me."

I don't understand him says this thing because I love him and him say, no.

No, he say.

You're not the Amal I love.

What's this mean?

I am not the Amal he love.

How he say it?

Why can this be?

I am shame to my family.

They think he slept with me that night we meet in Dubai, and changed his mind.

I don't have peace.

Mary, Joseph, Georgia, Philip, Mary, Bernard.

Next month we move to London.

My ex-husband, first one, got us passports.

He says he needs the children there.

But always I am thinking, what if I run into Sad?

When I go there, I would shake.

It's all of me on my face.

I don't know I can hide it.

I'll have my freedom there, but not my peace.

Maybe freedom is better than peace.

I fear it here and I love it here.

I cannot stop what I am here.

I'm obsessed by these things we all are, but we're not saying.

How that I should die, how does it go?

It's my favorite.

Shaharazod, that I shall die or I shall live a ransom for all the daughters and the cause of their deliverance from his hands to mine.

I've never talked this before.

Nobody here, they don't know this thing about me.

I keep it in my heart only.

I want to talk every day this way.

Tell me, is this American way?

Tell me what you think.

What should I do?

I want to memorize what you say so I can be this way, freedom again.

(gentle music) - I miss my papa, too.

Papa, my father, he said I am smart, but mama, mama says I'm stupid.

I've not been to school.

(stomping) I've not been to school since America came.

Your stupid mama say, you don't need to go to school.

But I think, I think she didn't like the soldiers that came to our school.

They look like NSYNC, mostly Justin Timberlake.

They made all the girls to laughing really hard.

But since that day she won't let me go to school because I waved to them.

So I never leave the house.

I was for the war.

You think the people didn't want liberation?

Still they want it.

Everyday there is more than you can conceive just to go to work, to school.

There's a whole generation today, they want to think for themselves without Iran, without America, that never knew Saddam.

What they face now is worse than.

(gentle music) I found my father's notebooks hiding upstairs under the floor.

He had some math books there and some look books.

I took this one.

I look to it to keep my heady busy, even though the math is for people bigger than me.

I can understand some of the math.

But today I read here in his notebook, it says Somora, that's me, dated October 5, 2002.

Somora, my beloved was at school and they asked her, "have you ever visited Babylon?"

Somora, she tolds them, "of course I've been, "even at night because my father say "Saddam put his name on the bricks of Babylon, "but he cannot put his name on the stars over Iraq.

"They will arrest me now for this "and I am sure to die.

"I should have taught her how to lie."

(gentle music) I remember some mens came to our house to take my father.

They said papa is so smart about the stars over Babylon our president, he needs him.

I've not seen him since I was seven.

The Iraq War was personal.

It was against all my beliefs, yet I wanted it.

Least I can say, we all can say.

Congratulations, the regime is gone, Saddam is gone.

Mama, she thought when America came he might come home, but nobody seen him and we haven't moved.

I still I want to study because when he does come home I have to be smarter than when he left.

Actually, I cried too when I saw papa Saddam killed on TVs because I knew he stole my father, but I thought he was bigger than anybody.

He didn't even fight to death.

I felt ashamed.

Why I'm afraid from him all my life?

(gentle music) Mama, she's right, I am, I'm stupid.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - I named my daughter Ghadaan, Ghadaan means tomorrow.

So, I I am Ummghadaan, mother of Ghadaan.

It is a sign of joy and respect to call a parent by the kunya of their first born son, but I did take my daughter's name.

In Baghdad I am famous now as Ummghadaan because I do live outside Amiriyah bomb shelter since the bombing, 13 February 1991.

I was inside with nine from my family talking, laughing.

Then such a pounding, shaking everything is fire.

I couldn't find my children, couldn't find my way out, but somehow I did.

And the whole day later I am searching child bodies.

Bodies, they were fused together.

The only body I did recognize is my daughter, Ghadaan, so I did take her name.

I'm Ummghadaan, the mother of Ghadaan.

I'm hard to understand why I survive and my children dead.

I asked Allah why, why you make me alive?

That night all people died, 403 people, there's nothing we can do, they are dead.

- The baby should be dead, not her.

She had three girls at home she insisted.

What am I supposed to tell her husband?

Look, your first born son, sorry is born.

- I am now the witness stand for emissaries from the world who come to Amiriyah shelter to look what really happened.

You will be witness too.

- And the cancers, I've never seen them before in Iraq.

It's girls, seven, eight years old, with breast cancer.

One kid came in wearing a bullet around his neck.

It's a bullet tipped in depleted uranium around his neck.

This is Amiriyah bomb shelter.

They write their names in chalk over the smart figures.

And here a silhouette of a woman vaporized from heat.

- This huge room became an oven and they pressed to the walls to escape from the flames.

In the basement two bomb burst the pipe.

Hot water come up to five feet and boiled the people.

It's in the shelter airborne, it's in all the water, it's in the food.

But, if it's airborne like this they will have this depleted uranium for what, 4000 years?

How many generations is that growing up?

(gentle music) I'm afraid to see them when they're grown.

It's better maybe, death.

My husband says death is worse (mumbling).

Death burns the heart, but I don't believe.

Two bomb from U.S. airplane come to this point of the roof.

The first bomb, drilling bomb, drilled the hole.

Second bomb come inside exactly same spot and exploded in fires.

I think they were testing bomb.

This bomb had never been used before, a special two bomb design for breakin' only a bomb shelter, its very purpose, very, very purpose.

Now look, look around this hole.

Wild greens, they are growing.

Life did choose to root here in this grave of Iraqi peoples.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm pregnant.

All my family is here.

Ghadaan is here, so I am Ummghadaan, mother of tomorrow.

My full name is dead with them.

Come.

Now you sign the witness book.

(rock music playing on radio) - We have a story, is that us drunk?

Read that sign.

Come in, eat all you want.

Your grandson will pay the bill.

Our young man a teenager.

He goes in happy for a free meal.

He eats and eats and eats.

When he's done eating everything he wants the waiter brings him a bill.

Young man says to the waiter, "no, your sign says "free of charge, my grandson will pay the bill."

But, the waiter says, "yes, indeed sir.

"This, this is your grandfather's bill."

This is my grandfather's bill.

(upbeat music) - You know my house was hit from Bush's war?

I wasn't there, but we lost everything.

My paintings for the new exhibition, my family's things, everything.

So, how smart is this bomb if it bomb a painter?

Maybe they think I'm dangerous.

(laughing) Maybe I am.

I'm attached like I will die if I leave.

I think you're dangerous.

Americans, they are not so attached this way, not if you're so free even to be alone.

I don't want freedom.

To be alone?

I like protection.

All I want is to feel it, love.

I risk everything for it, oblivion even.

I don't care, I submit completely.

I tell you, even when I fell in love not with my husband, after I was married, really I fell in love.

It humiliated me to finally see how much of myself I could never be.

I hated not to be full, not to feel whole.

It's the worst feeling this occupation, to inhabit your body, but not to be able to live in it.

So, I had an affair.

I let myself love him.

We were just a boy and a girl in art school painting, drawing, very expressive.

You cannot imagine the freedom.

We had teachers from all over the world coming to Baghdad.

I was very messy, and when my husband found out he shot me.

I thought I was dead.

Even in the emergency room I'm saying, no, no, it's me with a gun, it's me.

It was an accident.

We never spoke about it, but he never stopped me from having an affair again.

(stomping) I think most women, they must be so hungry because they love with such a sacrifice.

It's an aching, but I tell you when you're this way, so attached, always loving like you're going to die without something.

You love like an Iraqi woman.

Sharazad, Americans have this passion to save everything, because they have such a big footprint they feel guilty.

There's such a handsome teenager, right, so tall, strong, passionate, selfish, charming, but they don't think.

You have our war now inside you like a burden, like an orphan, with freedom, intelligence.

Your own opportunity and choice.

If we tethered you to something cold you cannot see it.

We have you chained to the desert, to your blood.

Oh God, you carry it in your lifetime and fight your war to unchain yourself and you come back.

You feel at home here, maybe different, maybe more than any country.

But I know you hate us, too, because you cannot be free, because we're not free.

You are not free.

You love too much.

Love too much.

It's the same all.

Anywhere you live, if you love like an Iraqi woman, if you love like you cannot breathe.

- Dad.

I watched my dad try not to cry because when he's watching TV and it's all this great night time footage of bombs he can recognize the street and the neighborhoods where all his family lives.

Lived.

I watch TV looking for faces of our family.

All I did was cry, but my dad wouldn't, so he ended up choking, making himself sick.

I mean, he lived here in the U.S. for 55 years.

He played golf five times a week.

He was just sad, but contained because you can't, you can't watch it on TV.

I was on my knees usually, in the middle of my apartment with my mom on the phone holding a rosary.

I wanted to pray.

I didn't have words, so I said my family's names out loud over and over, Zuhare, Zuhida, Benam, Ramzia, just trying to see them alive because we didn't know anything.

We couldn't call, we couldn't get through on the phones.

A police station, my uncle Sarta lived in Baghdad next to a police station, uncle Zuhare next to the airport.

Umahuda, next to the Palestine Hotel.

Umazuhira, in Kurada, Mount Lebanon.

My cousin, Masoon, she used to work for the UN, the whole face got blown off.

I read it on the bus.

They never forget ever.

They carry everything with them, everything.

They're so attached, like great grandparents, parents, children, it lives in them, it walks with them.

They don't let go of anything.

They hold it all inside them.

But, the year ISIS took Mosul, dementia took my dad.

He spent 80 years carrying and six years forgetting.

There were times he cried, it was lifetimes.

I mean, I just never saw anything like it.

- I don't know what to do with myself now.

I have doubts.

Everywhere there is civil war.

- We didn't know if our neighbor was Sunni or Shiite, was offensive to us.

But here now people demand to know what I am.

I don't recognize my country.

- When dad went into the hospital the whole country was shutting down.

I threw my kids in a rental to drive across country.

I was afraid to drive to Michigan with New York license plates.

I was coming from the epicenter and the country was at war.

On the drive my brother kept calling, said we didn't have long, the way dad was breathing.

I knew I wouldn't be allowed inside the hospital coming from New York.

I knew I couldn't rush to his side, couldn't touch, couldn't hold, so I stood outside dad's window for two days watching him pass.

A man of few words, I watched dad all my life.

Everything I knew about dad I knew from watching.

I knew he was from Michigan as much as he was from Mosul.

I knew he wanted this place.

He wanted this life, water, green, golfing, the sky, until he got lost driving home from the store.

At first they said it was dementia and then they said Alzheimer's, but I said, "what if it's violence?"

Because before he lost memories and language he lost brothers and sisters and neighborhoods and root systems that have been in place for thousands of years.

My family waited decades for things to get better.

They waited through revolutions coups and shock and awe, and three wars, three wars, and unemployment.

But, when neighbor turned against neighbor, even my family fractured.

- And this gutting of the middle class of what keeps a country together, it can not be changed back.

- One cousin left for a job, another for school.

They went anywhere they were offered a spot to survive.

- The West has gave the fundamentalists their legitimacy and now they're controlling the country.

- France, San Diego.

- See.

- Houston, Detroit.

- It started in Iraq.

Where will it end?

- We were from Iraq for thousands of years.

We scattered in less than 10.

Now I can never go home again and sit in my Amma's kitchen and say I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

- The mistake is not the war.

We had to do it.

The mistake.

- The war, it was a mistake, don't you think?

I don't even know.

How many Iraqis dead?

This woman, she actually turned to me and said that.

She said that war was a mistake.

She was getting a pedicure.

I was getting a pedicure.

I want my country to stop 'cause now another Iraqi is dead, Baba.

- We just woke up.

We just woke up.

We heard a shot and gunfires and things and we gathered all the friends in the street to see what's going to happen.

We never went back to our house.

This was a coup, 1963, it was a Friday.

180,000 people were just arrested from Baghdad.

They went house by house taking artists, doctors, everybody, we were communists then, not violent.

The Baathist only took us because we disagreed with the prison status, it was terrible.

We stayed lying on the floor like.

Their way, their way was to torture the people close to you, that's how they do it.

One woman I was with, they brought her baby outside the cell, three months old baby.

They put the woman's baby in a bag with starving cats and they tape record the sound of it and of her rape.

They play it for her husband in his cell.

That's how they do it.

So, how these people could have liberated themselves?

How?

How these people could have liberated themselves?

Myself too, it takes a lifetime to be liberated.

- The veteran, too, who moved in two doors down on our quiet circle in middle class Michigan.

On the same street you lived at, longer than you lived anywhere in the world.

The veteran moved in like you're looking to make roots, but ended up on a rampage near the river and police came saying, "lock the doors, "try to hide."

I think, did he know your accent?

Did he recognize your face?

But mostly I think something simpler is true.

I think the war made him lose his mind just like you.

(gentle music) Our last conversation before the bombs started in Baghdad I finally got through to my aunt.

The first thing she said to me clear as English is "go to church and pray."

Her only other English was I love you.

I love you, I love you.

I love you.

I love you, Dao, Josephine, Selma, Mary, Ramzia, Georgas, I love you.

I love you.

Benam, Rebob, Amar, Beshar, Nassar, Loma, Filela, Matsa, Zena, Nadia, Zuhare, Carhem, Rashert, Muntler, Mopheda, Johira, Geon, Sebar, Rhem, Rand, Jabbar, Zaki, Ramzia, Rowah, Oba, Rahid, Mary, Jacob, Una, Huda, Nabir, Mariam, Selma, Usef, Fadia, Adman, Sarta, Imara, Milad, Misera, I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

One day you'll come back to it and you'll find nothing, no wellhead, no river.

So, beware of throwing a stone into the well.

Paint with real restraint.

Always fight to keep transparency because once you go past between the shore and the river it goes muddy forever.

The marshes are witness when you drink water out of the well.

It's the space, you leave it empty from the beginning.

Look around this hole.

All my family is here.

Same accent, same eyes, same nature.

We couldn't live together like this.

Always it's life and death.

And life, and life and death carry it with you.

Carry it with you so when they cry so old you cannot see it.

He wanted this place.

He wanted this life.

Sing to my mother.

I'm home again.

Oblivion even, I don't care.

I submit completely.

I submit completely.

I submit completely.

I submit completely.

Late in the evening, always late in the evening, I come to collect worn souls from the river because I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I fear it here, I love it here.

I cannot stop what I am here.

Either I shall die or I shall live a ransom for all the daughters of savagery.

She called it savagery when you love like you cannot breathe.

(gentle music) (singing in foreign language) Funding for this program was made possible by Kumi and Bill Martin, People's Light and Detroit Public Theater.

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