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[music playing] Can, looking back push us forward?
Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Billie Holliday.
Will our voice be heard through time?
Can our past inspire our future?
Complete act of concern.
[music playing] Mosul and the Nineveh plains in Northern Iraq have had a long and hard history.
Mar Behnam Monastery is a perfect example, a Holy site.
For over 1,600 years it was occupied, desecrated, and even partially blown up by ISIS in 2014.
[music playing] The region has for some time been recovering from the war with ISIS that only ended in 2017 with the liberation of Mosul.
And while the atmosphere is still steeped in uncertainty, there is no doubt that people have risen from the ashes stronger than ever.
We saw this first-hand when we traveled to Mosul with the US-based group devoted to education and religious pluralism.
The Good Road followed the work of nonprofit Hardwired for several episodes last season.
But we are now turning our focus to the diverse voices and stories of the local Iraqis who were inspired by their own experience to join Hardwired and its fight for diversity and human dignity.
People for whom trauma and violence cultivated an intense desire for peace and pluralism in their country.
[music playing] Hanaa is one of the most amazing people we have ever met.
She was the cultural liaison for Hardwired's program in Mosul, one of our key translators on production, and has an incredible personal story.
We met Hanaa near the Hardwired headquarters at a market in Qaraqosh, Southeast of Mosul.
That, of course, is a city for Christians people.
They were here for a long time and they stayed because they felt comfortable to stay here because they feel peace.
When ISIS came in, what changed?
It was a horrible time for all Christians.
Yeah, and they fled from ISIS.
So this was a ghost town almost at the time.
Which is hard to imagine now, but an era of normalcy has returned to the region.
Hanaa was one of those who fled.
After ISIS was forced out, Hanaa was asked by Tina, the head of Hardwired, to come and work with them.
She then came to Mosul to aid in the Hardwired program dedicated to freedom and pluralism.
I accepted, of course, because Hardwired has concepts and principles, it matches my principles as a Bah' They care about freedom of religions and belief.
This is very important to our country.
And important to you personally, because the Bah' are always a minority almost everywhere.
Yeah.
Being Bah' in Iraq, is that a-- are a lot of Bah's here?
Is it normal to be Bah' in Iraq?
Yeah.
And different provinces in Iraq, even in KRG, you have Bah's Before 2003, Bah's were not very comfortable.
And persecuted.
They were very afraid, even to ask us as a Bah'.
And they accused us as blasphemy.
But now it's different, completely different.
It's OK.
I searched for seven years.
Because I was looking for peace.
Real peace.
We believe in freedom and love.
Her personal journey as a Bah' is a kind of parallel story, charting the potential for tolerance and progress in Iraq.
Talk a little bit more about you as an Iraqi.
Well, because we face hard time for several years and we need peace, and this is very important.
So we need it for next generation.
You always seem very happy and joyful.
Yeah.
You do?
Yeah.
And everybody loves you for that.
You've also faced some very hard things yourself.
Sure, of course.
2006, it was horrible day.
My son injured in a bombing a time of Qaeda.
He was eight years old and he went to the shop to buy something.
I told him, don't go.
It was Friday.
I don't forget that day.
It was really the worst day in my life.
Then I heard a bombing.
I immediately went out.
Then I saw my son came.
It was red, and bleeding from everywhere, from his head.
My neighbor, they put it to kill people, so my son was the victim.
Then he survived, thank God, at that time.
But when I remember that day, it's really touching.
So, Hanaa, even after your son was so badly injured by a family that had built this bomb, tell me about going to them.
I can't live without love and peace.
So I forgive anyone because my friend neighbor were arrested.
The three men from that house.
And I went and I talked with women and I pray with them.
I told them it's OK. Everything will be OK.
They became my friends.
That's amazing.
Yeah, and they respect me so much.
They love me.
A lot about you.
Thank you very much.
It's hard to imagine, for most people.
Yeah.
The people that did the bomb, hurt your child, and now your friends.
It's not easy to forgive, but now we have to.
He's wonderful.
Handsome.
[music playing] [non-english speech] My first degree was in KRG.
That was 1980.
Yeah.
And they are very good people also, so I learned Kurdish.
Ask this gentleman, is he from here?
[speaking kurdish] He grew up here?
[speaking kurdish] Oh he was born in 1961.
We're the same age.
No.
Aren't you still young.
No, I'm 65.
Yeah, I was born in '66.
65.
We went to high school together.
Yes.
Yeah.
I couldn't have said more.
Sorry.
No problem.
[laughter] What does it mean home?
Home sweet home.
Sometimes you say about our country.
Home.
That mean I'll find peace and safe, You feel a little bit like a nomad, like your world is wherever you are.
Yeah.
He's completely right, because as a Bah', Bah' is a global religion.
God said the honor, not to love yourself and your country, the honor is to love all the world.
Wherever we go, we build that place.
Bah'u'llh our messenger, said unity in diversity.
So this is the beauty.
Well, coexistence is easy when you're in a place that's peaceful.
Exactly.
And yet it feels like there's so many people that want to coexist here.
That's when it becomes remarkable.
And people now, they are awake.
They look different.
You can't imagine people they were very, very intolerant.
But now they became different.
I think fear impact them.
They afraid to ask me even, what does it mean Bah'?
You are very peaceful people.
Well, you're tapping into something there that's super important and that is dialogue, talking about the things-- idea of bringing people from really dramatically different positions, politically and religiously, and just getting them to talk.
Well, and that's the value of travel, too.
Because, again, prior to coming to Iraq, I had a lot of impressions about Iraq, but only because I've seen news of the war.
Yeah.
When people can travel and see it, that's the beauty that you get.
Really feels Hanaa-like.
That's kind of-- Thank you.
Yeah, you are that person too.
Thank you.
And as we soon discovered, it is impossible to pay for your own tea as a guest in Iraq.
It's good.
[non-english] No.
This is a kind of hospitality, basically.
He refused to take money.
Oh they're very generous.
Thank you so much.
Next, Hanaa takes us to meet another colleague who was also inspired by Hardwired's message of diversity, pluralism, and religious freedom.
[music playing] We met Addison at the school he now runs not far from the market.
Before he was an educator, he was a shopkeeper.
But sectarian violence made it very dangerous for Christians during the time of al-Qaeda and he didn't escape unscathed.
Addison, so you are the principal of the school?
Yes.
OK. Tell me a little bit about your story.
[speaking kurdish] In 2006 and 2007, we was afraid we were in risk as Christians.
[speaking kurdish] And I had a shop.
Then when I closed my shop, then I want to return back home, there was a bombing car waiting.
At that time, it was a horrible moment.
It looks like a fire blowing.
[speaking kurdish] Then I observed-- my father was bleeding and he observed that I was bleeding.
And I touched his head and he touched my head because we're afraid of each one will lose his life.
[speaking kurdish] Till now, I don't know who saved us.
They took us to the hospital in Erbil in KRG.
Then they made four operations to my brain.
When I recovered, they asked me to move from my country, from my homeland.
I couldn't do that.
After this traumatic experience, many thought he and his family should leave, but he felt there was too much work to be done in Iraq.
But in 2014, when ISIS invaded, it was simply too dangerous and they fled.
The scars are all around this neighborhood.
[speaking kurdish] ISIS attacked the area, so we fled, the whole family, without food, without money, without clothes, without anything.
But the only thing that we saved our life.
KRG embraced us and also the church.
As educated people, we couldn't stay without work or do anything.
During their time as refugees, Addison organized refugee teachers and created a school for displaced people.
About 200 teachers, they were displaced.
They didn't have work at that time.
So I called them and I registered them and they worked with me.
When he returned back to the Nineveh plains, he stayed in education but noticed the change in the children.
When we returned back after liberation, our children, the fears, they didn't trust anybody.
They think all people are going to hurt them.
And we tried to let them understand, not all people are bad.
A relative recommended he explore a training event put on by Hardwired, and the experience impacted him deeply.
[speaking kurdish] At that time, we participated in this training with Hardwired and we returned back.
We practiced this experience and the trainings with the whole staff, students as well.
So we observed the impact and the conceptual change on those children.
This thing would not happen without understanding that we have the right to live with the other people in coexistence.
So all this happened because of the support of Tina and her team.
[speaking kurdish] Thank you, Hardwired, to make our children creative and believe in pluralism, coexistence.
And we need all these concepts to live in our society in peace.
And Addison, thank you for shepherding your children through this really horrific time.
I mean, without you, not only could they not be educated, but they might not actually be alive.
[speaking kurdish] I didn't work alone.
We were a team.
Without them, I couldn't do anything.
Now, it's great work.
Shukran.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a good story.
After we reluctantly packed up our bags and headed home, we ended up with a 24-hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey.
[music playing] Sleep-deprived and a bit overwhelmed, we got to spend some time with Arwa Damon, a journalist, war correspondent, and former CNN reporter who has covered Iraq for decades and started the nonprofit in Arwa.
The International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance is devoted to helping children impacted by war and disaster throughout the region.
Arwa is Syrian-American and is still doing important journalism in and around Iraq, Syria, the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the region as a whole.
Arwa gave us a bird's-eye view of what's next for Iraq and the region.
You know, sometimes you land somewhere and from the first day you're like, this is where I'm meant to be.
And every single time you go back, you feel like you're going back home?
That's Iraq for me.
And I think I spent so many of my formative years there, like as a young journalist, young adults.
And Iraq can be very harsh and they've had a hard life.
And yet there's this almost contradictory, like vein of kindness that runs through them.
And I think that's what I love.
It's like a New Yorker is a super hard shell, but they're all softies inside.
Exactly so, yes.
Exactly.
Hard to pay for your own tea.
And it's hard to leave anywhere.
You'll never pay your whatever.
And it's hard to leave without being invited to, why don't you stay, because we can make-- Why don't you spend the night?
Well, I will say, you're reporting specifically in Iraq, for me, it's so hard to humanize people who are in a war zone thousands of miles away.
And somehow you guys did that.
So for us, like when you're out there reporting frontline, it's breaking news.
It's like there's all these moments that happen when the cameras aren't rolling that are the real moments that kind of capture the essence of what the culture or what the spirit of a place is.
I mean, we were under siege by ISIS in Mosul in 2016, and it was insane.
I mean, stuff was going off everywhere.
And we ended up tumbling out of the vehicle we're in because it had taken this direct hit.
We're in this man's house and his wife and children are hiding in the back corner.
So there's bleeding soldiers in the space.
And in the middle of all this craziness, he goes and he makes everybody fried eggs because we're ultimately his guest.
And being able to show moments like that, create a certain link between people that might not have existed before.
As soon as you said, Iraq and fried eggs, and I was like, that's Iraq.
That's feels like breakfast.
How do you do your job when bombs are going off and stuff?
There's this thing of like, I'm there by choice.
This might sound a bit harsh, but if we can't hack it, then maybe it's not your place to be.
If I ever got to a point where I wasn't impacted by the story that I'm telling and by the people that I'm meeting, then I don't belong in this field anymore.
Like they're trusting you with their innermost emotions, often at their most vulnerable of times, and you give it your everything, but it still doesn't make the kind of impact that you would want it to.
And so that was something that took me years to shift my thinking around.
And I still struggle with it a little bit, a lot, actually.
You feel as if you've somehow failed because, surely what you're trying to do is recreate this moment that you've lived that has deeply impacted you, but it's someone else's life.
But you're trying to recreate it and package it for a viewer, and you want them to feel the same thing that you felt in that moment.
I want you to feel the awe that you feel when someone who has nothing offers you their last cup of tea or the almost suffocating admiration that you can get for someone who has been through so much and still has this strength about them.
So you have this desire to want to bring someone into these other people's lives and build these bridges.
And when you feel like you haven't been able to do that because perspectives aren't changing or policy isn't changing, then you feel like you've failed.
I mean, I do feel like I failed.
Really?
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
And everyone's like, oh my God, don't say that about yourself.
Like, blah blah, blah, blah.
But no, it's true, but I'm OK with it, which also sounds crazy, but I'm OK with it.
Because you know what?
You might not reach the millions that you want to reach, but if you reach one person, isn't it still worth it?
Like, doesn't that still matter?
No, you can't reach only 10 people.
No, you're-- I mean, look-- [laughter] I mean, we can't give up just because it's hard, that I can't do, ever.
Do you find that in the midst of all this kind of war and chaos and evil, that there's a fair amount of goodness in the world as well?
It becomes harder and harder to find.
It really does.
I don't think that we deserve what has been given to us.
I just I don't.
But that being said, I do believe in the fight for what's right.
And I have found that, and again, I'm probably super-jaded that individually, people can be extraordinary and good and inspiring.
But when we collectively get together, selfishness and greed takes over.
Well, you may be jaded.
It feels like you're still optimistic because you're still doing INARA.
I'm a sucker for a lost cause.
And that's what I love.
I mean, because I get it's like oh yes, this is it again.
But again, you're not stopping because even now-- I'm not stopping.
Yeah.
Pessimistic as I might seem or I might be, I mean, Iraq has changed enormously.
Five years ago in Baghdad, you couldn't go as a foreigner and have a meal outside on a sidewalk because someone would shoot at you or you would get targeted for kidnapping or whatever.
Now you can.
But again, it all boils down to the security dynamics.
And Iraq's security dynamics are all tied up in politics.
The politics start to fall apart, security situation starts to fall apart.
It's not the other way around.
In reality, every kid that's younger than 20 has only seeing the war thing as well.
So I wonder what these kids will look like.
So you meet these young kids, like, they have such potential and they have such ideas and they have so much that they want to do.
And we were covering the demonstrations in Baghdad and the way people were just fighting for their freedom, and all of that.
And it's so inspiring.
It's almost like just let Iraq be.
They had a dictatorship, then they had an occupation, and now they've got pick of any number of countries who are in there manipulating, pulling puppet strings.
And if everyone were to just get out of the way and let them grow and thrive, Iraq could be an extraordinary place.
But for that to happen, you're going to need huge sweeping change, which means that everyone who is lining their pockets with money right now and all these very different groups that are still jostling and vying for political and, let's face it, military power, they're going to have to somehow be pushed out of their way.
Again, if we look at Lebanon and we see what that looks like down the road, it doesn't look good.
I'll do anything for Iraq, though.
So thank you guys, honestly, for going there.
We kind of fell in love with Iraq.
But yeah, no, we fell in love with Iraq as well.
Thank you so much.
I like how you say Iraq.
Well, I don't know.
I'm trying to-- I'm trying so hard.
I suck at Arabic.
It's OK.
The legend of Mar Behnam comes to mind.
A King's children converted to Christianity after experiencing an incredible miracle.
Enraged, the King sent his soldiers to kill them.
But before the soldiers were successful, the children were swallowed by the earth.
Consumed by pain and regret, the King himself converted to Christianity and built the church as an act of redemption.
The site itself is now holy to many different religious groups, as evidenced by the various styles associated with it.
So when ISIS struck out at it, it was not striking out at Christianity, or the Yazidis or anyone else, but at the idea of diversity, pluralism, and freedom itself.
The Iraqi people have embraced a future full of these things that ISIS most feared.
[music playing] Funding for The Good Road has been provided by-- Can looking back push us forward?
Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Billie Holliday.
Will our voice be heard through time?
Can our past inspire our future?
Complete act of concern.
[music playing] What makes a good road?
Blazing a trail.
Making a difference.
Being unafraid to take the path of most resistance.
Toyota has a beyond zero vision for a carbon neutral future that lets you find your own good road with Toyota's electrified lineup, including battery electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell electric vehicles, designed to get you where you want to go, from work to school or wherever your adventures take you.
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Toyota-- Let's Go Places.
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