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The Waiting Room
Entry 6 of 17 | show all | print this entry |
While staying at the Cliff hotel in Amman, we met two people whose situations embody the painful political situation in the Middle East.
Sabeeh
Sabeeh is a 70 year-old Iraqi man who had been living at the Cliff for 20 days before Nick and I showed up. He's been trying to get his family out of Iraq ever since two of his four sons were shot dead by a militia. As he said to me, speaking also with his hands, "Now, I put a big X over Iraq. I go anywhere they send me, but no Iraq." It took him over a year to get the right type of passport and the appropriate visa to allow him to leave Iraq for Jordan. Of the 150 people per month considered for entry from Iraq to Jordan, he was one of eight to make it through the process. This native Bagdadian is now a refuge of the Iraq War.
As a refuge he has a huge amount of documentation, which he proudly displayed to me. I could read some of it, it being almost completely in Arabic. He had maps which directed him to various places where he could receive a variety of services, free doctors, food, and medicine. He doesn't take advantage of any of them, but says that other refugees get the stuff (e.g. bag of rice) and sell them. He has no interest in any of this food, medicine etc, he said, he just wants out.
He told me about his life. He use to work at the Saddam Hussein International Airport. He worked in a section that dealt with the airport's signaling/communications with the planes. He took some certification classes in England, Italy and France, and eventually headed up one of the 17 sections which run the airport. He explained that he worked on the communications boxes that the pilots used to perform triangulation.
Now, at the Cliff Hotel, he sits and chats with us, or pads around in his pajamas, and waits for a phone call from the UN Refugee Agency. They will tell him to which country he will be moving. Once he gets there, his wife and two remaining sons will follow him. His wife called him yesterday to tell him that his next door neighbor of 40 years was gunned down while shopping in the market. He remains upbeat, telling jokes or funny stories, but his laughter sometimes seems to verge on tears.
British Woman
I never got her name so I'll call her Charlot. Charlot is a Brit in her early 30s. She went to Palestine a while ago to protest the Israeli Occupation, stand in front of bulldozers, document events as they occurred, etc. All standard anti-war work. She ended up marrying a Palestinian man. This is where her troubles really begin. Since 2003 the Israeli government hasn't been giving residency permits to children or married couples in the Occupied Territories. For this reason she is suppose to go in and out on a tourist visa (three months at a time.) She knows various wives who have been doing this for over thirty years.
Anyway, she got an agreement with the Ministry of the Interior that she could live in the country from 23 months (assumed renewable) leaving every three to renew her visa. However, the Ministry of Defense controls all the border crossings, so when she left, and then tried to get back in, she was turned away. The last time she stayed at the Cliff hotel it had been for seven months, while she sued up to the level of the Israeli Supreme Court, to be granted entry into Palestine (Nablus) to see her husband. When we left her, she had been at the Cliff for 20 days and her husband had been called in for questioning by the police
She had previously tried to get her husband a residency permit in various countries, though they are both want to leave, as that would be 'giving in.' She's had to post bonds on herself for good behavior while she is in Nablus. A woman married to her husband's brother has been living illegally with her husband for years, and pretty much doesn't leave the house (as there are checkpoints everywhere ... and without the right paperwork she will be deported.) While her parents-in-law see no problem with her just living at home, she clearly won't stand for it.
So now Charlot waits at the Cliff Hotel for her Israeli lawyer to try to get her back in the Occupied Territories to see her husband. Similarly, Sabeeh waits for the UN bureaucracy to place him in any state that will take him so that he can get his family out of Baghdad.
"The Palestinians, 90% of Amman, are waiting to go home, Iraqi refugees are waiting to get out of the region or go home."
"Jordan" says Charlot "is one big waiting room."
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