blurred borders

I was at the ISP school last Saturday when an Egyptian film maker came in to talk with the students. There is currently a film festival for documentaries in Damascus and she had directed one of the films, called “startup.com.” In it, she painted the picture of a world where people united cross-culturally through art. This woman was inspired by the mission of ISP and wanted to meet all of the young adults from Iraq, who are displaced in Syria, and will soon be students in America.

Saturday's discussion with the Egyptian director focused mostly on what stories the students felt were not being told from Iraq. They all said that the media focuses unfairly on the negative, on the exceptions. Yes, there is a problem in Damascus with Iraqi prostitution, but what about all of the mothers who stay strong, raise families, and get jobs when their husbands aren't able to? And yes, many extremists cite Islam as a reason for their violent actions, but what about all of those people who, after being forced out of their countries, away from their homes and families, are able to find peace five times a day through prayer? I have never heard anyone talk about religion the way that one of my students, Ziad, did that day. He is one of the most attentive, open-minded people, who speaks about wanting to go to MIT in a flawless accent and laughs at all of my dumb movie references. I hadn't taken him to be particularly religious. But he said that at his mosque, he found a new part of himself. He spoke about finding a community when he felt like he didn't have one... about the sight of his mosque on Fridays, so clean and pure and white... about the feeling that comes when you are surrounded by people kneeling in unison, connected to each other through their movements, but connected to god on a very individual level. I have never heard anyone speak so openly and passionately about religion and his own faith in god.

The discussion also centered briefly around politics. The focus of this conversation was about how exaggerated and generalized sectarian conflicts have become in the media. They all said that before the war, communities mixed with Sunnis, Shias, and Christians lived peacefully. They stressed that the desire of the Iraqi people was peace in their homeland, not any sort of extreme religious ideals of isolation or superiority. According to these students, the people who are creating sectarian violence in Iraq, particularly Baghdad, come from gangs and don't represent any larger trend among Iraqi people.

Saturday felt a little different from most days at the ISP school... The students seemed more excited than usual. At first I thought their excitement was from the chance to speak with this amazing woman, whose roots were so similar to their own. She was the daughter of an American-Syrian marriage, grew up in Egypt, and after receiving an education in the U.S. she went on to become a talented director. Then I noticed the black ink stains on so many pointer fingers in the room.

Sunday, the following day, was the official Iraq election. The black ink marked that the students had voted in one of the local polling stations.

During the next class that I taught, I asked my students a little bit more about the elections. They were all first time voters, and their eagerness for this new-found privilege reminded me of myself in the fall of 2008. They stressed how long the list of candidates was, extending for pages, and how Iraqis all over the world were voting just like them. Jokingly, almost braggingly, they spoke about how easy the ink is to remove with bleach. At the polling stations, you must present a form of identification so that your name can be written down on a list, but the only preventative measure for multiple voting is this black mark on your pointer finger. A few of the students had friends in Iraq who had voted in two different regional polling stations.

Here are kids the same age as me. And among this group of youth, of first time voters, of refugees who were forced out of their country, you can find the same excitement that became such a part my life during the 2008 election. I remember taking a picture with my cell phone of the little check next to “Barack Obama” on my ballot. I remember at every dorm party quoting Obama, toasting: “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” Hope felt tangible to me. It felt like the youth around me were the driving force towards creating even the smallest amount of change in a world so big.

The feeling is the same with these students. Their expectations for the results, and probably for the legitimacy of the election, are certainly different than mine were a year and a half ago. But whether you are an 18-year-old Iraqi boy proudly displaying a blackened finger, just hoping for a change in the homeland that you haven't seen in years, or a 19-year-old American girl walking in front of the White House in a pin that says “Yes we can!”, the feeling is the same.