Something about Rachel (Liberate THIS, Part 8)

A continuing series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

I knew that Palestinians—and many other indigenous peoples for that matter—were dying every day in their struggles for justice.  I didn’t want to be racist and mark Rachel Corrie’s death because she was American, while ignoring others who died because they were the “wrong” nationality.

There was actually another young man shot and killed by the Israeli Army that day in Gaza, within hours of Rachel’s murder.  No news of the loss of his life broke in the papers of USA Today.


But there was something about Rachel and her story that mystified me and captured my attention the way no one else had before.  The journey of the next few years would help me decipher why her courage, her life, and her death were so powerful to me.  It would take a while for me to understand enough about myself to be able to comprehend why she touched my heart so.

In the short term, however, I considered the bizarre contrast of that day.  The headline could have read, “23-year-old, all-American woman visited—and was murdered in—Rafah in Gaza, Palestine, while 31-year-old failed physician surfs the Internet at home.”

The incongruity made me wonder: if Rachel could travel thousands of miles to learn about people she didn’t even know, then maybe I should go see my family whom I hadn’t seen in almost 27 years.

 

 

“We should blow up the countries” (Liberate THIS, Part 5)

Part 5 in our continuing series by guest author, Dahlia Wasfi

Most medical residencies are abusive, and this one was no different. But the environment became even more hostile following what happened on September 11, 2001.

“I don’t want to operate on any Middle Eastern people,” one attending physician muttered.

“We should blow up the countries of each of the hijackers,” another said vengefully.

Shock and awe cartoon
London graffitti; photo by Michael Reeve. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

These were my supervisors—medical professionals who had taken the Hippocratic Oath.  One of the foundations of medical ethics is supposed to be “Primum non nocere”:  First, do no harm.

I wasn’t feeling that sentiment in what these doctors were saying.  And based on the hostility they were directing towards “Middle Eastern people,” I worried about potential backlash against me if they learned what my background was.

I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat, along with my voice, and continued to work under them, business as usual.  Protecting myself within my workplace took priority for me that day over speaking against injustice.  I condemned these physicians for their hypocrisy, but my silence was dishonest as well.

By early 2002, the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, and the American government was telling lies to build support for invading Iraq. My relatives, from whom I still was separated, had been starving under sanctions for more than 12 years. Now, we were going to shock and awe them. My tax dollars would help foot the bill.

“We should just nuke ’em,” my attending physician proclaimed.

In September 2002, overwhelmed by the hypocrisy without and the painful conflict within, I couldn’t continue business as usual. I burned out. I was hospitalized.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.


[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

My government rained down terror (Liberate THIS, Part 2)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Engaging Peace is pleased to publish the second in the ongoing series from Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS]

My father was born and raised in Basra, Iraq. Graduating from Baghdad University, he earned a government scholarship to study in the United States.  He completed his graduate studies at Georgetown University.

Weapons cache in Basra
Weapons cache in Basra (Image in public domain)

While in DC, he met and married my mom, a nice Jewish girl from New York. Her parents had fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss and emigrated to the United States. Was it love at first sight? I don’t know, but my sister was born in 1969, and I arrived in 1971.

To pay back his scholarship from Iraq, my father taught at Basra University from 1972 to 1977.  Thus, my early childhood was spent in both Iraq and the United States. For me, the bombing of Basra was equivalent to the bombing of Yonkers, New York. I had family in both places.

Upon returning to the Swarthmore College campus for the spring semester, I was dumbstruck by what I remember to be a mostly pro-war atmosphere.  The militancy was in stark contrast to the peaceful traditions of its Quaker founders who established the school in 1864.

The Quakers, a Christian denomination also known as the Religious Society of Friends, are known as a peace church, because of their teachings’ emphasis on pacifism.  While Swarthmore no longer has any religious affiliation, it prides itself on being an institution that still reflects many Quaker values.  As the current brochures describe, “Foremost among [these values] is a commitment to the common good and to the preparation of future leaders who will influence favorably a changing and complex world.”

In the early months of 1991, as far as I could tell, Swarthmore was a breeding ground for warmongers. Flags and pro-military banners hung from the dorms of Parrish Hall, the main building on campus. Their messages remain burned in my memory.  On a white sheet, students had written, “By Air, By Sea, By Land:  Bye-Bye, Iraq.”  Hanging from the next window:  “U.S. Troops:  Simply the Best.”  They made me cringe.  The blatant disrespect for the lives of Iraqi victims was sickening to me.

I thought, what the hell is going on? Why didn’t the best and brightest understand that war is unacceptable, no matter who is directing the tanks? Why was the anti-war sentiment drowned out at this “liberal” institution?

Internally, I condemned the hypocrisy of militancy on a campus that purported to reflect peaceful traditions.  But the Swarthmore disconnect between image and reality was mirroring the hypocrisy that I despised within myself.  I was living the American dream at one of the top—one of the most expensive—schools in the nation.  Meanwhile my government rained down terror in the form of cruise missiles on Iraqi families.

Dahlia Wasfi