Five years ago, Ghanem al Mansuri’s 68-year-old mother celebrated word that U.S. troops had arrived at the gates of Baghdad.
“She was hopeful,” al Mansuri, 39, said. “She thought she could go back.”
Early this morning, she was expected to go into open heart surgery at Providence Everett Medical Center.
Thousands of miles from her homeland, her only comfort is that if the surgery isn’t successful, her family has promised that she’ll be buried next to her husband in Basra, in southern Iraq, al Mansuri said.
“Five years ago we felt like we were going to go back,” al Mansuri said. “We were going to live like it was many years ago, when my father and mother were young. Everybody peaceful, when there is no gun against anyone.”
“But nothing like that has happened.”
Everett is home to the largest community of Iraqi refugees in the state, and one of the most concentrated groups in the country. It’s impossible to know exactly how many live here, but Iraqis estimate that they number 1,000 or more.
Most began arriving here in the early 1990s, after the first Persian Gulf War. Many come from southern Iraq, where in 1991 they participated in a uprising against Saddam Hussein. In retaliation, Saddam Hussein’s forces swept through the city and executed countless men.
Many of Everett’s Iraqis are afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder because of their experiences during Hussein’s long reign, said Someireh Amirfaiz, executive director of the Refugee Women’s Alliance in Seattle.
Amirfaiz is a psychologist who has counseled refugees and immigrants throughout the Puget Sound region, including many of Everett’s Iraqi refugees through Snohomish County mental health programs.
“What I have seen among the Iraqis is a lot of trauma, especially post-traumatic stress disorder and also a level of paranoia,” she said.
The United Nations reports that about one in five Iraqi refugees has been a victim of torture. That number doesn’t include the Iraqis who have watched family members tortured or killed or who have seen the carnage from violence.
Once they are resettled in another country, the trauma the refugees have experienced in their home country often is compounded.
Many of Everett’s Iraqis suffer from a prolonged state of “tourism,” Amirfaiz said, which is a term used by psychologists to describe refugees and immigrants who never advance beyond feeling like a tourist in their new country.
“No matter how long you stay in a country, you’re always a tourist if you think you’re going to go back,” she said. “And this has gotten worse, because there was a time when they thought they would go back.”
There are very few qualified, bilingual psychologists and therapists who can serve refugees and immigrants, Amirfaiz said. Most therapists in the U.S. are trained to diagnose mental health problems through a lens that may not adapt well to other cultures.
Even when a qualified therapist is available, many refugees must overcome long-standing cultural stigmas against mental health care.
Among Iraqis and other Middle Easterners, Amirfaiz said, post-traumatic stress disorder often is manifested physically, through migraines, back pain, gastrointestinal issues, heart palpitations and other chronic ailments.
The refugees also are likely to suffer from psychotic flashbacks and seemingly bizarre behaviors that make it difficult for them to work.
Amirfaiz remembers one Middle Eastern refugee who routinely locked himself in a closet.
“He just said that he wanted peace and quiet, and the only way to get that peace and quiet was to go into the dark closet,” she said.
Iraqis were desperate to leave their home because many were hunted by the Hussein regime, said Lafta al Ali, who came to Everett in 2000. They knew what they were leaving behind: persecution under a deadly dictator.
When U.S. troops entered Baghdad, that Iraq was no more.
Everett’s Iraqis had visions of the country of their youth, al Ali said: wealthy cities and quiet countrysides, despite regional tensions and clashes with Iran.
Since then, everything has changed.
“There was a ray of hope that they would be reunified with their families, but the situation in Iraq just got worse,” Amirfaiz said. “Since then, so many of their relatives have been killed.”
The U.S. invasion of Iraq brought euphoric hope for the Iraqis, said Teena Ellison, an Everett Housing Authority community coordinator who works primarily in the Grandview neighborhood, where many Iraqis live.
Now, for some, the sense of desperation is greater than ever, she said.
“A lot of the families who have come here have lived in public housing for a very long time. While they appreciate the support they’re given, this wasn’t their life’s dream 20 years ago,” Ellison said.
Older refugees remember Iraq as it was before the Hussein regime, when education was available and women were doctors and lawyers.
“That’s what they want back,” Ellison said. “They’re waiting for that.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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