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2 THE ROVING
EYE In the heart of Little
Fallujah By Pepe Escobar
Today's "zero point" returns Iraq to
its own history, a history written with the ashes
of incendiary fires, with its sons fleeing in all
directions on the one hand, and its exiles
returning to their own homes on the other. I truly
do not know if distance today can be defined
through the experiences of refugees, or the masses
of displaced people, or the exiles returning to
burning cities to live out a sense of loss.
Distances begin to take on the forms of lines
which have been drawn on ashen roads, resembling
the traces of
people who have lost their
way and have never arrived. - Mohamed
Mazloom, Baghdad poet, born 1963, exiled
in Syria
DAMASCUS - This is biblical
exodus - the YouTube version. Welcome to Little
Fallujah - previously Geramana, southeast
Damascus. The Nahda area of Geramana now boasts at
least 200,000 resident Iraqis. They visibly came
with all their savings - and made good use of it.
The congested main drag of al-Nahda is an
intoxicating apotheosis of anarchic capitalism,
business piled upon business - Hawaii fruits,
Galilia underwear, Call Me mobile, Snack Bambino,
Discovery software school, Eva sunglasses,
boutique Tout le Monde, all Iraqi-owned.
Street banners promote nightly Iraqi music
festivals. Iraqi restaurants rule - such as the
favorite Iraqi Palm Tree, with piped bird-singing
and a flotilla of Chevy Suburbans with red Iraqi
license plates at the door, also popular with
Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians from refugee
camps and even Somali and Sudanese immigrants.
According to a resident, "Druze beautiful girls"
in the neighborhood have been replaced by "fat
Iraqi men" - a reference to when al-Nahda used to
be a little Druze village sprinkled with a few
Christians.
A 100-square-meter apartment
sells for 2 million Syrian pounds (roughly
US$40,000) - four times as much as before the
Iraqi invasion. One square meter in prime business
premises is now $20,000. Iraqis always pay US
dollars cash. No wonder the price of potatoes has
also risen fourfold. Not to mention the inflation
of hairdressing salons - where Mesopotamian sirens
perfect their Christina Aguilera-influenced,
multi-shaded pompadours. And right beside al-Nahda
is the action - al-Rahda, peppered with smart
cafes like the Stop In and al-Nabil not far away
from a huge Sunni mosque.
There's not only
Little Fallujah. There also are Little Baghdad,
Little Mosul, Little Babylon, Little Najaf. But
even exile replicates the stark divide found in
Baghdad. Middle-class Sunnis won't be seen around
the middle-class Shi'ites who tend to go to the
area around the spectacular Sayyida Zaynab shrine
- a key Shi'ite pilgrim site boasting distinctive
Persian architecture that would be perfectly at
home in Qom or Mashhad. This area is Little Najaf.
The stories, though, are similar to Little
Fallujah's. Shi'ite families had to abandon their
homes in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods -
otherwise they would have been killed. They came,
they saw, they opened a restaurant, and they're in
business.
This proliferation of Little
Iraqs accounts for the biggest exodus in the
Middle East since the Palestinians were forced to
abandon their own lands in 1948 as the State of
Israel was being created. In every single month in
Iraq at least 40,000 people are displaced.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, there may be as many as 50,000 a
month. Were that rate to continue, before 2020,
all the population of Iraq would have been
"liberated" from its own country.
In
northern Damascus, a crammed room inside the Iraqi
Embassy compound is pure Dante's purgatory - waves
and waves of Iraqis desperately in search of the
right missing papers to request political asylum
in a Western embassy. Thousands may be planning to
stay in Syria, but for the great majority the
promised land really means a visa for Canada,
Australia or the ever-elusive European Union.
Mixed-marriage land Whichever
Iraq one picks in Damascus, the mantra is recited
in unison. Any glimmer of hope for the future
hinges on the Americans leaving - and the
establishment, by Iraqis, with no foreign
interference, of a non-sectarian government.
Take Nabir, owner of the Salon Musa, a
barbershop decorated with a giant poster of soccer
star Ronaldinho in a Nike-sponsored Brazilian
yellow jersey. Call him the Barber of Fallujah.
His family left Turkey in the early 20th century.
Nabir left Iraq in late 2004. He stresses that
"during Saddam, everybody had work, and everything
worked". After working at the former Saddam
International Airport, he worked for the Americans
as a barber in - where else? - Fallujah. His hopes
are "that the country will be totally destroyed,
and only Iraqis will be allowed to come back". He
was against the war. He left because his family
had no security. And he does not want to go back.
The story of Aziz Abu Ammar, an affable
sexagenarian impeccably dressed with suit and silk
tie, is emblematic of what happened to Iraq's
professional and cultural elites. We talk at the
most spectacular of settings, inside the Umayyad
mosque just after evening prayers. Ammar is a
retired government official from
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