By Amira El Ahl, Volkhard Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand
Before the building opens in the morning, employees walk through the crowd with megaphones, warning the refugees about con artists. No one from the UNHCR will ask for money, they say, adding that while the process will be time-consuming and inconvenient, it is free. Then health experts arrive on the scene to scan the crowd for the sick and fatigued. "We have to fish out the most vulnerable ones first," says Wilkes, "otherwise they won't make it through the waiting period in the heat." The disabled, old men in wheelchairs and chemotherapy patients are taken to the front of the line.
Huda Sibawi, 33, a grief-stricken young woman, is carrying six death certificates: those of her mother, her father, two uncles, her brother and her brother-in-law. The father, a wealthy Sunni from New Baghdad, had donated money to a mosque and, at the end of Ramadan, broke the fast a day earlier than is customary among the Shiites. He paid dearly for his infraction. Fighters from the Shiite Mahdi militia exterminated most of his family in a two-week murdering spree.
The killers seized the Sibawis' assets, which included 11 apartment buildings and a small chain of supermarkets. Neighbors from Baghdad occasionally call Huda to tell her that members of the Mahdi militia are now driving the family's company cars around the city.
Some of the Iraqi refugees are so desperate that mothers have been known to take their daughters to nightclubs, where they offer them to Western and Arab tourists from the Gulf as if they were exotic fruits. "Diana, for example," says a driver who works for the limousine service of a large, Western hotel, "just arrived from Mosul. You can meet her in our disco after 1 a.m."
Careful Preparations
But so far, abject poverty is still the exception among refugees. Many Iraqis made careful financial preparations before leaving the country, selling their houses and cars in Baghdad so that they could buy apartments in Damascus or Amman. Other families are using up their daughters' dowries bit by bit. "Our funds will last us for exactly six months," says Huda Sibawi. "By then we'll need a decision on whether a European country or Canada will accept us."
Other refugees retain a place of residence in Kurdish northern Iraq so as not to lose their pension claims. "Most of these people are very well-educated and self-confident," says a UNHCR employee who once worked in West Africa. "Only a fraction comes to us. Asking for handouts goes against their grain. That's the most tragic thing about this crisis: The ones who have left Iraq are its 2 million best and brightest."
Meanwhile, the Iraqi nose for business is in full evidence in the Jordanian capital of Amman, dominated by the Iraqi-owned Le Royal, a luxury hotel designed as a striking sandstone cylinder, a variation on the renowned spiral minaret on the mosque in Samarra. While Iraqis make full use of Amman's liberal economic environment, the country also benefits from their presence.
The wave of refugees has also led to rising living expenses, rents and real estate prices in Jordan. "We are a country without resources," says Jordanian businessman Abd al-Sattar al-Kuda. "We have no water, no oil and little agriculture," he says. "In other words, there is nothing the refugees could take away from us." On the contrary, the Iraqis are partly responsible for a boom in consumer spending.
Baghdad's wealthy residents, many already with one foot in Amman before the war, have settled in Abdoun and Deir Ghubar, exclusive residential areas in the city's southwest. They include Iraqis tied to the former regime, such as former dictator Saddam Hussein's daughter Raghad, who is often seen driving her blue BMW sports car and is said to have opened a beauty salon recently. Refugees from the Iraqi middle class have settled in western Amman, while the poor live in the east. Although many are in Jordan illegally, Iraqis have already made the Jordanian capital a different place than it was.
Amman's Transformation
Once-sleepy Amman has turned into a vibrant big city with busy restaurants and cafes. After 2003, many Iraqi restaurant owners moved their businesses from Baghdad to Amman, often mimicking the original restaurants and naming them after Iraqi provinces and neighborhoods. At "Anbar" in western Amman, the "samak masgouf," a carp dish, is served just as it's prepared in waterside restaurants along the Tigris River -- fresh, rich and moist. The waiters and patrons converse in Iraqi dialects, while Jordanians are in the minority. Big cars with Baghdad license plates are parked bumper-to-bumper on neighborhood streets.
But as harmoniously as Iraqis seem to fit into Amman's street scenes, their status is precarious. The government has gradually ramped up its requirements for residency permits, demanding that Iraqis deposit increasingly large sums of money as collateral. Those who are turned down have no right to appeal the immigration court's decision.
Being pushed around like this in Jordan or Syria is especially humiliating for educated Iraqis. Baghdad's middle class, in particular, has always considered itself the Arab world's urban elite. An old Iraqi Arab saying sums up the way many Iraqis see themselves today: "Books are written in Cairo and published in Beirut, but they are read in Baghdad."
A retired archaeology professor from Baghdad, who prefers not to give his name, found a bullet wrapped in a balled-up piece of paper in his garden one day. "Get out, or we'll come and get your daughter," the note read. He packed his bags and drove to Amman with his wife and daughter. That was a year ago, or the space of two six-month tourist visas. At some point, the 70-year-old professor realized that he would probably not be returning to his native country.
But this time, the Jordanian immigration office is refusing to issue the professor a third visa because he is unable to pay the $75,000 fee. "Not to be granted a residency permit in Jordan is extremely hurtful to me, a person who spent decades at the university and years working for UNESCO," he says.
He stands, watery-eyed, in a friend's basement apartment in Amman, wearing a light blue shirt and gray flannel trousers. "Do you know what I have done now?" he asks. "I have prepared my resume and attached an application to it. Perhaps one of the universities here will take me."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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