Bust A Notion, Bang A Gong, Get It On!

So H. and I were reminiscing about the good old days when we worked for a company whose owner wasn't in jail, and when we actually had real jobs with actual work involved. Well, she was. When she said that those were the good old days for her, I kind of did a double-take, because our boss really sucked and I was really happy to leave when I did. For me, that first job in Baghdad represented a major step in my life, but one which I was happy to get away from as soon as possible. But for her and the other Iraqis, it was a really important event in their lives and moving on was difficult.
H. and her family were sharing their small apartment with her Aunt's family after the invasion, and they were all out of work, with very little food. H.'s cousins, by the way, are the brothers S. & R. I was telling you about in my last post. At any rate she told me they would often sit around the apartment with nothing to do and bemoan their futures... they had no money and things in Baghdad at the time were, although better than they are now, still chaotic and uncertain. They were very hungry, eating only a little cheap bread if they were lucky, and talked and hoped that now that the war was over, they might have some better luck. Maybe they could find work with the rich Americans, somehow, but they had not heard of anybody getting that kind of work. Well, Inshallah (God willing). Inshallah is something Iraqis say often... they swear that they really mean it, but to me it comes across more as something you say fatalistically, when you have no hope but in some God that apparently has turned his eye away from you. Maybe that just has more to do with the times, rather than the intended usage of the word.
Anyway, another cousin of hers was working at an office in town which was funtioning as a sort of re-employment office for Christians. My original company's boss had gone there requesting housekeepers, kitchen workers, and groundskeepers for their contract at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).
When H.'s brother, A. went to the office to put his name down for work, he put all of his family's names down as well, of course. When he got the call that there was some crazy American asking for workers and his and H.'s names were picked out, she refused to go because she didn't believe it. There was just no way they could have the fortune of working with Americans and making some decent money, when that is what everybody in Baghdad at the time was hoping for. Well, most everybody, anyway.
When A. told her to stop being silly and to get her butt down to the office because they were going to pay $200 per month, she really didn't believe it. Not because $200 per month is a shameful exploitation of a labor force from a nation we recently bombed the crap out of (which it was), which among other things facilitated this exploitation, but because that was actually a lot of money at the time. H. told me that before the invasion, the most she'd ever made at a job was $50 per month, and this was considered a very good wage. Of course, those wages can be blamed on Bush Sr., but she is too young to remember the job market before the first Gulf War, when Iraq was a prosperous, sovereign nation.
Well, I guess after much yelling, hand waving, and "No, you're stupid!"s, she went down to the office and reluctantly signed on, not wanting to hope for a second that this might actually happen. Apparently her Aunt, I. was even more adamant (according to H., comically adamant) in her disbelief, not accepting the possibility until she was actually at work on the first day, in our kitchen.
And then it did happen. H. & her brother, her cousins and her Aunt were told to be ready one morning to be picked up and taken to where the job was; They were not told ahead of time where they were going or what they were to be working as or who for, other than for Americans, somewhere in Baghdad, and that it involved cleaning or something. H. told me that they were all awake at like 4:30 in the morning and too excited to sleep... It seems wrong to me that an entire family had had to be in the position where they were acting as though a new job working for the people who just conquered their nation for $200 per month was the next best thing to Christmas on acid, but there you go.
The BIAP is about a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad, and between that and all of the checkpoints at the time, especially the main entry to the BIAP, it could take anywhere from 1 to 1½ hours to get to work. In the summer of 2003, mid-August, it was very hot. There were alot of gasps on the un-air-conditioned bus, sitting in dangerous traffic in 120° heat, when the Iraqis realized they'd have to do this every day both ways if they wanted this job. But for $200 per month, most of them were more than willing.
I remember seeing H. and the others for the first time... it was only my second or third day in Iraq. We'd been told they were arriving to begin work that morning, and I remember thinking how weird it was going to be, working with people who wore black veils and probably wanted to kill me. And having to tell them to scrub toilets. That was really the part I was having trouble getting over.
But when we went out to meet them, and saw them getting off of the bus, my naïve preconceptions were pleasantly busted. They were all smiling and laughing, eager. The men wore dress pants and button shirts, the women wore casual skirts and blouses, their sunday best. Not a single black veil in sight. They brought changes of clothes for working in... jeans and T-shirts, men and women both.
And the Iraqis have made it their duty to continue busting my preconceived notions about them ever since.