Mona Hanna-Attisha - What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City

I AM I RAQI, AN IMMIGRANT, BORN SOMEWHERE elsebut not in Baghdad like my older brother, who was named Muaked, which means certain, confident. He fits that name, always did. He was just one year old when my family moved to Sheffield, England, and Muakeds name proved difficult for English speakers to pronouncejust as they had trouble with my dads name, Muafak, which sounds like a profanity even if you say it correctly.

In England, my family stayed for a time with my moms cousin Bertha, who was born in Iraq but over the years had become British to her core. In a display of her extraordinary strength of personality, she renamed my brother Mark, and it stuck.

M Y GRANDFATHER H AJI CAME up with my name. Haji was idolized for his charm, intelligence, and humanity. He was a businessman who lived in Baghdad and had a large, soulful view of the world, an iconoclastic wisdom. People in our family always wanted him to name their babies, probably for that reason.

He named me Mona because he thought it would be an easy name for both English and Arabic speakers to pronounce. My family was still living in England at the time but was planning to return to Iraq when my dads studies at the University of Sheffield ended. He was getting a doctorate in metallurgy, which is what you study if you are going to work on nuclear power plantsor nuclear weapons. But my dad was a progressive, a pacifist, and didnt want his work to go toward making weapons for the repressive Baathist regime that dominated Iraq. He was interested in working with metals like zinc and aluminum and in creating new alloys. He has an engineers passion for making things work bettersometimes stronger, sometimes lighter, sometimes more durable.

In Arabic, my name is traditionally spelled and pronounced Muna. But Haji believed that, for me, the anglophone version, with a long o, was better. Haji was magical enough that maybe he foresaw that a Western name would work to my advantage. Either way, Mona means hope, wish, or desire.

I was a chubby baby, born with a mark, a capillary hemangioma, on my forehead. It wasnt pretty or fascinating, like Harry Potters lightning bolt. My mark was dark red, the size of a golf ball, and near my hairline. Sometimes it would bleed when I fell. When my mom, Talia, carried me in public, the women of Sheffield looked at me with horror and pity and sometimes got up their nerve to ask: Whats that growing on your babys forehead? Can it be removed?

The hemangioma regressedwent away on its ownas I grew older. Now it is just a spot where my hair never grows. Your eyes wouldnt see it unless I told you where it was.

My brothers real name also vanished over time. My mom is the only one who calls him Muaked anymore. I dont think his own kids even know it.

The road behind my family disappeared too. The Iraq they knew was lost, replaced by war and ruins. In my mind, this lost Iraq is a land of enchantment and despair. But its lessons endure. They may be unseen, but they are not forgotten, just as Mark is still Muakedand will always be certain and confident. And when I touch my forehead, my birthmark is still there.

T HE HIGHWAY WAS DARK, and snow was falling but not much. My mom drove for a few hours and then stopped and switched places with my dad. It was an endless drive, close to twelve hours, but wed made the trip once before and had our routines. We were going back up north, to Houghton, after spending Christmas with Mama Evelyn, my paternal grandmother, in Southfield, just outside Detroit.

My dad put the silver Monte Carlo into cruise control at sixty-five. My mom resumed her knitting and turned on the radio. Mark and I were sitting in the deep sofalike backseat. Nobody was wearing seat belts. Wed long ago tucked them underneath the seats to keep them out of the way.

We passed Flint, where the Monte Carlo had probably been built. We passed Saginaw and the landscape soon became wilder and more pristine. My brother played with the Legos he had gotten for Christmas. I had a soft stuffed bear on my lap, a present from Santa, the only one Id wanted.

My dad opened the window to flick the ash of his cigarette into the frozen air. When he rolled it back up, I could hear the clacking of my moms knitting needles again. On the way down to Mama Evelyns, shed made a cozy oversize sweater for me. Now on the way back, she was finishing one for Mark.

My mother was perpetually busyfrying kibbee on the stove, pulling baklava trays out of the oven, rolling a new batch of dolma. She sewed most of our clothes. At night, she was always reading a book. In Iraq, she had been trained as a chemistone of only two women in her chemistry classes at Baghdad Universitybut her foreign degree was all but meaningless in America. Never mind that, though. We would go back to Iraq someday soon, she always said, her voice thick with emotion and defiance. Back to Baghdad.