Bullets in Envelopes
These life stories of academics from around the globe tell a vivid, inspiring and sometimes poetic history of modern Iraq.
miriam cooke, Braxton Craven Professor of Arab Cultures, Duke University
Searing! The American assault aimed to end the Iraqi state and shatter the culture that sustained it. Yako retrieves the stories of some sixty displaced Iraqi academics. Distillations of their experiences read as if written on shards of glass that penetrate the skin and wound the heart.
Raymond W. Baker, Board Director, International Council for Middle East Studies, Washington, DC
Luis Yakos thinking is as compelling as his writing. Bullets in Envelopes persuasively shifts the politics of argumentation. He uses anthropology to convey the existential turbulence of academics in exile after the US invasion, instead of using academics to advance the discipline.
Walter D. Mignolo, author of The Politics of Decolonial Investigations
Bullets in Envelopes
Iraqi Academics in Exile
Louis Yako
First published 2021 by Pluto Press
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Copyright Louis Yako 2021
The right of Louis Yako to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4197 2 Hardback
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To all those who were burned by the fires of war, but insist on living to tell their stories To all those who didnt survive to bear witness to what happened
To my first Iraqi educators who taught me how to breathe when they taught me my first alphabet
To all those who loved Iraq sincerely then and now
To the many poets and writers who taught me: how to let my heart and mind beat in harmony with every word I put on paper that one can be a sniper carrying a pen that the cooperation between humans and injustice is like a cooperation between a wound and a dagger and if injustice is to end, the wound must stop cooperating with the dagger
To a future that is yet to be born one in which everyone gets their fair share of bread and love
Contents
Preface
In what I call the genealogy of loss, this book traces the losses of Iraq and its people through the eyes of academics, one of the countrys most educated demographics, to show the extent to which wars, sanctions, and the 2003 invasion have damaged Iraqi society. The invasion had an enormous impact on education and educators. It not only destroyed many achievements Iraqis had built for decades but also erased and forced out some of the countrys brightest minds that had helped train Iraqis and shape the skills essential for running and preserving the entire society. Academics are the engineers of the society in the sense that they train almost everyone else to contribute to it, whether doctors, engineers, professors, workers, lawyers, and many other professions. The destruction and restructuring of Iraqi academia and the killing and/or forcing out of many of its academics can only be seen as a political tactic aimed at restructuring and disabling Iraqi society.
While most Iraqi people I know from different walks of life are politically savvy because their lives have been determined by politics, I wanted to research a population that is as close to politics and the centers of power as possible, yet also one that can critically examine and interrogate power from multiple perspectives. Academics are uniquely positioned to do so. They can look critically at their lives in Iraq before the invasion, while equally critically articulate and analyze the consequences of Iraqs invasion and the current regimes of power. As a cultural anthropologist deeply committed to the Middle East and Iraq, I wanted to select a population that is near and dear to my heart. Looking back at my own life in Iraq, from primary school all the way to graduating from Baghdad University, few groups have influenced and shaped my vision as much as Iraqi educators have. Many of the educators who taught me were deeply committed to Iraqi societyto creating knowledgeable students and citizens who see themselves as equal to rather than superior or inferior to anyone else in the world. And because most of these educators simultaneously influenced and were affected by wars and politics, I knew that their voices could add nuance to the story I was trying to tell.
Furthermore, having closely studied much of Western scholarship on Iraq and the Middle East, I saw that the stories of the region and its people are seldom told through the lenses of its most educated populations. If we consider that the former Baath regime made education available for free to every Iraqi citizen from kindergarten all the way to the PhD level, then it follows that Iraqs most educated people are as diverse in gender, class, and politics as the society itself. Iraqi education was a basic human right available to allnot the privilege of a chosen fewand the diversity of voices in Iraqi academia reflects that reality, not that of a privileged group only. There are many important works that paint a picture of the region from the viewpoint of its refugees, gender issues, dissidents, and other important populations, but few are the works that examine the region through the eyes of its academics, who, since the beginnings of the pan-Arabist project, have been key actors in building their societies.
Telling Iraqs story through the eyes of its academics challenges the stereotypical images of war-torn countries as destroyed places with people in tents and in need of humanitarian aid in the form of basic foods and blankets: children with worn out clothes, and countless other such images whether propagated through certain types of scholarship, humanitarian organizations raising funds, or mainstream media. I am not suggesting that these stories are not important. I am instead suggesting that such narratives only tell us how things are at present, not how they became that way. I wanted to choose a group that could trace the genealogy of events. Thus, it is my hope that the testimonies in this book will not just be projected as sad stories from that part of the world, but rather considered as expert and experienced voices that can make cultural, political, and epistemic contributions to how we understand the regions challenges.
STARTING FROM THE END: RETURNING TO IRAQ AFTER A DECADE IN EXILE
Once upon a time, I was born and raised in a place I used to know only as home. Once upon a lonely night in 2005, I had to leave Iraq to save my life after receiving a death threat for working as a Linguist/Interpreter with the occupying forces. I wanted to leave with my dignity intact, so I chose to leave as a scholar to pursue higher education rather than live in refugee camps. My love and passion for learning helped me do that, but little did I know that the more education I received in Western institutions, the more I would realize how subjugated and indoctrinated one can become when trying to learn under the grip of age-old colonial and imperial institutions. Nevertheless, as a scholar, I was determined to gain and use every critical tool possible, including tools and ammunition from the imperial universities, to understand what was done to Iraq, to my beloved home that was lost forever.
