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As we drove through the Iraqi countryside, I sat in the backseat of the SUV looking out the window in amazement at the pastoral scenes passing before me. With my teammates, Otto and Deanna, I had just crossed from the Turkish border into what is known as the Kurdistan area of Iraq. We were a group of three American nurse educators who had come to teach Kurdish nurses more specialized care. I was curious to see what the hospitals were like there, and the level of nursing skill. I wanted to know what it was like to be a woman living in a Muslim country. And as a Christian, I was also very interested in attitude toward religions other than Islam. There were so many questions in my head, but I was able to enjoy the unexpected beauty of this very war-torn country.
The rolling green foothills were dotted with occasional fields of wheat and barley and an occasional settlement here and there. Behind the hills sharp, rugged mountains pierced the sky. It was hard to imagine that just three hours to the south of us in Kirkuk, soldiers were still exchanging gunfire with insurgents. A war continued to rage on in other parts of Iraq. Out my window were flocks of sheep and goats being tended by a lonely herder in fields of green.
Our final destination was the city of Suleymaniyah, a city of about 900,000 people nestled in a valley just a couple hours’ drive from the Iran border. Suleymaniyah is a bustling city with encouraging signs of progress. Many new buildings are under construction, both commercial and residential. There was a new city park being developed just across the street from our hotel. Every day we would see cars decorated with flowers passing by and honking—inside were newlyweds wearing their wedding finery. In the afternoon the children would be walking home in small groups all wearing their school uniforms. Everyone seemed to be carrying a cell phone.
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The first morning of class we were each driven to our assigned hospitals. Otto was dropped off at the critical care hospital, Deanna at the pediatric hospital, and I at the maternity hospital. At first glance the hospital buildings appeared very nice, definitely not indicative of a developing country. However, when you go beyond the superficial, there is a glaring discrepancy between the physical atmosphere and the quality of health care. Many patients die daily in Iraq from very preventable causes. The high mortality rate is partly because of an inability to obtain very common medications and blood products, lack of functioning equipment and the knowledge of how to use it, and poor access to current educational materials and training. Interestingly enough, the reasons I just mentioned are all the result of an even larger problem, and that is the lack of a good organizational structure. We were told by several that there is plenty of money for things needed, but there is just no process or plan for how to obtain monies or materials.
One of the first things that I did was to evaluate at what level the nurses practiced. I discovered that the nurses, even though they go through three years of training, are not allowed to take vital signs or to do nursing assessments. They do not have any background in anatomy and physiology, but are then expected to perform highly specialized skills such as delivering babies, inserting chest tubes, and intubating patients for anesthesia. Nurses, prior to being trained by us, did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They would call for a doctor to come if a patient was unresponsive, and then watch the physician perform CPR. There were so many things that needed to be addressed that we just had to start from square one and cover many of the basics with these “experienced” nurses.
Throughout my four weeks there I was able to enjoy many positive interactions with my interpreter and nursing students. I taught maternity care at the only maternity hospital in the city. My interpreter, Dr. Mariam Baker, was a young progressive woman. She spoke very good English and had a passion for learning and teaching. As we got to know each other better, Dr. Mariam began to share with me the different intricacies of the Kurdish culture. She also shared with me old wives’ tales and would laugh because some people still put a lot of stock in them.
I learned of female circumcision still practiced out in the more isolated villages. I also learned that parents would bring in a daughter after a fall off of a bike or a car accident to have the doctors verify that the girl’s hymen was still intact, and request a formal document stating the fact. This was to ensure that their daughter would still be acceptable for marriage. Dr. Mariam shared with me that on several occasions she had lied when a young woman had been brought in prior to her wedding to be examined, so that the bride would not be rejected by her fiancé and killed by her family. 
Every day we saw the cars of newlyweds driving by, and this prompted me to ask questions about the whole process. Some marriages are still arranged by the family, but there is a move toward people choosing their own spouses. It was interesting to discover that there is a practice of a prenuptial agreement. When a man asks a woman’s hand in marriage, she will tell him how much gold he will be required to pay in order to marry her. If the man agrees to the amount, he will then present the bride with a portion of the gold at the wedding, with a promise of the rest if he decides to divorce her. This would also be the settlement of the divorce, and he is bound to pay it. Only the man can choose to divorce, and only the man is able to remarry. There also seems to be an unwritten caste system that says that people in certain professions, education levels, or classes can marry someone only in their class or level.
On the point of religion, it seems that the followers of Islam are very similar to Christians in the area of having various commitment levels to their religion. A large majority of Muslims rarely, if ever, go to the mosque to pray. There are Muslims who faithfully keep Ramadan by fasting the entire month, but otherwise, do nothing else. There are Muslims who go to the mosque every Friday, and study the Koran. And there are the more pious Muslims who stop each day, wherever they are, when they hear the call to prayer being blasted over the city minarets, place their prayer rug on the ground, and kneel facing Mecca for their prayer. There also appear to be about as many different types of Islamic sects as there are denominations of Christianity, each with its own emphasis. The most interesting conversation I had on religion while I was in Suleymaniyah was with a man by the name of Herish.
Herish is an employee of our in-country host and a well-educated man. He fluently speaks English, Arabic, and Kurdish, and speaks some German and Japanese. Herish worked for the U.N. on a couple of different occasions as an interpreter.
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At lunch one day I asked Herish if he was Muslim. He replied, “I am a Muslim on paper only.” I asked him what he meant by that, and he said that when he was born, his parents signed his name to a document claiming him to be a Muslim. Herish stated that he had read the Koran and the Bible but that he does not subscribe to any religion. We spoke at great length about religion, as Herish is very well read on the subject, but has no real opinion toward Islam or Christianity. The most revealing thing that he said was, “If a person were to read the Koran and follow the Five Pillars of Islam as they are written, they would be just like Osama bin Laden.” I wasn’t sure that I had heard him correctly, so I asked him to reiterate, and he said the same thing. I didn’t really know what to say for a few seconds.
I did not meet any radical Muslims while in Iraq, nor did I meet any Iraqi Christians. It is said that there are about a dozen Christian families living in the populace of Suleymaniyah. These dozen or so families belong to two different churches, a Chaldean Catholic church and an Armenian Christian church. Some of the other Kurdish cities are known to have larger populations of Christians living there. Dr. Mariam told me that these Christians have peacefully coexisted with the Muslim community for many years. The Kurdish people that we were working in the hospitals with knew that ours was a Christian organization and that the three of us were Christians. We did not perceive any hostility toward our religious preference, and bringing our Bibles into the country was a nonissue when we crossed the border into Iraq.
As our medical mission drew to a close, we had an opportunity to visit with a group of U.S. soldiers in the parking lot of a supermarket. It was a secure area, and the soldiers were taking a short pause in the realities of war. These men were stationed down in Mosul, and they were telling us of the rigors of daily life and death. They were also sharing with us their frustration at the media and the negativity being portrayed on the news. One soldier named Deal said, “Why don’t they report about the people who come up to us every day to shake our hands and thank us for being here? Or how the kids love to hang out with us? Why doesn’t the news media show all of the good things that we are doing here?” Another soldier, Weber, said, “The news makes it sound as if all the soldiers here are bad, when in reality it is just a few bad ones.” It seemed that our visit with them was a short reprieve from the harshness of the reality they were living. At the end of our conversation I proudly gave each of them a big hug and thanked them for their service and told them that they would be in my prayers.
As I sit in my comfortable home, I can’t help being thankful to be an American and live in the United States. I am immensely grateful for the quality of health care available here and the competence of our physicians. I am thrilled to be a woman in this great country, and know without a doubt that I am an equal and have the same rights and opportunities as the next person. I am grateful that I can be a Christian or any other religion I might choose ... and not just “on paper only.” Finally, I am thankful for men and women who are dedicated to helping protect our freedoms while putting their lives on the front lines.
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Brenda Maldonado is a medical professional living in Seattle, Washington.
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Editor’s note: I met Brenda by “chance” on a flight back to the East Coast earlier this year. I had been in Canada for a weekend speaking appointment and had missed my late-night connection through Seattle. The next morning I managed to get a seat on the first flight out to Washington Dulles airport. Just before we pushed back from the gate a woman came on board and sat next to me. ( I later found out she had been reassigned that seat at the last minute.) I said hello and little else till the breakfast service began. At that point the flight attendant made much of her and talked at length about seeing her on television the previous day, then introduced Brenda Maldonado to me as “a celebrity.” Brenda, it turned out, was beginning an eight-week odyssey to northern Iraq as part of a medical team from Washington State. Their assignment was to educate and advise Iraqi health-care providers. Brenda is a caring person of faith—a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—dedicated to witnessing in a practical way. She had not even told any church people outside her own congregation of the adventure, but she saw it as a way to project her faith values through a caring ministry. Naturally, I asked her to report to Liberty on what she found and to comment on the religious freedoms or the lack thereof that she might encounter. While she found the situation in northern Iraq much more stable, forces are at work throughout Iraq to pit religion against religion.
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