Anson C. Smith, Public Relations Coordinator
Housatonic Community College
900 Lafayette Blvd.
Bridgeport, CT 06604
Tel: 203-332-5229, Fax: 203-332-5247
E-mail: asmith@hcc.commnet.edu
Surviving in Iraq, Thriving in U.S.
LINDA CONNER LAMBECK lclambeck@ctpost.com
Connecticut Post Online
Gazi Hassan, 40, was born on July 1, but his family celebrates his birthday on March 11.
That's the day in 1991, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, that the doors of one of Saddam Hussein's many jails in the Northern Kurdistan region of Iraq were broken open.
Hassan, a Kurdish journalist now living in Fairfield, stepped out and got a second chance at life. He used that chance to pick up where he left off — writing about freedom with an even stronger passion — in Kurdish, Arabic and now English.
"Jail was a very good school for me," Hassan said in an interview at Housatonic Community College, where he studies journalism when he can scrape together the money for tuition. "It made me more powerful inside myself. I learn in a short time how people live like animals, think like animals, how people don't respect each other."
Hassan works full time at a Fairfield 7-Eleven store. It helps support his family. His wife, Sanaa, works at Hall Neighborhood House. She, too, takes courses at Housatonic.
Their children, 8 and 6, who go to school in Fairfield, have no idea how different their lives are from the childhoods of Sanaa and Gazi Hassan.
Hassan grew up in Elinjagh, near Arbil in Northern Iraq. He was in high school before he learned of his Kurdish history or background.
In 1988, he enrolled in the University of Baghdad to study languages. He began writing for a Kurdish newspaper as a way to practice the language.
When he returned home, he joined a political party and found a new purpose for his writing.
The party, critical of Saddam's regime, published an underground newspaper that advised locals how to avoid poison gas attacks and resist government control. The paper had gotten out seven or eight hand-delivered editions when the government stopped it in late 1990.
Hassan was imprisoned for four months. It seemed like a lifetime. "It wasn't like a regular jail here. It was very, very bad," he said.
His cell was so small he had to sleep squatting. His eyes were kept blindfolded. It was cold. There was no electricity, no water. His one meal a day was onion soup and sometimes a small piece of black bread. For four months, he couldn't shower. He had no visitors. His family didn't know where he was.
Guards were free to do whatever they wanted to prisoners. He was frequently kicked and made to sign things he couldn't read. Twice, he was given electric shocks with wires attached to his ear lobes.
He refused to talk to his interrogators and was sure he was going to be killed there, or transferred to another prison, where there would be more torture, then death.
"You can't believe you can come out and live again," he said. "I did not do anything wrong. I not kill anyone. I never touch anyone in my life."
In 1991, the Gulf War came and the Kurdish people wrenched their land free of Saddam's control. In the chaos, the doors to the jails were opened. Prisoners, Hassan included, just ran.
Hassan ran home. His house was empty. His family — five sisters, four brothers and his mother — was out looking for him.
After the war, Kurdistan remained part of Iraq but was largely beyond Saddam's reach. Hassan returned to journalism. Throughout the decade, he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Kurdistan, giving witness to a slowly opening culture.
One weekly was Alay Azazi, which means "freedom flag." A magazine he helped produce was Jilemo, which translates to the red part of a flame.
His main topics were politics and Kurdistan's sour economy. After Saddam was driven out, many people were out of work and had to sell their homes. Prices of goods were very high.
"I wrote articles about what we need to make economy better for farmers," he said.
The paper enjoyed freedom, by Kurdish standards, but writers were ever mindful of upsetting political or religious factions, Hassan said.
Even today, free speech and equal rights are somewhat radical concepts in Kurdistan, which is heavily influenced by Islamic traditions, he added.
Shortly after Hassan's children were born, the family crossed the border into Syria on travel visas. From there they applied to immigrate to the United States. In 2001, they were accepted and landed in Connecticut.
Hassan started at Housatonic in 2002 to study English and learn more about freedom of the press. He has written for Horizon, the college's student-run newspaper.
Steve Mark, an English professor at Housatonic and advisor for Horizon, called Hassan an incredibly committed student.
"English doesn't come to him easily. It takes a lot of effort. We would spend hours in my office going through an article, looking at sentence structure. Trying to figure out how to best say what he wanted to say," Mark said.
Hassan has written about the plight of women in the Middle East, including honor killings. He hopes his articles help American students learn about Kurdish people.
Mark said Hassan's other mission seems to be to share the journalistic techniques he's learning with colleagues back home so an Iraqi free press can tell people what they need to know.
Besides his job at 7-Eleven, Hassan writes for online journals for Kurdish people curious about life in America.
He still has family in Elinjagh. The village has no electricity, but since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, residents of Elinjagh now have cell phones, enabling Hassan to speak frequently with a brother there.
"People very happy. It's not perfect but there is a good future American media never talks about," he said. "America did a very great job over there."
Hassan would like to return to Kurdistan once he is a full U.S. citizen. He has nothing but praise for the job America has done in Iraq.
Someday, he also plans to write a book about his experiences in Iraq.
"For me, it was very worth it because we need freedom," he said