First Impressions

Our day started in my old neighborhood, Jabbal Amman, near doar talat. Amman is built on a series of hills (jabbal) and neighborhoods often follow the contours of the hills. Eight traffic circles have been constructed along the hill called Jabbal Amman (four of them in the expansion of the city that has taken place since 2003, I believe) and people use the circles to delineate different neighborhoods. Doar talat is the third circle. It's a calm, fairly green area dominated by The Royal, an enormous cylindrical hotel built by an Iraqi man who became rich off the oil for food program during Saddam's era.

Jabbal Amman, doar talat is not a particularly Iraqi neighborhood- but it is home to several of the city's hospitals and clinics, and one, the Khaldi hospital, treats Iraqis who were badly injured while working for the U.S. Many of them were interpreters for the US military, usually men in their twenties injured in IED attacks or assassination attempts. In January, when I last visited Khaldi, the Iraqi patients were all bitterly disappointed with the U.S. embassy in Amman for ignoring their pleas for admission to the US refugee program and for refusing to help them gain legal status in Jordan.

We met with the public affairs manager of the hospital- a very sweet man who helped me arrange permission for CBS to film in the hospital on my last visit. He told us that since then, the hospital had been overwhelmed with requests- from British and French news stations as well as American media- and that eventually, many of the patients had been moved to hospitals in different parts of the city.

I was surprised by this information- and to be honest I believe there is a somewhat more complicated reason why the hospital decided to move this particular group of patients. I asked after several of my friends, but the P.A did not know where they were anymore.

We stopped by the outpatient residence next door to the hospital, which also has an excellent place for lunch. I had gotten to know the Iraqis at Khaladi after one of them held the door for me as I came in for lunch one day. Yesterday, seven months later, I caught sight of this same young man sitting in the lobby across from us. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds and then he said my name in disbelief.

His news was good- better than good. About the same time the CBS report aired, someone started to pay attention to his case. He'd been interviwed by the UNHCR, then by the IOM twice. He was admitted into the US refugee program, and as far as I could tell, going through the last steps of the security clearance process. He pointed to another one of the terps who was sitting at the computer. "He's going to the States on the 30th" he said. "Can you believe it"?

Several of the other patients at Khaladi were on their way to the US. It sounded like for most, life had become infinitely more hopeful. Only one rather painful story cut the good news. One young man (I'll call him Andy, a nickname he was given by the American) had returned to Baghdad. I was pretty shocked- Andy had suffered from far more severe injuries than any of the others I knew. When I met him, he was in a hospital bed, sick with worry over his mother and two younger brothers, who were surviving alone in Baghdad. Andy's neighbors had learned he was working for the US troops, and he believed his family would face retaliation for his work. He had returned to Iraq to be with them.

But after just one day spent in meetings with several Iraqis and two local NGOs, my impression is that at least a few things have changed for the better in Amman. People here now admit there is a refugee crisis. Strange as that sounds, that is progress- eight months ago, Jordan was still in denial. And a door to the US has been cracked open, if only for a very select group of people.

The vast majority of the refugees here still have no path to a stable long term future. I'm still bitterly disappointed that the USRAP has only committed to helping 7,000 people, and that we won't meet that goal this year. But I'm grateful and relieved, that someone is finally paying attention to the interpreters at Khaldi.

Arrival

My first night in Amman has been peaceful. I am staying in Hashem Shemaly with Iraqi friends. Although they fled the war, they do not like to be called refugees- and I can understand why. It's a bleak word.

When my friend picked me and Habib up at the airport today he noticed twenty or so Iraqis who had just made it through passport control. The reader board above baggage claim listed an afternoon Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad. On my last trip to Amman, about seven months ago, I learned from credible sources that sometimes Iraqis were not even allowed to disembark from the Iraqi Airways planes. These flights often returned to Baghdad full of refugees who had been turned away. So it was interesting to learn that these days Jordan might be admitting some new Iraqis - I will keep my ears open for more on this. It's possible that the twenty Iraqis we noticed had diplomatic passports, or were just in town for business.

After dinner my friends and I sat out on the patio and watched their kids play. The son started school last Sunday, in part thanks to a decision from the Jordanian government to allow Iraqi kids into public school. Their daughter, the youngest, should be in kindergarten but she refuses do go. She does not like to be separated from her mother.

I remember speaking to this family a little more than a year ago, when they were in Baghdad. It was the last day of the school year, and the parents were relieved the kids were going to be cooped up at home for the summer months. Sending the children off to school in the morning and waiting each evening for their safe return was torment.

We stayed on the patio until midnight, speculating about what life could be like in America for this family, which has applied to the refugee program. I told the mother that I ride a bike to work, and her face lit up. She's looking forward to riding a bike in the U.S.