Kim Schultz takes audiences on a journey to experience life as an Iraqi refugee.

“How could one person summarize so much pain, pride, traumas, love and suffering like an Iraqi refugee while she is, in fact, not an Iraqi refugee herself?” asked Ibrahim, an Iraqi refugee, after attending a reading by Kim Schultz of the play to come out of Intersections’ Iraqi Voices Amplification Project. “As a refugee myself, I gave up to the fact that no one can hold the complexity of the crisis, it’s so complicated and different. Yet I was wrong. In this event, I was captured from the first word until the end. It was brilliant.”

Those were the sentiments echoed after Intersections held the first public reading of No Place Called Home, a new play written and performed by IVAP artist Kim Schultz and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde. More than 40 people –– including members of the NYC theater community and humanitarian aid organizations –– attended the reading, which marked the beginning of a larger collaboration with those who gathered.

The play tracks one American woman’s experience with Iraqi refugees as she accidentally falls in love with one of them. This one-woman, multimedia show with music opens this fall in a nomadic run throughout New York City. Each venue will provide unique opportunities to engage different audiences throughout the city, including the outer boroughs. There also will be opportunities to unveil other IVAP elements — dance, photo exhibits and film — as events are scheduled in conjunction with the play.

No Place Called Home is a compelling vehicle for American audiences to journey to meet Iraqi refugees without having to leave NYC. After Monday night’s reading, there is no doubt that it will be a strong motivator for people to take action to support Iraqis. Internationally known journalist Mona Eltahawy exclaimed in an e-mail after the reading, “Kim did a great job of acting as our eyes and ears to the refugees she met. She both humanized them, but just as importantly, clearly delineated the horror of their situation. It’s essential that more Americans get to hear an American retell those stories to them. It was a very cathartic experience for me –– it felt like a punch to the heart, but also inspired me and filled me with resolve.”

The play will open in New York City in early October. More details about the nomadic run of No Place Called Home are coming soon!

Monday was the deadliest day in Iraq this year. A series of coordinated attacks across the country killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds more.  The attacks began shortly after 5 am and continued throughout the day in over 10 cities, including: Falluja, Samarra, Tarmiya, Suwyra, Mahmudiya, Basra, Hilla, Baghdad and at checkpoints on the border with Kurdistan.  I mention the cities names because it’s all too easy to forget that these are neighborhoods where people live, go to work, go to school and try to go about their lives in the midst of war.

The violence in Iraq continues. Yesterday a body-bomb exploded in northwest Baghdad, killing 3 people and wounding 23 more. This morning a car bomb exploded in Sadr City, killing 9 and wounding others, which was followed later in the afternoon by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

The significance of these events, in light of continued lack of a clear winner of the March 7^th parliamentary elections in Iraq, cannot be overstated.  With the US scheduled to draw down troops from about 94,000 today to 50,000 by Sept. 1^st, questions need to be asked as to effects of this plan on the Iraqis we leave behind.

This month, The List Project released a new report, Tragedy on the Horizon, which details what will happen to our Iraqi allies if we do not take them with us when we leave. The report urges America to learn from the bloody lessons of our past and to answer our moral imperative not to abandon those who have helped us. America can initiate plans for a Guam Option, a not-unprecedented solution which airlifts Iraqi allies to Guam for processing. Our coalition allies have provided evacuations for their Iraqi employees and we should plan to do the same.  Now is the time to sign the petition and send this report on to your representatives for their consideration and action.

But what about the Iraqis who have not worked with us? The 2.2 million who have fled their country to seek refuge in surrounding nations or those who have remained at home and faced the consequences? Their future is still uncertain. But what is certain is that we must not forget about their struggles. And we must not forget that we can do small things to make a difference.

This week, I’m am encouraging everyone to take a minute to sign the petition and if you are in New York City, come see  an art exhibit by Iraqi artists now living in Damascus that was opened last week by Common Humanity, an NGO based here in New York City. The exhibit runs through May 29^th at the Second Presbyterian Church. The sale of these paintings goes to support Iraqi artists living in Syria. Together, we can make a difference.

The U.S. Helsinki Commission and CityDance Ensemble present:
Still Waiting, Still Suffering: A dance performance and discussion about Iraqi refugees

Tuesday, Dec. 8th, 4-5:30 PM (doors open at 3PM)
U.S. Capitol Visitor Center – Main Auditorium
FREE and open to the Public.

The IVAP team included members of the CityDance Ensemble, and will be presenting an original work this week, based on its experiences with refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The event is presented by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, CityDance, and Intersections. After the performance, the artists will join the U.S. Helsinki Commission and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for a Q/A session.

Speakers include:

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Chairman
Representative Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), Co-Chairman
Dr. Michel Gabaudan, UNHCR Representative for the United States and the Caribbean
Paul Gordon Emerson, CityDance Ensemble Artistic Director & Co-Founder, and members of the Company

And On Saturday:
Join IVAP team members Paul Gordon Emerson and Kathryn Pilkington in the performance Wishes of the Sailor, a collaborative work based on their experiences working with the Iraqi refugee community in the Middle East as part of Intersections IVAP team.

Saturday, Dec. 5th, 5 PM
Room 405, Music Center at Strathmore
5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD

To order tickets for the Saturday show, visit www.strathmore.org

It’s been almost a month since I boarded a plane in Damascus and headed for home after spending three weeks in the Middle East talking to Iraqi refugees. Back in New York, life caries on very much as it did before I left. The city movesat a lightening pace. Storefront windows get ready for the holidays. My friends call and ask me to the movies. It’s so easy to forget there is a war going on.

HadaYet I find I can’t get Hada* face out of my mind. A former English teacher in Baghdad and now single mother of four children, Hada’s been living in Damascus for three years. Her husband was injured in a car bombing back in Iraq that left half his face paralyzed, causing the family to flee to Syria to seek medical treatment and a safe place for him to recover.

About a year later, they got word that his mother was very ill and so her husband decided to go back to Iraq to see if he could help his mother or bring her with him back to Syria. It’s been over a year, and Hada’s had no news of her husband. All she knows is he disappeared somewhere on the road, on his way to Baghdad. She’s called relatives, police stations, hospitals…no one has any news.

What makes this story even more tragic was that six months after her husband went missing, her case came up for resettlement to Sweden with UNHCR. However, Hada wasn’t ready to give up hope that maybe her husband had only been arrested and might turn up, and worried that he would never find them if they moved to Sweden, she declined.

And now she waits for their case to come up again, this time acknowledging that if the offer comes to resettle, she’ll have to take it. She’s quietly terrified about how she’ll raise her children without a father and how she will manage everything alone, in a strange country.

She said, “I used to pretend to call their father on the phone and then say, ‘I’m on the phone right now with your father, and he says you better be good and listen to your mother!’” In the end, she knew she had to tell them. And now she knows that she must accept that her husband is gone forever, pick up the pieces of her life and move forward the best she can, one day at a time.

And then there is Billy Spencer, a 19 year old Marine from Ohio who was recently killed in Iraq. In a segment on The Today Show this morning, Billy’s parents talked about how incredibly proud they were of their son and how surprised they were to find out he had been making video journals of most of his time over there.

Through Billy’s videos, they were able to share their son’s final months and see first-hand what life on the front lines in Iraq is really like. They watched Billy talk to them from inside a tank, behind bullet proof glass. They also watched their son play with Iraqi children and remembered how Billy was always the first to reach out with a helping hand. Billy’s father said the videos allowed him to watch his boy turn into a man in front of his eyes. And in the end, the Spencer’s know that they must accept that their son is gone forever, pick up the pieces of their life and move forward the best they can, one day at a time.

These are the costs of war. I’m humbled by the bravery of people like Billy and Hada, who share their stories. I’m thankful for the many organizations that work hard to keep the war in America’s consciousness, to help our soldiers when they come home and to help Iraqis rebuild their lives. I know we have a lot more work to do.

*name has been changed.