As we start our time in Syria, one of the things that is heavy on my mind is the challenge of trying to draw attention to the problems of a people who are in hiding. Many of the Iraqis we meet with do not want their real names used, nor their faces shown in any of the photos or videos. Their concerns are justified and valid, many are still facing persecution and all are living in their host countries illegally. It is a challenge we have been dealing with from day one, and I’ve started to realize that sometimes some of the most interesting things to come out of the interviews happen when I ask the question, “Can we show your face?”

Most of the time the answer is either “Mafi Meshkla” which means “no problem”, or a shy “la, la, la” which means “no, no, no.” However, once in awhile this question sets off an extremely emotional response. Some people get up and leave the room. Sometimes a heated debate breaks out among the family members, with people arguing both sides. These conversations almost never get translated word for word. Our translators usually let the argument go on a moment and then just fill us in on their final decision, but sometimes they do translate it and what gets said is always enlightening. Here are some of the most memorable comments I’ve heard to date:

A husband and wife are arguing. He doesn’t want his face shown, but says his wife and children should agree to be photographed. This makes the wife nervous and she says she doesn’t want to be photographed and he says to her, “what are you afraid of, your brothers dead already!?!” (Needless to say, we did not photograph the wife).

A young mother now raises her five children alone after her husband disappeared a year ago when he had to return to Iraq to help his sick and dying mother. She has had no news of her husband in over a year and has no idea if he is dead or alive. She spoke a lot about the difficulty for her to be the head of the household without her husband who used to make a lot of the decisions. When we asked if we could take pictures she said, “I will ask my daughters, they share my life now.”  Her daughters are preteens.

We interviewed a survivor of torture and asked if we could photograph his face as well as his injuries. He responded,
“You can take my picture and show it to the Prime Minister of Iraq, we can only die once and I died a long time ago.”

This afternoon we spoke with a single mom who used to be a professor at a university in Iraq. She has a PhD and lived a very good life before the war and now lives in a one bedroom apartment with her daughter. When asked if we could take her pictures, she refused, but not for the usual concerns about safety. At the question of wither or not we could show her face she broke into tears and responded, “I used to be so beautiful. I saw my cousin last month after many years, and he didn’t even recognize me. I don’t want you to take my picture because this is not me. I don’t know this face.”