There is a plastic container of hummus in the refrigerator this morning, the remains of our Middle Eastern dinner last night.
Iman is in her late 30s. She made dinner for me, my partner and a close friend. Last year Iman worked for the U.S. State Department in Baghdad. She will be returning soon. Her Arabic is perfect, having grown up in a Mediterranean Arab country.
Iman was on a team that spent four months visiting the sites of mass graves that were being opened up. She was recording the available information and interviewing the many people who came to the sites to look for family members. One site had 15,000 people buried alive in it.
Iman relates the story of a BBC crew with a haughty interviewer at a mass grave who tried to interview a frenzied woman who was looking for the remains of her six sons. Iman, who has a slight British accent, imitates the BBC interviewer who said in a slow heavy drawl: “I’m so sorry.”
Iman opened a Human Rights Office and recorded the descriptions of pain, suffering and torture of the people who came to her office. She couldn’t sleep at night. People who had their hands and legs cut off were common.