Threats of Death Drive Pharmacist from Iraq

Karen Button

Dina is pharmacist from al-Jamia district in Baghdad where she owned a pharmacy and lived with her husband and their two children. "In the past, we lived in safety," she tells me. "I have two beautiful children, a special home; every day I go to work in the morning and then again in the evening. I was happy in my work, my home, in my country. There was no worry, no killing, no threats… After the Americans came, everything in my life changed... One day at 4pm I was on my way to work. I was driving when four men with guns forced me to stop. The pulled me from my car and began beating me heavily with their guns. They beat me on the head and on my shoulders. They told me, 'if you don’t leavefrom Iraq, we will kill your children and your husband. You’re a pharmacist and all of you, doctors, chemists, pharmacists, you all must leave Iraq!’ "I cried every day thinking about what to do. I did not want to leave Iraq, but I was worried about my children and my husband. I’m a pharmacist; my husband is a chemist and a Sunni man. If my husband walked in the street and the government [security forces] took him for any reason, he would be killed for sure since the government forces are Shiite." (...) "So, we had to leave Baghdad" (...) "You know, the Americans said 'we come to liberate you from Saddam,’ but instead they destroyed Iraq. When they killed Saddam we lost more hope. All the Iraqi people would wish the time would turn back, even for onemoment to when Saddam was in power, just to feel, even for that moment, what life was like"...

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