Ashraf & Dina

Ashraf and Dina were husband and wife, the first interpreters that we hired. Bill hired them even before we were completely set up in the IAC. Ashraf was a Sunni Muslim and worked in the Saddam regime, but wasn’t a Baath Party member. His wife Dina was Kurdish. She was attractive, but a little shy. They spent much of the first 10 days or so sitting around waiting for us to find something for them to do. Pretty innocuous. Then one day, two of my guys saw Ashraf hitting Dina in the parking lot of the Convention Center. He put a chokehold on her and started to strangle her. Right there in the parking lot. So my guys pulled him off of her and took her to a Special Forces safe house. The guys there put her up in a small building on their grounds. In the US, no big deal right? The woman calls a shelter or her relatives and they take it from there. Charges may be pressed against the husband. But this is Iraq. There was a minor outcry that rang up and down Baghdad over the next 48 hours. We had done an extremely dishonorable thing! Coming between a husband and his discipline of his wife is a no-no. Taboo, and none of our business. Both Ashraf’s and Dina’s mothers came to our house and pleaded for her return, even if she didn’t want to go. We relented (because we had to – a small firestorm would have erupted. This was before the Green Zone had been established) and Dina’s mother talked her back to her husband’s house. After all, it looked bad on Dina’s family if they allowed this to continue. I heard later that Dina left Ashraf and that both of them are trying to get to the States. Muslim Culture 101.