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A Businessman Without An Officea
Janet McGiffin / August 2008
Hassan (not his real name) is in his late fifties, energetic, engaging and eloquent. “I am, in general, a businessman,” he says. He survives in Cairo using his skills and instincts for doing business via the internet and travelling to nearby countries to give lectures, training courses, and continue business relationships.
Hassan is unique in that he has a valid visitor’s visa to the US backed by a Security Clearance, thanks to a lifetime of doing business in Iraq with foreign companies and especially with Americans. In 2003, he became a “principal member” at the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (A-ICCI). “I headed the Trade and Investments Committee and also the Committee of Revision of the Laws after the war. I made match meetings between Iraqis and Americans. They were exchanging ideas and vision about democracy, relationship, business, glaobalization, market values, which ways Iraq is going to be transferred from the dictator era to a democracy era. I was the group leader of many of these teams operating in the Green Zone in Iraq. At the same time, I established my business group. I had more than 12 businesses in Iraq. I executed many contracts from America to Iraq as the American companies.” When Negroponte came to Iraq, his deputies headed the group that met the first (I-ACCI) business delegation visiting the States within March/April 2005.
“The Arab countries say that we are traitors to our country, but it is just the opposite. Our opinion is that socially, culturally, politically, that we have to cooperate all together, with the Americans, the Europeans, to rebuild our country again after this bloody war. We don’t want to see Americans being killed in Iraq. We don’t want to see our children killed.” Hassan’s life with foreigners began thirty five years ago as a marketing officer at the Austrian Embassy. Then he was drafted into the Iraqi army from 1978-80 and again from 1982-87, released from the Reserves in 1987. He started his own private business and “after two or three years, I was working openly with all international companies in the world. I executed many contracts between Ministry of Health of Iraq and foreign companies, including American companies—even in Saddam’s time. I have my BSC in Business Administration and Accounting, MSC in Investments Decisions, and a PhD in Strategic Management. I was a Lecturer at a few universities and colleges. But as a Lecturerer, I didn’t want to be cut off from my experience in the field.”
Hassan has two brothers and two sisters in the US. His father died there last year. He could fly to the US any time and apply for asylum. But he remains in Cairo, held by his wife, grown children, and extended family, none of whom have papers to get into the US. He sincerely believes that if he leaves them to go to the US, they might be lost, because they afraid deportation and don’t know how to navigate the difficult life of refugees in Egypt.
“I know that it is better for me to go. But I want to go with my family. My brothers and sisters are there, but if they apply for my family and me, brother to brother or sister is not less than ten to fifteen years.” His confident, rapid delivery voice gets an edge of panic. “They [the US government] have to accept us. If you analyse the problem, we were in cooperation with them when they were in Iraq. Now because of that, our people in Iraq, they are called traitors. I am talking something humanitarian. We were cooperating; we were building bridges between us and the West, with America, all the world.”
Hassan is unique among in Iraqi refugees in Cairo because he is a Chaldean- Christian/Catholic. In Iraq, it wasn’t problem until 2003. “My friends are Moslem. My business partner is Christian. In Iraq one person is Orthodox, one is Sunni, and one is Shi’a. From our childhood we all grew up together. As a people we don’t have any problem with distinctions. But the militias that are on the ground in Iraq, they are making this problem. After 2003, when sectioning started, they wanted to take the cake; they wanted it all for themselves.”
Despite Hassan’s canny ability to survive as a businessman in a foreign land, he is sensing increased pressure to leave Cairo. “Cairo is becoming for us terrible—just within these last few months. It’s not like it was before. Now, the language the Egyptians use with us is changing. I don’t know why. We had seven or eight million Egyptians living with us in Iraq for thirty years and when we came here, they remembered that and appreaciated that they had been able to work there. Now, they are seeing us with a very low opinion.”
He recalls a recent incident of an Iraqi friend who phoned, crying and saying her mother was dying. She said she hardly had the fee for the taxi and when she reached the hospital, she was charged 500 Egyptian pounds while at the same time, they charged Egyptians 100 for the same service.
“Things are going worse for us here,” he says. “The Egyptians are 80 million and we are only 150 thousand. We are not taking their bread, but we believe but that if someone comes to you, you don’t kick him out. We know that jobs for them are rare. But we are here only to rearrange our next step. We lost our country, we lost our history, and we lost the records of thirty to forty years of work performance. It’s all buried under the soil. This is what is killing us. But mostly what is killing us that we lost our homeland, our country. We should have a country to be resettled in. We have to find somewhere to go. We have to find ourselves again. We don't want to lose our only remaining thing; our growing children."
