February 5, 2003

Yesterday, our delegation began the journey from Amman, Jordan to Baghdad in Iraq. As we were waiting at the border to leave one country and enter another, I began thinking about what borders were really about. My mind zeroed in on a question by Mabel Brunk, one of our team members. Mabel said, "I wonder how high borders are? Do they go above the ozone layer?" Well, if we can believe our astronauts, they don't reach even that far. Their oft-times sacred experience of seeing the earth from outer space is that there seem to be no borders at all. Then I began thinking about what the world would be like if there were no borders. We wouldn't have to cross them and wait in long lines and present our passports numerous times and pay taxes and fees. The merchants on one side of a border would not have to pay tariffs to sell their merchandise on the other side. We wouldn't need armies to defend them. We wouldn't have enemies on the other side. We wouldn't have to bomb people on the other side to keep them from getting too powerful or because we didn't like their government. We wouldn't have people surrounded by a border and then call them part of the "axis of evil". Hmm! Perhaps it sounds naïve and simplistic to consider a world without borders, but I think I'll keep thinking, imagining and hoping.

That being said, our delegation did cross a border yesterday. We had all arrived in Amman by late Sunday evening, February 2 or early Monday morning, February 3, from the U.S., Canada, Scotland and The Netherlands. Our first day in Amman was filled with meetings, orientation and a bit of exploring around the neighborhood. At 6:30 p.m. several of our delegation went to the Iraqi embassy and found that only part of our group had been given visas. It was determined that it was only a technological glitch; one page of names had failed to be faxed from Baghdad. So, in the morning another group from the delegation made their way to the embassy and all visas were issued.

Soon we were meeting in our hotel lobby with luggage and huge smiles on our faces, ready to do what we had come for. Someone there commented that he'd never seen a group of people so happy to be going to Iraq. Our bus was waiting and by 10:30 we were settled and ready to move. The trip began rather quietly as I began to realize just where we were going and all of the implications that might mean. We stopped along the highway for delicious kabobs and arrived at the Jordanian border around 6:30 p.m. And yes, it is true; you do have to show your passport and visa many times, first at the Jordanian check point and then as you go into Iraq. The whole process took us almost three hours, and then we were back on the road with an arrival in Baghdad around 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. Needless to say, we fell into our beds rather quickly at our hotel. The morning came all too fast, but after breakfast, we met for worship and some orientation with Iraq Peace Teams, a group of which CPT is a part. Then followed a walking tour of the neighborhood, checking out local stores and restaurants and just getting a feel for the city.

I began to wonder what it must be like to live here, with the threat of imminent war and the possibility that bombs might drop any day. Next we went to the Amariyah Shelter, the place where on February 13, 1991, at 4 a.m. an American bomber dropped two bombs during the Gulf war and 408 women and children died instantaneously. It is now being maintained as a museum, a memorial to the horror that war really is. We were told by our guide, Entisar, that there are thirty-three other bomb shelters just like this one throughout the city, but that if another war breaks out, people will be too frightened to enter them. Where will they go?

The people I saw and talked with today seem a lot like me. Yes, their skin may be a bit different color, their cultural customs unlike mine and their language undecipherable to me, but somehow I was able to look at them and see a sister and a brother with the same hopes and desires and fears that I have. Just because they are on the other side of a border, are they the enemy?

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