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Driven by War to a No Man's Land in Jordan
Palestinians Ikhlas Aziz, left, and sister-in-law Aida Qadsiya are refugees in Jordan. In 2003, they fled Iraq, the family's refuge from Arab-Israeli war.
(By Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)
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"They have been systematically brutalized," said Anita Raman, a reporting officer with UNHCR in Amman.
"You kill a Palestinian, and what is the consequence?" she added.
Virtually everyone in the Ruweished camp knows someone who was killed in Baghdad. Essam Eissa, a 49-year-old veterinarian, sat in his tent underneath a poster for Royal Jordanian Airlines. "Change is in the air," it read. He remembered when Mahmoud Bakiza left the camp and returned to Baghdad in 2004. The 24-year-old was killed 10 days later in the Baghdad neighborhood of Baya. Mohammed Ziab, sitting in his tent and wheezing in the sandstorm, remembered another camp resident who returned to Iraq in 2003.
"I heard he was killed two days later," Ziab said.
In Abdel-Rahim's tent, his wife recalled the fate of her brother, Marwan Lutfi. Members of a Shiite militia, wearing police uniforms, entered his tailor shop on Baghdad's storied Rashid Street in April 2006, she said. His co-workers told her that the militiamen asked him to come with them for 15 minutes. "He walked with them," she said. For a moment, she was silent, tears welling in her eyes. "He never returned."
Four days later, her brother's body was found in the street, covered in acid burns, she said. He had been shot 21 times.
"My mother couldn't look at the body," she said. "Only the gravediggers did."
"I have to endure the circumstances here, but at least it's not Baghdad," Abdel-Rahim said, nodding.
As he spoke, his brother, Khalid, turned angry. It was the bravado of desperation. "I'd forget anything that's called Arab, anything that's called Islam, if I could find a place, anyplace in the world, for my children, with a safe future!" he shouted.
The others were taken aback by what they considered his blasphemy.
His brother wagged his finger.
"There is no god but God," his wife yelled.
