While embedded with the 172nd Stryker Brigade, reporter Margaret Friedenauer kept a Web log of her observations. This item was filed Dec. 27, 2005.
I made some girlfriends today.
I have met several women soldiers since arriving, but meeting local women is a little more difficult. When visiting Iraqi homes with U.S. soldiers, the men of the house usually do the talking while the women either sit to the side quietly or disappear elsewhere in the house.
But thanks to Lt. Col. Scott Wuestner, I broke that barrier today. With gusto.
I noticed a group of women sitting in a tent at the transfer of power ceremony today. There were only about a dozen among hundreds of men and they were all sitting together, apart from the men. I asked the colonel about them and he promptly walked me over to them with his interpreter.
It was like I suddenly had a dozen mothers and sisters. Most of them wore colorful head scarves, sometimes with matching eye shadow. Kurdish women are a little more liberated in their dress and expression but I felt like I towered over them and outweighed them, mostly due to my big Kevlar vest.
They told me they were with a local Kurdish women’s group that works to provide women with more skills, opportunities and education.
I asked how conditions are for women in their area right now. They said they are better than before the U.S. arrived three years ago, mainly because it is written in law now that husbands can no longer “bite” their wives. The interpreter and I haggled about this translation for a few minutes and I still wonder if we got it right. But the gist is, apparently, men are now forbidden by law to hurt their wife or wives.
I joined them later for lunch where they were again secluded from the men, but this time it was just us; no men around, no translator. Some of the younger women, in their early 20s, were able to speak a little English. They asked if I was married, and I asked them. They gave a stern “no” and we all laughed and agreed its not bad to stay single when you’re young. Even the older women agreed.
These women aren’t complaining about their situations. One of them said she has an old husband who has other wives and too many children. But she is not advocating for herself; she is trying to create more opportunity for her daughters. She wants opportunities for her older ones, who she is trying to send to Mosul University and keep unmarried for at least awhile, and her younger daughter who she hopes will grow up to become whatever she’s wants to be–an engineer, doctor or even a journalist, she said with a wink and a hug.