Bullets in Envelopes Quotes

“Reem’s life was one of a lost past, a present she rejected, and a future that is up in the air, like a plane traveling between continents.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I was horrified about how to ever put the first line on the paper to tell this story, let alone finish telling it. I confess that I hate finishing stories. Stories should never end.
The book is over, but the battle for a decent life and a more tolerable world is not. The book is over, but I hope that the stories of my interlocutors will start a new dialogue, a new language, and a new way of looking at things. I hope this work will make many other works possible. So, now that this work is finished, I hope that its life shall begin.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“A long silence filled the room. There was a strong feeling of sadness and deep emotions for her and me. I could not utter a single word after that statement, so I decided to 'be with her' in my silence rather than in my words.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Most Iraqis I know from all ethnicities and backgrounds see the catastrophic US-led invasion as graphic evidence of how unjust this world is. They also know that the stakes for any so-called ‘third world’ nation aspiring to be independent from the dominating superpowers have become more challenging in the neocolonial imperialist age than ever before. Neocolonial agendas hide skillfully behind a million masks and justifications to ensure that so-called Third World countries remain in that category—that the ‘developing’ world remains in a permanent state of never really developing.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Because of the wars and devastation of the last few decades, the only way an Iraqi could be treated with dignity, whether in Iraq or elsewhere, was to hold a foreign—meaning Western—passport. A 'good' or a 'fortunate' Iraqi is almost by definition one who holds a Western passport. An Iraqi passport is paralyzing. It’s ‘suspect’ at every airport, checkpoint, or point of entry. As an Iraqi, one is unwelcome almost everywhere. One is questioned almost to death before being allowed entry to any country, and one is always welcome to exit with no questions asked. Every authority and official think they have the right to interrogate an Iraqi without a second thought. Iraqis know well that holding that useless document called an ‘Iraqi passport’ is a curse at this point in history…Most passport holders who come from nations whose people count as, using Frantz Fanon’s words, ‘the wretched of the earth’, experience different forms of discrimination and exclusion. Some experiences are harsher than others. It is all about power, or lack thereof. Your passport has power. It is not just a document that helps you pass; it can become a symbol of humiliation that prevents you from passing.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I had become irritated about my first language, my second language, my third language, and all the languages I speak. Words increasingly don’t mean what they are supposed to mean in all these languages. Languages are increasingly becoming tools for disguising ideas and reality rather than disclosing them. It suddenly crossed my mind that perhaps one day I will be forced to put every single word I write inside quotation marks. Nothing means what it’s supposed to mean. I dreamt of a world in which everyone means what they say and say what they mean.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Languages, in many ways, are living cells in cultures. They are like DNA storing traces of what happened, what is happening, and what could have or should have happened.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Taxi drivers are some of my best friends in every city I visit. I wish to write a book on my encounters with taxi drivers in the Middle East one day. They see so much. They encounter all kinds of people. They learn to interact with people of different politics, backgrounds, gender, views, feelings, and even accents and dialects. In a sense, they are exposed to people in ways that any novelist, poet, anthropologist, or journalist would love to be. They are usually some of the best guides that hold the keys to the hidden secrets, especially the ‘dirty secrets’ of the cities where they live and work.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I thought how the lives of exiled people are like being on a flight. They are up in the air, between land and sky, not knowing when and whether they will ever land somewhere…I thought how transits are like the lives of many dislocated people like myself. The storyline from my experience often goes like this: a disaster befalls the place you call ‘home.’ You leave for another place hoping it will be just a temporary wait. Sometimes, the second destination is so harsh and unforgiving that you think of it as a ‘temporary transit’ and keep looking for a ‘final’ station that can grant you at least the basic human rights with some dignity. Over time, the temporary becomes permanent. But, deep inside, your feelings, senses, and existence may not cooperate with your new permanent reality. And so, you may find yourself in a state that can be best described as ‘permanently temporary.’ You become divided and torn deep inside constantly hearing two voices: one voice tells you that it is all temporary no matter how long it takes; and a second voice tells you not to believe the first one as this is your permanent destiny.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Exile is not just the location where exiled people are today, it is also everything that happened before arriving at their current destination.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“The experiences of academics captured here show that this was done primarily through three 'cleansing methods': first, through direct death threats and assassinations of academics and professionals who were no longer wanted in post-occupation Iraq; second, by igniting sectarian violence that significantly contributed to turning Iraq from a unified, central state with strong institutions in place, into divided zones run by militias and militant groups…and third, many academics were removed/cleansed through the notorious and controversial policy of 'de-Baʿathification.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Rather than considering the Iraqi regime solely responsible for these sanctions, many exiled and displaced academics believe that the UN bears the main ethical and human responsibility for the damage the embargo caused for Iraqi people and society. Many academics saw these sanctions as the UN’s method to obtain the consent of Iraqi people to the 2003 occupation through starving and weakening the people, as well as destroying Iraq’s strong institutions and infrastructure.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Dismantling and destroying Iraqi education was not just ‘collateral damage’ from the occupation: it was part and parcel of the occupation forces’ deliberate efforts to restructure the Iraqi state, society, and identity as many testimonies in this study make clear.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Developing’ countries must be prevented from developing at all costs because, if they do, then who will the so-called “developed” world compare itself to and define itself against? If developing countries are truly allowed to develop, where will the ‘developed’ world steal its resources from? Yet, the price of preventing these countries from being truly independent from the iron fist of the superpowers is costly.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Many expats I know love so-called Third World countries. Many do not mind settling and getting married there while the locals in those countries are escaping in all directions. The reason is simple: expats are treated better than local citizens in such countries, and even better than in their own so-called industrialized countries in the 'developed' world.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Hiba S. is one of the pioneer Iraqi women academics and authors in the field of media and journalism, currently exiled in Amman. During a visit to her office in summer 2014, Hiba shared that the early days of the occupation in 2003 were the most difficult she had ever experienced. She recollected:
‘I was sitting in my garden smoking when I suddenly saw a huge American tank driving through the street. I saw a Black soldier on the top of the tank. He looked at me and did the victory sign with his fingers. Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have immediately shot myself in the head right then and there. The pain I felt upon seeing that image is indescribable. I felt as though all the years we had spent building our country, educating our students to make them better humans were gone with the wind.’
Hiba’s description carries strong feelings of loss, defeat, and humiliation. Also significant in her narrative is that the first American soldier she encountered in post-invasion Iraq was a Black soldier making the victory sign. This is perhaps one of the most ironic and paradoxical images of the occupation. A Black soldier from a historically and consistently oppressed group in American society, who, one might imagine had no choice but to join the military, coming to Iraq and making the victory sign to a humiliated Iraqi academic whose country was ravaged by war. In a way, this image is worthy of a long pause. It is an encounter of two oppressed and defeated groups of people—Iraqis and African Americans meeting as enemies in a warzone. But, if one digs deeper, are these people really 'enemies' or allies struggling against the same oppressors? Do the real enemies ever come to the battlefield? Or do they hide behind closed doors planning wars and invasions while sending other 'oppressed' and 'diverse' faces to the battlefield to fight wars on their behalf?
Hiba then recalled the early months of the occupation at the University of Baghdad where she taught. She noted that the first thing the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) tried to do was to change the curriculum Iraqi academics had designed, taught, and improved over the decades. While the Americans succeeded in doing this at the primary and high school levels, Hiba believed that they did not succeed as much at the university level. Iraqi professors knew better than to allow the 'Americanization of the curriculum' to take place. 'We knew the materials we were teaching were excellent even compared to international standards,' she said. 'They [the occupiers] tried to immediately inject subjects like "democracy" and "human rights" as if we Iraqis didn’t know what these concepts meant.' It is clear from Hiba’s testimony, also articulated by several other interviewees, that the Iraqi education system was one of the occupying forces’ earliest targets in their desire to reshape and restructure Iraqi society and peoples’ collective consciousness.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“Life had taught me that it is possible that things, ideas, concepts, and feelings can mean the opposite of what might seem apparent. It was possible for people to be the opposite of what they claimed. It was possible for 'home' to signify 'exile' and vice versa. Laughter may be tears in disguise. Revolutions could be about oppressive powers pulling the carpet from under the feet of other oppressors. Climbing to the top might not really mean 'going up,' it could in fact be a harsh form of falling; reaching the pinnacle of fame, surrounded by camera flashes has led to the demise of countless souls on this planet. In brief, it was possible that everything we are told and taught is the opposite of what we think, or that it might be outright false.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“We need to plant fields of flowers not mines for each other...”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“It occurred to me that there are some striking similarities between God and exiled people. Like these people, God has often been a political and a politicized figure in history. Like exiled people, God’s power lies in his existence everywhere and nowhere. That is how many exiled people feel. They have a multiple existence, but multiple existence can also be akin to nonexistence. God, therefore, is the ultimate expression of exile. God, if exists, should understand the meaning of exile more than anyone else.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I thought how artists, writers, and thinkers who are genuinely and strongly connected to their time, place, and peoples always sense disasters before they befall. They are not magicians with crystal balls. They simply use their other well-trained senses, beyond the five senses, to feel the upcoming earthquake, to sense the eruption of the upcoming volcanos, the approaching hurricanes. They signal what they sense in their works, while many people don’t take their warnings seriously.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“While an extreme and violent case, Bullets in Envelopes shows that the conditions of Iraqi academics in exile are part and parcel of global trends marked by the commercialization and corporatization of higher education adversely affecting academic, social, and political freedoms of writing, thinking, and speaking truth to power. As such, countries and societies are being totally reshaped (and destroyed) in alarming ways. Bullets in Envelopes is about academics, but it’s not written for academics only. The stories in the book prove that the Iraq war is far from over. Instead, it has been happening over and over in other countries too.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“The journey of this book started as a project to tell the story of exiled and displaced Iraqi academics in post-occupation Iraq. As I finished writing it, I found that, in telling their stories, these academics ended up telling a very important story about Iraq itself. With their firsthand, intelligent, and analytical voices, I find the testimonies captured in this book indispensable for understanding the effects of the U.S. occupation on Iraq. Moreover, these testimonies speak volumes about why what was done to Iraq should never happen again in another country.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“In many ways, the language, the sect, and the ethnicity are the IDs in post-U.S. occupation Iraq—the 'new Iraq'.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“As the taxi moved, I started checking out all the new buildings and streets. It was clear that whereas some people had gotten better off, others were worse off or had simply stagnated. Infrastructure reveals so much about a place and its culture, politics, and people. The disparities between the poor and the rich neighborhoods…show that ‘time’ was not ticking at the same pace for everyone. Time was not moving favorably for everyone. Even time is like power in that it moves some people forward, some backward, and some to the sides and the margins. Time also buries some people under the ground.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I thought about how in every ‘Third World’ country that gets ‘liberated’ from its dictators, the first things that go up are luxury hotels and residential areas for Western expats and gated communities from which to administer the newly formed governments in places like Baghdad’s Green Zone.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile