I understand well soft forms of persecution and prejudices. As a young schoolchild in Baghdad, though most of my classmates received some discipline, I distinctly remember sustaining more raps across my palms from Sit Samira’s ruler than my Muslim classmates; being downgraded just enough in physical education to ensure that when grades were posted, the first-in-the-class was a Muslim girl and not me, a Christian. I also recall my father’s superiors passing him over for a promotion because he was a Christian; the public looks, the marketplace slights, and the general incivilities. I know something of all the ways, small and great, that the Muslim community in Iraq applied pressure against its Christian population to keep them in their place—never allowing us to forget that we were unwanted and unwelcome. When my father, seeking asylum, was interviewed by the American consulate in Greece he was asked: “You say you are persecuted in Iraq, but they are not killing Christians in Iraq, how can you say you are persecuted?” To which my father tapped his finger on the temple on the side of his head and said, in broken English: “There is persecution here.”
We Middle Eastern Christians are not unaware or ignorant of the variety of ways a non-Christian community can make life a trial for its Christian community. The response by Christians in that region varies, of course, according to both historical norms and the individuals’ temperaments and tolerance for these trials. Some were able to shrug it off and go about their life, others used whatever opportunity was available to get ahead no matter the setbacks, yet others left, looking for a more welcoming land. And then there are those, like some of our friends and distant relatives, who stayed until there was literally a gun to their heads.
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