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Assyrian Family sees both sides of election

Snday Gazette-Mail  By Robert J. Byers 
Staff writer

January 30, 2005

Aoleen Stavrulakis made it out of Iraq a few years after the Gulf War and eventually settled in Charleston. Of her nine siblings, all but one made it out of the war-torn country in the 1980s and '90s.

Now, the one left behind huddles with her husband and children in their Mosul home, afraid to step outside, as they brace for the expected violence of election day.

Iraqis go to the polls today, but Danielle, 43, and her husband won't be among them. Nor will any of their neighbors or people they know.
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"If they could bring a paper to your door, we would do it," she said by phone from Mosul as her sister translated, "but to stand out there [at a polling place] waiting for a bomb or bullet...

"If someone wants to try to do something for the country, they will be killed."

Danielle knows this for a fact. On her rare forays to the marketplace to pick over meager and overpriced goods, she sees the pictures tacked on the walls. The ones of the people who dared take a job with the Americans, the ones with their decapitated heads and ID cards resting on their chests.

Danielle asked that her real name not be used, for fear that her picture might be the next one on display.

Like her brothers and sisters before her, Danielle and her children - a 17-year-old daughter, and a 14-year-old son - have a dream of journeying to America, of reuniting with Aoleen and their parents, who now live in Modesto, Calif.

Her mother has applied with the U.S. government to bring her daughter across the ocean, but family ties don't apply to Danielle's husband in the complicated world of immigration, and she is not interested in leaving him behind.

Danielle, Aoleen and the rest of the family are Assyrians. Ancient Assyria, whose heart was once near Mosul, was one of the earth's first civilizations and it was one of the first to embrace Christianity, a preference that carries over to today.

Mosul has always had a relatively large Assyrian population, although as a whole, Assyrians are a tiny minority in Arab-dominated Iraq.

The Assyrians have had a rough existence under Muslim rule, including early 20th century massacres that the Assyrians hold up as a genocide

 

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