Between Two Worlds: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam

MS. NISBET: Good morning. I'd like to welcome Zainab Salbi, the President and CEO of Women for Women International. She's also the author of recently published "Between Two Worlds: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam." We are tremendously grateful to have her here this morning. She's on her way to the other side of town shortly, probably in about 40 minutes, so we'll go ahead and get started.

If you could, please state your name and affiliation before asking your question and then we'll get started. Thank you.

MS. SALBI: Thank you very much. Because of the shortage of time, I'll sort of jump right into things. As it was mentioned earlier, my name is Zainab Salbi. I grew up in Iraq. I lived all my life in Iraq until I was 20 years old, and I will talk about my life in Iraq, later actually. Well, no, I might as well do it now.

My father was Saddam Hussein's private pilot. I grew up using my -- I always say that Saddam was like a leaked gas that we breathed him (ph) all slowly and that we tried to all survive him slowly in different ways.

I'll go back to what life was like in Saddam Hussein. But the long story that I came to America through an arranged marriage that my mother had arranged for me just to get me out of Iraq. And the marriage end up being horrible and I end up being staying in America and starting Women for Women International. It's an organization that the focus is on women survivors of war, and I use my own experience and my own growing up in war to sort of direct me in terms of my focus with Women for Women International.

There are a few things that the organization focuses on. Most importantly, we argue that we need to change the paradigm of how we look at women's issues. From a marginalized sight issues that just women check, to really major national issues that we cannot necessarily talk about nation building or democracy or economic reconstruction, so anything like that, if we do not have women as a crucial part and a crucial member in the decision making. And then usually women are often absent from the negotiating tables and when they are absent from the negotiating tables, their rights often get negotiated away.

Now, we believe very strongly that women are a bellwether for the society, that things often starts with women, and they're the softest entry (ph) to the society. And we often don't see it, we don't pay attention to it, but it's actually an indicator for the direction of the society generally.

That we can see. There are lots of examples of that. If I may use the Taliban example of how they started their forces with violence against women, if I may use actually even Saddam's example in terms of the intimate violence, what I call, under Saddam's time vis-à-vis women. And I'll talk much more about that later.

But we need to pay attention to what's happening to women, what's happening today in Iraq, for example, vis-à-vis women, what's happening in Congo vis-à-vis women. We have to pay attention to that, not only as women's sake and for women's sake only, though we deserve it on our own merit, but really for the national interest. What is happening in that nation? What is the direction of that nation through women's eyes?

When women's rights get negotiating away, women tend to -- when women go back into their homes, their rights usually are negotiated away in terms of inheritance, divorce, marriage, custody, things like that, they usually pull the whole society back with them and particularly in post conflict, where women are a critical mass. They are about 60 percent of the population in post conflict and they cannot be marginalized from the decision-making power in terms of the discussion about nation building.

Now, we also argue that we need to compete at the grassroots level, that we cannot talk about issues, about rights and politics and democracy and all of these things if we do not talk about the how the grassroots, how the average citizen's life is being impacted and that's exactly what Women for Women International does. Is saying we -- the more fundamentalist forces are going to the most vulnerable and marginalized women in different countries and they offer very tangible services. They offer what I call "the rice sack" concept. Go to a widow, has ten children -- give me a child, I'll give you rice every month.

That's a very simplistic example but it is, in many ways, it has not only the rice but clothing and food and medicine and all of these things. And the widow, and I think women have the tendency to support fundamentalism if we do not pay attention to them, and that we really need to go and compete with that rice sack. And I think there is a lot of other things that we can add in terms of jobs and trainings and voting and things like that. But unless we shift the way we discuss about women and discuss about democracy and discuss about economic reconstruction from a macro perspective to a very micro one, to how we actually impact each individual's life, how do we improve the access of amenities, jobs, health care, electricity, schools for their kids, shelter on top of their homes, that we lose the population. We lose the hearts and minds of people and that's how we -- if we want to talk about these big ideas that's how we need to go into the very small solutions to address these big ideas.

We do that through different programs. We have a sponsorship program that links women all over the world with women survivors of wars. We ask each sponsor to send her matched sister $27 a month along with a letter to start communication link between the two women.

We argue that we need to connect nations, not only on the big nations' perspective but really on the human interest. When Beatrice (ph) in Rwanda get a letter from whoever -- I don't know, Rita -- Rita becomes her friend who is making a difference in her life. We immediately start investing in women's job-making abilities -- how can we help them get jobs and how do we not victimize, further victimize, refugees and displaced population by just making them dependent on aid? As someone who has been myself displaced, dispossessed and lost everything I had, and at one time in my life I had only $400 in my pocket.

I can tell you, from a first-hand experience, that people who have been dispossessed from everything, if anything, they want to stand on their feet and they want the right to the dignity to get back on their feet and not be dependent on charity. And that's what we try to do is within one year we try to help them start small businesses through different mediums, micro-credit or small businesses.

Now, I am someone who is used to talk about other women, and I feel women's experiences and stories are very, very important. And that if we pay attention to them and to what women are saying, they are cutting -- they are stopping patterns of violence. If it wasn't for the Bosnian women or the Rwandese women who talked about what happened in terms of the mass rape in Bosnia or Rwanda, we would not have changed international laws and the Geneva Agreement and we would not have prosecuted rape as a crime of genocide.

I'm used to doing that. I get on TV often talking about women's rights. Through my book, it was my first attempt to take ownership of my own story and realizing that we each have a story and it's easier to talk about courage and to talk about other people's stories; it's much harder to talk about our own. So through my book I talk about my own stories and in many ways I show -- I feel naked in many ways because I write about every single thing that I've been through.

But I use my own narrative, my family narrative, as someone who grew up in Iraq, who grew up in a war, a Shia, to talk about what happened to Iraqis during Saddam's time. Through my own narrative I talk about the deportation of 200,000 Shias between 1980 to '82 in Iraq. Some of they were my own family member. I grew up fearing that I would lose my mother because of her ethnic origin. Through my own narrative I talk about the state-sponsored violence against women in Iraq during Saddam's regime, the mass rape of Shia women as they were deported in the borders where a lot of Iraqi army were actually raping the women when they had to walk between Iraq and Iran.

I talk about Saddam's particular rape of women and the use of rape as a way to penetrate every single household in Iraq. Saddam, for example, had People's Day in which people could go to him and ask him to solve their own problems. And on that day usually a lot of women would go to address family law issues. He, in many ways Iraq did have a good family law, but in a lot of other ways, Saddam kept a lot of the decisions to himself. So you would have to go to him himself or his brothers to actually get things that the law should guarantee you anyway.

If he liked women in these sessions, they were taken to other rooms and they were raped and there were mobile clinics in which he would tour the clinic and go to villages also for the People's Day. And if he liked women in particular villages he would rape them in his own van. Women were often used to -- women were often raped and their rape was videotaped as a political torture against political opposition to Saddam. And that video would be used -- sent to the man or to sometimes as in front of him, as in the case of Sadar's (ph) cousin, uncles and aunts actually, where she was raped in front of his uncle.

Rape is also used to blackmail the women to joining the secret service in Mukhabarat (ph) and spying on other family members and relatives. And, of course, rape was used significantly in women prisons -- with women prisoners, particularly political prisoners. And myself interviewed people who have -- the former Deputy Director of Abu Ghraib prison who talked about how they used torture and sexual torture and rape vis-à-vis political prisoners.

So I -- all what I did instead of talking about other women as I did in Bosnia or Kosovo or Afghanistan or Rwanda or Nigeria or Congo, I this time talked about my own story in Iraq. I feel very, very strongly that we have to go through a process of telling our truth, documenting our past in Iraq. There hasn't been a moment in which we take that moment of breathing and each one of us to tell what happened to us under Saddam's (inaudible). We can use his trial as a historical moment to talk about that. It's very important that we use his trial -- we have a thorough process that we do not legitimize it, delegitimize (ph) it, rather, by rushing it because we have to take a thorough process. But we have to include his crimes against women. This is a very important point thing in terms of setting up precedence for other future governments of Iraq or for the society at large that violence against women is not to be tolerated.

And that overall his trial present a historical opportunities for Iraqis to not only tell their truth but to seek their reconciliation as I have tried to do in my book. I'm a privileged person and got the chance to publish it, and not many Iraqis have that privilege. And his trial presents that opportunity.

So I'll stop here for questions and answers. Thanks.

MS. NISBET: Please make sure to state your name and news organization as we are having this transcribed.

QUESTION: My name is Juergen Schoenstein from the German news magazine, Focus. To start with your last idea, do you think that will happen in the trial? He's, you know, he's on trial for something that happened decades ago. Do you see any chance that this will come up?

MS. SALBI: I have lots of fear for the trial. The fear first is that it's really rushed, that it's not to be rushed. When you talk to Iraqi judges who are in the process or people who are being consulted in the process, they're talking about a two-month setting (ph), in and out kind of deal. I really fear because it delegitimizes (ph) and it's a very important historical opportunity.

I also fear that he is being indicted only for a handful of crimes like you had mentioned, not only the one that he is currently -- but there are other handful of crimes that we have to use this as a way to actually not only document his handful of crimes but his (ph) thorough (ph) crimes against the population and perhaps the messages that we want to send through his trial.

So I do -- there are a lot of fears and concerns that I have, you know, for the hastiness in the trial. And I want to make sure that it is inclusive and it is thorough. It's for Iraqi's history but it's also for the world's history and my opinion is for history's sake.

QUESTION: My name is Talal Al-Haj with Al Arabiya. Your father -- where is he now?

MS. SALBI: I prefer not to tell where -- the location of my father.

QUESTION: (Mr. Al-Haj) Not the location -- is he still alive?

MS. SALBI: He's still alive, yes.

QUESTION: You said women (inaudible) are more -- they have more sympathy to fundamentality. What did you mean by that?

MS. SALBI: Not more tendencies, no, not at all, on the opposite. But if we ignore women, and if we don't see them as a crucial part of the discussion for the national debate, on any country, not only Iraq, we could lose them to more fundamentalist forces. That is we have to compete like any political parties are competing for them, and we in the West don't talk about -- we talk about women, there are a lot of rhetorics about women's rights and all of these things, so fine. But we need to walk the walk in terms of the real inclusion of women. And if we don't thoroughly include women at the negotiating tables, we could lose them. I don't think that they have more tendencies, but they are also the ones who are dealing with the water and the food and the basics. And, you know, if you look at more fundamentalist forces in different countries, they are reaching in a tangible way to these things and we need to address -- compete in that level.

QUESTION: (Mr. Al-Haj) And you seemed to be also worried about the future of women in Iraqi -- of the future. What are you worried --

MS. SALBI: I'm neither worried nor not worried, I'm cautious. You know, Women for Women International did a survey of Iraqi women, of 1,000 in Busra*, Mokob* and Mosul and for me it's very important to get what women are saying about wars. In this case it was focused on Iraq. There were lots of complaints about electricity, about there is no jobs, no health -- no proper health care and no education for their kids.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) doesn't (inaudible) the women, it's the population.

MS. SALBI: True, but 94 percent of the women were adamant that their legal rights have to be protected. So this is, although the constitution discussion is still going on, that we've got to protect women's legal rights, not only for women's sake but for the country's sake. But 90 percent of the women we surveyed said they were very optimistic about the future. And I think this is a very, very important finding. This optimism and sense of hope among the Iraqis is what's keeping Iraq together, in my opinion. We should not take it for granted. We should not dismiss it. We should make sure that this hope is transformed into tangible improvement in people's lives.

So no, I'm not necessarily -- I'm never a pessimistic person, but I'm cautious and I caution people about making sure to protect women's rights as Iraq moves forward.

QUESTION: How about your trip Sudan? Did you go to Sudan?

MS. SALBI: I did go to Sudan.

QUESTION: What's happening?

MS. SALBI: We're trying to open an office in Sudan. We're trying to open an office in southern Sudan. We're particularly -- we visited all over Sudan -- we didn't get to go to Darfur, but eastern Sudan and --

QUESTION: That was the most important (inaudible).

MS. SALBI: Actually, when you go to Sudan and that's one thing that is very important that we bring it up, a lot of the Sudanese, whether we went to the east or to the south or to the center, and they say, ah, look the world is paying so much attention to Darfur and bringing so much money to Darfur. If they don't pay attention to us, we will fight. And it's a very bad precedent that we are setting when we only pay attention to one aspect of the country and not the whole country.

QUESTION: (Mr. Al-Haj) The reason, if I may say, is I've been to Darfur (inaudible) and I've seen tens of thousands of women and children in these camps.

MS. SALBI: Oh, absolutely, Darfur needs a lot of help.

QUESTION: And the thing is they need help now.

MS. SALBI: Right.

QUESTION: Not tomorrow, not (inaudible)

MS. SALBI: Correct. But the south is going through starvation and if we do not pay attention to the south, where they are four million population that has been displaced, it's very important. This is by no means dismissing the help to Darfur, it's very important that we continue that. This is by all means saying, we need to pay attention to the larger picture. And when we ignore one side over the other, we actually send a message if you fight, you can get --

QUESTION: (Inaudible) open an office in Darfur.

MS. SALBI: Hopefully -- we're hoping -- no, we're trying to open an office in the south actually, where we are trying to help people repatriate back into the south and work more on economic development for the south.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Paula Kling from Semana, the Colombia weekly. I wanted to know about your work in Colombia, what cities --

MS. SALBI: We work in Ibaque and in the surrounding areas, Tolima. We actually -- we call -- we do in Iraq what we do in Colombia, we call it Plan (ph) Columbia, women's style. (Laughter.) We work on making sure to help women start small businesses. And we've been able to penetrate actually through different communities throughout the previous inter-fighting in some of the villages. But we did it through just women and through women addressing how to improve their own lives in these countries -- I mean in these communities, and through mostly income-driving (ph) projects, so we support women in starting small businesses basically and through a right approach as well.

QUESTION: (Ms. Kling) Is this displaced women or women who are still living in their communities?

MS. SALBI: Both, both -- displaced women, indigenous women. We work a lot with indigenous population and women who are living in their own community. We do not have the sponsorship program in Colombia or in Iraq for the security and safety of the women because they feared of getting a letter from a foreigner, that could be a security issue.

QUESTION: Even now in Iraq?

MS. SALBI: Definitely, even now in Iraq. You know we have to pay attention to what's happening to women in Iraq, if we look at the indicators, professional working outspoken women have been assassinated. I myself know about 20 women who have been assassinated, professors, reporters, pharmacists, deputy ministers, things like that, women like that. We have hair salons in Iraq and have been targeted for bombing. We have female college students are being targeted for kidnapping and rape, so we really, really need to pay attention. And obviously, on a daily basis where we're seeing women's bodies on the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So we have to pay attention to what's happening to women. It's sort of what I call during Saddam's time, it was vertical violence, state-sponsored violence. And right now it's a horizontal violence that is just open to the public. And it's -- and we need to pay attention to it and make sure that we stop it -- address it.

QUESTION: You spoke about (inaudible). Is he in this country?

MS. SALBI: No, no. He's in Iraq. I was doing the research for my book. And -- but that gives you a very good example. I was doing research for my book about what happened to women and I wanted to talk a little bit about women prisoners. And by coincidence, I got to meet him and I was so afraid.

QUESTION: (Inaudible)

MS. SALBI: I don't really remember his name. I'm not even trying to hide it. I just don't know. I don't remember. It's been a couple of years ago. But I was shaking because, I mean, these guys kill us. In the old days, they could be killing us. So I was really shaking and I was really afraid. But I was telling him why are you telling me these things. He talked about how women were tortured, how there was electric shocks in their sensitive parts, how -- that he did not call it rape. He said, "We just slept with them, these women agreed, but after they were tortured." So his definition of rape was different.

But when I asked him why was he telling me that, because who was I to -- for him to tell me and he's like, "I need someone to hear me, I need someone to acknowledge. I need to talk about it." That was right before the -- after the war. That was actually within a few months -- four months after the war.

QUESTION: (Inaudible?)

MS. SALBI: It was during a time in which they were getting a lot of the mass graves identified. He was helping the U.S. Government in identifying mass graves and things like that. So he was saying that a lot of the past emotions are coming back.

QUESTION: (Inaudible)

MS. SALBI: Three years ago or whatever -- whenever I met him, he was. Yes.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MS. SALBI: Yeah, yeah. But there are lots -- I mean, that's what people suspect is that a lot of the kidnapping and all of that is happening through people who used to be the former torturers of the, you know, in a formal way and now they are having their own gangs and their own mafias who are doing it.

QUESTION: Emmanuel Saint-Martin with the French news magazine Le Point.You're able to go to Iraq now?

MS. SALBI: I am able to go to Iraq now. I try to.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MS. SALBI: Yes. It's very dangerous, as I said, because so many women are getting assassinated, particularly outspoken women. It is dangerous. And I have, you know, I take my hat off for the Iraqi women who are really, really heroines who are continuing to the struggle over there in talking about women's rights over there. But yes, I can go there.

QUESTION: And you do?

MS. SALBI: I do. I haven't been there in about a year now. But before that, I've been there every two months.

QUESTION: (Inaudible?)

MS. SALBI: I love home, but I also love the food of home. (Laughter.) But I also love Congo and Afghanistan and all the other countries that I work in as much as I do Iraq.

QUESTION: (Mr. Saint-Martin) Speaking of Afghanistan, you know, getting rid of the burqa was kind of the symbol of success there and when you look at the pictures that you see now, it didn't happen.

MS. SALBI: Brilliant question because every time I go to Afghanistan and I was there a few months ago, I keep on asking women why are you not lifting the burqa because very few women have lifted the burqa. And women go back over and over and over again and say, who cares. We want jobs. Why are you so obsessed about the burqa. And that's -- I mean, that's exactly what I was talking about. We need tangible solutions. We can't talk about women's rights as a theoretical, ideological issue. That's a privilege to talk about it this way. It's only because we don't think about water in this country and we don't think about food or electricity that we can talk about -- cover or not to cover. In Afghanistan, people are still talking, I want jobs. You know, why are you obsessed about the burqa when I don’t have a job to even buy a decent dress.

And that's what we need to focus. You know, we need -- we can't talk about rights in a vacuum, without talking about the economic of rights and about how can we actually get people very tangible deliveries of how can they improve their lives and that's what we try to do with Women for Women is incorporate the rights discussion, but with very much economic discussions. We don't talk about rights if we're not talking about jobs training or business training. But through that, through the job training and the business training and the creation of jobs, we talk about elections. And so in last year's election in Afghanistan, -- early this year's elections, rather -- warlords were offering $150 each voting ballot for -- to buy. And the women in or program refused to sell it -- I mean, $150 you can start a business. That's how much we give micro credit loans, $150. It's a huge amount of money, but the women refused and said, our vote's right -- voting right is more important. But you need to incorporate it only because they have a job and they have something that they can think about.

The lifting of the burqa is going to be an evolution and it's going to be a gradual thing. It's not -- cultural transformations are not an overnight transformation. It's only with the empowerment of women and of obviously the larger society when you do have jobs and you start talking about political issues, then it will come gradually. But we can't expect it to be an overnight issue.

QUESTION: You have spoken (inaudible?) Do you have other plans and (inaudible) suffering women is (inaudible). What are your plans to spread the good work?

MS. SALBI: We work only with wars. It's not focused -- Women for Women International particularly focus on women in conflicts and that's why you have the Bosnia and Kosovo and you have Congo and Rwanda and you have Sudan and Iraq. But it's not directed in any geographical direction as much as where there is conflict we go. And (inaudible) there won't be anymore (laughter), no more.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) women are living in bad conditions and they have their rights denied in many (inaudible).

MS. SALBI: Absolutely. And there is so much work that can be done. We each have to focus on one angle to make sure that we get the job done. They are about 42 wars going on in our day today. And I always say that the day we run out of business would be a very good day, you know. (Laughter.) But it's just a (inaudible) focus and not to say that there aren't more women suffering.

QUESTION: Marta Torres Ruiz, La Razon, Spain. Were their perks with the relationship of knowing Saddam?

MS. SALBI: Well, there were definitely perks into the relationship, you know. I always say first when Saddam asks you to do something, you can't say no. You could get killed if you say no. You could get imprisoned if you say no, but I'll give you one example, for example. We didn't see him every day. We saw him periodically and weekends, that's where we spend in his farm compound. There was one time he sent for us, for example, to go duck hunting and he sent us helicopters, so it was fun as a teenager to be in a helicopter. But then when we he -- the way he start hunting is he surrounded duck flocks -- a flock of ducks rather -- with five helicopters and they were a small flock of ducks. And he opened all the doors and he started shooting with a rifle. And I start seeing -- I could see him because I was on the ground, I could see him laughing and just having fun. But more importantly, I could hear the ducks scream. I don't know how to explain how it was from the guts as they were trying to scream for their life. And it's just ducks, we eat them. But I, as a teenager at that time, I start crying and I start yelling that this is a massacre, this is a massacre. And the simplest thing -- it was just ducks. I, as a teenager, and I was crying and my mother was so afraid that she run towards me, she shoved my head into her chest and start hushing me and silencing me really, really, really fast because that simplest expression of feeling. And she start looking at the guards around us, because the simplest expression of feeling could be perceived as danger. As what's wrong with her, you know, how could she call my hunting a massacre?

So we were constantly vulnerable to his moods and it was a scary relationship; it was not a fun relationship, but there were perks in it. Saddam, I always say gave to people, not only to my family, he gave to a lot of Iraqis. But he took the most intimate part of us. He gave, for example, he asked every Iraqi woman to donate her gold, you know what you wear (ph) in Iraq. And the Baathist Party would go house to house sometimes to ask for gold donations.

And we had a neighbor who said I don't have any, so they said, but you have your wedding ring. And women donated every single thing, including their wedding ring. But then he would give, you know, then he would award you for giving the gold, you know, kilos of gold or whatever. And the award is a golden award medal. And I just didn't understand as a teenager how could he do that, but he's taken our gold, my family's -- not only my family, I'm just using my own story, but people's normal history, you know, the necklaces that you pass through generations or whatever.

And his helmets in the palace would all be golden helmets. And he had a golden chair and all of these things. He takes the most intimate part. He gives you cars for every person who died in the Iran-Iraq war their family got a car or a house or $10,000. He gave the people a lot of money, but he took the sons and the daughters and the most intimate part of our lives.

QUESTION: Do you have many men working for you (inaudible)?

MS. SALBI: We always have men, the most wonderful men who work with the organization. Yes, but we can't clap in one hand. We do work with men and we have programs for men actually. Formally we call it Leadership Training for Men, informally we call it Women Rights Training for Men because part of being a good leader is to know what 60 percent of the population is saying and that's where we bring the women's issues and why it is important to pay attention to women's issues.

MS. NISBET: I was wondering if you have much time to talk about the sponsorship programs that you have. They look very interesting and maybe people would be --

MS. SALBI: Thank you. Great. The sponsors program is really -- I never thought of it as a movement but I start getting people all over saying this is a movement, this is a movement. It started as a really simple effort of connecting women all over the states, mostly in America, but we really have 33 other countries in which women are sponsors with women survivors of war. As I said, we ask each sponsor to send her matched sister $27 a month. You get to be matched with one woman, you get her letter, you get her picture, you get her name and you get to send her the money and she receives it in cash for a one-year period.

Part of it, for someone who has been displaced and dispossessed by war, and war doesn't only lose your home and your loved ones, you lose your support network. You no longer have your friends and your neighbors who are there for you on a hard day. So to get a letter from a stranger saying I care. I'm here for you. It does make all of the difference in terms of restoring your hope in humanity. And the money, obviously it helps them, what I call "catch their breath." Just, you know, just catch up with their food and whatever as we are training them through that one year, so it's just a one-year period.

But I also think, for us, for the sponsors here or anywhere in the world, it's an opportunity to understand war from women's eyes and this is actually -- I'm working on a book right now, "War as Seen by Women." And this is not about the missiles and it is not about the bombs, it is really about what does it mean for a Bosnian woman to be standing in front of the water supply line for one hour as the snipers are shooting at her, but she stands because she has no choice but to get water. And what does it mean in terms of the food and what does it mean in terms of keeping your children's schooling going?

So we need to understand the nuances of war, the complexities, the emotions of war and that's how we have a more sophisticated understanding of war besides the intellectual discussions in our New York Times in terms of war, yes or no. And that's what we tried to do is sort of get to a sense of who is this Afghan woman, what is she going through, how can I understand her circumstances?

I'm a big fan of Rumi, it's a 13th century Sufi poet. And one of my biggest -- the poems that I love the most, in which he says, "Out beyond the world of right doings and wrongdoings there is a field, I will meet you there." I think in many ways my life has been in that field and I humbly add -- I really say humbly because I adore Rumi, that out beyond the worlds of war and peace, there is a field and women are meeting there and can meet there and perhaps we have different ways of building bridges of peace through just sharing our humanity and not only our politics, but just our humanity.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) sponsorship and since you come from the Middle East (inaudible) you understand that there is wealth (inaudible) did you try to get some of that wealth (inaudible) maybe even in the personal level (inaudible) to educate the women there about the work you do in the Middle East area, in the Gulf area and sponsorship -- get sponsorship from these women to (inaudible)?

MS. SALBI: It's a great idea but we haven't approached it. I mean our outreach is an international outreach and not to focus on any --

QUESTION: But the money's there.

MS. SALBI: The money is everywhere. You know, over the years, this program started with -- by me and my husband and we had nothing to start it. And over 13 -- 12 years now -- we have helped 52,000 women, we have impacted 203,000 (ph) family members, $21 million was sent. Right now, on a daily basis, we are working with 25,000 women in eight countries. But that money came from your average person anywhere in the world and not necessarily -- we did not approach only the wealthy communities. We approached everyone.

I met a woman a couple of days ago and she said, I'm not a rich woman. I'm not even a middle-class woman. I'm a woman who had to work two jobs so I can afford this.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) maybe because of the suffering of the women they understand (inaudible)

MS. SALBI: Right.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MS. SALBI: Well, we'll definitely explore that.

MODERATOR: I know that you only have time for maybe one or two more questions.

MS. SALBI: Maybe one.

QUESTION: (Ms. Torres Ruiz) When did you go back to Iraq for the first time after escaping -- going to America?

MS. SALBI: In 1999 -- I went there to bury my mother. She had come to America to get treatment. She had Lou Gehrig disease or ALS and she died in America. And actually it's through her words that I end up learning my story and what she had gone through -- the family gone through -- and why she took me out of the country in such a rush because she could no longer speak. She could only write at the end of her life. But I only took her to fulfill her wishes to be buried in Iraq and that was the first time I went back, nine years after. That was the first time I saw my brothers and my father also.

QUESTION: It was difficult or --

MS. SALBI: Very, very difficult. It was very difficult because Iraq, you know, when we talk about Iraq, we talk about only this war. We really don't talk about the impact of the other wars and the impact of the sanction. And when I went there I saw the impact of the sanction and the fatigue in people's souls but also in the walls and just Baghdad in general. The whole thing was just fatigue, you know, so it was very difficult to go back. But it also was suffocating because -- and maybe you will understand, I mean, I can't explain how suffocating Saddam's regime was. We were so afraid of everyone, of our own shadow. So it was like I just, you know, wanted to get out because I felt like I couldn't breath over there.