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Iraqi-American Artist Hopes Paintings Answer Questions About Iraq War

Posted on: Sunday, 19 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Jeanne Huff, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Mar. 19--Today marks the third anniversary of the war in Iraq.

Few people know that better than Iraqi-American Samira Harnish, who moved to the United States in 1978.

Harnish keeps in close contact with friends and family still in Baghdad. With her insider perspective, she says she is often approached by friends and strangers here, to explain what is going on there.

Do the Iraqis hate the Americans? What about President Bush? Do they know how terrible Saddam Hussein was? What about the violence, the suicide bombers, the religious strife?

Harnish has painted her answers to these questions and more on paintings hanging on the walls at the Flying M Coffeehouse in Boise. You can see them through March.

Harnish contacted the coffeehouse about showing her paintings, according to Flying M co-owner Lisa Myers.

"The thing I love about artists is they have to do it. Samira painted these paintings because she felt that she had to do it," Myers says. "I can't imagine being here for over 25 years and her family there. She must have so many emotions built up. I think she's an artist because of that."

Myers says Harnish's paintings are "folk arty. They're just very real."

Harnish shyly denies that she is an artist, but, at the urging of her husband, Justin Harnish, she took paintbrush in hand for the first time since she was a child to work out her demons about Iraq and the war and to prove to her family that she has not forgotten them or their pain and sorrow.

Samira's story

Harnish, now an American citizen, came to the United States as a teen bride. Her then-husband, also from Iraq, moved to Logan, Utah, to study at Utah State University, and took her with him.

She also attended the university. After they graduated, they moved to Boise, and Harnish was hired as a civil engineer at Micron Technology Inc. She has lived in Boise and worked at Micron for the past 15 years.

She and her first husband divorced in 2000. She married American Justin Harnish last year. She has raised her own three children, plus her two nieces. Most of the children are grown and now attend colleges in the United States.

She speaks English and understands it perfectly, although she has retained an accent and sometimes searches for the right sentence structure, especially when she speaks about the war.

Harnish obtained her U.S. citizenship in 2000, too late, she says, to have visited her mother, who died from an illness in Iraq that same year. It can be iffy to travel with a green card, Harnish says. You might not be able to return to the United States. But while Harnish has lived far from her homeland since she was young, she still has family in Iraq: two sisters and their families, several uncles and cousins, all living in Baghdad.

They've kept her apprised of what's happening by phone and e-mail since she left. She knew early on, in 1980, that she did not want to return. It was just too dangerous after Saddam Hussein's rise to power and Iraq's invasion of Iran.

The Iraq war

"I hate Saddam," Harnish says. "Animal is better than him. He is more like monster."

She says the hatred for Saddam in her country is so great, people only want him dead.

"Yeah, you feed the country (with his arrest)," she says. "But he's still alive. He does not deserve to be judged."

But since the war in Iraq began three years ago, Harnish has heard stories of despair from her family in Iraq. Brutal suicide bombings -- but not by Iraqis. Harnish's family says the bombers are strangers, not from their country. They have recently become alarmed by more and more land mines.

While many there looked to the United States for salvation, Harnish says it has not been a cut-and-dried, Americans-to-the-rescue situation. "It's not 100 percent better," she says. "Saddam is not there, but there is killing there."

Well-meaning American soldiers can inadvertently bring disaster, she says, because they are targets for suicide bombers and others who may kidnap people or plant land mines. If Iraqi civilians are with the American soldiers, they become targets, too.

The struggles in that part of the world are ancient; whenever a third party comes in, the struggles become even more strident, more complicated, Harnish says. "When other factions come in, they upset the balance."

She says she often becomes emotional when she talks with her family in Iraq.

"For both sides, I don't like it, I really don't. Most of time, my phone is crying and sobbing. I'm happy to hear their voice, but when they tell me the stories, I'm just sobbing. My sister says, don't cry. Pray."

Paint your feelings

Harnish has been painting only for a short time. Her husband, Justin, a chemical engineer at Micron, and a writer, gave her paint and an easel as a present last year.

"She had mentioned she'd done art in Iraq and that it was important to her," Justin says.

Harnish says, "He said to me, 'Why don't you go ahead and express yourself in painting?' I have all this passion in me for years, but no way to express it."

As she painted, she worked through her emotions.

"As an American and as a mother, I do feel for American soldiers, many of whom are teens who have mothers like me who always worry about the health of their children," writes Harnish in her artist statement. But she also worries about her family."I sobbed and cried while painting" she says. My youngest daughter said, 'Do it, maybe you will pass the sadness.' "

Harnish says she soon found that painting was a way of telling a story. "I thought, 'How do I tell the people what's going on there?' The media wasn't really good with the war," Harnish says. "For awhile, they didn't show what was going on."

What would Harnish say about the media's coverage now?

"I give zero for them now. My sister will tell me about the land mines on the buses, and they don't know who is doing that."

Her paintings are representations of her and her family's Iraq, the war, and images that are symbolic in her homeland: the fertile crescent -- the crescent and star, which represents the area that includes the modern day Iraq -- brewing and sharing tea, which represents a famous song, says Harnish, and dates.

Her painting called, "Man Picking the Dates" includes her description beneath the painting: "Famous in Iraq, dates and date palms symbolizes the sweetness of life and of the stability of the Iraqi people. The man makes a journey up the tree, the sun and his heart warming his every movement."

Harnish says she plans to keep painting, but will move back to modern art, a style she likes and dabbled in before she began her Iraq paintings. She says she's glad that she picked up the brush -- it's like finding an old friend.

"As a young child, 9 or 10 years old, I was just drawing pictures," she says.

Her family discouraged her drawings because being an artist wasn't considered a successful occupation.

For now, she hopes her paintings will serve as answers for at least some who see them, and even more importantly, she hopes to comfort herself and her family.

"It was one of my wishes to express myself in art. I know it's not going to change the world or bring peace to Iraq, but maybe if people see the paintings they might think about how everybody suffers, how the people of Iraq suffer."

Harnish sums things up in her artist's statement: "I want to present these pictures to my family, deceased and alive in Baghdad -- to let them know that I do suffer for each despair that befalls my war-torn home. This war and the human destruction it has caused weighs heavy on my heart and mind -- yet I can't do anything for them except ask Allah and all the prophets that came to earth, for the miracle of peace for Iraq after all the suffering they have went through and are still going through."

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Source: The Idaho Statesman, Boise

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