For Margaret, and all her compatriots

Margaret, I never met you. I wish we’d had the chance to meet…

This, from today’s Guardian, about Margaret Hassan:
Hassan was born Margaret Fitzsimmons in Ireland, where her early childhood was spent in a Dublin suburb. Later, her family moved to London, where she completed her education.
In 1961, when she was 17, she met and married Iraqi-born Tahseen Ali Hassan, who was 26 years old and studying engineering in the UK. In 1972, she moved with her new husband to Iraq, where she began working for the British Council, teaching English to Iraqis. Falling in love with the country, she learnt Arabic, converted to Islam and became an Iraqi citizen.

Hassan never contemplated leaving, becoming first the assistant director of studies at the British Council in Baghdad and then its director. Her husband worked as an economist.
In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf war, was launched by an international coalition headed by the Americans the following year. Again, despite the 42-day bombing campaign, Hassan never left Iraq. During the war the British Council suspended its work. At the conflict’s end, Hassan was left jobless.

In the pictures, you always looked like one of the strong, knowing women whom I admire and get on well with.

In January 2003, before the US embarked on military action, she briefed both the United Nations and British MPs, drawing attention to the effects of the embargo. “The Iraqi people are already living through a terrible emergency,” she said. “They do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action.”

Yes, but since then they have withstood not only the original invasion, but also, additionally, the many long months of chaos and deterioration that ensued.
“Withstood”, yes… But not without suffering almost unbelievable spiritual wounding from all that had happened. What other explanation is there for the way they treated you, dear Margaret… Margaret, their friend??
Okay, I know it was not all “the Iraqi people” who did that to you. Just as it is not all “the American people”, or all “the British people” who have been carrying out the violent and abusive actions that have been the main order of the day inside Iraq for the past 20 months.
In each of those cases, it is just a wounded but powerful minority who commit the atrocities. But each of those atrocities: your killing, every single one of the killings that is taking place inside Iraq these days– they all wound all the rest of us as well.

Hassan was kidnapped in Baghdad on October 19, when men dressed in police uniforms stopped her car as she was being driven to her office. Her driver and unarmed guard were pulled from the vehicle and beaten. Hassan stepped in to stop the beating, offering to go with the gunmen. That was the last time she was seen. Hours later she appeared, distressed, in a video issued by captors calling themselves merely “an armed Islamic group”.
However, Hassan did appear in three harrowing videos. The most recent footage – released on November 2 – was so distressing that al-Jazeera, the Arabic television station, refused to screen much of it on humanitarian grounds.

Margaret, you were a woman of three nationalities, a woman of the world. I imagine you saw all the world’s people as your compatriots, just as you saw all the children of Iraq as your responsibility.
I never met you. I wish we’d had the chance to meet.
But we didn’t. Now I’ll just have to figure out what I can do, in my way, to continue the work that you started. Loving condolences to your husband, you siblings, and all those who not only loved you but also knew you well.

Margaret Hassan, aid worker, born 1944; died around November 14 2004