Iraqi native shares her story 2 13

Iraqi native May LaMotte shares her story of surviving Saddam’s regime, becoming a U.S. citizen and her passion for education

By Shelley Van Atta Photography by James Woodcock

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Looking into the kind, expressive eyes of May Hasan LaMotte, it is hard to imagine they were once witness to years of fearful living under the tyrannical oppression of one of the world’s most monstrous dictators. But there is no missing the reflection of pain mirrored back as she recollects the tragedy those years visited on her neighborhood; and, worse yet, her own family.

It isn’t until she speaks, in her steady, soft-timbered voice, that you learn this exquisitely beautiful, compassionate woman – cutting such an elegant figure, hands gently folded in her lap as she quietly describes her life under Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime – saw and experienced horrors that most Americans only heard about in news stories.

“Billings, Montana. I love my life here.

It’s so quiet and peaceful.

I never want to leave. For us, community is family, and this is my family. I left my family in Iraq and it was hard.

I don’t want to break my heart two times.”

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May was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in June 1968, just a month before Saddam Hussein took power.

“That is when the beauty of life ended in Iraq,” she said.

Hussein may be dead, but the terror he caused continues to haunt the nation’s psyche. Posttraumatic stress is not the sole purview of the soldier.

May still has nightmares, and the spark in her eyes quiets as she recalls why.

Under Hussein, she said, middle school children were given an application to join the Ba’ath party.

They were to take the application home to their parents, fill it out and bring back to school along with a membership fee.

“We were funding the government with money we could not afford,” she said. “For my dad, with 10 kids, it was a disaster, but we had no choice.” To refuse would mean jail, or worse.

And with Hussein, there was always worse.

Once children reached middle school, about the time they were required to join the Ba’ath party, they began to understand the atrocities perpetrated

by Saddam’s regime. Before that, however, they were taught that “Saddam was kind; he was the one who gave us food; he was ‘Santa Claus’; he was the ‘best of the best’; and we were to call him ‘Papa Saddam’ because he was more than our father; he could do no wrong,” she said.

Parents told their children this to protect them.

Parents were afraid that out of the mouths of babes could come words that would condemn their entire family to death, which is what happened to a

neighborhood family that was not as cautious.

When Saddam visited a neighborhood, May said, families were required to greet him with cheers of joy and to “kiss his hands and feet.” One neighborhood friend of May’s, a little boy of 6 or 7, joined the throng during Saddam’s visit. The child ran up to Saddam and delightedly cried, “I know you!” Saddam smiled and patted the little boy’s head and said, “You do?” and the little boy rejoined, “Yes! Every night when you are on TV, my dad spits on you.” The smiles immediately died and there was deathly quiet. The entire family, from grandparents to babies, were lined up in front of everyone and executed.

From the neighborhood into the Hasan’s family home, the horror followed.

May explained that everyone who received a university degree was expected to work for the government: “It was not an option,” she said.

One of May’s brothers was an engineer. He told his father, sisters and brothers that he had to leave Iraq because he could not make enough money to feed his wife, 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. “We’re starving!” he told them.

Knowing the wrath Hussein could inflict, May and her family begged him not to go, but the brother said he wanted a better life for his children. He hired a driver to take them to Jordan. As her brother, his wife and children were walking down a street in Jordan, a black SUV pulled beside them. Four of Saddam’s thugs got out of the car and approached him, firing three bullets into her brother’s head and

even more into his body while his wife and children watched in horror. May’s family later learned that Saddam tracked her brother down by finding, torturing and executing the driver who took them to Jordan.

Even in the midst of their collective despair, May said her family considered themselves, “the luckiest family in Iraq.” Because the assassination happened in Jordan, she said Hussein’s regime was too afraid to execute their entire family – which they normally would have – because Saddam knew the international media was watching. Instead, she said her family’s names were placed on “the list,” and they were confined to their home. Saddam’s regime wanted to make certain nobody from the family could travel outside of Iraq to tell the world what his henchmen had done. *** Before the Americans toppled Hussein from power, May and her family dared not even dream of leaving Iraq.

But in 2003, May’s life changed.

She was teaching at Baghdad University and spotted a handsome American reporter standing in the commons area preparing to interview an economics professor. She asked the reporter, Greg LaMotte, if she could watch.

“You speak English?” he asked. “Yes,” she replied. He asked the professor if it was OK. It was, so the interview commenced.

“And then she corrected the professor!” Greg, now an anchor on Billings’ KULR-8 TV, laughingly recalls. “I was so impressed that I asked her for her email address, and then it progressed to cell phones and then the conversation never stopped.”

May and Greg were married in Egypt on Christmas Day, 2004. “I love Christmas,” May said, “and love it even more now because it’s my anniversary.”

Even though the Saddam Hussein years were behind her, the flashbacks of fear were not. “I don’t like big noise. I lived most of my life in war. I still hear the bullets,” she said.

For a short time the couple lived in Washington, D.C. “I loved having an American family because family is so important to me,” May said, “but there were so many tall buildings and people and noise. I wanted a peaceful, quiet place to live.”

Though Greg had a highly successful career as a journalist, he was protective of May’s sensitivities; and after his mother passed on, his priority was finding a place where his wife could feel safe. He remembered visiting Billings while covering Montana’s Centennial celebration for CNN. “I recalled the goodness of the people, their downhome hospitality that I was familiar with from my own family who were from Texas,” he said, “Just good, kind folks. The kind that if they tell you they’ll do something, they’ll do it. You don’t need to sign a contract. A handshake is enough.”

What attracted him back to Billings, he said, was the wonderful memory of that week-long experience.

“Greg told me he knew of a place where people are very nice and friendly, a peaceful place that’s quiet and is surrounded by the beauty of nature,” May said. “Billings, Montana. I love my life here. It’s so quiet and peaceful. I never want to leave. For us, community is family, and this is my family. I left my family in Iraq and it was hard. I don’t want to break my heart two times.”

Top left: May and her family on a picnic on Eid Adha (similar to Christmas). May said all of her siblings were happy to finally have something new to wear.

Top right: : May and her siblings pose for a family snapshot.

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*** A lifelong thirst for learning and passion for teaching fueled May’s next step when she and Greg moved to Billings in 2005.

She began teaching Arabic to soldiers deployed to Iraq through MSU-Billings’ Veterans Upward Bound program.

“Preparing the soldiers was my best way to pay them back,” she said. “I wanted to make sure they were safe over there and would come back.”

Teaching Veterans at Veterans Upward Bound, is vital to May. “I tell them all the time, ‘You are the best part of my day. You teach me so much more than I teach you.’”

When not teaching veterans, May, who received her certification in teaching English as a second language this fall, also teaches language classes; she also substitute teaches in School District 2.

Putting her education into action was something impressed upon May from her parents at an early age.

“My parents were the most kind and loving people, but were very strict when it came to school because they knew that education was the only way out,” she said. May’s mother died when she was only 13, leaving her father to raise 10 children alone.

She arrived in the US with three degrees from Baghdad University: a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics, a post-graduate degree in teaching and learning and a master’s degree in computer science.

“I remember my father telling us, ‘We don’t have money, but even if we did, you could lose it later in life, but you can’t lose your education.’” It was a lesson May and her siblings never forgot.

Growing up in a country where violence was the norm, education, her parents told their children, “is your weapon in life.”

Her parents did not differentiate between the boys and girls, “We all were equal,” she said. “Whoever got the most A’s was the one who received the highest praise.”

When May visits schools today to educate young people about the Iraqi culture, she tells them that the values and principles they carry with them in life, steeped in education, are more important than money. She says, “You can make money. Money cannot make you,” and then shares this story: Think of a very young Iraqi girl who came from a poor family. That was me. When I was in elementary school, our teacher told our class that this year we would give new school uniforms to the needy. I had an old uniform that had been handed down to me from sister to sister, and I very much wanted a new one, so I went home and told my dad. He said, ‘No, you can wear the uniform you have; you tell your teacher you need a coat.’ I told him that I could not tell my teacher privately, that the administration required we stand up in the middle of class and say it. ‘So what?’ he said, ‘There is no shame in being poor. You can do it,’ so I did. The children laughed at me and I cried when I told my dad. He looked at me and said, ‘It doesn’t matter that they laughed. You have the A’s, and as time goes by, you will see who is laughing, then.’ At 10 years old, it was hard to imagine he could be right, but he was. After I graduated with my master’s degree, I was walking in my

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Davi Nelson, Hillside Patterns

Top left: May enjoys the escape of driving.

Bottom left: May and her three sisters, Top right: May after becoming a U.S. citizen. Bottom: May’s younger brother and his family. Oppostie page top: May at her Billings home. Opposite page bottom: Greg and May in Las Vegas.

neighborhood and saw some of the kids who had laughed at me. They came from families who had had a lot of money but lost it, so they now were selling things on the road.

They asked me what I was doing and I told them I was a teacher at the university. Who do you think got the last laugh, then? Dad was right.

May tells the children that even if their parents cannot buy them what the other kids have, “always remember that your parents are giving you as good of a life as they can so that you can stand on your own.”

And one trip to the supermarket last year revealed to May that her young, impressionable audience was listening.

While she was shopping, a woman and her son approached her.

“Mrs. LaMotte,” the woman said as her son shyly stood by her side.

“We want to thank you.” May looked at the boy and he told her that her life story had inspired him to work on his grades. “I got a scholarship, Mrs. LaMotte!” he excitedly relayed. “I thought that if you could make it, I can, too. You told me that if I make good grades, I will find a way to get into college, and I did.”

This, she said, is the American Dream, and is one she now is proud to live. She followed her own advice and studied “so hard” to become a U.S. citizen; and, on June 17, 2010, her dream came true.

“When I became a U.S. citizen, I felt different,” she said. “I felt more powerful. Middle Eastern people look to the United States as the most

powerful nation in the world, and now I was one of them. All I could think of was that I’m free because I’m an American!”

While many Americans take their freedom for granted, May never will.

“Because you were born here and never experienced another government, it can be difficult for you to understand,” she explained. “That is why I do not like to hear people complain about our American government, because if they lived for even one month in a country without freedom, they never would complain again. Whenever I talk to my family in Iraq, I tell them about American society, and that even people who are poor and have no power can stand up in public for what they believe. They say, ‘Wow! That’s beautiful, May!’ because they miss everything that’s beautiful.”

That was lost, she sadly added, with Hussein.

“The recovery of the Iraqis will not come with my generation,” she said. “It will come with the new generation.

Our generation, even after the liberation, still cannot feel safe. The memories will always be there. I can say, hopefully, that as time goes by, I will feel much better, but I know that no matter where I am, I will never be 100 percent. It’s the new generation in Iraq that will understand freedom of speech and a new life that is safe. The Americans gave us that.” *** People in the community are very protective of May. “When people hear my accent, they often ask where I’m from. When I tell them I’m from Iraq and that my husband is American, they want to make sure this lady who chose to move to the United States is OK. They are just so kind.”

Last summer, for the first time since leaving, May visited her family in Iraq. After she returned, she realized she felt more American than Iraqi.

“My family told me I’d changed, and I said, ‘Well, I’m living in an American society now. I cannot be as I used to.” Although they miss her, they are happy for her.

“I carry the best of my old world and the best of my new world. Greg calls it ‘a good mix’ and I like that. It’s a balance. This is how we build bridges between cultures.”

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A better life is what May is now living, and it brings tears to her eyes when she sees an American flag. When she and Greg were watching the last Winter Olympics and one of America’s gold medal winners held up the American flag, she started to cry. “Greg looked at me and asked me why I was crying.

I pointed to the screen and said, ‘Because that’s our flag; the American flag! It’s freedom and don’t ever take it for granted.” Even a newsman, whose everyday professional life is a journey in words, did not have a rejoinder to that. She did not need to remind him of what Saddam’s sons did to athletes in Iraq who failed to bring home the gold.

“They were lucky if they were just killed without being tortured,” she said.

And nightmares of those years of horror haven’t ceased. Last year, one of her hands was terribly swollen. The doctor told her it was from the cold. “I had not told anyone that when I was alone, I turned off the furnace.

The sound it made coming on reminded me of the sounds of the bombs and bullets.”

Sometimes, she said, when she hears Greg talking politics on the phone, she still finds herself being afraid someone might be listening.

“It’s hard for us to conceive of the fear Iraqis felt,” said Greg.

In 1991, while covering the Iraqi war for CNN, he was captured by the Iraqi military for a week.

“I carry the best of my old world and the best of my new world.

Greg calls it ‘a good mix’ and I like that.

It’s a balance.

This is how we build bridges between cultures.”

“A colonel, who was our main captor, spoke pretty good English. After about the third day, I told him, ‘You know, colonel, if I was in the White House having dinner with the President and I disagreed with something he said, I could tell him that and go home and not worry about it. The colonel slammed his fist on the desk and called me a liar. The next day, we were talking again and he said, ‘You know, I didn’t agree with Saddam about going into Kuwait.’ I asked him, ‘Why’s that?’ He replied, ‘Because we Iraqis are tired. We just finished eight years of war with Iran. We lost a million people, so we just want to go home to be with our families, have a job, have food, be with our friends and enjoy life.’ It was so heartfelt the way he said it that I told him, ‘Well, colonel, that’s what everybody wants. What would happen if you told Saddam that?’ and he made the slash gesture across his throat. I understood.”

It was that conversation, Greg said, that “made me realize we’re all the same, all around the world. We all want peace in our lives.” That, he emphasized, was the life he wanted for May. Both May and Greg laughed when they recalled the first days of the Iraqi liberation.

“There were two things all Iraqis wanted: cell phones and satellite dishes.” They remember watching Iraqis driving down the street with satellite dishes on their cars “because for years,” May said, “all we could watch were two channels: one owned by Saddam and the other owned by one of his sons. Finally, we got to see something other than Saddam!”

Besides the American flag, the great symbol of freedom for May now is her car. She got her driver’s license in June 2006, after Greg began teaching her with drives around the neighborhood. Was she scared? “I don’t know about her, but I was scared to death!” he laughed.

After a long day, May says she gets behind the wheel of her car, rolls down the window and feels the rush of the wind blowing through her hair.

“I feel the freedom of independence. I feel like a bird.”

My first job in America is serving food at a cafeteria-style restaurant located at one of the city malls. Strangely named Blue Boar, it is a crowded place with dark walls, a few tables and booths and a steel counter that runs from the entrance to the cash register.

Large aluminum trays of pale chicken, potatoes and apple pie glow under red warming lamps. My responsibility is the hot vegetable station with the main dishes to the right and desserts to the left.

Every morning when I get in, I get yelled at by the assistant manager.

“Yogh, baby!” That’s his way of saying good morning.

Beyond his pathetic greeting, I don’t understand a word he says–partly because my English is very poor, and partly because he speaks the slang that only black people in Kentucky can understand. To me everything he says is one long, incomprehensible word. When he sees my confusion he yells the same words but louder.

I’m not deaf, you idiot.

by natasha mancuso

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