Yusif Agoub is proud of the fleshy Masgouf fish from the river Euphrates swimming in a tiled pool in his kitchen and the rough Iraqi bread baking in the wood-fired oven. It feels like Baghdad but the carp are imported from Syria and this is one of the best restaurants in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
Agoub used to run the Al-Finjan restaurant in Baghdad, which closed after the city’s descent into chaos. He packed up in 2004 and invested here with a partner with Jordanian citizenship. This restaurant, Zad al-Kheir (Generous Fare), is an elegant place buzzing with well-heeled diners arriving in Mercedes and BMWs, many with Iraqi or diplomatic number plates.
With his pocket calculator and two cellphones in front of him, Agoub does not look like a refugee. ”I am succeeding with the help of our Jordanian brothers, led by His Majesty the King, who make things easy for us,” he says. ”We have a good life here. I would like to go home tomorrow, but it’s hard to be optimistic.”
The nearby streets in Amman’s Umm Udhaina district are a glittering showcase of the wealth that Iraqi exiles like him have brought. The smart new villas and apartment blocks have shady balconies and Filipina maids at work inside.
The few empty plots are for sale or being built on. Iraqi accents dominate in the local mall. Saddam Hussein’s daughters and other former Ba’athists keep a low profile. Abdoun, another posh Amman neigherourhood, is now jokingly referred to as Adhamiya — a Sunni area of Baghdad.
”There are some very rich people who stole from Iraq after the war and invested in Jordan,” says Rita, who fled Baghdad two years ago with just a small suitcase and counts herself lucky to have a Jordanian residency permit and a job. ”But there are many, many more who are facing a very hard life.”
There are thought to be 700 000 Iraqis now living in Jordan, the largest concentration anywhere except Syria. But many believe the true figure is closer to a million, a staggering number for a small and resource-poor country with a population of just 5,6-million.
The latest arrivals include Hatim and Latifa al-Qaylani, who were forced to leave the room the family shared in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib area. They are desperate for treatment for their teenage children: Baydaa needs a bone marrow transplant; her brother, Tay, has diabetes and a rare blood disorder and needs an expensive drug. They are not eligible for health care here.
Their new refuge is in a downmarket area of Amman. The atmosphere is grim. ”Now even the health ministry in Iraq is controlled by the [Shia] Sadr militia,” says Qaylani, a Sunni shopkeeper.
Faiza al-Aqari, who brings needy compatriots medicine, advice and comfort, says: ”These people are the hidden victims of what is going in Iraq.” She tells them ”Allah karim,” (God is gracious.) But the misery and anger are palpable. ”The Americans don’t tell you health care and schools were free in Iraq, only that Saddam killed his own people.”
Aqari, a water engineer from a well-known Shia family, left home after her son was kidnapped and the family paid thousands of dollars to get him back. ”We paid and came here,” she says. ”This is normal.”
While the rich prosper and some of the poor can eke a living hawking cigarettes or herbs, professionals are worst off; few can afford a residency visa and face arrest if caught. A Najaf man with a university degree found work as an illegal day-labourer, sometimes unpaid since he could not go to the police. He was sent back to Iraq, where he was injured and had a heart attack.
Faiz, an unemployed engineer from Anbar province, hotbed of the Sunni insurgency, was reluctant to talk. His sister lost her hearing after a near hit by an American bomb, but he has despaired of getting her treated in Jordan and plans to go home.
It is a tribute to Jordanian hospitality and tolerance that so few Iraqis have been deported. But things have been getting tougher since al-Qaeda suicide bombers killed 60 people in three hotels in Amman in November 2005. For months now the authorities have been denying entry to Iraqi men aged between 18 and 35.
”What do you do with a son who’s travelling with his 80-year-old mother who needs an operation?” asks a Jordanian official. ”We are confronted by real cases and, of course, there is a margin of error. But we can’t end up with two-million Iraqis in Jordan.”
Refugees are a sensitive issue in a country that absorbed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, 1967, and again in 1990 when those living in Kuwait flocked back to Jordan.
The UNHCR is frustrated that the government has not surveyed Iraqi numbers and needs. ”The equation, Iraq equals refugee, is not comfortable for them,” says the agency’s Amman director, Robert Breen.
Economic pressures are rising too. With high unemployment and 14% of Jordanians living in poverty, recent fuel and other price rises have been painful. The cost of housing in Amman has doubled or tripled in the past year alone.
Most of the Iraqi children do not go to school and those who do have suffered some bullying. Jordanians worry too about importing Iraq’s sectarian strife into a country where the Sunni majority has always lived happily with a Christian minority. Ethnic cleansing in Baghdad could trigger a new exodus, they fear.
It is unfair, argues Prince Hassan, King Abdullah’s uncle, to focus on the wealthy Iraqis who dine at Zad al-Kheir and keep the real estate agents and the new Porsche dealership busy.
That’s true, but the resentment is still unmistakable. Nuha Batshon, a Palestinian gallery owner, says ”it’s the rich ones who have driven up prices”.
One Amman taxi driver cursed as a new SUV with Iraqi plates glided past. ”I’d like to seem him drive that in Baghdad.” For Aqari such attitudes are another depressing sign of terribly changed times for Iraqis. ”In Saddam’s day the Jordanians used to treat us with respect. Now, they are humiliating us too.” — Â