As long as we're doing National Albanian Heritage Day today, let's explore the ties between Albania and Iraq. There aren't any.
But that allows me to discuss a key Iraqi contribution to civilization, one for which Iraq is not properly appreciated: the invention of the first name.
Some years ago, I worked with an Iraqi named Ahmed. Ahmed had come to the US on a student visa and got his Bachelors degree. He then got another student visa and earned a Masters. One more student visa and he got his PhD. By now he had been in the US about 8 years. Then he got a work visa and a nice US job. Along the line, he got his wife, his child, and eventually his US citizenship.
Ahmed had never returned to Iraq after his first day in the US. But he left his mother and some brothers in Baghdad. One year, Ahmed had a very strong desire to see his aging mother before she might pass away.
Alas, however, Ahmed had also never fulfilled his military obligation to Saddam. Ahmed, you see, was not a Muslim Iraqi. He was full-blooded Christian Iraqi, which no doubt explains his horrible attitude toward the Iraqi military.
The urge to go home to visit Mom was growing ever-stronger for Ahmed and finally had to be satisfied. Armed with his US passport showing him to be born in Iraq, he finally got on the plane to Baghdad (connecting in Saudi, as I recall). With trepidation, he got in the line at Iraqi passport control. If he was recognized, he faced immediate induction into the army plus possibly a long prison sentence if he survived to be discharged. When he was face-to-face with Iraqi immigration officials, they took his passport away and went to check out his name in the big book of fugitive desperados.
Now here's where the important Iraqi invention of the First Name enters the story. Because Iraq invented the first name, all official papers are filed alphabetically by first name. There are maybe hundreds of thousands of men named Ahmed. (The name is like 'John'.) My friend's name may have been in the Book, but the matchup was never found. Ahmed is still alive and well with his family in the US.
And he talks fondly of the last time he will ever have seen his mother alive.
(Btw, this is a true story. If Ahmed is a stock investor and happens to see this, I imagine we'll end up talking about it once again.) |
