It was certainly not a match made in heaven at first. He was an American soldier newly arrived in Baghdad at the start of the US-led invasion. She was a young Iraqi doctor. But against the odds they fell in love and were married. They were the first mixed couple to emerge from the bloodshed and terror of the Iraq war, and only a handful more have joined their ranks since.Five years later the couple now live in Florida with their 15-month-old baby girl, Norah. But life has been far from easy and the costs have been high for this couple who had to overcome a huge cultural gap and look beyond the fear and distrust forged in the Iraq war. "I think it was not easy at all. It's not that smooth," said Ehda'a Blackwell from their Florida home.
In 2003, she was a young doctor looking for work when she met Sergeant Sean Blackwell, a new recruit to Iraq who had been there for just two weeks and charged with overseeing security in hospitals. The couple were married in August 2003 in a 15-minute civil ceremony in a Baghdad restaurant, for which Sean first had to convert to Islam.
On paper the US Army is prepared for this kind of liaison which is not illegal. But the reality proved very different. "I hate to sound like we were the pioneers for this, but I do think maybe it made the road a little easier for those who followed," said Sean Blackwell. "I was persecuted by my military chain of command," he explained. "They tried to have me court martialed for dereliction of duty, saying that I forsake my mission to go get married instead. But nothing came of it because that was not true."
"Once they figured out that he was going to really marry me, they wouldn't permit him to go to the court to finish the marriage," said Ehda'a. "We had to ask the judge to meet us somewhere on the way of their daily patrol because they wouldn't let him go to another area and marry me." So Sean took a quick break from his patrol and the couple were married. "That was the fastest marriage I've ever seen. I wish we could make it again," she said longingly.
The couple were forced to live apart for several months. Sean left the country in December 2003, and returned to Jordan in February 2004 to collect his bride who had been secretly smuggled out of Iraq by a CBS television crew. They spent six months in Amman getting to know each other, before finally heading to United States. Ehda'a, who now works as a medical assistant, has not seen her family since she was smuggled out of Iraq. She does not want to talk about those she left behind, fearing for their safety as they have received several threats.
It is hard to say how many such marriages have taken place. Sean, who has now quit the army, thinks there may be only about 20. Neither the army nor the State Department keep the figures. Some 1,400 visas for Iraqi spouses have been issued since 2003, but that figure is largely made up of couples with double-nationality.
Sean concedes that cultural differences and differences in religion pose large hurdles to mixed marriages. Converting to Islam caused him some problems at the beginning. "I considered myself to be a Christian at the time and it was a little bit a struggle for me personally, but it was just something I had to do to marry her. It wasn't something that I believed," he said. "Religion is not relevant in my life, it's not something I really worry about. America is one of the most Christian countries in the world so it's definitely not well received to marry a Muslim ... we've always painted a negative image of the Arab culture."
Cultural differences remain one of the main reasons why US-Iraqi marriages occur less frequently than US-Vietnamese marriages during the Vietnam war. "During the Vietnam war, the soldiers were more integrated in the society. In Iraq they are more isolated. And with the major differences in religion, we can expect the number of marriages to be much lower," said military sociologist David Segal, from the University of Maryland.
"I married her for love and a lot of reasons," said Sean Blackwell. But he added: "We both agree that we would trade our marriage for (an end to) the war any time. Our personal happiness with each other is not worth all of the lives that have been lost."
You gotta be impressed by the spitball spin the AFP puts on this story. They even bring in an "expert" to make the crucial Vietnam reference.