A Family in Baghdad

Part 1

Peace be upon you…
I am still in Cairo, busy and dedicated to studying. My life here is very quiet and only filled with studying and researching. I don’t have any social relationships except with my school colleagues. We meet twice a week at the campus. I might go one more day to the University to spend sometime in the Library…
This world is much more comfortable than work experiences. Work is so exhausting and we always have to work with people that we don’t have much harmony with. May be their behavior and intellect don’t match our behavior and intellect.
Of course, studying is a rest station from where you launch again to work environment again, but I hope that I finish my Master and PhD degrees then I would be able to work fulltime at a university. The environment here is much more stable and the tasks assigned to faculty staff are clear and specific. It is more comfortable than working with local or international organizations. It is even better than working with governments…
Why?
Because my past experiences exhausted me a lot. I am a human being who lives by steadfast principles. This world is becoming like a blend of colors that is mixed in a way causing confusion and exhaustion for someone who doesn’t have constants and who will remain in conflict state to compromise between work and principles.
Would he give up his principles to please his colleagues and managers? Or would he abide by his principles and pay the price of becoming lonely. The path of righteousness is always lonely and those who walk through it are very few…
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The more I studied about project management for example or about Management of Human Resources, I look back and evaluated my experiences. I mean that there is a difference between the field experience and academics. Each one of us needs both to leverage his understanding to things and improve his intellect and performance…
I think back to recall my tough experiences of work during the recent years. I worked in Jordan in the year 2007 with a renowned Jordanian women organization as a coordinator of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan. This organization presents itself as progressive leftist. They participated in many protests against the invasion of Iraq. Of course, this gives strong indication that they are patriots who have principles. Therefore, I agreed to work with them even though my directions are more moderate religious and independent. I never was associated with party or extremism. They were secular. I told myself, I don’t care about their religion. All I care about is their disclosed principles that root for women rights and invaded nations such as Iraq and Palestine. But after one month of working there, I discovered the secrets of management within the organization. I observed the ciaos, indifference and bad management. I observed lying and cheating in documenting projects for fund providers. The manager justified it as natural right to obtain the fund to pay for organization utility bills (water, electricity) and salaries of our permanent employees…
The manager conducted periodic meetings with project coordinators (Each project has a fund provider and a coordinator is assigned for each project to submit project progress reports to fund provider). The manager was teaching coordinators how to present an illusive documentation so that they get the fund legally in a way that cannot be detected for forgery by fund provider auditor who may submit a report against the organization…
I sat in those meeting smiling, wondering and looking around for someone to raise her hand and object. I didn’t find one single woman during the year I worked there who did so. I was astounded with those people whose conscious died and who justified it by saying (What can we do? We’ve got to live!)
Living human beings are so pitiable…
I pitied the new generation, the young ladies who were taught by this manager how to become thieves without any conscious. They are in their early twenties and at the beginning of their career. Unfortunately, this manager is their role model. In a confusing world, people no longer know the meaning of a role model.
Role model is becoming someone who has power such as a manager or a minister. He would have the authority to spend money and decide on administrative issues such as how work should be executed. The role model to them is someone with power who cannot be objected. People are usually weak and the manager is usually corrupted…
Life goes on in most places of our modern world…
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I refused to apply her instructions of course. I knew that she respected me and that she was afraid of me because she perceives me as someone confident and stubborn. She knew that I was authorized by the fund provided (The High Commission for Refugees in Jordan) to call in any cheating or forgery in documentation. I knew that she and her staff didn’t like me because I didn’t bring the organization any money. I spent all the money on deserving Iraqi women and children according to budget plan. Spending included also procurements for the project and the salary of employees who worked on the project.
The employees’ salary remained a weak point that I didn’t have any control over. The employees were poor women who were hired by the manager. She deducts a mandatory cut from their salary as a donation for the organization and makes them sign that they received a full amount. This is an obvious extortion. They were not members of this organization; they are just employees who were scammed by this manager. She told them that this cut is a saving for them and that they will receive it at the end of the project. Of course, she didn’t fulfill her promise. At the end of the project, their contracts were ended and she took all of their money fallaciously.
Who would submit a complaint against her?
I don’t know, maybe there is lack of monitoring by the state. If the complaints were submitted against this manager to be accountable and if she was punished for what she did, her behaviors will not be repeated by anyone. But where is the authority of law? Why people are so weak and silent? I believe that these weak points still characterize our societies everywhere…
The year has ended and my contract with them has ended. I left them without any regrets. The manager told me before my work was ended that she admired my loyalty and dedication to work and that she would like me to continue working with them as a permanent employee. I smiled and apologized. I said to myself how can live with you? What is common between me and you? Will I become one of the slaved in the herd who lies and forges to receive his salary at the end of the month? Thank you, I don’t need this humiliating life…
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