All this week, I looked forward to the Pope’s visit because it might mean unprecedented media coverage of life in Iraq that we don’t often see.
While the Pope begins an unprecedented visit to the birthplace of my ancestors this weekend, traveling across Iraq to bring faith and healing to Christians who have suffered there for years, please allow me to indulge for a bit on what this means to a Chaldean journalist who has, for as long as she can remember, wanted to visit the place where her parents were born. I really never thought I’d still be waiting in 2021. By now, I should have walked down the streets in Baghdad that my mom and dad took to school in the 1950s, stood on the banks of the Tigris River where my dad and uncle used to swim as boys, touched the home where my mom’s mom made traditional beef and bulgur kubba by the dozens for her brother’s hotel and looked for the diner on Rashid Street where my dad’s dad was a cook.
