A path of empathy after unimaginable loss in Iraq

IRBIL, Iraq – Basim Razzo's apartment in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil is pristine, with none of the clutter of most family homes. The spotless kitchen cupboards hold cans of Maxwell House coffee, a brand he and his wife, Mayada Taka, became fond of when they lived in the United States in the 1980s.

In the living room next to a TV, a pink plush unicorn and other stuffed toys are neatly stacked on a blue armchair, awaiting the next visit of his 3-year-old granddaughter, who Razzo said is his life now.

The little girl is also named Mayada, after her grandmother, Razzo's late wife. Taka and the couple's 21-year-old daughter, Tuqa, were killed in an airstrike on their home in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2015 by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militant ISIS group.

Razzo, sleeping just a few feet from his wife, survived, though he was badly wounded. His brother and his nephew died in a second attack on their house next door. Razzo's other child, his son Yahya, now the father of young Mayada, had fled to Irbil early in the occupation.

Razzo's case was documented in a 2017 New York Times Magazine investigation that found the deaths of hundreds of civilians in coalition airstrikes were never acknowledged by the United States, which oversaw targeting for the anti-ISIS missions from Qatar.

Washington has never publicly apologized for mistakenly identifying Razzo's home as an ISIS car bomb factory. But last year the Dutch government, a member of the coalition, acknowledged that one of its pilots carried out the strike and awarded Razzo compensation believed to be about $1 million.

It would be understandable if Razzo were bitter over the attack that killed his wife and daughter and left him badly wounded. But instead he preaches empathy and forgiveness, working with the group World in Conversation to link Iraqi university students in Irbil, Mosul and Najaf with students in the United States through online dialogues.

"I said, 'Listen, tell him he was following orders. He's a soldier. It was his job. If he knew that it was families in here, I am sure he wouldn't have bombed, but he didn't know. So tell him I forgive him.' "

In Iraq and many countries, a more common reaction is a vow of revenge.

"Some people say forgiveness is the act of a coward," he said in an interview in Irbil. But as a Muslim, he believes a person's destiny is determined before they are born.

"I have no other explanation other than it's an act of God," he said about the reason he was left alive. "Maybe it was my destiny to do this. Because after that I started preaching ideas, started talking about empathy and started talking about forgiveness."

Some of that started in a friendship he struck up in 2013 with an American professor after Razzo happened upon his TEDx talk about the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, titled "A Radical Experiment in Empathy."

"I didn't know what the word empathy meant, so I looked it up," said Razzo, 61. He e-mailed Richards, who ended up asking him to speak by video link each semester to the 700 students in his sociology class. The students asked him questions about being Iraqi and about Islam, and he felt that he was establishing a real connection with them.

But he cut it off after the bombing.

A year later, "Sam said, 'Basim, I want you back in my class,' " Razzo said. "I said, 'Sam, I can't.' He said, 'Please just do it.' "

Actually, he did more than that, traveling to State College, Pa., to speak to the students in person after they raised money for the trip. While he was in the United States, he met with military officials and lawmakers in a bid to have the military accept accountability for the bombing. To date it has not done that, though it did offer Razzo $15,000 in condolence payments — too little even to pay for the damage done to his cars in the attack. He rejected the offer.

He started his work with World in Conversation by connecting Mosul students to their U.S. counterparts in 2018, a year after the city was liberated from three years of ISIS control.

The night of the bombing, Taka went to bed early and Razzo went to sleep later.

The attack came a few hours later.

"The sound of the explosion was indescribable," he said. There were two explosions: "one on my house, the other on my late brother's house. And then pitch black. The electricity went out, and when I looked up and the smoke had cleared, I saw the sky."

The roof and entire second floor had collapsed, killing his wife and daughter instantly. Next door, only his sister-in-law, who was blown through a window, survived.

Razzo said the ordeal left him a different person.

For all his emphasis on empathy and forgiveness, he has not forgiven the U.S. military for approving the attack on his house.

With the settlement from the Dutch government, he has been able to buy apartments for his son and his nephew and a car for himself, while supporting his mother. All of that, along with his work connecting people, has been deeply satisfying, he said.