Khaled Dudin: American Bedouin
An alum shares his exeriences as an Arab American soldier in Iraq
by Mary Abowd
A combat medic with the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army,
Khaled Dudin’s job is to rescue the wounded and the dying.
“Can you hear me? Can you talk to me?” he calls out
through the smoke and dust after a gunfight has occurred. Based
in Fallujah, Iraq—one of the fiercest sites of Iraqi resistance—Dudin
has jumped into action with his aid pack more times than he can
count, ushering injured soldiers and civilians to safety.
But Dudin, 35, is no ordinary medic. An Arab and a Muslim, he wears
a U.S. military uniform, speaks fluent English and Arabic, and has
spent the past 15 years as a resident of Chico. In Iraq, that combination
never ceases to amaze the locals.
An Iraqi who sustained gunshot wounds on a street in Fallujah was
clinging to life when Dudin reached his side and spoke to him in
perfect Arabic. “The fact that I was speaking Arabic was mind-boggling
to him,” recalls Dudin. Later, on the operating table, the
man looked up at him. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”
he asked Dudin. “I told him, ‘Say your prayers.’
”
It soon became apparent that the medic everyone called “Doc”
had something more to offer than triage skills. He could speak to
Iraqis in their own language and possessed a finely tuned understanding
of their culture that eluded everyone else in his battalion—including
his commander. It was not long before Dudin found himself in several
new roles, serving as battalion interpreter, tribal negotiator,
political and cultural adviser, and liaison with the Iraqi police.
“Basically every conversation that took place between my battalion
and the local population, I was the interface,” says Dudin,
who returned briefly to Chico from Iraq in April after serving seven
months there. “Knowing how to greet a certain tribal sheikh
and what kind of kiss to use for that tribe, it’s that kind
of obscure knowledge I happened to have; it was just sort of a coincidence.”
The coincidence has everything to do with Dudin’s own roots.
Born in Buraidah, in the Qasim region of Saudi Arabia, to a Palestinian
father and a Lebanese mother, Dudin grew up in what he calls “the
most traditional, conservative” part of the country, a place
seemingly isolated from the rest of the world. The area was largely
inhabited by Bedouin tribes, and Dudin’s parents both worked
in tribal education. “I grew up with all these tribes and
picked up all the tribal dialects,” he says.
On his father’s side, Dudin is descended from a prominent
Bedouin family from Hebron, in the Palestinian West Bank. As a boy,
Dudin learned about the Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.
He can rattle off the names of Iraq’s Bedouin families, including
those in explosive Fallujah, a highly tribal area where he says
he’s made it his mission to use finesse and negotiation with
the local population to help the U.S. military distinguish between
enemy combatants, Iraqi civilians, and friendly forces.
It’s what Dudin calls “taking the pin out of the grenade,”
diffusing potentially disastrous situations with cultural know-how.
He describes this scenario: A truck carrying U.S. troops is moving
through hostile territory. Tension fills the dry desert air, and
everyone—Iraqis and Americans—are on edge. “People
are shooting at you or ambushing you on a regular basis,”
says Dudin. “But the people who do that are not wearing uniforms,
they are in civilian clothing. That’s what really complicates
things; you’re not fighting a regular army.” Suddenly
the convoy comes upon a tribal militia, also dressed in civilian
clothes and carrying AK-47 rifles. The U.S. military has hired the
militia to secure Fallujah’s water pumps from looters, but
the soldiers on the truck don’t know that. All they see are
men with guns. Dudin says if those guns are raised in a menacing
position—even by accident—U.S. soldiers are trained
to shoot.
“They [the militia] are standing there proud,” says
Dudin. “They don’t expect us to be harmful to them,
but this [U.S. military] patrol comes and may not know that these
guys belong to our militia. It sure does help when somebody like
me gets off the truck and the first thing he says is ‘as-Salaamu
Aleikum! Allah Bakhair!’ [“Peace be upon you. May
God keep you safe.”] Now, the first thing they do is—with
shock on their faces because this is the last thing they expected—they
smile back and greet back. Now we’re drinking tea together.
This could have been a bloodbath.”
Dudin also describes how he gained the trust and res-pect of the
local Bedouins by drawing on some of his most obscure knowledge—how
to greet a tribal leader. Some tribes greet one another with a kiss
on either cheek; others kiss on the cheek and touch their opposite
shoulders together. But, in one instance, Dudin knew this particular
leader was from the al-Shummar tribe, a large and powerful Sunni
clan that is spread throughout Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
First he took the leader’s hand and, while still holding it,
gently brought his forehead to the leader’s forehead, allowing
their noses to barely touch.
“The head is the most honored part of the human body,”
says Dudin. “So this was a sign of honor.” The leader
was impressed.
It was not long before the Bedouins of Fallujah had given Dudin
a nickname. “They called me the American Bedouin,” he
says. “One elder tribesman said, ‘You’re a Bedouin
from California.’ I really laugh about it because I am
a Bedouin from California.”
But back home in California, several of Dudin’s friends were
baffled by his decision to join the military. His progressive politics
as a campus activist while attending CSU, Chico as an international
relations major as well as his longtime involvement with the General
Union of Palestinian Students didn’t exactly make him a likely
candidate for the Iraq war. In April 2002, he organized a march
in Chico to peacefully protest the Israeli missile strikes, shootings,
and home demolitions that had killed 52 Palestinians in the Jenin
refugee camp earlier that month.
Dudin was also involved with the Model UN on campus for several
years and helped start a program for Butte College students. He
was a lead member of the Model UN team in New York City when CSU,
Chico represented the United States after 9-11, winning awards and
high praise for his abilities. Two months later, he signed up for
four years in the U.S. Army.
Dudin says he didn’t take the decision to join lightly. He
explains it this way: “I knew after 9-11 that the U.S. military
was going to be in Arab Muslim lands,” he says. “There
was just no doubt about it. I knew there was going to be a need,
and I felt that Arab Americans needed to engage.”
It’s been a harrowing mission thus far—Dudin was injured
by shrapnel and now bears a scar on his forehead above his right
eye, earning him a Purple Heart. He was subsequently awarded a Bronze
Star and numerous other awards for his bravery and service, including
a “War on Terrorism” ribbon. But the dangers of war
have not deterred his plans to head back to Iraq for another tour
of duty. “I don’t feel torn about this mission at all,”
he says, “I know I am helping Iraqis.”
Dudin says he fought against anti-Arab racism when it came “seeping
through the woodwork” after 9-11, and he acknowledges that
as an Arab American he sometimes encounters those attitudes in the
military. All the more reason his presence is needed, he says. “They
see me and they say, ‘Doc knows this place. He gets out of
the truck and talks to these people. He’s our guy.’
”
About the Author
Mary Abowd is a former associate editor of Chicago magazine.
Her work has appeared in The Chicago Reporter, the
Chicago Sun-Times, The Progressive, and other publications.
Now living in Chico, she was awarded a 2004 George Washington Williams
Fellowship from the Independent Press Association in San Francisco.
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