“The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus

3 Wounded Bird

25 3 WOUNDED BIRD 1 It’s difficult to find a picture of Neenef Odah smiling, though the first thing his good friends mention is his comedy. Dan Poskey says he often smiled, but “more like a half-smile.” The photo that comes closest, among those I’ve seen, is the photo on his green card, taken when he was around twelve. And even there, it’s not quite a smile; it’s more a hopeful upturning of eyes and lips, as if something good might just be coming. Perhaps he thought it waited in the United States. Neenef was born in Iraq in May of 1979, the second son of Assyrian parents, Wilson Odah, a physician, and Susan Aprim Shima Odah. “Assyrian,” a transnational term, refers to a particular Christian ethnic group in the Middle East, descendents of the earliest Christians. Their first language is Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. In the sixteenth century, Assyrians joined with the Roman Catholic Church and remain under its jurisdiction today, while retaining their ancient language and rites. Within Iraq, Assyrians often identify as Chaldean Catholics, descendents of the Babylonian Empire, though the Odahs apparently do not; while Iraqi Chaldeans are not taught at home to speak Arabic, Neenef apparently spoke and wrote the language. CHAPTER 3 26 Assyrians in Iraq did not generally fare well under Saddam Hussein, although some Iraqi Christians, such as Foreign Minister Tariq Assiz, were able to achieve prominence. For the most part, however, Saddam and his Baath party were pan-Arab and secularist in orientation, intent on unifying Iraq within an Arab national identity. Assyrians, then, felt pressure to assimilate. Saddam’s policies toward minorities were undoubtedly a factor in Neenef’s family’s decision to emigrate, not to mention the fact that the region was in turmoil that would culminate in the first Gulf War. Neenef also told friends that his family’s priority on education was a primary motivation for their leaving. Safety, freedom, opportunity—the traditional immigrant mix. Neenef told Martha and Rick Omilian that his family had been very wealthy but had had to leave much of their wealth behind. He said that they had been on vacation in London when the situation at home suddenly became critical—perhaps at the outset of the first Gulf War—and they simply never returned. From England they moved to the United States when Neenef was about twelve. They went to Seattle, where Neenef attended Seattle Preparatory Academy, a Jesuit secondary school, graduating in 1997. By the time Neenef was ready for college, the family had developed a Kalamazoo connection, most likely through the large Chaldean community in southeastern Michigan. A cousin attended Western Michigan University, where an old family friend and distant relation also taught. It may have been this professor who told the Odahs about Kalamazoo College; he was sending his own daughter, Neenef’s age, to K. It had been decided that Neenef would study science, preparatory to becoming a physician like his father, so K’s reputation for premedical education and medical-school placement probably figured in the decision as well. The first thing his peers at K tell you about Neenef will probably have to do with his family. The friends who loved him clearly saw him against a dark, troubled backdrop of family life characterized by patriarchal domination and intense pressure to succeed. According to one story, by the time Neenef arrived at K, his older brother had in fact jumped ship: unable or unwilling to sustain the role of Eldest Son in such a context, he was estranged from the family, living on his own. If true, this would have left Neenef heir apparent to all the expectations—about grades, career, masculinity, culture—that his brother had fled. WOUNDED BIRD 27 German professor and soccer coach Hardy Fuchs met the Odah family when they visited K in the spring of 1997, Neenef’s senior year in high school. Above all, he recalls Neenef’s father, a tall man, well dressed, who emphasized the family’s being Assyrian and explained that this meant they were Christian. Even in those days before 9/11, Neenef’s father felt it was important to counter assumptions that the family was Muslim, especially in such a midwestern Protestant enclave. Greg Mahler, provost and academic vice president at K at the time, met Wilson Odah and son on Neenef’s first day...