Aikido is helping an Iraqi to 'get out of the way of conflict'

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/29/BAV0SEJ2G.DTL

Without his friends and fellow martial arts practitioners in the Bay Area and around the United States, Bashar Ahmed might have been another anonymous casualty of the Iraq war.

Ahmed has a black belt in aikido, a Japanese martial art whose practitioners learn to "get out of the way of conflict," in the words of instructor Kayla Feder of Richmond. But Ahmed is a native of Baghdad, where avoiding conflict is all but impossible.

Last year, Ahmed's father was shot to death. The father of another Iraqi aikido practitioner was kidnapped and held for tens of thousands of dollars in ransom, and a member of the Baghdad aikido training center was killed in a car bombing.

After he received threats in the wake of his father's slaying, Ahmed fled the country. Now he's in Syria, trying to get his remaining family out of Baghdad, and his friends in the Bay Area are holding a benefit for him today.

"He needs our support," said Feder, who is hosting today's aikido exhibition in Richmond.

Ahmed says the Iraq war and his refugee status have made him even more reliant on a martial art known for its spirituality and the empathy it requires toward opponents.

"All these wars and violence and bad situations ... made me cling more (to) aikido," Ahmed said in an e-mail interview from Damascus, Syria, where he has been living since August. "I'm without home and without my family and without work and income and without (a) place to start a new life, and without country ... but I still try to find (a) chance to train (in) aikido."

Bay Area members of Aiki Extensions, a national organization, got to know Ahmed through their financial support of a training facility, called a dojo, in Baghdad.

Just buying mats for the dojo was a major help for Baghdad's aikido practitioners. The fundraiser being held today will benefit Ahmed and Aiki Extensions' projects in the Middle East and Ethiopia, where Ahmed lived for a few months after leaving Iraq.

In Ahmed, aikido masters recognized a kindred spirit who faces an uncertain future in Syria, where the government has told him he can remain only two more months.

A martial art that emphasizes defensive tactics, not offensive maneuvers, aikido requires concern for an enemy, along with exercises that are meditative.

"We're taking something that's violent - a punch or strike or knife - and we try to block it, receive it and redirect it, handling it in a nonviolent manner," Feder said. "We redirect the opponent's energy and bring it to a neutral position where, hopefully, both people stay safe. By protecting your opponent, you're saving his karma and yours."

Jamie Leno Zimron, a former Bay Area resident who directs Aiki Extensions' Mideast Aikido Peace Project, worked with Ahmed and five other Iraqis in April 2005, when they went to Cyprus for a weeklong aikido peace workshop that brought together practitioners from Israel and elsewhere.

For the first time in his life, Ahmed, who is in his mid-20s, not only met Jewish Israelis, but engaged with them in aikido and social functions. Palestinian aikido practitioners also attended the workshop, traveling there with their Israeli cohorts.

"I've frequently described what happened as a lovefest; it was astonishing," said Zimron, the younger sister of state Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

"In aikido and inside one dojo," Ahmed said, there are "no nations, no religions, no colors and no fanaticism."

But when Ahmed returned to Iraq from Cyprus, the sectarian bloodshed that has destabilized his country struck him and other aikido practitioners.

It's unclear if they were targeted because of the hatred some Sunnis and Shiites have for each other in Iraq or because they participated in a sport that led them to interact with Israelis.

Soon after his father's death, Ahmed left for Jordan, where he stayed for eight months until going to Awassa, Ethiopia, where Aiki Extensions has a dojo. Ahmed missed the culture of the Middle East, so he found a way to get to Syria.

He's grateful for the support he's gotten from aikido followers in the Bay Area and around the United States, where other upcoming fundraisers are also planned.

Zimron, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford with a degree in political science, knows how sports can unite people whose leaders are at odds. After Cyprus, Zimron - who is Jewish and holds dual U.S.-Israel citizenship - worked with the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv to help secure a dojo in East Jerusalem for Palestinian aikido practitioners. She has also taught aikido in Jordan.

Aikido, Zimron says, "is particularly suited for peace work. The founder of aikido said aikido is to make all human beings one family. It's known as the art of peace."

Online resources

For information on Aiki Extensions and today's event, go to the group's Web site:

www.aiki-extensions.org

E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.