The Write Stuff: Fouad Manna Follows His Own Path

posted on: Dec 17, 2016

By Weam Namou
The Chaldean News

Fouad Manna was born in 1936 in an Iraqi Christian village that had 96 homes, 500 residents and no schools. It was during a time when families easily and naturally shared one big home. In his case, there were three families, each with about seven or eight kids. For the most part, they lived off the land through agriculture or herding. Everyone worked, even the children. But Manna wanted something else. He wanted to go to school.

“I went up to my mom and said, ‘I want to go to school,’” he said and his parents registered him in a school he would walk to two miles away.

He continued in this educational path, and after graduating, studied journalism for a year. One day a man was pushing a three-wheel cart, selling used books. Manna was drawn to a book by Khalil Gibran and decided to buy it.

“Reading Gibran’s book mesmerized me,” he said. “I felt an immediate connection with the author. It was as if he knew my thoughts and feelings.”

After that, he searched for more books by Gibran and read each one several times.

At the age of 20, Manna began his writing career by working for one of Iraq’s newspapers. This was during the Hashemite Kingdom, which he describes as “the best government Iraq ever had. Every government that has come since then has been worse and worse.”

During this period, writers could write whatever they wanted as long as they did not attack the government. The Kingdom of Iraq was founded on August 21, 1923 under British administration and following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I. It was established with King Faisal I of the Hashemite dynasty receiving the throne.

After the Hashemite Kingdom’s overthrow on July 14, 1958, the new government closed all the newspapers associated with the Kingdom and arrested the editors-in-chief. Manna eventually continued to write in different papers until 1963, when the Baath Party came into power. They too closed newspapers, but they did something entirely different with the editors.

“These people were gone, just disappeared,” said Manna.

Manna realized that he could not live under this type of government, especially not given his profession. “Journalists have to address the negativities of the community, to shed light on it,” he said.

He came to the United States in January 1969 with his wife Hana and their five children; the family lived in the Six Mile and John R area near what was later called Chaldean Town. Within one year, Manna established his own print shop in Detroit and published a weekly paper called Al-Hadaf, the Purpose. He also worked at Chrysler; after his shift ended at 3 p.m. he would head to the print shop, work until about 10 p.m., and go there on the weekends as well.

The paper published important community news and news and analysis about Iraq and the Arab world. Adhering to his journalistic values, Manna wrote about government and religious issues openly and objectively, which in 1972 brought Iraqi officials from the Iraqi Embassy in Washington literally knocking on his door, wanting to “help” the newspaper financially.

Manna asked the two men who visited him, “Are there any rules I’d have to follow to receive help from the Iraqi government?”

They replied, “Every day, we’ll send you the two daily newspapers that we print in Iraq, and you use some of those articles in your paper.”

“You mean the ideology of the Baathist Party?”

“No, no, you chose whatever you want from the newspaper.”

“I don’t think I can work with you,” Manna said.

“Why?”

“Well, I’m in America and I believe in democracy. There’s no democracy in Iraq. It’s a dictatorship. Most of the people who get money from the governments are puppets for the government. I’m not for sale.”

They left, tried on a few other occasions to win him over, failed again, and then let him be. He was also antagonized by a local priest who, unhappy with what Manna printed, threated to burn his shop. A few days later, the shop burned down.

This was in 1974, and during that time, a number of storeowners were hiring people to burn their stores so they could claim the insurance. When the police came to the print shop, they first told Manna that because someone had entered the building using a key, it was an inside job. He said, “Why would I burn my shop if I don’t have insurance?”

That ended the suspicion. It took almost three months to rebuild the shop.

While Manna continued to work hard, his wife was raising their children – three more were born in the United States – and studying to be a teacher. She ended up teaching for nearly 52 years, and all three of her daughters became teachers as well. Manna’s five sons pursued different paths and have all had successful careers, some receiving master’s and doctorate degrees. Today he is the proud grandfather of 26 children and great-grandfather of four children.

Manna had hoped that his first child, Gibran, named after the famous author, would be another real Gibran. When his son was a year old, he set him against the books in the library and took a picture of him in the hopes of securing that literary path. But Gibran (known as Jim) became a Realtor — and just became the first Chaldean elected to the West Bloomfield Board of Trustees.

Now 80, Manna continues to write, recently publishing a book about a relative of his, Bishop Yacoub Eugene Manna (1866-1928), who died eight years before Fouad Manna was born. He had heard a lot of stories from his grandfather, who told him what a courageous, eloquent and popular bishop he was. Among many things, he had wanted to unite the churches that were separated by the Roman Church, but certain authorities were against him and went out of their way to silence him. In the end, he died a mysterious death that left many questions about the church’s possible involvement unanswered.

“Reading is a good foundation for any person,” said Manna. “I read a lot. Sometimes, when I talk, people think I’m not a believer. I’m a believer but not the way they want me to believe.”

His religious and political philosophies are deep, acquired from decades of reading, independent thinking, self-reflection, and the desire for true freedom. Once someone asked him, “Why don’t you become a member of a political party?”

Manna’s response: “Why should I put chains around my wrists, freeze my brain and follow one way?”