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CULTURE & HISTORY<br />
Honoring Amir Denha: A Chaldean Pioneer in Publishing<br />
BY ADHID MIRI, PHD<br />
In this article we shed light on the<br />
success story of another pioneer, a<br />
publisher, a calligrapher, a caricaturist<br />
who embarked on a creative venture<br />
with limited resources and minimal<br />
support.<br />
Every goal must have a start, a<br />
middle, and an end, with many steps<br />
or objectives in between. The objectives<br />
are check points along the journey,<br />
checking off each one as they are<br />
accomplished, to continually move<br />
forward. Success comes to those who<br />
persist, to those who keep their goal in<br />
front of them and who move through<br />
each step toward their established<br />
goal.<br />
Ultimately, success comes through<br />
vision, determination, hard work and<br />
careful planning. Hard work without<br />
planning and a smart goal is just hard<br />
work. Hard work combined with vision<br />
and a goal eventually has you publishing<br />
the Chaldean Detroit Times newspaper.<br />
Personal Biography<br />
Amir Denha was born in Baghdad in<br />
1943, the eldest in a sibling of 4 brothers<br />
- George, Ayad and Ziad - and four<br />
sisters - Najla, Ayser, Hanaa, and<br />
Ayman. He grew up in Baghdad’s Al-<br />
Shalchiyya Railway District. Amir’s<br />
parents, Mikhael Hana Putrus and<br />
Hassina Essou Ayar, were natives to<br />
the village of Tel-Kelkepe in Nineveh<br />
Province. In 1975, Amir married Haifa<br />
Kassir and the couple raised a family<br />
of two daughters, Dalia and Olivia,<br />
and two sons, Vidal and Rami.<br />
Coming to America<br />
Amir Denha arrived in the United<br />
States on January 1, 1967, just a few<br />
months before the infamous Detroit<br />
riots. His journey to America occurred<br />
by chance as his cousin, Sabah Ayar,<br />
worked at a Baghdad Airport hotel and<br />
had established a friendship with the<br />
chief American Consul in Baghdad.<br />
This relationship provided the opportunity<br />
for Ayar and Denha to obtain<br />
visas to the US.<br />
As a youngster, Denha held great<br />
ambitions. When he left his Iraqi-<br />
Chaldean family in Baghdad to come<br />
Amir in one of his favorite places, the library.<br />
to the United States, he had the American<br />
Dream forefront in his thoughts.<br />
“My journey was not easy; America is<br />
the place to come to change your life.<br />
America is the place to start a new life.<br />
That is why I came to America,” recalls<br />
Denha. Whether it was inspiration or<br />
desperation, his early dreams came<br />
true as he started opening A & L (Amir<br />
and Lilly) party stores in Detroit in the<br />
aftermath of the riots.<br />
The American Dream<br />
Denha was not afraid to challenge the<br />
status quo and the traditional political<br />
way of thinking that he embraced earlier<br />
in Iraq. He started thinking of the<br />
American Dream as a new idea, a big<br />
idea, and really knew how to go after<br />
it.<br />
He believed that big thinking preceded<br />
great achievements and anyone<br />
charting a new course would face resistance.<br />
A pioneer must be capable of<br />
choosing his own path. A trailblazer<br />
should be capable of achieving new<br />
horizons and doing what is best for everyone<br />
to become successful.<br />
Denha states his vision clearly: “If<br />
someone truly believes that they will<br />
be successful, they become successful.”<br />
In life, all have a natural disposition,<br />
a unique set of traits that give<br />
us a competitive advantage over others.<br />
When you understand what your<br />
unique gifts are and cast a vision that<br />
is aligned with that ambition, then you<br />
will be successful.<br />
The world of journalism<br />
Denha’s interest in calligraphy and<br />
writing started early in his high school<br />
years. A group of friends that included<br />
Bassam Faraj, Dawood Al-Farhan, and<br />
Richard Jerjis issued a flyer called The<br />
Voice of Humanity. Denha exchanged<br />
the issues with his school friend,<br />
neighbor and brother-in-law, Iraq’s<br />
soccer national team captain, Abed<br />
Kadhum, who published the friends’<br />
magazine.<br />
In the United States, Amir Denha’s<br />
passion for pen and paper surfaced<br />
again when he joined a revival that<br />
took place in the nineties. His aim was<br />
to carve a niche for himself in a challenging<br />
industry, among a host of adversaries<br />
within other emerging newspapers<br />
who used the community news<br />
to lodge themselves within the larger<br />
multicultural metropolitan family.<br />
There is no denying that Amir<br />
Denha was adventurous in his early<br />
days. As a newcomer to Michigan,<br />
Denha found himself in a difficult situation<br />
- pushing the boundaries of free<br />
access to information, free thought,<br />
and free expression on one of the most<br />
daring issues (Iraq), in one of the most<br />
uncompromising parts of the world at<br />
that time.<br />
A score of community newspapers<br />
and magazines were published and<br />
faded during the last few decades in<br />
Detroit. They had attempted to publish<br />
information about the city of Detroit<br />
and its diverse communities, as<br />
many Arab Americans turned to both<br />
Arabic- and English-language media<br />
for news and commentary, where they<br />
were exposed to very different versions<br />
on the story of the moment, but they<br />
made scant reference to the contributions<br />
of Chaldean Americans or their<br />
achievements.<br />
During the last century, before<br />
the emergence of internet-based media,<br />
the local immigrant community<br />
had few ways to stay informed about<br />
the happening in their home country.<br />
Later, advances in television brought<br />
Al-Jazeera from Qatar and BBC from<br />
London, as well as CNN and MSNBC<br />
content directly into metro Detroit<br />
living rooms. Local Arabic-language<br />
newspapers were intently focused on<br />
the Middle East conflict, the Iraq-Iran<br />
War, The Gulf Wars, and the fallout<br />
from the September 11 terrorist attacks.<br />
News reflected the pull-and-tug<br />
among Arab and Iraqi Americans, between<br />
patriotic support for the United<br />
States and their often-strong disagreement<br />
with U.S. policies and actions in<br />
the Middle East. This changed with<br />
time as people started focusing less on<br />
politics and more on economics and<br />
issues that impacted their lives here in<br />
Michigan and across the United States.<br />
The fact of the matter is that Chaldean<br />
news media used publishing in<br />
Arabic/English as a medium of expression,<br />
and Arab and Chaldean authors<br />
and writers have been making their<br />
voices heard with originality and confidence<br />
in TV- Orient, MEA-TV, Arab<br />
Voice of Detroit, and new publications<br />
like The Chaldean News.<br />
The Chaldean Detroit Times<br />
The Chaldean Detroit Times was issued<br />
as a publication geared towards<br />
34 CHALDEAN NEWS <strong>FEBRUARY</strong> <strong>2022</strong>
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