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CounterPunch
March 20,
2003
From Waiting
to War
A Day and a Night in Baghdad
by JO WILDING
Fourteen people live in Yasser's house in Saddam
City: his parents, his brothers and sisters, his aunt and several
cousins, nieces and nephews and his grandmother. She is paralysed,
and he gently lifted her, sitting on her bed, propped her on
pillows and spoke with her. She says she's not scared of the
war.
Yasser shares a room with his cousin
Mustapha, a student of physics at Baghdad University. The boys
have two posters on their wall: one of Manchester United and
one from the film Braveheart. "It's about freedom,"
Mustapha explained. There is an easy affection between them all:
the younger children are cuddled and stroked and there is pride
in their voices as they introduce one another. Yasser's mum says
they've been trying hard to make the kids feel safe and to reassure
them.
Zainab and the baby played in the car
while Yasser showed us the sacks of rice and flour they have
stored for the war: the food ration for March to July, and the
well at the front of the house in the chicken pen, a walled enclosure
with about eight birds who mainly shuffle about in the hedges.
They have a Kalashnikov in the house for defence. I asked who
they expected to need to defend themselves against Americans,
the Iraqi army or looters. A shrug. Anyone who threatens their
home.
The boys say they will carry on studying,
though Yasser's school and Mustapha's college are already closed.
Yasser's sister lives there with her husband, who is studying
translation, and her daughter Zainab. The house is ramshackle
from the outside, but within it is spacious and comfortable
sofas occupy one corner and two walls, while rugs and cushions
frame another wall. Filled with family members, it's the warmest
place I've ever seen. When we left they gave us gifts a
handmade basket and a copper jug.
"Insha'Allah we will see you again
soon, in a better circumstance," Yasser's mother said, through
Faadi translating. They were gorgeous. I wanted to hold onto
every one of them, store up every minute in their home and re
run it a dozen times.
People living fourteen to a house in
extended families is common in Saddam City, which is why its
population is so dense. As well, Carel de Rooy from UNICEF said
that people have been moving into the district from Shi'a villages
all over the country, especially throughout the duration of the
sanctions, when the rest of central and southern Iraq has been
even poorer than Baghdad. Consequently no one knows how many
people live here.
In Saddam City the shops were still open,
unlike most of Baghdad, and the market was busy with horses and
carts and people among the stalls with tattered raffia shades
over the goods. Traffic was light in Baghdad and a 40-minute
journey on an ordinary day took only 15 today.
Like Yasser, Thoraya wasn't at school
today. She's 17, born in 1985, during the war with Iran. She
was five years old in the last Gulf War. Her mum remembers both
her and her brother Usama being terrified and crying during the
bombing, and taking them into rooms with no windows sometimes
sitting in the bathroom with them for fear of imploding
glass. Thoraya's friend's family's house collapsed in the bombing,
killing everyone except the father. The buildings now are in
a worse state than they were in 1991, Thoraya's dad explained,
because a lot have been weakened by bombings and most people
haven't had money to spare for maintenance in twelve and a half
years under sanctions.
Thoraya loves Anthony Hopkins. Silence
of the Lambs is one of her favourite films and she likes Charlotte
Bronte as well, especially Jane Eyre. She writes poems and has
posters of Princess Di on her wall. Her dad did a masters degree
and PhD in chemistry at Essex University and her mum lived there
for two years after marrying her dad, so the whole family speaks
excellent English, maintained by watching English language films
in the long years since they last met a native speaker. "My
Fair Lady" they know off by heart. Her cousin is a translator
at the airport, but as there are no flights any more she wasn't
at work.
Faroukh's school was open, but only the
teachers were inside, and Leila, the beautiful cleaner whose
grey hair shows just at the front beneath her scarf. A crowd
of his mates were at the gate clowning, hugging each other, singing
football chants and declaring AC Milan to be the greatest. No,
no, I assured them. Brighton and Hove Albion were far better,
if a little less famous and wealthy. Then I stumbled over a mound
of sand in the road and gave them something to laugh at.
"We don't know when we will see
each other again or if we will at all," said Faroukh with
a shrug.
Drinking tea with a Lebanese photographer
friend we found ourselves the subject of attention from the usual
men in suits. He and Julia started discussing the properties
of his two cameras, the respective merits of Lika and Nikon cameras,
and our companions got tired of us and went to look at the demonstration
passing the door yet another on its way from the coach
drop off to the UN building. I long for the time when the people
can tear down those portraits, but my soul aches with the bitter
knowledge of all that the US and UK have done to harm the people
of Iraq over twenty-odd years.
As if it was the city of Baghdad that
was the problem. As if it wasn't the idea that you can support
and fund and arm someone who you know minces his political opponents
and destroys whole towns of people and that's OK because he's
buying your weapons and selling you oil and starting wars with
your enemies, with your help, not knowing you're helping the
other side as well, covertly. As if it wasn't the idea that once
that person is outside of your control you can besiege the people
of the entire country, denying them adequate food, even despite
a distribution system "second to none" (UNOHCI) and
after twelve and a half years of suffering and death, because
it didn't work, you can flatten their country, "shock and
awe" them into surrendering with Cruise missiles.
Jeremy phoned and said the bombers were
on their way. It's tonight. Some people didn't believe it would
be tonight. The 48 hour deadline ends at 4am. Ahmed came and
knocked on the door of our apartment and told us the same thing:
the bombers are coming for us. He told me he was sorry. He shook
my hand, held my shoulder and told me he was sorry.
A siren sounded and my heart flipped,
but then followed the familiar horn sound of a Red Crescent ambulance.
Going where, I wondered. What accident, what illness could possibly
befall you in the hour before the war? It's 3:30 am.
The First
Day
I hardly know whether it was real. In
my head I know that bombing started around 5:30am. I know because
I heard low thundering booms that drew me out onto the balcony,
where I could feel the pulsation through the air and see the
distant flashes and the occasional moving light of a Cruise missile,
until the sky got too light to spot them any more. I know because
I saw the feral dogs that live on the riverside running down
the middle of the road, which was wiped clear of cars, trying
to escape the noise, which was in stereo. I know because the
phone's been ringing all day with journalists asking what's happening.
The streets are still empty. Nothing
is open to travel to. There's nothing in the shops and the metal
or brick frontages are staying where they are till it's all over.
The war has started and yet not started. Bush says this morning
was only an "opportunistic strike." The full weight
of "shock and awe" hasn't yet begun.
This morning the manager of our hotel
was arrested, seized by two men in uniforms and dragged, screaming
and struggling in obvious panic, to a vehicle, apparently because
some ignorant journalists were filming the bombing from the roof
of the hotel, even though they're all supposed to be staying
in the Palestine Hotel across the road. They wouldn't tell us
where they were taking him and we couldn't do a thing to help
him. We hardly expected to see him back, but within the hour
he was escorted through the door. The edifice isn't crumbling
just yet.
Those who are out are wandering around
a little numbly. It's kind of the war but it's kind of not. There's
nothing to stop us going out and doing things but there's not
actually anything to do.
We're still in limbo.
Jo Wilding
is a British peace activist from Bristol. She can be reached
at: wildthing@burntmail.com
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
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Give
War a Chance: the Anti-Peace Anthem
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