A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (10 page)

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Authors: Asne Seierstad,Ingrid Christophersen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers, #History, #Military, #Iraq War (2003-2011), #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Journalism, #Social Science, #Customs & Traditions, #Sociology

BOOK: A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal
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It is the reserve forces who are flexing their muscles - the day before Colin Powell submits his ‘conclusive proof’ against Iraq. The reserve forces go under the name al-Quds - Arabic for ‘Jerusalem’ - and were formed by Saddam Hussein during the spring of 2001 to ‘recapture and liberate Jerusalem from the Israelis’. Around one third of all Iraqis belong to al-Quds, through their work or local districts, but primarily through the Baath Party. A well-trained paramilitary unit can also be found within al-Quds. Saddam’s real army is not present however - it has been called up long ago, supposedly to the borders in the north and south, into the desert and to various lines of defence around Baghdad.
 
A group of black-clad women have taken up position waiting for the parade to begin. They wear long veils over their faces and have covered hair. Only their eyes can be seen but it is obvious they cannot conceal their curiosity when we approach them. They giggle behind the shawls, but, like everyone else, respond according to the party line.
 
- We will eat the Americans as if they were rabbits, one woman threatens. Her name is Muntaha. - We will defend ourselves with sticks and stones and we would rather drink our oil than let the Americans have it.
 
Muntaha has attended training courses with al-Quds three times during the last two years, in periods of two months. - We learn weapons handling, how to use communications equipment and write military reports. Last time we also used heavy artillery. Besides, we have been through survival courses and learnt how to subsist in the desert, says the mother of three. Several women crowd around us, inciting each other with ever more fiery descriptions of how they will kill the Americans.
 
It is not long before a gruff officer walks over and talks to Aliya. She nods and says we must leave. Before Janine or I have time to even murmur, she is on her way over the road.
 
- Stop, I cry, and call her back. - What did he say?
 
- We need permission to interview people.
 
- Where do we get that?
 
- We have to go and see the mayor.
 
I visualise a never-ending swirl from office to office, ending only when the parade is over and there is no one left to talk to, so I try to pull a fast one.
 
- Listen, why do you think we are here? Do you think we have arrived under our own steam? I say to the muscular officer. - Not at all, we have been sent here by the Ministry of Information. We have permission from the minister himself. Show him the permission, Aliya. The permission implies that we can talk to people. How could we otherwise do our job? Actually, we haven’t only got permission to be here, we have in fact been ordered to come. If you prevent us from carrying out this order, which actually consists of visiting and writing about the parade in Mosul, then you are really pitting yourself against Iraq’s Information Minister, who has been hand-picked for the job by Saddam Hussein. What is your name, by the way?
 
I look straight at the officer, who has been listening to my speech via Aliya’s translation. He breathes heavily, snorts a few Arab expletives and walks off. I say proudly to Aliya: That’s how to do it.
 
Aliya has pursed her lips and asks me to behave.
 
- Now you follow me, she says.
 
The parade begins. The noise is ear-splitting; now it isn’t possible to interview anyone anyway.
 
The female units march at the front. Many wear their own clothes. Billowing lace blouses and home knitted sweaters, flowing skirts with or without splits, pleated skirts, tight skirts, all long. The colour is unique to each unit, but most of the women wear white tops and black skirts.
 
In spite of the alleged tough training, they would not have got far with the sort of footwear revealed - high-heeled pumps, sandals with golden buckles, slippers that keep on slipping.
 
- This is a celebration, an occasion, we’re not going out to fight today, one of the girls told me when I commented on her plastic shoes. I spot her now in one of the front rows. But she’s not wiggling her hips, she is stomping through the streets of Mosul, crying with the others: ‘
Na’m, na’m Saddam!
’ ‘Yes, yes, Saddam!’
 
After the women’s brigade come the men. One man catches my attention. Like the others in his unit he marches with knees pulled up high and in the traditional Kurdish costume: wide trousers and shirt, a flower-painted belt round his waist. What separates him from the others are the seven plastic roses he has stuck down into his turban. Behind the roses, anchored in the folds of the turban, is a picture of Saddam Hussein. On the front of the turban is another portrait of the president, a third is pinned on his chest.
 
The Kurd salutes to the right where Iraq’s power elite are seated in a stand, and to the left where ordinary Iraqis are sitting. Some of them have been given placards which they hold in their laps. When the call ‘
Na’m, na’m Saddam
’ is heard, they turn the placards and a huge portrait of the president appears in mosaic. The Kurdish hero Saladin has also been allocated space on the portrait. He was the warrior who forced the crusaders out of Jerusalem in 1187. Saddam and Saladin are fellow towns-men of Tikrit.
 
Workers and peasants, teachers and old-age pensioners march together in one large group, some in uniform others in work clothes. Many sport a banner across the chest on which are painted two flags, the Iraqi and the Palestinian. On other banners is the slogan: ‘Hold your head high, you are an Iraqi!’
 
Right at the end, on their own, the suicide bombers march. They are in white floor-length hooded robes, with dynamite wound around their waists and grenades in their hands. - We are ready to die a martyr’s death, is the message on the banners they carry.
 
A mother and her son stand quietly watching the parade. - I am a soldier’s widow, she says. - From the Gulf War. She clutches a dirty plastic bag in her hand. It is filled with coloured bits of paper which she and her son shower over the marchers. The widow also belongs to the reserve forces but is off sick. Her twelve-year-old son says he is proud of his mother being a member of al-Quds.
 
- He’ll be starting to train soon too, she says. - We’ll show the Americans, our children are made of fire and steel.
 
One boy is spellbound by it all, fascinated by the soldiers, the uniforms and the vehicles. On the back of his jacket is the word ‘Titanic’.
 
- That just about says it all, looking at this lot, a person to my right whispers. - Shipwreck at the first American attack.
 
 
When I return from Mosul there’s something about my room. It smells different.
 
A small palm is smiling at me by the mirror. I haven’t had time to close the door before Said is there, beaming. He looks at me and can barely contain his laughter. Have I seen it or not?
 
He points to the palm tree. I thank him, we both laugh. A small sand fly escapes from the pot. Well, I’ll never sleep alone.
 
 
The day after the parade we are invited up to one of the assembly rooms on the Ministry’s second floor. A large TV screen has been erected. On a sofa by the window the Minister of Information is sitting with Uday and a few other serious-looking men. In addition to us journalists the room is full of representatives from various peace organisations. The ‘Women in Pink’ are the most noticeable. They are dressed in various shades of pink and are gathered around a pink banner in the middle of the room asking for peace. I have seen them everywhere the last couple of days; they usually position themselves in front of the press centre or by the hotel roundabouts where they know they’ll be caught on camera. They spent one whole day under pink parasols in Paradise Square outside Hotel Palestine, doling out shocking pink plastic trifles to children. And the protests work. At least enough to appear on TV. They are especially popular with the Arab TV stations. Inside the conference hall it appears that the pink clad are being interviewed constantly, while eagerly scouting the hall for further interrogators.
 
- The world should be ruled by a pink attitude to life, I hear a lady say in a broad Californian accent.
 
Close to them are the Spanish ‘Mujeres por la Paz’. ‘No pasaran’ says their banner. But the Spanish ladies are no match for the Californian candyfloss, and eventually sit down on the available chairs waiting for the show to start.
 
‘Voices in the Wilderness’, ‘Priests for Peace’, they are all there. A vicar stands up and declares war a sin. Some Greeks from ‘Doctors of the World’, all wearing white pullovers, sit in one corner. A large EU parliament delegation, in Iraq to beg the country’s parliamentarians to cooperate better with the weapons inspectors, wander about. They don’t feel quite at home, either with Iraqi Baath Party activists or pink plastic necklaces.
 
The TV is turned on. We have seated ourselves with notebooks poised. The room is stiff with smoke. BBC and CNN show the same pictures and after a while, and some to-ing and fro-ing, the Iraqi in charge of the remote control chooses the BBC. Joschka Fisher is greeting his French colleague Dominique de Villepin. The UN inspectors Hans Blix and Muhammed el-Baradei arrive, followed by porters carrying suitcases. A bandy-legged, smiling Colin Powell saunters through the corridors and into the chamber of the Security Council, a briefcase tucked under his arm: the proof.
 
Minister of Information Muhammed Said al-Sahhaf leans back in his armchair. He watches the screen as if he is able to uncover some of the contents by scrutinising Powell’s body language. Uday has one eye on the TV screen and one eye on his superior. The séance takes ninety minutes. With the use of charts and sketches Powell demonstrates that Iraq ostensibly transports weapons of mass destruction around the country. He shows pictures of what he calls mobile laboratories and reveals that Iraq has close connections to al-Qaida.
 
I steal a glance at al-Sahhaf and Uday as Powell presents his proof. They sit and watch, poker faced, without exchanging a word until Powell has finished. The British Foreign Minister Jack Straw appears, applauding. Fischer demands more time for the Iraqis. Villepin says there must be better cooperation. Blix says time is running out.
 
As the broadcast finishes the group in the corner get up and leave the room, stiff, without staggering, looking straight ahead. We stay behind and analyse the speech. What kind of proof was this?
 
Two Spanish peace activists start crying and the Spaniards gather round for communal comfort. The pink ladies roll up their banners. The TV reporters rush up onto the roof to report the Iraqi reaction. But there is no reaction to broadcast. The stony faces left the room without saying a word.
 
A Swedish parliamentarian shuffles around the premises. - This looks bad, he says. - They don’t appear to have understood the seriousness of it all.
 
 
I marvel at every day I am allowed to stay. Each day lists with names of those who must leave are hung up outside Uday’s office. One day about fifty journalists are expelled, another day twenty. They are given forty-eight hours’ notice. Those who disappear are the unimportant ones, people who work for small countries. My category.
 
After three weeks in Iraq it is my turn. The extra days of grace from Uday have expired; I am unable to extend my visa and must go. I fantasise about hiding away and reappearing only when the regime has fallen, the Ministry of Information been levelled to the ground and Uday has fled. But it is difficult to go underground in a thoroughly monitored Iraq. The hotels constantly check that residence permits are up to date, and hiding away in a private house is out of the question. It would be impossible to be kept away from neighbours and relatives in a country where everyone is spying on each other and every street or building has an informer. Anyhow, I don’t know any Iraqis I could ask. What about the Bedouins in the desert? Like Gertrude Bell? I imagine the sequel:
Desert Queen II
.
 
The fanciful flight remains fantasy and I pack my bags, book a ticket to Amman and wonder what to do now. Go to Oslo? Wait in Jordan? I know it is virtually impossible to return once one has left. Hundreds of journalists are tripping impatiently in the Jordanian capital, several having waited for weeks. Iraq’s destiny is at stake and I am on my way out. Damn.
 
The last day before departure I go to the Ministry of Information to settle my bill. All journalists must pay $225 per day for the privilege of staying in the country. I owe several thousand dollars. As I am counting the money, Kadim, number two after Uday and a milder type than his boss, whispers:
 
- Do you want to stay?
 
- Of course, but you are throwing me out!
 
- I can help you.
 
Kadim indicates that the help must be kept secret and asks me to meet him an hour later at the end of a little-used corridor.

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