A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (13 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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Haidar was delivered by his father to the gravedigger at the gate. - He had no money for either grave or ceremony and asked if we could take him anyway. We accept everyone here, we’ll be paid up there, he says and points. - We washed him and wrapped him in this cloth. But there’ll be no gravestone or plaque, Kadim says.
It is early morning. Seven children have already been buried today. - One was seven months old, another nine months. The others were a few years old, Kadim tells us. One of the children has a gravestone; a quotation from the Koran and a newly painted name in red and green stands out against the white stone.
- What did they die of?
- Not enough food, no medicine, then they get blood poisoning, Kadim says. That is what he calls the illnesses he can’t explain.
The digger prepares a hole in the ground for Haidar, between two other children.
The very smallest are buried here. - Every day we get between twenty and thirty children. A few years ago it was under ten a day, Kadim tells us. A handful are just delivered at the gate. The parents cannot afford a proper burial. The graves are never looked after, never visited.
Haidar’s father told the gravedigger that his wife was in a critical condition following the birth, and that he must hurry back to the hospital. Haidar was born two months early.
There has been a large increase in premature births in Iraq. Between 1990 and 1999 the number of children born with a below average weight has increased fivefold, which might imply that the mothers are also undernourished or malnourished. In the same period, the number of deaths during labour has doubled.
Primarily children have been affected by the decline in standards of living following the implementation of sanctions. The mortality rate among the smallest children has doubled in the last decade. Most children die of what would be run-of-the-mill illnesses in the West; two thirds die of diarrhoea or infections. An average Iraqi child suffers from diarrhoea fourteen days every month, as opposed to three days every month in 1990.
Following the UN Oil-for-Food programme which was put into effect in 1996, the statistics have levelled off and even show a slight improvement in children’s health. This is due to the monthly rations received by all Iraqis. But rations sometimes make matters worse. Mothers of very young children get free milk substitutes as part of their monthly package. Because of this, fewer women breast-feed, and others give up breastfeeding earlier than usual. The contaminated water supplies mean that this practice leads to more sick children.
Many fatal illnesses are caused by impure water. Before the Gulf War, Iraq had a modern water system, but lately the water quality has deteriorated drastically. Bad maintenance of water-works and purification plants, power cuts, lack of reserve parts and even chlorine have put many of them out of action. The generators at two of the three plants have stopped functioning owing to a shortfall of batteries and spare parts. There is fear of a catastrophic breakdown in water supply should the power plants be bombed. Many of the sewerage plants are not working. Half the purification plants in Baghdad, a city of five million inhabitants, are out of service. Half a million tons of raw sewage are emptied into the Tigris every day.
The gravedigger has finished. Haidar is laid down in the grave accompanied by a short prayer. Three bricks are put on top of him and the man throws earth over and treads it down. All that bears witness to the small child in the ground is the freshly dug, darker earth.
Kadim does not believe that Haidar’s father will return.
- Those who don’t have a burial place don’t usually return. After all, they don’t know where the children are buried. I’ll remember Haidar for a few days, but then new ones will be brought in and I’ll forget.
A little way off a man sits by a grave polishing the marble headstone. It is dominated by a large painting of purple lilies on one side and a quotation from the Koran on the other. Shehad: 1.7.95-3.2.99
- Leukaemia, says the father, who has put the rag aside and stopped polishing. Not a speck of dust remains on the shining white marble. - It is as if life stopped when she died. Our only child, and it doesn’t look as though we’ll have any more, he says sadly.
- She had blue marks all over her body, but the doctor said it was nothing. Then she became very ill, and we took her to hospital. There they gave her injections but she died after four days. Four days. They didn’t have the right medicines. My wife has been sick ever since, she only comes here on Fridays.
- Honey, he says. - Her name means honey. And she had honey-coloured hair and white skin. She was beautiful like a flower.
He leans back on the gravestone and lights a cigarette. He comes here every day and shares a few moments with his daughter.
A wind picks up. Further down the hill the packed earth whirls around. But Haidar is safe under three bricks.
For a long time I have wanted to visit Baghdad’s forbidden quarter - Saddam City; a place one should not talk about, not visit, and preferably forget the existence of. Each time we mention the place to the Ministry of Information they look at us and say: What do you want to do there? It’s just like every other place. No, keep to the centre of town.
When I ask Aliya she gives a start.
- Don’t ask me again, she says. - I do not want to go to Saddam City.
- Why not?
- We won’t get permission.
- We can ask.
- We won’t get permission.
- If we don’t ask we’ll never get permission.
- But I don’t want to.
What Aliya does not want she does not want. She denies that it has anything to do with it being a Shia area.
-There is no difference between Shia and Sunni. We are all the same.
There are fears that the whole area will rise up against the regime when the American attacks start, as they did during the Gulf War. Then the republican guard tried in vain to calm the inhabitants down. When the uprisings spread, Saddam’s son Qusay gave orders that unless the riots ceased in two hours, the entire neighbourhood would be attacked by missiles. The head of the Baath Party in Saddam City asked for twenty-four hours and got them. The riots were stopped.
- There is no difference, Aliya says sanctimoniously. And when I insist she hisses. - Must not talk about Sunni and Shia.
One evening when Amir, my regular driver, brings me home, he advises me against visiting Saddam City.
- They are dirty. Lazy. Not like us. They are uncivilised, look how they whip and beat themselves, he says, alluding to their religious rites. - They cause nothing but trouble.
I am surprised. It is forbidden to criticise the Shias openly. The oppression is supposed to occur in secret, preferably under cover of darkness, under the command of the
mukhabarat
, the dreaded intelligence service. Tens of thousands of Shias have disappeared, just for belonging to a mosque which the regime insists is plotting revolt.
mukhabarat
, the dreaded intelligence service. Tens of thousands of Shias have disappeared, just for belonging to a mosque which the regime insists is plotting revolt.
On the surface everything is supposed to be quiet. That is a cardinal rule in Saddam Hussein’s kingdom.
- You can’t trust them; they smile in your face, but thrust the knife into your back when you turn around, Amir continues.
Amir is a large, huggable bear of a man. He is built like a boxer and has a liking for jeans and leather jackets. In spite of his tough appearance he isn’t a bully - his round face gives him away - he is a kind and conscientious driver. When he picks me up in the morning he always brings with him the
Iraqi Times
and the English version of
Babel
, the paper owned by Saddam’s son Uday. On trips out of town he brings a thermos with tea or coffee and cakes baked by his mother. Amir is thirty-five years old but still lives at home. His father is dead and Amir provides for the family. Normally he never speaks about politics so I am most surprised when he tells me the Shia Muslims are dirty. I let it lie. There isn’t much we can talk about anyway - his vocabulary is limited. But he improves every day. When he sits and waits for me in the car he learns new English words or tries to pick his way through the
Iraqi Times
. When he drives me through the deserted streets at night, on my way home from the Ministry of Information, he plays classical music before dropping me off and returning to his mother.
Iraqi Times
and the English version of
Babel
, the paper owned by Saddam’s son Uday. On trips out of town he brings a thermos with tea or coffee and cakes baked by his mother. Amir is thirty-five years old but still lives at home. His father is dead and Amir provides for the family. Normally he never speaks about politics so I am most surprised when he tells me the Shia Muslims are dirty. I let it lie. There isn’t much we can talk about anyway - his vocabulary is limited. But he improves every day. When he sits and waits for me in the car he learns new English words or tries to pick his way through the
Iraqi Times
. When he drives me through the deserted streets at night, on my way home from the Ministry of Information, he plays classical music before dropping me off and returning to his mother.
One day, however, I get the chance to visit Saddam City, not with Aliya but with Janine’s interpreter Hassan, himself a Shia. - But he never talks about it, Janine whispers.
Having crossed the river to Saddam City our first rendezvous is at the Baath Party offices. Foreigners need a special permit in order to visit the area, and two minders - one from the Ministry of Information and one from the local party office. Hassan and the local guide sit squeezed into the passenger seat in front, Janine and I spread ourselves over the back seat. There is no way the local guide wants to share the back seat with us.
A dried out canal-bed separates one world from the other. On one side Baghdad’s broad avenues, high-rise buildings and monuments. On the other a slum metropolis. Stinking sewage seeps between the market stalls. Children run barefoot over vegetable refuse and decaying fish-tails. The canal dried up many years ago. Now it serves a different purpose - as a military site, it is rumoured. The canal will act as a trench - several defence posts have already been erected in the dry mud. Not to protect people from the Americans, but in order to protect one district from another.
Saddam City was built after the overthrow of King Faisal in 1958. Two years later the houses were ready, and the poorest citizens moved in. Out of Baghdad’s five million inhabitants, one and a half million live here. The palms are dead and the grass scorched. The ostracised of this world live in a slum that was named after Saddam following his visit here ten years ago.
We stop by the market. The first thing that strikes me is the number of flies everywhere.
Led by the two guides we start the first interview. The situation is unbearably meaningless.
- The Party has given me a Kalashnikov, says a green-grocer. - To fight the Americans, he assures us, arms flailing in the air. The insects alight and settle on the tomatoes, cauliflowers and lettuce. Janine and I look at each other in despair. What’s the point of interviewing people when we already know their answers?
Flies aren’t the only plague in Saddam City. Disease thrives too. We set off for the local clinic. A family is standing outside, crying. A young woman is carrying a child in her arms. It is ashen-faced.
- His blood is damaged, she says. - There is no red in the blood, only white. The doctor says he needs a blood transfusion or he’ll die. But I’m too frightened. What if they give him bad blood?
- Talasemi, explains Samir Saleh, a young doctor from Southern Iraq. - It is hereditary and prevents the bones from growing. He needs a bone marrow transplant, but that’s impossible. There has only ever been one such transplant in Iraq. Only one. There are so many sick children here. Contaminated water, sewage everywhere, chemical discharge, radioactivity, no food, reduced immunity. I tell the mothers to boil the water, but when have they got time to do that? They spend all day looking for food as it is.
The hospital director arrives and asks to see our permission. We show him the piece of paper. - That doesn’t apply to the hospital. You must seek permission via the Health Ministry.
We leave the misery and go to meet one of the area’s leaders. In Saddam City the sheiks are the most important people. They dispense advice and act as mediators - instalments on loans, marriage agreements, rows amongst neighbours, Sheik Namah abd al-Alawi explains. The sheiks are heads of tribes or clans ranging in number from a few hundred to several thousand.
- We are preparing for war, the sheik says, and asks one of his sons to fetch his Kalashnikov. It is brand new.
- We’ll defeat the enemy, he says, echoing Saddam’s propaganda. He hardly draws breath before prolonging the echo, without empathy, without enthusiasm:
May the desert be the graveyard of the aggressors.
May the desert be the graveyard of the aggressors.
The sheik is a retired Army officer and lives off his state pension and support from clan members. He has also bought a car and set up as a taxi driver, alternating work with his sons.
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