A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (29 page)
Read A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal Online
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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Hassan stands alone by a bed. In it lies his brother, with shrapnel in his stomach. His face is yellow and he rambles incoherently.
- He must live, he must live, Hassan cries.
Amidst the tears he talks: - We were standing outside our house, Ali, Jamil and I. I wasn’t hit but my little brother fell down in a pool of blood. Ali lies here, Jamil was killed on the spot. He had just turned six.
- Where are your parents?
- My father is in the mosque washing Jamil, he sobs. - My mother is at home with my sisters.
I must carry on. Have to go to the mosque. I glance at my watch and see that I have missed my first deadline, my second too. But I can get it into the last edition; I must tell about the massacre.
Abbas stands by the entrance to the hospital, smoking. He gives me an empty look, but says nothing. We set off for the mosque.
I am not wearing a shawl and tie my jacket around my head. The mosque is full of people. Some scowl at us. Should we leave? Are we being intrusive? The atmosphere makes me giddy and I want to go when a man grabs my hand. He looks mad. His eyes are wide open and his mouth distorted. The man is tall, with light brown dishevelled hair and freckles. His jacket is open. He halts by a coffin and talks to me in Italian. He holds my hand tight, stares into my eyes, then he lifts the lid of the coffin. I look down. Inside is a boy wearing shorts and a shirt; a large cut crosses his chest. The boy too has freckles and the same light hair as the man. His knees are grazed, his clothes spotted, the trousers are green. Surely his knees were grazed before the missile struck. Maybe he was playing football, or cycling. He will never get any more scratches.
-
Perché? Perché?
the man says, his voice faltering, his eyes roaming between me and the coffin. - Why?
Perché? Perché?
the man says, his voice faltering, his eyes roaming between me and the coffin. - Why?
No answer exists.
I cannot tell him it’s because the USA thinks Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
That’s not what he is asking.
The words stick in my throat. He begs for an answer and I have nothing to give. I look up at him and feel I am falling. But I stand with a jacket over my head; I stand and weep floods of tears onto the little boy with the freckles. The man collapses over his son. Several of the men nearby weep quietly.
The boy is like a petrified sculpture in the little wooden coffin. His eyes are open, fixed on the roof of the mosque - towards heaven - into eternity.
Another man grabs my hand and leads me to the back of the mosque. He pushes me through a door in the end wall. Into the wash room.
Fatima lies on a bench. She is naked and is being washed by three women in black tunics. Fatima has a cut in the knee, in the stomach and in the back. Her face is untouched. She has dark curly hair and might be about ten years old. She looks like a Madonna. Her skin is pale, flawless; it seems so soft, I want to touch it. The brown eyes appear still to be seeing. Through reality.
- Tell the world, the man had said in broken English as he pushed me through the door. - Take pictures, show the world that our children are dying!
I take out my camera and look questioningly at the three women. They nod.
The women lay a transparent plastic sheet around Fatima, then wrap her in a white cloth. It is rolled around her several times before being knotted at both ends. They cut holes for her eyes and mouth.
On the floor there is a coffin; her mother Hasina is already lying in it. One of the women recounts what happened. - They were on their way to the market and happened to be where the missile hit. Hasina had eleven children; she leaves ten behind.
Fatima is lowered into the coffin beside her mother. Washed clean - on her way to Paradise. Outside the cubicle two of her brothers cry.
Back in room 734 I have twenty minutes to write Fatima’s story. I forward a picture of the beautiful young face.
Aftenposten
cannot publish it; actually I already knew that. I sent it so as not to be alone in having seen her.
Aftenposten
cannot publish it; actually I already knew that. I sent it so as not to be alone in having seen her.
A week later the
New York Review of Books
wants to print pictures of the last moments before Fatima was lowered into the coffin. But not of her face.
New York Review of Books
wants to print pictures of the last moments before Fatima was lowered into the coffin. But not of her face.
I send the last image. Where she is lying on the bed, rolled in a white cloth knotted at both ends. A dead child’s face is too strong an image for the international press. But that is what war is about - people dying.
The next morning we return to the market place. To discover in the light of day what had really happened. Sixty-five bodies had been put into coffins during the course of the night.
- My sons! My sons!
Shamsiya sits on the floor, beating her chest with clenched fists. Beside her are her mother, daughter, sisters, aunts, nieces and neighbours. Black-robed women come and go. They do not talk but listen in silence to Shamsiya’s lament. Now and again they strike up, clap their hands together rhythmically, then fall silent again. Or cry. All attention is directed towards Shamsiya. The room is heavy with the atmosphere of sympathy and sorrow.
She lost three sons. Shrapnel from the missile which struck the market shot into the backyard, smashed the doorway and flew in through the window.
- The whole house shook, the windows shattered and I heard screams. I rushed out and they were each lying in a pool of blood. I froze, just stood there looking. It was as if I entered the gates of death with them, then I was hurled back, the mother cries.
The youngest son died instantly, from shrapnel in the heart; the two older brothers died in the hospital the same night.
- I had asked them to stay at home because so many bombs had hit the neighbourhood, the mother says between sobs. - And look, they met their death at home, she cries, and points out through the door to the backyard, which is full of shrapnel. The blood has not yet been scrubbed away. Flies buzz around, soaking it up. Shamsiya interrupts her tale with wailing: My sons! My sons!
She pulls a photograph from her bosom. It shows her five sons. Now only two are alive.
- How beautiful they are, she sobs. - Muhammed was hit in the heart, Hussein in the forehead, Abbas in the chest. Muhammed was only twelve; he was born during war and died during war. The night he was born was one of the worst bombing nights of the Gulf War, the mother recalls.
- They were so young. Still at school. I have breast-fed them, washed them, clothed them, taught them to speak, sent them to school. What shall I do now? Bush has ruined my life. Why does he kill families? Why?
Her lament grows in strength and the other women join in. The wails reach the street and blend with the low hum of voices from the market.
In a room on the other side of the backyard sits Kahlil, the boys’ father. The old man is crying. He sits up against a wall, his legs crossed. This is where he was when the missile struck. - If only my boys had been in this room with me. Then they would have been alive now. How can I go on living, with my sons dead? If only the missile had hit me instead, he moans.
A man enters the room. His eyes are bloodshot.
- Jovid is dead, he says quietly.
Jovid is the boy next door, one of Muhammed’s friends. He was out on the street when the missile came and was hit in the stomach by shrapnel. He was taken to hospital and died in the night. His uncle has arrived to impart the news. Khalil nods silently, grabs the uncle’s hand and prays.
Out in the backyard is twelve-year-old Muhammed, together with his big brother. Not the Muhammed who was killed by the missile, but his friend and namesake. When he heard that the missile had struck his best friend’s house he came running immediately.
- When I arrived I saw Muhammed lying there, the boy says. His eyes are empty. - I ran home and returned with my mother and father. He was our best football player and fastest cyclist. I think of him all the time. Last night I couldn’t sleep.
Out on the street the coffins pass by slowly. They have been secured to the roofs of cars and move in procession through the desolate market place. After the victims had been taken to the mosque to be washed and prayed over, the coffins were returned home for a last night under their own roof, to be buried today.
At the market place people walk around and inspect the damage; the crater made by the missile, the burned-out cars, the twisted iron bars and ripped canvas. Small missile fragments lie everywhere. When the missile exploded the bits penetrated whatever they reached. The bits that didn’t hit anything lie scattered around, hard and cold.
- Allah will make us forget, forgive, says a man who accompanies his friend to the grave.
No one really knows what it was that exploded at the market. Several who were there immediately before the missile hit said they saw a plane circle above. They say it was the plane that dropped the missile. But it might equally have been Iraqi anti-aircraft guns aiming at the plane. When journalists arrived at the market that same evening Iraqi police had cleared away any large bits of missile, probably to prevent anyone from identifying it. The crater was one metre in diameter, too small to have been made by the bombs used by the Americans.
However, undeniable is the fact that Muhammed lost his best friend and Shamsiya and Khalil lost a twelve-year-old, a fourteen-year old and an eighteen-year old son.
Spring has long turned into summer. The mercury is creeping towards thirty degrees. The everyday life of war has reached us: no electricity or water in the hotel, the fridge is useless and the water-boiler superfluous. I bribe the hotel electrician and he connects a lamp in my room to the generator. Amir buys me some wiring and - hey presto - my computer and phone have electricity.
When there is water in the pipes we let each other know, and anyone with time on their hands can take a shower - in cold water, of course. We fill up the bathtubs to wash ourselves and our clothes. The bell boys have long since disappeared and the hotel slowly fills with rubbish. I can sympathise with them not wanting to come to work. They have enough to do looking after their families, or maybe they are doing the security rounds for the Baath Party, like Amir’s brother.
I ask Aliya how her family are coping. - No problem. We have a gas cooker - all Iraqis have one. No one is naïve enough to think there will be electricity every day - not even in peace time. And we have a water tank on the roof and masses of food. No one in Baghdad is suffering because of the war. Well, apart from the ones who are hit by missiles, she adds.
On one of the warmest days we are waiting for al-Sahhaf, as usual. We are expected to be on time, the minister arrives when it suits him. I sit talking to Robert Fisk, one of the most knowledgeable and interesting among us. Always restless, always toying with new ideas. Now he is discussing depleted uranium. It is used in the American missile-heads to penetrate panzers, bunkers and solid surfaces. Following the first Gulf War there was an increase in the incidence of cancer among soldiers who had served in Southern Iraq; the same was the case for the people of Basra.
- Tanks and bunkers which have been hit continue to radiate depleted uranium, Robert says. - And you can be sure that the military vehicles are soon crawling with children playing. They climb on to them, slide down the bonnet, clamber around the burnt-out chassis. Then they go home, with uranium dust in their pockets, in their clothes, hair and little bodies.
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