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

A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (36 page)

BOOK: A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

10.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

In the tent, pictures whirr on the monitors and I watch fascinated. Soldiers, battles, tanks rushing across sand dunes, the American flag on top of the Presidential palace. The war in close-up. Events I have not seen myself, only heard about.

Paul stretches out on his stool, fit, quick, supple, restless, in his mid-thirties. He appears tired. Owing to security risks Reuters has cut down heavily on manpower. For Paul that means a duty of sixteen hours, divided between the office on the fifteenth floor and the tent on the roof.

- What sort of a life is this? he says. Paul rarely shows his gloomy side.

A brutal wind fights with the tent canvas, making it difficult to hear what Paul is saying. When it drops he continues.

- My life has become the world’s wars. I’m away for months at a time. But I just can’t stay at home; I suppose this is my life.

I understand exactly what he is saying.

- Enough is enough. When this is over I’m going to stay at home. Find a girl, work at the Reuters office in London. Or I’ll destroy myself. If they had sent someone to relieve me I would have left on the spot. Now I have to stay to the end.

Paul yawns. It becomes increasingly difficult to sit upright in the chair. The pictures flicker over the screen. My eyelids will not stay open; the canvas flaps.

- All I wish for now is a good night’s sleep, Paul says.

I nod.

- I’ll pop into your office tomorrow to take a proper look at the recordings, I say.

It’s strange to be so close to the fighting, yet so far away. - All we know is what is happening at the hotel and at the Presidential palace across the river, I say.

- Well, that’s something at least, Paul laughs and gives me a hug. - It’ll be over in a couple of days, I promise you. Then we can go home and start living.

I leave Paul in the gale on the roof. He has an hour to go, waiting for some pictures.

A strange sound wakes me in the middle of the night. It lulls me in and out of sleep. Darkness embraces me, as does the curious, light sound. It is gentle, like a memory from carefree days. The trickle of water. Drip, drip, drip.

It’s raining.

When day breaks I am woken anew. I peep out of the window to see whether the view might have changed during the night. In the morning twilight all I see is rain; raindrops pregnant with desert sand fall heavy to the ground, leaving yellow-brown blotches wherever they land. I try to sleep. I am exhausted but my body is full of adrenalin and won’t let me have more than a few hours sleep. I peer out of the window again. The rain has cleared; the sun is forcing its way through the clouds, pushing them to the side. It could have been a beautiful morning.

The battles start with a bang just after 5am. Booms are heard from every direction, the building vibrates and window panes shatter many hundreds of metres away. Fire from heavy artillery shakes Baghdad out of its slumber. The bombers circle menacingly before dropping their cargo. The bombs seem to hover in the air for a moment before descending, and then, boom, hit the target. Buildings explode, some are levelled to the ground. Once again grey smoke rises heavenward.

Only some curious young boys dare show themselves. Their eyes are turned towards the sky, the planes, the fire-balls. They watch seriously. No sensation seeking, no excited faces. I myself am too frightened to venture out. I sit in my room, exhausted, sick with the lack of sleep. Soon I must report to the wide-awake Swedes.

Like the previous day, the most serious fighting is centred around the Presidential palace. The republican guard is trying to recapture it. They fight with mortar and machine-guns. The American answer is immediate, strong and precise. Following a night given over to the sound of raindrops the air attack starts at full strength, tanks and artillery batteries attacking from the ground. Baghdad residents suddenly catch an unknown sound in the air, the intense chatter of small cannonballs, followed by an ear-piercing braking sound. A10 aircraft are flying low, peppering Iraqi positions. The planes dispense 4,000 130mm bullets a minute and are called ‘tank killers’. This is the first time this type of plane has been used in a centre of town.

Now war is not only raging by the Presidential palace. Parallel to the fierce attack on the administration quarters, fighting has also broken out southeast of the town. Several marine units have crossed the Tigris during the night and are approaching the commercial district, the markets and the residential quarters.

The streets around the hotel are deserted. Aliya phones from 716, a few rooms away, and asks about the plan for the day. I hesitate. I have no plan. I do not dare go out.

- I’m writing, I say.

- OK, I’m in my room if you need me, Aliya answers. Tough Aliya, staying with me, not knowing how her family is faring. She cannot phone them, the telephones are out of action. She cannot go and see them as that would mean crossing the front.

In spite of Saddam Hussein’s countless requests to take up arms and fight, Baghdad’s inhabitants do exactly the opposite. They lock their doors, bolt the windows and wait for the war to end.

Outside a man with a cigarette trolley stops by a puddle. He leans the trolley against the pavement and lights up.

I consider going up to Paul in 1502 to take a look at the pictures Reuters have snapped during the course of the morning. With their lenses they can see far more than I can from my balcony. As I am on my way out the door the phone rings. It is Tim.

- The water is back!

Excellent. Now I can fill the bath. I also fill about thirty hoarded bottles. My room is a pigsty, there is nowhere to dispose of rubbish. Some just throw rubbish bags into the corridors, as though they will disappear by themselves.

After the water ritual is over I have no energy left to ascend to the fifteenth floor. Anyway, if I wait they might have some more pictures.

To pretend that I am actually doing something I open my mail. The first one has the title ‘War chariot’ and is from Per Egil Hegge,
Aftenposten
’s senior correspondent.

Brothers and sisters,

This is rather overdue - but on the other hand it is never too late. We must eliminate the word tank meaning war chariot. In Norwegian a tank is a milk tank, or a petrol tank. Åsne in particular uses the word tank; for all her good qualities her military vocabulary is weak and this must be changed in her manuscripts.

Per Egil

The next email is also from
Aftenposten
and signed Per A. Christiansen. He rattles off all the different spellings of Iraq’s Minister of Information: Mohammad Said Al-Sahaf, Muhammed Said al-Sahaf, Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Muhammed Saeed Sahaf, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf, Mohammed Saeed al.Shahaf, Muhammad Saeed as-Sahaf, Mohammed Saeed a-Sahaf. He suggests we should agree on one version.

I reply that I prefer Muhammed Said al-Sahhaf. As I press the send button there is an almighty crash, the windows rattle and the building shakes violently. That was close. I instinctively glance at my watch. One minute to twelve. Still feeling the swaying hotel in my body I cross over to the window. Have they hit the Air Force HQ nearby - or was it even closer? I see nothing from the balcony and continue to concentrate on
Aftenposten
’s linguistic usage. Arabic names can be transcribed in endless ways; one must only stick to one. And from now on I will use the word war chariot and not tank.

The telephone rings. It’s Tim again. Has the electricity returned, I wonder.

- The hotel is hit. The hotel is hit. Get out! It might collapse!

I stiffen for a fraction of a second, holding the receiver in my hand. Then I rush out. Should I have taken the computer? The telephone? No, I just run. Everyone is running, the stairs are full of people, rushing down, out to the back garden, through the reception, out the glass doors, away from the hotel complex. The building is still standing. Will it fall?

Someone suddenly calls. - Reuters is hit! Reuters’ office is hit!

They are carried out of the lift in blood-soaked blankets. There are no stretchers, no first aid. A jeep, its back doors open, stands by the front door to take away the wounded. Another car drives up. More bloody blankets. They are carried out in long bundles. We cannot see who lies in them. It takes a long time before they are brought down; they wait vital minutes for the sluggish lift and lose a lot of blood.

Josh walks towards me. He is crying, staggering.

- My friends! he cries. - I was there, I saw it all. Taras on the floor, Paul on the floor. The office is all smashed up.

- Paul, I ask. - Do you . . . do you know anything about him?

- I don’t know, I don’t know. There was nothing I could do.

Josh’s face is red, he shakes, looks away, walks off. Josh the soldier. The satellite guy. Like Paul. When the cars drive off we remain outside the hotel. Puzzled.

A crushed camera lies on the floor in 1502. Bits of concrete and metal shards swim in pools of blood.

Why was the hotel targeted?

From HQ in Qatar a message is sent to the effect that soldiers on the bridge had been shot at from the hotel and that they had replied to the shooting in self-defence. It makes me shiver. What if the Iraqis start to use Palestine as a point of departure for the defence of Baghdad? We know there are anti-aircraft guns on the roofs around us. If they now place soldiers and weapons on the roof, maybe in the garden, in the stairwells, in our rooms, what we most fear will come true - we will be hostages.

That same morning, Tarek Ayob, the reporter for the Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera, was killed as he was about to deliver his report. He was on the roof of the channel’s office, a stone’s throw from the Information Ministry, when a missile annihilated the generator a couple of yards away. It exploded and the metal shards cut up his body. He died instantly, while the programme’s anchorman, on the other side of the Persian Gulf, sat watching.

- These attacks are not accidental, is Robert Fisk’s opinion. - Al-Jazeera has been targeted three times in as many years. First in Kabul, then in Basra and now here. They say it is mistaken identity, but they know what they are doing. Journalists are among the American’s targets.

Uday hurries past, swiftly, lightly. Jean Paul asks him what has happened.

- People die in wars. Surely you know that, Uday says breezily before turning into his office.

A thin column of smoke streams from the room on the fifteenth floor, windows are shattered on several floors. The missile hit the balcony balustrade, concrete and glass rushed in.

Uncertain, I stand there. The hotel framework has not been hit. I return to my room. As I let myself in the telephone is ringing. It is Bjørn Hansen at NRK.

- Are you OK?

- I’m OK.

I hadn’t thought about the fact that the news from Hotel Palestine would reach home, that the agencies would spread the news and that someone might be worried.

- We’ll put you on the morning broadcast and you can give an account of what you have seen while I phone your parents. What is their phone number?

I am put through to the studio and give a narrative of the little I know of the missile which struck.

BOOK: A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

10.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads