A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (41 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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The interrogations took place at the end of the passage. Blindfolds and cloth to tie hands and feet, electric cables and pipes lie scattered around the room. The interrogation room is chaotic; the prison has been looted during the course of the last few days. Drawers have been turned upside down and paper strewn on the floor. A cupboard with tapes has been emptied; only the covers remain. Journals have been trampled into the ground. A woman’s shoe lies among the rubbish; a man shudders when he sees it.
In the courtyard in front of the prison, Sabab stands with his hands in his pockets and looks up at the building. - I was here for three months and was one of the few let out. I was accused of belonging to a political group I had not even heard of. I never thought I would survive. They tied my arms, hung me from a fan in the roof and spun me round until I fainted. They beat me with sticks. Gave me electric shocks. They broke both my arms. I never thought I would get out, he says.
- The majority of those brought here were never released. Some were hanged and buried in mass graves, others were thrown in front of their family’s door in the middle of the night, one man relates; he will not divulge his name. Like many others he fears that the old regime is not yet finished.
Outside Baghdad is the dreaded Abu Ghraib prison. The high walls are covered with portraits of Saddam Hussein. These are now riddled with bullet holes, in his eyes, his nose. On some the whole face has disappeared. The walls are punctured with gaps caused by exploding bombs and missiles. Inside are many square kilometres of prison complex. Factory-like buildings house rows of naked cells. Each building contains a food hall with concrete benches and tables. The only colour is a portrait of Saddam Hussein at the end of the room. The president is smiling and smoking a cigar.
People come to Abu Ghraib too, to look for their loved ones, even though the prison was virtually emptied when Saddam Hussein proclaimed his amnesty last autumn.
One man roves around, from cell to cell, through passage after passage. He is looking for the secret basement where he thinks his brother is being held. - Abbas has been missing for eighteen years. He was twenty when the secret police came and took him from the university. They accused him of being a member of Dawa, Najib explains. - When we inquired, all they said was that it would be best for him if we never mentioned him again. If we ever returned to ask about him we too would be imprisoned. My mother has cried for eighteen years; for eighteen years we have been wondering where he is. I shall find him now, he says determinedly, and walks through cells, dining halls and looted offices. In search of the entrance to the secret basement.
Instead he finds something else. In one of the buildings he enters a bare room. Some stairs ascend to a concrete plateau which covers half the floor space. Two lengths of rope are suspended from the roof, two nooses lie on the floor. Under the bits of rope is an opening. On each side of the opening are two trap-doors, and between them a bolt which can be pushed down in order to open them. Anyone with a noose around their neck will hang.
Najib hurries out into the sun. He glances into another passage of small cells: the death row. Here prisoners waited for their execution.
- I must find the secret entrance. Abbas is there, I am absolutely sure, says Najib, and walks on.
We leave Najib and Abu Ghraib prison, reading the inscription over the doorway on our way out:
There is no life without the sun.
There is no dignity without Saddam Hussein.
In a puddle outside the gate I tread on a rope. Hiding in the wet sand are some photographs, a toothbrush, a flaky tube. The rope is coiled up. It is the same type of rope as those that dangled from the roof in the execution room; the only room where there was no portrait of Saddam Hussein.
We can hardly get into the hotel. The Americans have erected so many checkpoints that it takes an eternity to pass through them. First there is an outside barrier. Behind this is a sea of Iraqi men - seeking work, demonstrating, or simply curious. We force our way through the crowd by means of our press card, the yellow one I paid thousands of dollars to renew just a few days before the war. Thereafter we stand in a queue to be frisked and have our bags and pockets checked.
The last barrier is immediately in front of the hotel. The press card is produced again. We are frisked again. Aliya stiffens when a large American man checks her waist for explosives. Anger surges inside me.
- Should you not have female soldiers to search women? I ask.
- We do.
- I can’t see any.
- They’re on the other side.
So the female entrance is on the other side. I tell Aliya we will use that next time.
In the lobby a smiling American welcomes us. He wants to talk. We don’t. The reception area is packed. The hotel is overflowing with journalists from Amman and Kuwait who waited for the fall of Saddam. Janine is among them. She approaches us in flowing desert robes and embraces us.
The women’s team is united again.
The five missing journalists were found, after eight days in Abu Ghraib prison. They had been interrogated, threatened, accused of spying. At night they heard the other prisoners being beaten.
They were freed and sent to Jordan.
On the way back from Abu Ghraib we had passed several corpses. Uniformed, half-naked, civilian. Some were already black with decay. Somewhere, someone was waiting for them.
In the car I had thought about Ali’s face, soft and beautiful, like the face of a fairy. Like Fatima on the cold bench in the mosque.
Towards evening I descend from my room to make my TV reports. I wear the bulletproof vest. In spite of the rumbling tanks outside the situation is more dangerous than ever. Anyone might be in possession of weapons. In the floodlight in front of the cameras we are sitting ducks.
I exit through the back door in the basement to avoid the steaming reception. Cameras and mobile transmission cars take up every available space in front of the hotel. I zigzag my way to my position in the garden. A few bearded types lie coiled in the grass: the warriors from reception! The ones with the martyr missions! Extraordinary. They are spreading themselves under the noses of the Americans. I speculate about what they might be hiding under their ample shirts.
I mount the stand in front of the camera and report looting, torture chambers, and the inhabitants’ growing opposition to the invasion army.
On my return I scowl at the men in the grass. They take no notice of me. I’ll bring Aliya down and have a talk to them, I think. Find out what they are doing here, why they did not flee with Saddam’s soldiers. Perhaps they want to continue fighting, as guerrilla soldiers or suicide bombers? What better place than Hotel Palestine, not so much for a couple of hundred western journalists, but for an equally large number of American soldiers. I wonder how the guys in the garden got through the barriers. Maybe they have just never left.
En route to my room I pop up to Lorenzo to borrow a cable. He is in a radiant mood. Proudly he displays the day’s loot: blindfolds in an orange material, others in leather, and a rope.
- Picked up at the prison, he says.
I look at him, appalled.
- From the torture chambers?
-
Si, bella
.
Si, bella
.
I feel I have been shipwrecked, washed up on a rotting beach. I can hardly stand up. Nauseous, I turn and walk to the door.
Nabil has opened his restaurant again and has put tables out in the garden. He tells me he was not in time to send his wife and twins away. When he at last made up his mind to do so there were no longer any planes flying, and his wife refused to take the babies on a fourteen-hour drive to Syria.
- There are queues, chaos, bandits, she said.
Instead they ensconced themselves in their 400-metre square luxury home and sat tight.
All the tables are taken and we ask if we can order something.
- No food, only beer, Nabil laughs. Earlier there was food and no beer.
- We have no power, so no food. No fridge, no heat.
Behind Nabil’s happy countenance, bitterness lurks in his eyes. He sits down beside us.
- Was it necessary to kill so many? Was it necessary to bomb residential areas? Shoot people in the street?
He lifts a lukewarm beer to his mouth but does not drink.
- Oh yes, the dictator has fallen. Oh yes, as a restaurateur and businessman it will be possible to enter into good contracts. Maybe the economy will blossom after so many years of isolation. But it was a dirty war. In spite of the American army’s superiority, they behaved like savages. My heart bleeds for Iraq, Nabil sighs. - And I also fear the Shias. I understand they are picking themselves up now, they suffered a lot under Saddam. But I do not want to live in a fundamentalist country. I hated Saddam but between you and me, he protected us Christians. Thanks to Saddam Hussein our life in Iraq was a good one, thanks to him I’m a rich man. Now I’m frightened, says Nabil, and finally takes a deep gulp of the beer.
The artists’ café Shahbendar has also reopened. I look for Isam, the candid literature critic, but cannot find him. Instead I spot my artist friends, Haidar and Rafik, who discuss passionately. Samir is still in Syria. The painters agree on two things: That Iraq has been liberated and that they do not like the Americans. They smile. Sip their lemon tea and look reasonably happy and unconcerned.
- When I was seven I went on a boat on the Tigris with my parents, Haidar says. - I pointed at the Presidential palace and asked what it was. My parents regarded each other with horror and told me severely that I must never again point at that building. A bit later I protested when we learnt something at school about Iraq’s history. My teacher was horrified and demanded that I never again open my mouth in class. So when I was seven I understood that we were not free, that we lived in danger. I learnt how to behave like a good Iraqi - in other words, to lie. Always and everywhere. I have been a liar ever since.
Haidar drinks his tea and purses his lips as if the tea no longer tastes good. He pulls on his cigarette. Even this appears to taste bitter.
- The tyrant has gone and I need lie no longer. But for thirty years I have lived under the skin of a liar. Now I must free myself.
- He talked on the radio today, Aliya says one morning.
- Someone has seen him in town, she says in the evening.
- He’ll be back on his birthday to kill all Americans, she continues the next day.
- He’s only hiding, the revenge will be sweet, she assures me.
But the days pass and Saddam does not return.
Before leaving Baghdad I want to see it, the palace on the opposite bank. I have stared at it so often; it was where the first bombs over Baghdad fell, where the hardest battles were fought, where the republican guard and the volunteers stood their ground the longest, and where I spotted the first American tanks. I have pondered over the building at daybreak, at night, during the sandstorms. It is the first thing I see every morning. The Presidential palace.
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