A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (7 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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Like Alaw, the owner of al-Finjan, Nabil belongs to the Christian minority in Iraq. This evening he is scared. The weapons inspections are not going well; the American rhetoric is increasingly aggressive. Nabil is newly married, has newborn twins and says they will leave if the war starts. Maybe to London, he speculates. Close the restaurant and return when it is all over.
- Do you think there will be war?
- It will be difficult to avoid.
- When will it happen?
- Impossible to tell, but leave in time.
In the meantime Nabil does all he can to forget the clouds of war. He extends the menu and learns how to make pizza Margherita from a friend who lived in Italy.
- Come on Valentine’s Day, says Nabil. We’ll have a party!
Every day Takhlef propels me through the Baath Party mill, having been mashed through it many times himself. I feign compliance. However, our cooperation is starting to unravel.
One morning I make myself sound sick; I tell him I am at my hotel, in an attempt to sneak off. I am actually going out with two Norwegian child psychologists, Magne Raundalen and Atle Dyregrov. Unlike me, they have a super interpreter, a woman who takes people seriously. She is of course also hired by the regime, but she lets people speak and does not scare them off.
- We’ll choose a street at random, Atle explains. - We’ll knock on the first door and ask if they have any children.
- But you have to apply first, I tell them. The Iraqi bureaucracy has become part of my daily life. Obviously there are other rules for child psychologists.
We drive north and the car really does stop in a randomly chosen street. Atle takes the houses to the left, Magne and I the houses to the right. We ring the bell outside the first house. A man appears. The interpreter explains our business and the family lets us in. I am in an Iraqi home for the first time.
The family of Abu Khan - Grandfather Khan - are gathered together for holy day. Everyone assembles around him in the front room, eight children and about thirty grandchildren. They were preparing dinner when we rang the bell.
Magne’s project is to establish the psychological problems or traumas present in children who live on the edge of a war. Having explained his objective to Abu Khan he asks if he may start. He is a determined guest; he asks the parents to stay in the background and say nothing and gathers the children around. - Usually I ask the parents to leave, but that is not possible here. After all, we have arrived in the middle of a family party.
- Are you frightened of anything?
- My brother is frightened of dogs.
- And you?
- I’m not afraid of anything.
Hamza looks Magne Raundalen in the eyes while fumbling with a button on his overalls. The child psychologist asks again.
- Aren’t you frightened of anything?
Hamza stares defiantly at the questioning man. No one says anything. Then Hamza decides that it is permitted to be frightened when one is seven.
- I am frightened that my mummy and daddy will die, he says, looking down. I’m frightened of being alone, that many in my family will be killed. I’m frightened that they’ll shoot us. Or that they’ll use weapons that will make us sick. There are some weapons like that and you don’t notice at once that you get sick. Then you get very sick and it hurts terribly and then you die.
- Who has got these weapons?
- Bush and Sharon.
- Why?
- I don’t know. We mustn’t talk about that.
Everyone listens while Hamza speaks. Only a little girl walks around, gurgling, wide-eyed, surprised at the sudden silence. The four cousins Shahad, Hind, Sahar and Reem huddle together in an armchair. It is their turn now.
- Sometimes I can’t sleep at night, I think about the bombs, eleven-year-old Shahad says. - I dream that the whole family is at home, that we can’t escape. Just when the bomb falls on us and explodes I wake up. Mummy told us about all the people who were bombed and burnt alive. They were buried under lots of earth and crushed.
- We will withstand the enemy. We are strong and we will fight, says fifteen-year-old Reem. - Just like the Palestinians, we are struggling against Zionism and America. We are shut in, just like they are. We must get foreigners out of our country.
- What Reem said is typical, Magne explains. - Teenagers have been taught what to say. They use Saddam Hussein’s words. But the younger children muddle everything up - fear, fantasy and snatches of conversations they have picked up.
- But I don’t think they’ll kill lots of children, Shahad interrupts. - No one would agree to that. I think people will show sympathy. We are peaceful and won’t attack anyone.
The others don’t agree. - Oh yes, they’ll bomb us, I’m quite sure, says Reem. - But when Bush sees all the dead Iraqi children on TV he’ll regret it.
Magne notes it all down and then asks if they can draw their insides: How much is fear, how much is unhappiness, and how much is anger. They draw circles and divide them up. Fear is the largest sector in Shahad’s circle; in Reem’s it is anger.
- The media is the father of fear. The children rarely discuss with their parents what has been said on telly, they just store it up and then it emerges at night or when they are alone. What they fear most is being alone, or being left alone after the war, Magne says.
As if the media has not sown enough fear already, Grandfather Khan fuels the fire.
- I was a soldier when the British attacked us in 1941. That was awful. But the Gulf War and the American bombs were even worse. This war will be devilish. And do you know why? The weapons are larger and stronger and it will be impossible to defend ourselves. The new bombs will kill us all.
He gets up from the chair and shakes his fist. - But we will fight.
The psychologist takes his leave. The grown-ups return to their cooking. The children go out to play. The Security Council meets to discuss the situation in Iraq. Bush is impatient.
Several days go by and I do not see Takhlef. I tell him I am at the hotel writing, reading or resting. In reality I sneak out at daybreak to work with the child psychologists.
One evening when my minder phones I realise I can avoid him no longer and agree to meet him next morning at nine. At the crack of dawn I leave to meet Shaima, a six-year-old who regales me with how the Americans will bury her house in sand, how all the sand will cover her, how she will rub and rub her eyes but the sand will not go away and in the end everyone will be smothered by it.
I am caught offguard by her stories and forget the rendezvous. When I appear one and a half hours late Takhlef is livid.
- What are you up to? he cries. - You sneak out without me. They’ll throw you out!
My minder has done his job and has asked for me at the hotel. Abdullah told him I had left at six. Takhlef quivers with fury, but is scared at the same time. If I do anything illegal he will get the blame. I resort to a lie.
- My editor asked me to interview two Norwegian child psychologists, and they were off this morning so I had to catch them at their hotel at first light. You can check it out at al-Rashid.
- It’s OK, Takhlef mutters. - But you can’t continue like this - you’ll be straight out. I’ve lost a lot of money the days you didn’t turn up.
Takhlef is in control. One word from him and it will be over. But I hold the trump card; the wherewithal.
- I apologise for making you wait, and I’ll pay double for the days I’ve been away.
The next day I slip him hundreds of dollars in a white envelope. He then tells me that the German TV channel ZDF has offered him a job.
That suits me perfectly and I throw him willingly to the Germans.
- Television! I exclaim. - What a chance! And d’you know what? I lower my voice. When the Germans say nine they mean nine. Not half past ten!
Having said goodbye to Takhlef I feel free as a bird. But the happiness is short-lived. How can I work without a minder and interpreter?
Frustrated I sit down by my laptop, which I have placed on the corner of a dirty plastic table outside the Ministry of Information, behind the fence by the pavement. Those of us who cannot afford office space inside are left to this dusty strip between the house and the road. Fortunately it rains little in Baghdad but it can get cold. In the desert the temperature sinks drastically when the sun sets.
I shiver in my winter coat. The satellite telephone is rigged up by the road, the aerial facing southeast to catch the best signal. I send a few emails home and sit around moping about the working conditions. No interpreter, no visa, nothing to write about.
Beside me stands a buxom young lady reading a newspaper. She looks like one of the employees, with down-at-heel shoes, fuzzy woollen skirt and a huge sweater. I try English.
- What do the papers say?
- The same as usual, she answers and laughs. - Do you want me to translate?
She reads, shortens, simplifies and explains. Compared to Takhlef, who stumbled through complicated Arabic news-speak word by word, it is a pleasure listening to her. The woman is called Aliya and she is employed by INA. It is her job to translate Saddam’s decrees and INA’s press releases into English.
By the next day I have employed Aliya. She inquired about the possibility of working with foreigners and our bosses agreed. As more and more journalists stream into Iraq the need for minders and interpreters increases and Aliya is accepted as being safe enough.
- Everyone who sees me thinks they know me. And do you know why? Because I look like everyone else, was one of the first things Aliya said to me when we met.
She’s right. She looks like the woman next door, a typical Middle Eastern woman. Big, curly hair, rounded hips, broad lips. Beautiful brown eyes, framed by thick, long eyelashes.
Aliya confides in me that her goal in life is to travel. She would like to go to Dubai; get a job as a translator in a foreign firm and earn pots of money. Her travel fantasies are never accompanied by critical remarks about life in Iraq. She is a child of Saddam. She has been brought up with him.
It is not much easier to work with Aliya than it was with Takhlef. Like him she stalls. One of my editors wants a piece about the Baath Party. Simple, I think. The Baath Party owns Iraq, it is omnipresent. But I never manage to get a Baath Party member to talk. One has no time, the other no inclination, the third is away, the fourth does not answer. Aliya herself is not a member, a rarity in the Ministry of Information.
- That’s not necessary. All Iraqis are collective members, she says roguishly, without a touch of irony. It is difficult to understand what Aliya really means. Even if she is a lot nicer than Takhlef, and adopts me as her sister from the first day, I am careful with what I say. It is her job to report, on where we have been, with whom we have spoken and what we have spoken about. We never discuss politics. But unlike Takhlef, Aliya treats people naturally and not as if in a police interrogation.
Aliya and I eat chicken kebab in a Baghdad café. I speculate on what to write. It is already three and the deadline is only a few hours away.
This same day Blix’s inspection report has been submitted to the UN in New York. Maybe I could ask people what they think of it. Exciting. Really exciting, especially in a dictatorship. Saddam Hussein will take the right decision anyway. That’s what he has done in the past, that’s what he does now and it’s what he will do in the future.
Some teenage girls are sitting at the table next door. A well-dressed crowd who would not look out of place in any Western café. I ask Aliya if we can talk to them.
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