From Souk to Souk (13 page)

It was time to head back to Dubai, but first we wanted to pick up some water for the journey. The engine growled deeply as we trundled along the almost deserted streets towards the uninspiring rows of shops we had visited the previous evening. I looked at the houses as we passed by, mostly simple constructions little more than concrete boxes, some painted white or cream, a few decorated with a satellite dish or a wrought-iron flourish around the windows. Two figures walking towards us on the other side of the road caught my eye: small boys hand in hand, one a head taller than the other. As we got nearer, I recognised them as Ali and Sayyid, their school bags on their backs. They did not see us behind the tinted glass and a moment later we had driven by, a large white vehicle like any other. I wondered if someone had given them a lift into town at the start of the new school week or whether, when they sat down at their desks, they would already be exhausted from the long trek, their dusty feet aching. I was impressed by their, or their parents', determination that they get an education, but was saddened at the thought of the few possibilities I imagined were available to them. The field of opportunities was, I supposed, probably as barren as the mountains that surrounded the town, the chances of major change as likely as regular rainfall coming to this corner of Arabia. Some years hence, might Ali and Sayyid be the ones taking tourists out to the
khor
, I wondered, proudly showing them the stark beauty of their region, or would they, like so many others, end up risking imprisonment, or even their lives, as smugglers? I would never know whether they would grow up seeing their tiny Omani enclave as a scenic oasis in which they felt fortunate to live, or as a harsh, rocky prison devoid of prospects. Yet, I realised, my imaginings of what the two boys might want or aspire to were no more than personal dreams, a product of my own worldview. And I could no more change their lives than I could the climate. With a fanfare of revs we pulled up in front of one of the tiny stores in the town centre, Frédéric delighting in the noise of the engine. A short while later, provisions acquired, we bade farewell to Khasab and set off on our way back to Dubai, the Land Cruiser purring on the newly-asphalted road as I slipped into top gear.

‘I take it as a sign from God,' declares the vicar at the far end of the church, ‘that there is hope for this city and for this country, that on today, Good Friday, He should send us tourists.'

Speaking into a microphone, the interpreter translates his words into Arabic as the small congregation gathered in the first rows listens intently. In front of me, a young soldier, barely out of his teens, wearing grey camouflage fatigues and a black SWAT vest, stands watching and listening, an AK47 held loosely in front of him, a black beret tucked in his pocket. His thick, wavy hair is not shaved in the military fashion you might expect, making him look as if he has been hurriedly dressed up in a uniform rather than trained in a boot camp.

‘Of course, they must be mad,' the vicar adds light-heartedly, ‘but we are all mad here, aren't we!'

When they hear the translation, a ripple of laughter goes through the crowd: they are used to his jokes. If anyone needs a sense of humour in addition to their faith, it is these people: over the years, nearly three hundred of the congregation have been slaughtered by bombs and bullets, but in the face of such threats you have a choice of keeping your spirits up or sinking into the black hole of depression. The service is informal: children wander up and down the slightly dusty plum-coloured carpet that stretches the length of the aisle, while a flat-screen TV on a stand next to the chancel shows changing images of Christ, now on the cross, now preaching, now on the cross again.

***

As the plane began its descent I was struck by how flat everywhere was and how green, canals and waterways stretching into the distance and disappearing into the early morning haze. I had imagined a country of endless dust and sand as shown unremittingly on television, but, as I was to discover, there were many aspects of life on the ground that were different to the images that the media choose to show us. Looking at the verdant fields and the palm groves below, I felt the heartbeat of excitement: after some hesitation, not to say trepidation, I was here at last. I was about to arrive in the land of Adam, Abraham and Alexander the Great, in the land where the world's first cities rose from fertile plains, where it all started, where the wheel and writing were invented, where the first piece of literature in human history was written, a country whose past cultures left a legacy that forms the basis of much of our world today: I was about to arrive in Iraq.

***

A beautiful, haunting song unlike any I have heard reverberates around the church, its exotic tones contrasting with the building's sober interior of sand-coloured bricks and its simple, white arched ceiling. Voices sing in a language I do not recognise; the music sounds as if transported from antiquity. The service seems to have more of a rolling, ongoing nature rather than being limited to a specific event. Taking a break from the ceremony, the vicar comes down the aisle, passing the mostly empty wooden pews, accompanied by several children. They are smiling and relaxed as if unaware of the turbulent world outside the confines of the church's compound. The vicar stops in front of us, a tall forty-something figure with lively brown eyes and short swept back hair. A large steel cross hangs on a chain round his neck. Made of two square-headed nails fused together, it looks more like some piece of modern Scandinavian jewellery than a religious icon. A small boy in blue shorts and an orange polo top, his skin darker than the others, leans against the vicar, who puts an arm gently round his shoulder. The children gravitate to Andrew White with genuine affection.

‘Welcome to St. George's,' he says. ‘It's lovely to have you here.'

***

A visit to Baghdad is not like a trip to other capitals in the Middle East: this is not a place to wander around freely, to explore the sights or souks at your leisure; it is not even a place for which, under normal circumstances, you will get a tourist visa. Bombs, shootings, soldiers, angry mobs, wailing women and blood-spattered streets: that is probably what you associate with Baghdad. Yes, this is what the city is about, but only in part and, with notable exceptions, many of these images increasingly belong to the past. Slowly, in a rather un-newsworthy fashion, despite sporadic and tragic bombings, the security situation is improving. Yet it is indicative of the power of the media that for many of us these are the visions of Iraq that remain seared into our memories. Perhaps, like many of my friends, you imagine a country in ruins with shelled buildings and craters in the roads. When I returned home they asked me if the destruction was very widespread. What bomb damage I did see was mostly from terrorist attacks, not allied bombing. Let me tell you, for the most part, Iraq was simply dilapidated, its ugly, late-twentieth-century concrete buildings gradually falling into disrepair. Almost three decades of wars and sanctions have taken their toll on the economy: for a country rich in black gold, the overwhelming impression was one of poverty and of people struggling to eke out a living for themselves and a better future for their children. Yet signs of improvement were there if you looked for them. As we drove down one of the many new motorway slip roads, I saw workmen toiling away in the loop it made to create an area with park benches and flower beds. Perhaps to you or me the idea of spending an afternoon next to a flyover might seem odd, but public spaces and parks are few and far between in this city of seven million inhabitants, second in the Arab world only to Cairo. The large-scale reconstruction of the country is accompanied by a determined attempt to return to normality. That is what most people here want.

***

‘It's quite an eventful day with it being Good Friday,' says Canon White, ‘although it's a bit quieter just at the moment, so I was able to step out. It'll get busy again later. Come in and have a chat.' His powerful voice has a strange lilt to it, making his speech sound slightly slurred.

Accompanied by Omar, the ever-smiling guide and interpreter from the Ministry of Tourism, as well as Captain Hassan and Sergeant Ahmed, two plain-clothes guards sent by the Ministry of the Interior, we head along the paved pathway that transects the dry grass towards the gate leading to the vicarage garden. Here, the well-tended lawn is a brighter, more nourished green, flanked by a few thin rosebushes planted at intervals along the green metal fence. A handful of roses – pink, yellow and red – peep out from among the thorns and dark green leaves. It would be a normal, if somewhat sparse, garden for a vicarage if it were not for what stands in the centre. I pause to look at the white marble cenotaph, a trapezoid rising solemnly from a circle of stones and more rosebushes. On it, below an inscription from the Bible, are the names of Danish soldiers killed on duty here. I look at the list: three of them were only twenty when they died. Towering behind it, beyond the wall surrounding the compound, is the rusting skeleton of a bombed-out office building with half its walls missing and, above it, a peaceful blue sky with picture-book wisps of white cloud.

We turn the corner of the vicarage, a rectangular, single-storey building of beige and whitewashed bricks whose only concession to architectural style consists of two arches at the corner porch. We enter by a side door into what looks like a doctor's waiting room. A large, overwhelmingly dark portrait of a bearded Abraham, the prophet revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, hangs on one of the walls, a fitting decoration: the man lived in the city of Ur, the crumbling mud brick ruins of which lie in southern Iraq. Clutching the zip-up faux leather file with our papers that never seems to leave his hand, Omar looks round at the spartan room. The canon's teenage helpers start rearranging the plastic chairs so that we are facing him when he sits down on one of the two sofas. It is only now that I notice he is using a walking stick.

‘Would you like something to drink?' he asks.

***

The traffic was at a virtual standstill. Omar explained there had been a dramatic rise in car ownership since the end of the war. That and ubiquitous police road blocks, including at the end of every bridge over the Tigris, made getting around the city a slow and unpredictable task. We arrived at a roundabout where myriad yellow taxis of an unknown make were managing to weave their way through the traffic, dodging the occasional shiny 4x4 or sweating barrow boy pushing a crippling load. I laughed as we passed a fibreglass shelter for traffic police with a roof in the shape of a vastly oversized policeman's peaked cap below which a black tie descended and projected at the bottom to form a seat where the officer on duty could sit observing the traffic. Somebody in the Ministry of Transport, it seemed, had a sense of humour. It was strange to think that somewhere in the world – perhaps in Iraq – there was a factory churning out these comical shelters.

We turned into a boulevard lined with rundown apartment blocks, six-storey monstrosities in depressing brown, their windows small, their walls lined with ageing air-conditioner box units. The architecture was distinctly 1970s and 1980s when much of the city was rebuilt, seemingly in the style of some of Europe's worst experiments with social housing. Small trees, misshapen with age, coloured fairy lights adorning their branches, lined the road. Everywhere among the lingering brutality, be it that of the security situation or that of the urban planners, were signs of a craving for normality, for happier times.

Eventually, we reached a bridge and stopped at the police check point, a hut with a red and white rising arm barrier surrounded by concrete traffic dividers. Rather incongruously, like the roadside trees, the barrier had fairy lights wrapped round it and on the dividers someone had painted what looked like yellow and white marguerites, the flowers that adorned Babylon's Ishtar Gate, the flowers that symbolise innocence. A garland of lurid green imitation leaves draped along the top provided a finishing touch. I reached for my camera.

‘No photographs here, please.' Underlying Omar's friendly voice was a timbre of nervousness.

There was something touching about the scene, an almost childlike optimism and a yearning for the simple pleasures in life instead of the adrenalin and stress that comes from policing a city stalked by sectarian violence. Omar had told me that Iraqis, men and women alike, loved flowers: in front of me was an example at once sad and uplifting. As I watched the policemen in their camouflage fatigues chatting to our driver Mazen while they inspected our papers, I tried to imagine them carefully painting marguerites on to the drab concrete. Mazen, a tall man with a large nose and a cheeky smile, casually rested his hairy arm on the open window as he answered their questions. Leaning across, Hassan said something to the police sergeant holding the papers and a moment later we were waved on our way. With the traffic on the bridge so regulated, there were few vehicles as we drove across the fast-flowing Tigris. The turbid river was an unappealing brown, but its breadth meant we had a good view up- and downstream of what is still very much a low-rise city.

‘That is the Green Zone,' said Omar, pointing a chubby finger back towards the right bank, but from where we were I could not make out any features that distinguished the fortified sector from the surrounding area.

***

One of the canon's young helpers returns from the adjoining kitchen with a tray of cold cans of Coke, Fanta and Sprite. It is not quite afternoon tea at the vicarage, but this is not quite St Mary Mead either. The girl, a slight figure, is dressed as anyone her age in Europe would be. Smiling, she holds the tray in front of us as we each take one of the slim 25cl cans and a straw. The ring-pulls are the old-fashioned variety that come off rather than fold back; once again, I silently curse a Western manufacturer for using lower standards in a developing country.

‘So I suppose you would like to know a bit about St George's,' says the canon, adjusting his rectangular glasses and politely turning down a fizzy drink as the girl passes in front of him. She puts the tray down on the glass coffee table and joins the half-dozen other young people who have gathered in the room and now stand against one of its white-plastered walls, listening intently.

‘It's the only Anglican church in Baghdad, but, in fact, only Faiz the curate and I are actually Anglican: nearly everybody else is Syriac Orthodox, but we have a few Catholics and other denominations who come along too. Everyone is welcome.'

I glance at Hassan and Ahmed. They are sitting politely, ankles crossed, hands in their laps, pretending to listen, but their English is less than rudimentary: our communication is through a mixture of single words and sign language or through Omar. Ahmed, at twenty-eight the younger but more corpulent of the two, has already finished his Coke and leans across to put the empty can on the coffee table.

‘The church itself was first constructed in 1864,' continues the canon, ‘but, as you've probably noticed from the sign at the entrance, the current building dates from 1936. It was badly damaged when the two car bombs went off in 2009, but everyone has worked very hard to repair it.'

‘How big is the congregation?' I ask.

‘About 4,000,' he replies. ‘Sadly, 273 of them have been killed in the last five years. We miss them all; it's very difficult for the Christians here, for everyone, but our faith keeps us going.' Even when speaking of tragedy he somehow exudes a positive aura and I begin to understand why the people here seem drawn to him. ‘But it's not just the Christians,' he continues, ‘it's the Sunnis, the Shias, the Mandaeans: everyone is targeted.'

‘Why?'

‘Because they are different from those who are targeting them. Of course, the main conflict is between the Sunnis and Shias, but everyone else is caught up in it. My entire church council was killed and my head of security had his legs blown off. As you can see, though, the Iraqi government provides me with a lot of security.'

I look at the young soldier standing casually in the open doorway and pause to reflect: like Andrew White, he and his colleagues are risking their lives every day.