Naked in Baghdad

by Anne Garrels

  “To stay or not to stay?” is the burning question now. The AP has decided to pull its non-Arab staff out of Baghdad and the office is in an uproar. Several who have spent months here covering the story are contemplating quitting over the decision. Once other news organizations hear of AP’s decision, they may well follow suit. It is time to discuss this with NPR. I e-mail Loren that I hope my views will be taken into consideration as NPR decides what to do.

  I’m still just taking it a day at a time, but now that Amer will be working with me once the Japanese leave, I am much more disposed toward staying. Much as I like and trust Majed, I feel much more comfortable with Amer, who not only is savvy but also speaks good English. I will need him as a combined guide, translator, driver, and savior. The truth of this journalism business, that we are only as good as the people who work with us, has never been clearer.

  Loren e-mails back that he needs ammunition to persuade the powers-that-be that I should stay, if indeed that’s my decision. I’m surprised and heartened that he is supporting me and trusting my judgment. Gruff as he is on the surface he is no cowboy, and precisely because I know he cares about me I had feared he might just yank me out. But his instincts are that I follow my instincts. I try to muster my arguments. I have Amer. Amer and I have discussed finding some kind of safe-house if things start getting creepy. I am a woman, and an older one at that, whatever protection that might afford me. I might be able to disappear in a chador and wait out a war. I seem to have fallen below the official radar. The authorities are much more focused on others, especially John Burns of The New York Times, who after weeks cooling his heels in Amman managed to get back in with a peace-activist visa. He has since “legitimized” himself with the Information Ministry, but they hate him for his excellent reporting. As far as I can figure out, the ministry has not bothered to pull transcripts of my reports. I suspect they don’t think radio is very important.

  But none of this adds up to a hill of beans.

  MARCH 13, 2003

  The wind whipped through Baghdad overnight, rustling the date trees and coating everything with a dusting of fine sand. Like talcum powder, it insinuates itself everywhere. The gusts are the harbingers of the short balmy spring. It’s comfortable sweater weather now, but Iraqis warn of the long, scorching summer with no respite from the 130-degree oven. If war is to come, Baghdadis believe it will have to come soon. Virtually every night, President Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi television meeting various commanders and promising victory. But for many Iraqis the days are now measured by foreign news broadcasts that crackle over shortwave radios. And then there are the rumors.

  It’s finally dawning on many here that this could well end up as a fight for Baghdad. And the latest rumor in the capital is that Saddam Hussein will do whatever it takes to fend off the Americans, no matter what the risk to local civilians. Amer tells me the military has laced canals around the city with gasoline to encircle Baghdad in flames and enshroud the city in smoke in a desperate effort to confuse American smart bombs. There’s a deceptive veneer of normality to this city of dun-colored houses, suspended between war and peace. The complacency that Iraqis have about America’s ability to pinpoint targets is shot through with terror that nowhere in Baghdad might be safe if there is to be a ground war.

  The Iraqis take us to see an unpiloted drone aircraft that the United States and Britain claim can deliver chemical and biological weapons. With a wooden propeller and joints stuck together with masking tape, it looks like a toy. Brigadier General Imad Abdul Latif, the Iraqi project director, says the drone performed so poorly on early test flights that it has been grounded.

  I call around to all the embassies to see if I can talk to the few diplomats left. I either get no answer or am flatly turned down. A few of us have a meeting scheduled with a French envoy, but when we arrive the gendarme at the front desk says the envoy is not available. No apology, no explanation, simply not available. The gendarme says he will never be available.

  It is a Shiite Muslim holiday and there’s not much official news. I wander the nearby streets and watch as residents prepare the traditional meal. Once this was a community affair. There would be a neighborhood fire, where everyone would gather to cook together, but that was banned by Saddam. In a grudging gesture to the majority Shiites, Saddam now permits them to celebrate in the privacy of their homes. Women draped in black carry pots of soup back and forth between houses. They smile at me but say not a word.

  I can imagine the discussions going on back at NPR and e-mail Vice President Bruce Drake, asking that he not make a peremptory decision without at least consulting me first. I just ask that we go day by day.

  Majed reminds me that if I am going to stay, I need the same plastic garbage pails every Iraqi has bought to conserve water. We go out on a shopping expedition for yet more water and soda. Prices have doubled in a week; the value of the dinar is dropping by the day.

  We pass the zoo, which, given Saddam’s son’s predilection for tigers, has caused so much sick hilarity between me and Amer. I hope I don’t descend to doing the inevitable zoo story. In Afghanistan, the zoo became an easy focus, especially for British reporters, who competed to own the starving blind lion. While Afghans were suffering, The Daily Mail demanded that the British government dispatch vets to treat the remaining pathetic animals. The British Defense Ministry wisely decided it would be unseemly to do so.

  Every war has a zoo: Sarajevo, Kabul, and now Baghdad. Animals are a lot less demanding an interview than people and a lot easier to access. They don’t require that a minder be in attendance. The London Times correspondent has predictably done the story, and she generously suggests that I follow suit. The zoo is under reconstruction, but there are apparently two lions and a tiger that the keepers plan to tranquilize in the event of war. The animals got quite upset during the ’91 Gulf War and nearly killed themselves trying to get out of their cages. I pass on the story for now.

  Sandbags are stacked up near the gates of the Baghdad Museum, where the doors are firmly shut. Curators say priceless treasures have been spirited away for safekeeping, and archaeologists say they’re armed and prepared to defend what’s left in the museum—as much from possible looting as from American bombing. At the Information Ministry, workers continue to cart out computers and other valuable equipment, but we must still work there.

  Majed is sure no one will fight. He recalls ’91, when Iraqi soldiers in the capital literally dropped their weapons and fled. As he drove through the city, he and his son collected three Kalashnikovs that had been tossed into the street. He sold two but still has one, which he’s kept to defend himself not from the Americans but from possible anarchy. But there are Iraqis who say they will fight the American invaders, and I think they mean it.

  Sermons at Baghdad’s mosques have become more strident, exhorting Iraqis to fight the infidel. Even if they are initially defeated there are Iraqis who take comfort in their history, insisting they are the toughest Arab people to subdue. Ultimately, they say, no foreigner has been able to control this territory successfully.

  MARCH 14, 2003

  Qadm has refused to allow Amer to work with me as a minder. He can only be my driver, so I need to find a benign minder to work with us. I have talked to one guy called Sadiq who speaks excellent English. His journalists have pulled out, and he’s anxious for more work. He claims to be a closet dissident who has aspirations to be a writer. For now he is “writing for the drawer,” as the Soviets used to say. There’s something about him I don’t entirely trust. Meanwhile the CBC radio correspondent has been told by his bosses that they want him to leave. He is in tears. I feel pretty crass approaching him but nonetheless I ask if I can have the minder he is leaving behind. Saleh is a nice young man who won’t get in the way. Amer agrees he is “good,” which in this looking-glass world means he is incompetent—just what I want.

  The Information Ministry has called in all the minders for a meeting. Amer regales me with the proceedings
. All of them are told to be strong and not to look scared. They are reminded to watch our movements carefully and make sure we are not spies working under the cover of journalism. Like petulant little children, the minders all complain about the drivers, saying the journalists let the minders go and then run off with the drivers so the minders don’t know what they are doing.

  A reporter from The Boston Globe is caught with a Thuria, a small hand-held sat phone, and is expelled. The Iraqis are particularly sensitive about these phones because they are easily portable, unlike mine, which though of better quality has a cumbersome and highly visible antenna. They fear that some of us are “spotters” for the American military.

  MARCH 15, 2003

  While reporters struggle with the dilemma of staying or leaving, Iraqis are facing their own version. Saleh, my new minder, wants his twenty-five-year-old wife and young daughter to go live with relatives far from Baghdad for the duration of any war. His wife has refused. He hopes that I can help change her mind.

  The family’s two-story cement house looks out on the vast expanse of the Rashid Air Force Base. It was badly damaged in ’91 and is certainly destined to be hit again, but Saleh’s wife, Esma, is determined to stay with her husband. She pokes her head out of the kitchen and says firmly, “If we’re going to die, we will die together.” His mother, Sakhara, is on Saleh’s side, but so far she’s lost the argument.

  Though only fifty-two, Sakhara looks much older. Afflicted with high blood pressure and diabetes, her legs are swollen and she moves to the couch with difficulty. I stupidly tell her we are the same age, looking for some common ground, but then bite my tongue. She looks at me sadly, touches my cheek, and then touches her own mottled skin. She says she can’t bear to live through another round of missiles and bombs and if necessary will go, alone, to stay with a daughter outside the capital.

  If Saleh has his way, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to, he and his sixty-four-year-old father, Fadl, would stay in the house alone. The house is all Fadl has left from a once-comfortable middle-class life, and he’s determined to protect it. His business, a small factory producing metal furniture frames, couldn’t survive the sanctions. His savings are gone. The neighborhood reeks of sewage. There were no pipes in better days, either, but then they were on the up-and-up, making improvements. Now the neighborhood has slid into poverty.

  Fadl blames the United States and gestures to the portrait of Saddam Hussein that looks down over the dining table. “Saddam is one of us,” he says. “He deserves our devotion.” Neither Saleh nor Fadl would listen to my suggestion that Saddam had been unnecessarily brutal. They deny that he murdered his own people. Like the Soviets defending Stalin, they insist Iraq needs a strong leader to direct and unite this fractious country divided between competing tribes—Kurds, Christians, Shiites, and Sunnis. Maybe Saddam seems cruel, Saleh concedes, but he has to be. They describe Saddam as an Arab hero who has successfully protected Iraqi sovereignty from outside threats. “We have oil and great riches,” Saleh says, “which foreign countries want.”

  Fadl demands I tell the American people they must use their voice to stop this war. This appeal to public opinion, which is not permitted here, does not strike Fadl as peculiar or ironic. Staring through his thick glasses, he says he will fight to the last, though he acknowledges he has no weapons, just his faith. Eventually he concedes that America has the technology to win militarily. His bravado cracks further when he speaks of two sons who are in the army, posted somewhere in the north. They have not been heard from in weeks. It becomes apparent as the family talks that they have put by very little in terms of supplies and assume the war could be as short as four or five days.

  Saleh and his wife are already thinking beyond the war to the cruel summer when Baghdad boils. Assuming there will be significant damage, they wonder how their baby daughter will survive the searing heat and the bugs with no air conditioning, no fan, and no water. As the family’s sole breadwinner, Saleh asks if his English is good enough to earn him a job with a future American administration. If surviving means switching allegiances to another leader, even an American, Saleh will do what he has to.

  Tonight I did what I had to: I broadcast naked in the dark. Rumors swirled again about a late-night sweep for satellite phones. My thinking went this way: if I turn off the light in my room it’s harder to see the antenna on the windowsill and from the corridor there will be no light shining under my door. If someone knocks, I can pretend they have woken me up, beg for a few minutes to get dressed, and then perhaps have enough time to dismantle the phone and hide it. Not a great plan, but the only one I could come up with.

  I laid out a dress that I could slip on in seconds, moved the equipment so it was close to the bed so I could quickly push it under the mattress if I had to, and filed my piece in the buff. Robert Siegel remained in blissful ignorance, and the whole exercise was totally unnecessary as no one came to the door. But they could have, and they still might in the future.

  MARCH 16, 2003

  An e-mail from Loren is waiting for me when I wake up: “We have won the debate about you staying at least for today.” I reply that I want to continue. I have worked so hard to get here, stay here, and arrange all the logistics. I believe it is important to be a witness to whatever happens and to explain how complicated the emotions are here, and, to the degree that I can, explain how Iraqis perceive the situation. I realize it is quite possible that our sat phones will be blocked when the bombing starts, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty to say when they are up again. And I can’t face the idea of sitting on the Jordanian border with hundreds of frustrated journalists massed there, doing nothing. I realize that’s not the best reason for staying, but hey.

  Amer is now working with me full-time as a driver. I think Majed was happy to be relieved of the job for now. He needs to get supplies and take care of his family, but his nephew, Ahmed, isn’t pleased that I have paid Majed directly and not through him, and he now tries to wangle a cut of what I am paying Amer. I let rip. Despite all his family contacts with the Information Ministry, Ahmed has gone too far. In a matter of days or weeks it’s more than likely that his ties to the Information Ministry will be a liability, not an asset. Despite all the money we paid him he never delivered on the visas he promised; I got them on my own. If his family feels bold enough to work independently now, I sure do. After feeble protestations he backs off. He clearly realizes it’s time to reposition himself if he wants a future.

  Logistics continue to be a drain on energy and time. I need to get Amer and Saleh new ID cards, so they are officially working for me. Amer’s no problem; he has photographs, but Saleh left them at home, which is miles and miles from the office. When I propose going straight to an instant-photo place, Saleh protests, saying he has to shave first. No, Saleh, you are not going to shave. You are going to get the photo taken NOW. I don’t think Saleh and I are going to be working together long. I have a sneaking feeling he is not ready for the rough-and-tumble of war coverage. Am I?

  I ask Amer to draw me a map so I can find him and his house if we are separated and telephone connections are disrupted. Addresses alone aren’t much use in Baghdad, since street signs are not common. We are still mulling the issue of a safe-house. His family is leaving Baghdad, so I could hide out with him, but the security people know we work together and they might turn up there. He’s trying to rent a house somewhere else, but it doesn’t look promising. Baath Party members, in their green uniforms, are now patrolling every neighborhood. Amer says the government has placed more intelligence agents in regular army units to prevent defections.

  The Iraqis have submitted more documents to the UN weapons inspectors that they say will provide proof that they have destroyed their stocks of weapons of mass destruction. In a last-ditch attempt to forestall war, Saddam Hussein has even admitted that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction but he says they are no more. There is even talk of inviting Hans Blix back to Baghdad, but this is
all too little too late.

  People here have little official information about outside events that make war appear imminent—notably President Bush’s announcement that tomorrow will be the last day for diplomatic maneuvering to disarm Saddam. All that the Iraqis hear comes in the form of defiant statements from Saddam and his ministers, who vow in increasingly vitriolic language that American troops will be defeated. But the city is rife with rumors, and everyone is preparing for the conflict ahead, talking about what it might mean for them.

  We visit a mukhtar in one of Baghdad’s poorer areas. Abdel Menan al-Drubi is a community leader, approved by the Baath Party. He knows everyone of his 482 charges, and everything about them. Who’s married to whom, how many children, who beats whom, you name it. He arrives from one meeting armed with a Kalashnikov, and is about to race off to another. On cue, his children spout the well-worn refrain, “Bush, Bush, listen well, we all love Saddam Hussein.” A fifty-nine-year-old former soldier, al-Drubi is quite an impressive specimen, tall and commanding. He says the party has armed all the trusted men in the neighborhood and he insists they will pin the Americans down should they dare to enter Baghdad. Residents have been discouraged from leaving the city, but he acknowledges that people here are too poor to go elsewhere. As we wind up the interview, one of his kids, to whom I’ve taken a particular shine, gives me a kiss, and al-Drubi says simply, “Take him with you to America.”