by Anne Garrels
What has followed has been an orgy of looting. First there were just a few clusters of young men on the streets, but as people realized there was nothing stopping them anymore, the crowds grew, their fury focused on the symbols of Saddam’s power. Groups broke into government buildings and warehouses, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down and then some: chairs, air conditioners, computers, even doors. I see a yacht being pulled along downtown Sadoun Street. Vehicles are stolen from government parking lots. Amer points to people pulling or pushing cars because they can’t get them started. He watches all this with growing distress. He is devastated at the damage.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says we are watching history, the unfolding events that will shape the fate of a people and potentially the future of the region, but it doesn’t look good from here. Government buildings across the city are on fire. We pass the Olympic headquarters, which looters have set ablaze. This building symbolizes the sick brutality of Saddam and his family, for it was here that his elder son Uday tortured disappointing athletes or those who merely displeased him. Outside the Oil Ministry, a young man stands in front of a statue of Saddam imitating his grand gesture. A friend snaps a photo. Such a lark would have cost him his life just yesterday.
Amer and I stop on a bridge as a column of Marines approach on the highway underneath. I jump out of the car and lean over the balustrade. I can almost touch the kids sitting on top of their tanks. Before I can stop myself, I shout down at them, “Hey, guys!” One turns around with an M16 pointed at me. I raise my hands and hear myself screaming “No! No! I’m an American.” For so many days I had felt the bombs, or seen the tanks. Suddenly, I am face-to-face with American troops and peering down a muzzle. I hadn’t realized how threatened I felt by the recent days’ events and how relieved I was that the Americans are finally here, and also how relieved I am to think that this phase of the war might be over soon. Just last week it seemed the war could go on for weeks if not months, and I was having trouble imagining how I would last.
Another column of Marines moves through Saddam City, the poor, predominantly Shiite Muslim area, where they are greeted with plastic flowers and cheers of “Welcome, welcome.” People dance in the streets, waving rifles and defaced posters. Tongues are suddenly unleashed. Shiites pack into the al-Mokhsin Mosque, which has been closed ever since Saddam’s agents murdered their much-beloved imam three years ago. Sheikh Amar al-Musadawi told the rapt audience that Saddam Hussein had betrayed Islam. He spoke of thirty years of oppression. He urged Muslims to save the country, not loot and destroy it. He said nothing about the Americans passing by outside.
Amer is wracked with conflicting emotions. “What happened to the Republican Guard?” he wonders. Though a Sunni himself, he says Saddam sealed his doom by refusing to allow Shiites into the Republican Guard, but included only Sunni Muslims largely drawn from his hometown and tribe. Amer lashes out at Saddam for fostering a hollow army rife with corruption and unable to defend the country. Bitterness bubbles to the surface as he speaks of the humiliation and worse that Iraqis have suffered at the hands of arrogant Republican Guards. He calls them puffed-up bastards who were good at throwing their weight around but couldn’t fight like real men when the time came.
It’s become evident from all he has said to me, and how he deals with people, that Amer has risen above divisions of tribe and Muslim sect to be first and foremost an Iraqi, and as I’ve watched him navigate this society, he has a way about him that makes him warmly received by all. He gives people dignity, and they return his respect in kind. And that also goes for the way he deals with me. I doubt he’s ever worked for a woman before, but I get the feeling that as long as I am fair and straight it’s not an issue. If anything, he’s voiced sadness that men and women in Iraq still don’t have the freedom to associate, to get to know one another, as he and I have done in these strange times.
Exhausted, we grab fried chicken from a take-out place. I am sitting in Amer’s room about to chow down when we hear a commotion out the window. The Marines have finally approached the Palestine. I run down to witness their arrival.
I am stunned at how many Marines are packed into one Bradley. One after another emerges from its depths to take up guard duty around the hotel. Given the lawlessness in the city, it is reassuring to know they are here. Too many people, among them our former keepers, must know how much cash and equipment we have, and I had feared we would be a tempting target for thieves.
As more and more tanks lumber forward to the hotel, crowds begin to gather in nearby Firdos Square. A fifty-four-year-old taxi driver tosses his shoes at a statue of Saddam, a deeply insulting gesture in the Arab world. “We were surrounded by fear,” he tells me. “Even fathers and sons were afraid to speak openly to each other.” He recalls a friend who was arrested in 1978 and never seen again. “Thank you, America,” he says, “for removing this dictator.” He then joins a small group that tries to pull down the statue. After attempts with ropes and sledgehammers fail, the Marines move in a tank with a long boom to assist. The statue folds, falling to its knees, as the regime has.
The street scenes are nothing like as joyous as the cameras make them out to be. There are plenty of people standing around, numb or shocked at the events. Dr. Sa’ad Jawad, an Iraqi political scientist, watches sadly as the Marines help topple Saddam’s statue, calling the scene humiliating. No fan of Saddam, he nonetheless warns of wounded pride. He acknowledges that now the Americans are here, they must be in full control, but he says their control will quickly be resented.
When I get back upstairs, Amer confesses that he wept as he watched the scene below. Though he too hated Saddam, he says seeing American troops in Baghdad is more than he can bear. He doesn’t want their help.
Pulling down statues makes for good television, but as I saw in Moscow in 1991, it doesn’t ultimately signify much. It doesn’t begin to answer the deeper questions. Wiping out the past doesn’t mean coming to terms with it. That’s what Amer is struggling with: who are the Iraqis? How did they get a Saddam? How did they tolerate the fear Saddam created? And where do they go from here?
At dusk a group of men sits outside their shuttered shops, hoping their presence will deter the growing number of looters. They too are in shock at the sudden collapse of the regime. “I’ve never known freedom,” thirty-three-year-old Ali al-Abadi says, the tremor in his voice revealing a jumble of mixed emotions. “We want a just government, but we want a just Iraqi government,” he adds. Asked if they can name Iraqis they would like to lead them now, these men all shake their heads. That’s the problem, they say. The Iraqi opposition in exile which has been courted by the United States inspires no confidence. Each of them just wants power for himself, they agree. They want nothing to do with anyone who has just come back from living in luxury abroad while they themselves have suffered at home. And they all fear paroxysms of revenge as past scores are settled.
BRENDA BULLETIN: APRIL 9, 2003
Annie called early this a.m. Baghdad is again more or less quiet after the drama of yesterday. She was adamant in her belief that the scenes of wild welcome that filled our screens were restricted to almost “made-for-TV” demonstrations. I get the feeling seven of the eleven people seen dragging Saddam’s bronze head down the street were TV cameramen. One event, however, was very real. When the U.S. Marine tank column emerged out of the gloom yesterday morning, our ambivalent war-weary wench wept.
The eeriness of the vacuum at the hotel yesterday was pervasive throughout the city. Suddenly, by some mysterious stroke, all the security thugs who had turned the Palestine into a holding pen were gone. However, in the hours before midnight, Uday al-Tae did the rounds, playing on residual fears. Annie and her mates figured that he must have collected about $200,000 in pocketed cash. In an odd incident, he slapped and assaulted the Al Jazeera rep—a political ally in all this—when the latter presumably objected to the amount of the expected tribute.
Annie was worried about Amer and spent
much of the day with him. Like many Russians she had known, who had trouble dealing with the loss of Stalin and what that said about their own destroyed lives, Amer was far from jubilant. Quite the opposite, she found him deeply depressed because they, the Iraqis, could not effect the change themselves. Despite his personal bond with Annie, despite his clear understanding of how despicable the regime was, the sight of Baghdad filled with American troops was, for this proud and decent man, a very sad day.
Now that the thugs are gone, the Palestine is filling up with grimy ex-embedded journalists and a small detachment of U.S. military. And there is also a growing number of “arrivistes,” the just-drove-in-from-Jordan crowd in their crisp foreign-correspondent-multipocketed-Orvis-fishing-vests, complaining about the rigors of their journey. Somehow, I think their reception from the dirty denizens of the Palestine wasn’t quite what they had hoped it might be. It just isn’t Annie’s crowd anymore.
Later in the day she encountered a strapping young Marine Corps officer in the Palestine. They approached each other in a manner that you can imagine to be perhaps the penultimate scene of an HBO special. Stopping six feet away from her, he says, “Ma’am, I wouldn’t come any closer. I haven’t had a shower in quite a while.” “Funny,” she replies, “I was going to say the same thing to you.”
Lastly, there was that wonderfully absurd message from the Coalition High Command, wherever they are, following the shelling of the Palestine: “Hang sheets out your windows so that it won’t happen again,” they suggested helpfully, to which those in the Palestine replied, “Just who the fuck do you think has sheets?”
V
APRIL 10, 2003
I wake up to hear the creak of tanks moving their positions. My view today includes a contingent of Marines guarding the Palestine Hotel. When I come down to breakfast, or what passes for it, dozens of young Marines with their weapons slung over their shoulders, and still wearing their flak jackets, have already inhaled the food. It’s hard to believe they found the stale bread and hard-boiled eggs tempting, but it must make a change from MREs, and sitting at a table sure beats boiling coffee on top of your tank.
After more than a month on the road, these kids are desperate for some soda—better still, beer—and a young officer asks me if I know where he can buy some Bacardi rum. I have to give him the bad news that the liquor stores are still locked, including Tiger Eye, which had once promised to do “good business” when the troops arrived. I offer him the bottle of gin from my private stock, but filthy as he may be he has his standards, and he stubbornly holds out for Bacardi until he is persuaded that it’s gin or nothing. I reassure him it’s all the same color and throw in a case of Cheer-Up for his unit, who are now guarding the Palestine roof.
I catch Amer looking at all these young marines with a mixture of bewilderment and wariness. The hotel management was scared by their arrival but, now more at ease, they offer officers a place to take a shower, even if only a cold one. The Marines have now set up roadblocks around the hotel and are checking everyone, including us. Security has its drawbacks, and what strikes us all as just a little bizarre is that our passports aren’t valid ID. They want to see the yellow cards that were issued by the enemy Iraqi government.
Under Saddam’s strict regime, Iraqis have all had to carry IDs which quickly reveal if they are government employees and which branch of the government they work for. They also indicate if someone is active military or in the reserves. Amer pulls his out. It shows he is a civilian who fulfilled his required reserve duty. Many Iraqis who had the “wrong” jobs have torn up their cards, but the absence of an ID card just makes people more suspicious to troops manning the checkpoints, and they are taken aside for questioning.
The looting continues. While some Iraqis wave white handkerchiefs overhead to cheer the American military on and protect themselves, others continue to plunder government offices. Today, it’s turned into a family affair. Women and children have joined the crowds, helping to lug away whatever they can find. Lamps, chairs, and fans are particularly prized items. At Mustansarieh University a professor watches, helpless, as everything including the light fixtures are removed. He begs me to call in the Marines to protect Iraq’s intellectual future.
An Army detachment has been searching the Al-Rashid Hotel, and Eric Westervelt, my NPR colleague, is with them. It’s still not safe for me to get over to that part of the city. The staff at my former home has disappeared. I wonder what’s happened to Faez and Mohammed, who took such good care of me.
A company of Army engineers goes through the Al-Rashid room by room to check for snipers and booby-traps. They blow up locked doors in the basement and the first floor and then they destroy the mosaic of George Bush I, over which I walked so many times. They try to remove it in one piece, but in the end they have to chip it out bit by bit. So much for dreams of auctioning it off on eBay. But even when the tiles are gone, Eric tells me on the phone, there’s still an imprint of Bush’s face in the floor. His memory here is not so easily removed.
Despite the scenes of celebration widely broadcast back in the States, the city seems somber to me. Iraqis are afraid of anarchy. They are afraid of themselves as much as they are of the Americans. And while most now admit to being glad Saddam may be gone, they are at best suspicious of American intentions and influence. Educated Iraqis warn again and again in interviews that we should not be deluded by the signs of welcome.
Amer and I drive into al-Adhamiya. Many who live here are Sunni Muslims, and al-Adhamiya has been home to many Baath Party loyalists. Yesterday we heard that Saddam had stopped at a mosque here, where he was applauded by supporters. He then disappeared. Today the mosque has been turned into an armory. Inadvertently, we come on a firefight. Iraqi Fedayeen and Arab volunteers are shooting it out with American troops. The fighters move through the narrow streets, using the mosque as a rocket-launching pad and the civilian houses for cover.
A car is burning ahead of us. We pull to a halt next to a house when a family, cowering in a walled courtyard, calls to us. A woman pokes her head out the gate, crying in English, “My husband, my husband!” She points down the road and we see him lying in a doorway a block ahead of us. He’s been shot. He had run out to save a neighbor, whose car is the one smoldering in the distance. The residents plead with us to save the man in the car as well as his would-be rescuer. No one could possibly be alive in the charred car, and it’s much too dangerous to venture close to it, despite the TV signs pasted on our windows. In a split second we decide to inch forward toward the wounded man. We jump out of the car, each of us grabs an arm, and we throw him into the backseat.
I don’t do any of the things I had been taught as an EMT. I don’t check airway, breathing, or circulation. I don’t protect his spine. We just haul him out of danger and get him back to the family house, where everyone starts screaming. Amer carries him in. The young children sob in terror as their father is laid out on the floor in the main room. He has a shattered ankle. We offer to take him to a hospital, but the family says they will take care of things now. As Amer and I wash away the blood he looks at me with a smile and says with a certain amount of surprise, “You are very brave.” I look at his suit, now covered in blood, and tell him the same.
People up and down the street continue to hide from fighters, some of whom, during a lull, tell us they are Syrians and Algerians. Clinging to its last moments of power, the Baath Party warned people there would be a fight, and it’s been going on now for several hours. Abdel Majid Ahmed, who quickly identifies himself as a sixty-two-year-old customs official, is sheltering in his courtyard, which provides little protection from the surrounding gunfire. He says he still lives in a world governed by fear. “We have been in a big prison,” he whispers, “and we are still afraid to tell all we want. It’s terror.”
We speed out of this battle zone and drive to a complex that has inspired perhaps the most terror, the General Security Directorate, one of the buildings Iraqis wouldn’t dare look at
when they passed it. Even now, with the Marines in residence, Amer approaches gingerly.
The Marine guards say I can’t enter because I am not an embedded reporter, and they have nothing but disdain for Amer. I hit the roof. Finally though, after much to-ing and fro-ing, a very young public-affairs officer appears and I’m let in. New to Baghdad, he doesn’t fully understand what this complex means to Iraqis. It has been badly damaged and was abandoned just before the bombing began on March 20 because the security apparatus knew it was a target. Marines, combing the fifteen or so different buildings, have found no prisoners. Nobody knows what happened to them. What they have found is a well-equipped hospital. Saddam’s henchmen certainly looked after their own. Twenty-two-year-old Corporal John Holworth says corpsmen have recovered what they estimate to be more than a million dollars’ worth of pharmaceuticals, which they plan to redistribute. They have also found a movie theater. The taste in films ran to action flicks like the Rambo series. One entitled Amazon Women sparks some interest among the Marines, but an officer says somewhat wistfully that there isn’t any porn.
Like the Nazis and the Soviets, Saddam’s Baathists kept copious records of their sins. Large quantities of documents had been shredded before the personnel fled, but Marine intelligence officers say there are still thousands upon thousands of dossiers that they haven’t had time to go through. Many appear to include denunciations by neighbors or co-workers. This doesn’t surprise people outside, who say Saddam’s network of agents had turned Iraq into a nation of snitches. Paid informants would betray people for as little as $10. Sometimes, they say, lives would be destroyed just because of personal grudges or malice. When I go back outside, crowds begin to gather around the car. People have been frightened to approach the Marines, but they are not intimidated by our TV signs. Car after car pulls up next to us, their drivers demanding to know if the Marines have found any prisoners. Their faces fall when I tell them no one has been located inside. They can’t believe it, insisting I tell the Marines there are underground cells they might not know about. Everyone seems to have a friend or relative who disappeared. Forty-six-year-old Mohammed Abbas, a businessman, is looking for his brother, who was arrested twenty-three years ago when Saddam first came to power. The family has never heard from him again.