The Iraqi police packed up the checkpoint and moved later in the day, and their only relief is that the insurgents wouldn’t hit the same place twice. Farah hasn’t seen the Americans much on this trip, a couple of times on the streets, but their helicopters fly low over the city constantly, shaking the house when they pass.
As the danger subsides, the family jokes, “Are they going to come and pay for our broken windows out of Prime Minister Al-Jaafari’s salaries?” They send each other text messages that say, “If you are sad, if you are hopeless, broke and in debt, congratulations, you know you are Iraqi.”
I ask Farah what has changed since she last visited Iraq. She says that it is strange how normal things can feel: the markets teem with people, women go to work, children go to school, cars drive the streets, the sun blazes down. But the landscape of the city is overlaid with huge concrete security blast walls and razor wire. And yet there are rows and rows of fresh yellow flowers planted in the traffic circles and public squares and gardens.
“Baghdad is unpredictable; it can change at a moment’s notice,” she tells me.
There is a self-imposed curfew at night; from seven in the evening the streets clear out. Farah has to get off the phone; her uncle wants help with his immigration letter. The bombing has persuaded him that the family should leave Iraq.
I can’t believe that I hang up feeling that she is all right; she has almost convinced me of the normality of all that she is experiencing. And then the next day, the headlines shout, “Blast Destroys Shia Shrine.” The Al-Askari shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, has been bombed, and before long there is news of ninety Sunni mosques being attacked across the country. Huge protests overflowing with frenzied men holding machine guns flood Baghdad’s streets, and across the Western world newspaper headlines ask if this is finally the beginning of the civil war that has been anticipated for three years.
The next day, in response to the rush of e-mails from concerned family and friends, Farah e-mails us. The family is at home because there is a daytime curfew, and everyone is cooking or working in the garden. She has learned to make two of her favourite Iraqi dishes: bamiya (an okra dish) and kubbat hamuth (meatballs in rice flour in a tomato turnip soup). One of her male cousins is singing a song about the flower of the pomegranate, and all the women are trying to figure out who the love song is for. They have had worse days; they are fine.
HAIDAR SAMIR AHMED
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Portraits of the
Wounded
As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion. —“Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates,” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, October 11, 2006
The next time I see Farah is in Vancouver, three months later. She invites family and friends to a slide show at her parents’ house, to show them the images from Iraq she risked her life to bring back to the West.
When I arrive, I am amazed that she looks the same, beautiful and radiant, not haggard, tired or like someone who has just spent six weeks in a war zone. Immediately, she gives me a handful of gold jewellery.
“I almost got stuck in Iraq because of that gold,” she laughs.
I’m mystified. I knew she had been to see Karim but not that his wife, Maha, had asked her to bring back some of my aunt Amal’s gold jewellery.
“I was wearing it when I got to the airport,” she explains. “At first the officials almost didn’t let me leave Iraq because I was supposed to have an exit visa from the Ministry of the Interior in central Baghdad. The rule had just been changed and I didn’t know about it. Luckily, there were some other people in the same predicament, and so we persuaded the guard to call the ministry to ask if we were allowed to leave without one. I told him my parents were Iraqi, and he looked at my documents. Finally, after four hours of waiting, we were given permission to leave. I was so relieved. I didn’t want to go back into Baghdad. I’d said my goodbyes to the family already, and it was really really hard. I couldn’t go through that again.”
But that wasn’t the end of it. When she went through security, the woman checking her asked if she was wearing any gold. The guard could see the gold plainly around her neck and on her wrists, in her ears.
“Of course I am, I’m Iraqi,” Farah answered.
“Only Iraqis are allowed to take gold out of the country,” the guard said.
It was the same arbitrary rule as under Saddam. I’m sure now, as then, that women are smuggling their gold out under their abayas.
“ ‘Where did you get the gold?’ ” the guard asked.
“I said it was mine and that I came in with it,” Farah says. “The woman went away and got a fellow guard, who said, ‘Where did you get this gold? Where is it from?’ I told him I came in with it, and I grabbed my earrings and said, ‘These are from India, and the ring, an Ottoman gold coin, this is my mother’s.’ So he asked me, ‘Are you Iraqi?’ I said ‘Yes, both my parents are.’ So he said, ‘Let me see your passport.’ Of course, it’s Canadian.” Farah handed over her Canadian passport. He said, “ ‘Until you produce your father, either you stay or your gold stays.’ ” Farah says, “ ‘Produce my father? Listen, I’ve come all the way here alone, I am really scared, and all I want to do is go home. Can’t you hear my accent? Who do you think I am?’ He just kept saying that those are the rules. Finally I called over the guard who had called the ministry and begged him to help me. He vouched for me and my Iraqiness and finally they let me go.”
Because of Farah’s tenacity, I am now holding my aunt Amal’s jewellery, the first of her belongings that she will see in sixteen years, since she left Iraq for her holiday to England in 1990 just before Saddam invaded Kuwait. She never moved in the traditional sense of deciding to leave one place and adopt another; rather, she left Iraq on vacation and was never able to go back. The bracelet is heavy, 22-carat gold, with the heads of two lions joining at the clasp—the lions of Babylon twisted together into a circle of gold. The necklace is a simple gold rope. Farah says that they don’t have gold like that in Iraq anymore, and when she showed it to her family there, they were impressed with its quality.
She pulls out a small plastic box and presents it to me.
“That is for you, a present from Karim.”
“What? He shouldn’t have sent me anything. It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s a wedding present. He was really casual when he showed it to me, like it was nothing special,” Farah says. My wedding had taken place the summer before. Karim had always teased me about being so old and still not married.
I opened the box and pulled out a gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant on it. As I looked more closely at the pendant, I realized it wasn’t a heart but a map of Iraq with two veins running through the centre, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The west of the map was rough, representing the desert sand, while the east was smooth and shiny.
“It’s Iraq,” I say, not wanting to show my eyes welling up.
When the rest of the guests arrive, we take delicious homemade baklava and strong tea and get seated on cushions on the floor, waiting for the slide show to begin. A hush falls over us as the lights are dimmed and the first photograph of an amputee is projected onto the blank wall in front of us. He is a young man who has lost an arm. With black, slicked-back hair and strong features, his handsome face stares directly at the camera. His sleeve is rolled up and the stump of his arm hangs beside him. His younger sister sits behind him on the couch he has just got up from; her expression is an exact replica of his, serious, defiant, proud. Farah tells us that his father is dead and t
hat he was the eldest son, the breadwinner of the family, and that he has six sisters.
“His name is Haidar Samir Ahmed,” Farah says. “He is seventeen, and behind him is his younger sister Athra, who is nine years old. He lives in Karradat Mariam, which is just metres from the Green Zone, Saddam’s former presidential palace. It was a district heavily hit during the 2003 war. His mother told me that Haider is ‘sick with anger’ and jealous of his brother Ahmed because he has two arms. They haven’t spoken for two years. His mother sells soda, chips and cigarettes to neighbours from her apartment to make ends meet. Haider says that he wants to commit suicide sometimes, asking, ‘Who did my arm go for?’ ”
That question echoes around the room, “Who did his arm go for?”
“What happened to his arm?” I ask.
“He was injured on April 11, 2003,” Farah explains. “He was home alone watching over their apartment. The family was staying with relatives. He didn’t have food to eat, so he went out into the streets. He was caught in American gunfire. Someone picked him up after he was hit and took him to hospital. He can’t see out of his left eye. He has spent over two million dinars [approximately US$1400, enough money to live on for a year] on surgeries and medical care.”
“So he was only fourteen years old when the accident happened?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Someone asks how she got the photograph. Farah explains that she persuaded each person that agreed to be photographed to let her take their picture in their own homes. It was risky, but she didn’t want to photograph them in the impersonal atmosphere of the hospital where she had initially met them. She and her driver established some ground rules to protect themselves as they went about the project.
“We agreed not to wait for more than fifteen minutes for anyone,” Farah says. “I learned that from what happened to Jill Carroll [the American journalist for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted on January 7, 2006, and eventually released on March 30, 2006]. She had been waiting for over an hour to meet someone when she was kidnapped. We also agreed that we would only spend thirty minutes at any house we went to because we were afraid that someone would discover that a Canadian was in the area. Of course, that didn’t always happen and sometimes we spent much longer with people.” She laughs.
SAIF YUSIF HANOUN
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
The next photograph is of two boys. The eldest is sitting on the edge of a wooden table in a kitchen. He scowls at the photograph, and his prosthetic leg sits severed from his leg in front of his healthy one. The stump is cut off below the knee, and his younger brother leans into the wall, looking up at the camera shyly.
Farah explains, “That is Saif. It was significant to have his brother in this photograph because his mother told me that Saif beats his brother because he is so angry and frustrated.” On May 5, 2003, he had a high fever, and his uncle was taking him to hospital. They went up onto a bridge and a man was trying to tell them to stop, but it was too late. The Americans blasted them with gunfire.
“For no reason?” I ask in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” Farah says. “He doesn’t know. He was twelve then. He lost his leg fourteen days later. He is fifteen now. His brother is nine. The family sold their car and some land to pay for his surgery. His father left Baghdad and is now remarried and living in the United Arab Emirates. He won’t return until there is security in the country.”
The next photograph is of a father standing lopsidedly with his daughter. He is missing his right arm and leans his bandaged stump on a crutch, his right leg missing as well. His daughter holds his prosthetic leg, and her eyes pool up at the camera. She will be literally carrying her father’s leg for the rest of his life.
DUYAR SAI FEHAN PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HIS DAUGHTER, SHAMA
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
Farah tells us that he was injured on May 25, 2003, when his car was run over by an American military vehicle. Two other people in the car died, and he lost his arm immediately and then his leg to gangrene. He spent seven million dinars on medical costs. He sold his car and had nothing in the house where she photographed him.
To help him, people gave him gifts, and he borrowed money. He said to Farah, “You know how a worm walks the earth, little by little? That’s me, little by little.”
“He is the only provider of the family, all young kids.” Farah speaks slowly. “How is he going to work? There is no compensation, there is no organization that is going to give these guys a monthly salary to keep their families going. They need a fund for Iraqi war amputees. Even if they were given a hundred dollars a month it would help. There wasn’t even anywhere to photograph them. That is the entrance to the bathroom, and this is the middle of the kitchen,” she points out. “It was so small and dark . . . there was just one window.”
She changes the slide. The next photograph is of a man lying on his side in bed. At first glance, he looks normal and is even smiling. Then I notice that part of one leg is missing. Farah tells us that when she approached him, she asked if she could photograph him at home. She called him ammu (uncle) in the Arab way of showing respect for one’s elders, and he called her bint (daughter).
“Daughter! I would not let you enter my neighbourhood to visit me. It is far too dangerous for you,” he said to her.
MUHAMMED ALI ABDEL HADI
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
Farah laughs as she says, “When I pressed him to tell me which neighbourhood, we realized that I was living a few doors away from him with my relatives. I told him I could easily just walk over. He was surprised that I was living there!”
She continues, “He was injured by American gunfire just last year. He just got out of his car, and they riddled it with bullets. After ten minutes of fire, the car had fifty-six bullet holes. He said he didn’t even see the American soldiers; he just got out of his car and that was it. He has no idea why he was shot at. Those portraits above him are of his father and his uncle.”
I have been reading these stories of daily bombings, and I have never seen a single image of these people. Of normal people in their own homes whose lives have been destroyed by this war, which they were powerless to stop. Everyone in the room is transfixed by what they are seeing and murmur their agreement at the injustice of it all. After three years of war, thanks to Farah’s bravery, we are looking at some of the first images of the real price the Iraqi people are paying for their “liberty.”
The next photograph is of a man with no legs, praying on a prayer mat on his bed.
“His name is Ali,” Farah says. “We really connected. You know, I had this rule that I’d only spend half an hour with each person, but we spent eight hours together. I just love him. He is like my brother. I think about him, and I will definitely visit him if I return. He was ashamed of being an amputee, and he only agreed to be photographed if I wouldn’t publish his photo in Iraq or anywhere else in the Arab world. He said to me, ‘I am going to tell you my story but remember, I’m an Iraqi army soldier and I signed up for this. I signed up to die. But what’s happened to me has happened to civilians that go out to buy bread for the day. Those are the people you should feel sorry for.’ He was so selfless. He had never prayed before, and now he prays five times a day. When he had the accident the first thing he thought was ‘Oh my God, I am going to die and I don’t pray.’ That is why he wanted to live. Then he said that if God gave him a choice to get his legs back, but in exchange he would lose his ability to pray, he wouldn’t want them back. He was so sincere.”
ALI YUSIF KARIM
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
“Were all of the people here happy to be photographed?” Farah’s sister asks.
“Most of them were because no one was listening to their stories. They said things like, ‘You are the first person who has ever come to ask me about what happened to me.’ ”
“Are there enough prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs to go around?” her sister continues.
“Well,
many of these people have to pay for their own treatment,” Farah explains. “Ali’s family had to pull together the money to buy him that wheelchair. When he got out of the hospital he wasn’t even given a wheelchair. I mean, he doesn’t have legs! He says the Iraqi government looked after him when he was in the army, but now that this has happened they have just forgotten about him. This was six months ago. It was an IED that got him.”
Ali fades away and is replaced on the wall by a man with white hair and a beard, standing perfectly balanced on one leg without a crutch. If you only looked at his torso you would think his leg was still there. But it isn’t. He was attacked by a suicide bomber.
RAZAK RASHED ABBAS
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
“He told me he had been an Iraqi police officer for thirty-two years,” Farah says. “He was on duty at the main gates of the police station. A green Land Cruiser broke though the barricade, and the man driving was wearing military clothes. He watched the tall young man get out of the car and then their eyes met and the stranger pushed the trigger. Next thing he knew, his stomach was hanging out and he just held it in. His leg had also been blown off. His friend put him and his severed leg into a truck and took him to hospital. That was three years ago. He was given a thousand dollars’ compensation, and he receives a third of his salary, on which he supports six children.”
Farah reminds us that there are female victims as well, but it was impossible to find any to photograph. Women’s lives have been greatly restricted under the occupation, and you don’t see as many women in the streets. Farah tried to get permission from some of the female victims in the hospitals, but their families usually didn’t want them to be photographed.
The room is silent. The final photograph is the most chilling. A man without legs is lying on an examination table in a hospital. One arm is resting over his heart, and Farah tells us that he lost his other arm as well as his legs. He is a young man in his mid-twenties. All of us want to know what happened to him.
The Orange Trees of Baghdad Page 20