MUUAD IBNAYAN HADI
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
The man was with friends, and they were getting ready for another friend’s wedding. They reached the New Baghdad Bridge, and there was an Iraqi police convoy behind them. Suddenly, there was a blast; it was an IED that was intended for the police. They never found his hand,” Farah explains. “His family has had to pay for everything, every injection, since the day of his injury. Rehabilitation doctors in Baghdad told him that he wouldn’t walk again, that they couldn’t do anything for him because he was a triple amputee. They couldn’t give him prosthetics for some reason—they just don’t have the resources to deal with such a difficult case. He didn’t know he could go to the Green Zone to get help from a clinic initiated by the American military. Iraqis can go to the Green Zone if they have three pieces of ID, but it is very intimidating for them. Large groups of soldiers with their guns bristling make approaching the entrance a daunting experience.
When Farah went to see him he had been in despair for three months; without his legs and one arm, he knew he had no future. There was nothing much any of his family or friends could do for him. She told him that she would take him herself to the Green Zone clinic. The next morning, she went into his house and picked him up, and her driver carried him to the car. Farah spread out a towel on the back seat for him to sit on, and was very attentive to him, asking him how he felt, as she knew what a huge event this trip was for him. She was on the verge of tears looking at him without his limbs, sitting beside her.
It was the first time he had been on the streets since his accident and he was very jumpy and very afraid. He said, “I can’t handle the outside world, I’m broken inside.” They passed a car that was riddled with bullets; the victim of the shooting was still in the car, his lifeless head lolling to one side. Farah was heartbroken that on his first day seeing Baghdad again, he had witnessed the aftermath of a murder. She had to calm him down as they went through the centre of Baghdad, and when they arrived at the Green Zone, she had to reassure him that despite being Iraqi they would let him through. Once inside, the American military doctors were wonderful, and they immediately began giving him physiotherapy and told him that there was hope: he would be able to have prosthetics for all his lost limbs.
A month later, she heard from him. He still hadn’t received his prosthetics, and he kept asking Farah when she was coming to get him to take him back to Canada with her.
DATE PALMS IN BAGHDAD FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF AN AMERICAN HELICOPTER
PHOTO CREDIT: FARAH NOSH
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Min Al’Sima,
“From the Heavens”
So yesterday was the burning of books . . . The National Library and Archives—a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq—were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment were set ablaze. . . . And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops. . . . I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq’s written history. . . . Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? —Robert Fisk, “Library Books, Letters and Priceless Documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad,” The Independent, April 15, 2003
Before Farah goes back to New York, she comes over to show me some of the photos of her family that were to be published in Time magazine the following week. Since she’d visited Karim in Baghdad, I wanted to know how she’d found him and his family. Two years had passed since she’d last visited his house.
“Did your father receive the min al’Sima?” Farah asks me.
The name means from the heavens, and it refers to a traditional sweet nougat that is covered in white flour and can be found only in Iraq. Once she mentioned it, a memory surfaced. I could feel the dry powder in my mouth, but I struggled to remember the actual taste of the nougat. Slowly, the sweet chewy texture and the taste of the pistachio pieces came back to me. My grandparents used to bring it for us on their visits to England. I’d forgotten about it until now. Karim had sent some for my father through Farah, and she’d mailed it to him when she’d returned to New York.
“Yes, he got it,” I confirmed. “He loved it. When the box arrived, he hoarded the nougat all for himself. Like Proust’s Madeleine, the first taste brought Iraq flowing back into all his senses.”
As we drank tea, we talked about her trip and how strange it was that she was back here in the peace and tranquility of Vancouver. I asked her how she dealt with witnessing the tragedy of Iraq again and again.
She explains that taking photographs and publishing them helped.
“It’s my way of shedding it,” she tells me. “If these pictures get out, and people see them and read their stories, then I will be relieved. I am worried about the pictures of the Iraqi victims not being published. A part of me thinks now that I could have gone all this way and done all this work only for no one to see the photos. I thought the American publications were going to be all over the story, but . . . who knows? Maybe I haven’t found the right place. The family story was easier to sell, but that isn’t what I went to Iraq for. These victims need to be seen.”
I hadn’t received an e-mail from Karim in months. He didn’t seem to go to his office very much and even when he did and we tried to talk, the electricity situation was so bad that we kept getting cut off. I hadn’t had any direct contact with him for so long. Instead, I was saturated with news of incessant daily bombings and killings. I was constantly imagining the worst. I looked up the Iraq Body Count Website, which kept a database of every reported killing. It was a wonder that anyone was still living: you could be assassinated, die of gunshot wounds, be exploded by a suicide bomber, an IED, an American soldier, a car bomb, an air strike . . . death was especially protean in Iraq.
The last we’d heard, Amal had had a rare opportunity to speak to Maha, who was upset because Baghdad was suddenly closed to all traffic. It was raining, which was unusual, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had flown into the airport on a surprise visit. But because of bad weather, they couldn’t take a helicopter to the Green Zone. Most officials travelled from the airport to the Green Zone via helicopter because it was simply too dangerous to travel through Baghdad by car. But now, Rice and Straw had to be driven. In order to make their route safe, all the roads were closed and the city was brought to a complete standstill. Karim’s wife was afraid that if this lasted until the next day, she’d have to cancel the henna party she was organizing for a relative who was getting married. Celebrations are not easy to arrange when you are living in a war zone. When I told my father this story, he commented, “Just like under Saddam, the whole city stopped when he was moving from place to place. What’s the difference?”
Farah’s driver had taken her to Karim’s house, which is in a mixed Muslim and Christian area. As soon as they’d driven into the neighbourhood, Farah said, “I felt like we were in another world. Most of the houses had front and back gardens and people were working on them, peacefully gardening.”
The middle-class neighbourhood was not one of the wealthiest in the city, but was well maintained and cleaner than other residential areas, and it seemed richer and more serene than the rest of Baghdad. It almost appeared to be out of place amid the anarchy, fear and ugliness of much of the city. But Farah’s family lives in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods, a mostly Sunni area where there is intense insurgent activity.
The appearance of tranquility was an illusion; I told her about the huge blast on the street behind Karim’s house. A house was blown up, and one of Karim’s friends found the arm of a young girl in the street afterwards.
Karim’s wife cooked an elaborate meal for Farah. The centrepiece was a biryani, which is a traditionally special spicy rice dish of meat, nuts, raisins, spic
es, eggs and onion.
“I called them the day before and told them that I didn’t want them to go to any trouble, that they shouldn’t forget how small I am and how little I eat. Of course, there was way too much delicious food, but it was amazing,” she tells me. Iraqi hospitality, at least, has survived the war intact.
Karim and the family were happy to have company from outside the country. Farah’s Arabic was now so good that she was not only able to communicate with them in their own language, but also in their own dialect. Mostly the conversation, as in every household in Iraq, was about security and about the dreadful stories people heard daily from their friends and family. Farah was becoming exhausted by all the tragic tales but that was all they could talk about.
“They don’t have anything else going on,” she says.
I ask her what Karim and Maha were like, having not met them in person myself.
“Karim is the storyteller, more gregarious and outgoing, and Maha is quieter,” Farah tells me. “Karim couldn’t believe I was in Iraq. He gave me trouble, saying I shouldn’t have come, that it was madness.”
The area where Karim worked was becoming progressively more perilous. Farah said that a few weeks ago, he’d been in his office and it seemed to be business as usual. Unbeknownst to him, the entire street had been cleared out and everyone had left their offices and cars. The security guard in his building came and knocked on the door and then shouted at him, asking what he was still doing in the building. Apparently, there was an unexploded car bomb on the street, and everyone else had been evacuated. When Karim got down to the street, there were police everywhere. One asked him, “Is that your car?” His little car was parked in the empty street a few metres from the only other car—the one that was packed with explosives. The policeman shouted at him that he could move it or leave it, it was up to him. Karim had a split second to figure out if he was going to get his car out or not. He was terrified. But he really didn’t want to lose his car because it would not be easy to replace.
Once Karim had told me how he’d waited years to get that car. Finally, one day not long before the invasion, he had been called to pick up his new vehicle. But after the invasion he had been afraid to drive it around Baghdad because of the looting and stealing. It was much better to have a beaten-up old car, as you’d be less likely to be a victim of a carjacking or worse, being killed for your car, which happened all the time. So he’d kept the car at home, waiting for things to calm down. When they hadn’t got better in three years, he decided to start driving the car anyway.
Farah said that after that car bomb, Karim decided to close his office.
“He’s had to tone down his work,” Farah tells me. “I think he had a warning from a friend. They are keeping clients they already have, but they have stopped soliciting new business.”
Work was very complicated these days in Iraq. If you had work lined up before the war, then you were able to make enough of a living to survive. Men who already had work were lucky, but men looking for work couldn’t find any. And there are very few job options. Army and police salaries are good by Iraqi standards, but it is practically suicidal work. The only other options are to sell CDs on the street, or work with the occupiers and risk being murdered as a collaborator.
Karim had pointed out to Farah the couch where Auntie Lina had spent her last days.
“I remember she lay on that couch, and she just kept going down,” Karim had said to Farah. He’d said Lina’s deterioration had started soon after the last time Farah had visited. Farah was lucky she saw Lina up and driving and talking, although the elderly woman was already tired and not well at the time.
Now that Lina was gone, Karim and his wife looked after our family home for us, my grandparents’ house. Farah had said to them it was too bad that they couldn’t go to see the house.
“I wanted to take photographs for you,” she says, but she knew that it would be impossible. Karim agreed that it was a nice idea, but didn’t take it seriously. Farah explained that it wasn’t worth moving around in Baghdad unless you absolutely had to. Iraqis rarely go out, and it is not worth venturing outside just to take photographs.
But even without photographs, I know that my father’s childhood home now stands on a gradually emptying street as more and more people desert the neighbourhood, flee Baghdad, give up on Iraq. Most end up in Jordan if they have money, or Syria if they have less. Few make it to the West. Canada took only a couple of hundred Iraqis in 2006.
Farah’s visit to Karim took place soon after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra and the violent reaction that followed when mosques were burning all over Baghdad.
“Karim was comparing Iraq now to the age of the Mongols of Hugalu [Genghis Khan’s son], saying that mosques in Iraq haven’t been burnt since that time,” Farah explains. “Books were burnt then and thrown in the river. They say the river turned black from the ink of the books. But then he said that if we burn our own mosques and Korans in the very place that Islamic history was born, then how can we criticize Europeans for their cartoons about Islam or an American stepping on a Koran in Guantanamo?” Karim was comparing events now with incidents that had happened eight hundred years ago. Iraqi memories stretch back centuries rather than decades.
Karim also told Farah a story about his time in the military fifteen years earlier. A commander had asked him whether he knew if another soldier was Shia or Sunni. The soldier in question was Karim’s really close friend, but in those days you didn’t know the difference, so he replied, “Well, I don’t know, he’s Muslim.” Iraqis are always telling me that the difference between Shia and Sunni had not been very important in Iraq under Saddam. Saddam targeted anyone who was against his regime; it didn’t matter what religion the person was. Anyone who opposed him was at risk; anyone who didn’t was relatively safe.
Karim was tired; he looked shattered compared to the last time that Farah had seen him. But Farah found all Iraqis to be weary, literally worn out.
“You can see the exhaustion on their faces; the tension takes such a toll on them. You’ll see though, when I get the photos developed, they look smart and tidy. They are keeping their lives together somehow,” she says encouragingly.
She puts her hand up to her face, which lights up suddenly and then darkens.
“Oh yes, they told me that Jill Carroll’s driver was Christian and went to the same church as them,” Farah said. “Karim went to church the Sunday after the driver was killed and saw his young wife there with her baby. She is the same age as us, and he said it was just so sad seeing her there alone.”
No one knew why the killings and kidnappings were happening, she says. Anyone, anywhere, could be a target and people didn’t know who might be attacked or by whom.
“For some reason people aren’t too afraid to speak on mobile phones, but they are afraid of computers now,” Farah says.
I ask her, “How did you feel being able to just drop into Baghdad one day and then walk away and leave the mayhem? Did anyone ever get angry and say it is all okay for you, you can just leave, come and go as you please?”
Farah shakes her head and looks down.
“No one ever said it to me, but I felt so upset when I left this time,” she acknowledges. “I felt humiliated, so embarrassed that I could pack up and leave. Saying goodbye to them was so hard; I just wanted to disappear without them noticing. Everyone was being so sad, and in those last few hours, I wished I could disappear. It was so humiliating leaving, especially with the teenage girls. They’d say, ‘You are so lucky, I want to come to New York one day.’ They ask me about my life all the time, and what it’s like. What can I say to them? I’m free. It’s easy. What do you do? They met my boyfriend when he was taking photos there, and that is the weird thing because he could never go there now. An American guy? In that neighbourhood? There is no way. They say, ‘Tell him we hope that one day he can come back to visit us.’ But they know at the same time it is impossible.”
Farah’s family n
ever spoke about the future when she was living with them, she never heard them say, “When things are better we will do this or that . . . ”
“They think of the future only in a fearful way,” Farah says. “My aunt thinks about her son, what she will do if he doesn’t come home one day. It’s that kind of fear. Not ever about when this is all over. It’s just day by day, how to get through each day.”
I want to know if her relatives ever talked about the past, if not the future.
“Yeah, they are longing for those days,” she tells me. “They say, ‘We should have stuck with the regime.’ They call them the good old days. And that is significant, because when the invasion was inevitable, they started fantasizing about what life would be like without Saddam Hussein in power. They saw it as an opportunity for a better life, even though of course they didn’t want war. Now they are saying, ‘What were we ever complaining about? This is so much worse than under Saddam. It just gets worse all the time.’ ”
Farah pauses before she goes on.
“The worst is that they don’t have hope anymore,” she says. “It’s one thing to be in a conflict zone when you have a sense of hope. It is completely different being in the same situation without hope. The tension is so heavy. The expressions on people’s faces are so intense, and you never get a sense of optimism anywhere in Iraq these days.”
She looks down and takes another sip of tea.
She then tells me that she went to the Green Zone one day and saw an Iraqi photographer that she used to see before the war. Through the razor wire she asked him, “How are you, how are things?” and he said, “Not good, not good at all.” Then he just walked away. Farah hadn’t seen him in two years and she was shocked by his demeanour. Usually, Arab warmth and hospitality was proffered no matter what the circumstances, but he gave nothing. Farah guessed that something must have happened to his family or someone close to him because he was clearly in shock; he couldn’t even talk to her.
The Orange Trees of Baghdad Page 21