Baghdad Diaries

by al-Radi, Nuha;

  27 April

  It is called ‘the Chernobyl virus’. Came back home and heard on the radio that Turkey has been hit by it too.

  28 April

  I was just listening to the radio about Salvador Dalì’s brother; it seems he had been manufacturing a whole lot of Dalì fakes and has just been taken in for questioning. I go downstairs and our grocer, Abu El-Izz calls me in and asks, could I give him a bit of advice. A friend of his had just called and said he had a painting by Salvador Dalì.

  ‘He says it is worth a million.’

  ‘Don’t touch it with a ten-foot barge pole’, say I.

  ‘But it has a signature’, he says.

  ‘So does a forgery’, I reply. He couldn’t take it in and felt disappointed at the loss of this prospective fortune. He said he would show me a photo. It’s a painting all about space stuff. I love coincidences like that.

  16 May

  We have a nightingale visiting us – what a sound. Birds don’t know when to sleep nowadays, because the Saudi Embassy has its floodlights on full blast, all night. Though they seem to have flourished and increased by hundreds. I have sparrows, bulbuls and doves. I feed them on my balcony. The nightingale is still singing.

  4 June

  Went for the residence permit again today. Fingerprints are now required, and we still have to go again. I am totally depressed. How many more months do I have to wait for it to finish?

  17 June

  My residence was refused. It’s been five months now of waiting. My horrid, lying lawyer just took money from me. I feel so low. But I am going down with Suha to drink mint tea by the sea.

  24 June

  Nidal phoned and said that she was working like six donkeys and six mules. Good, I said, we have all got to work like donkeys – we might hit the jackpot like the one in Egypt, which made a big sensation recently. A donkey walking in the desert fell into a hole, and they found hundreds of mummies, gold, etc. It seems they had been looking for this site for years.

  No news on the residence-permit front. Nidal promises to look into it.

  25 June

  At the Goethe Institute, we are listening to a lecture when the lights go out. Generator starts – we leave later for a friend’s house next door. I said it’s the Israelis – everyone boohooed me. Coming back home, the whole of Beirut is in pitch darkness except for a few generators working. My landlord took me up the stairs with his flashlight. He said it was the Israelis. After that, it was another wonderful musical night, with Israeli jets coming overhead, breaking the sound barrier, and the Lebanese firing whatever they have in defence.

  Christina phoned her broadcasting station in Germany to ask if she could send them something about the situation. They said, ‘It’s okay, we have a correspondent in Tel Aviv.’

  ‘But Israel is bombing Lebanon – what about this side?’

  They hemmed and hawed, and in the end said, ‘We have no money.’

  Seems a lot of damage has been done to the electricity station and many bridges have been hit.

  26 June

  Everyone is very depressed, they cannot face starting all over again. The civil war is still very fresh in people’s minds. Saudi Arabia and Iran say they will help to rebuild.

  Regardless of the dire situation, in the evening the European Beauty Contest pageant held in Beirut went ahead!

  Rima phoned to say I am going to be invited to this Medécins sans Frontières event in Dubai. It is to be the longest painting in the world: ten kilometres, to be painted in a day so it can get into the Guinness Book of Records.

  27 June

  Ma said, ‘I lit a candle for you yesterday at the Kiddass.’ So I say,

  ‘Sol has lit candles in the whole of France for my residence.’ I live in fear and trepidation, but am going down to the sea for a swim anyway.

  29 June

  The streets are in blocks of light or darkness, depending on which section of Beirut has electricity. The house is shaking from the sound of generators; the downstairs one has a deafening roar while the upstairs one shakes the whole house. Generators are the most anti-social machines, just noise and dirt polluters.

  It is the season of kittens. Lebanon, I think, is a cat country, as opposed to Iraq being more dog. Magda goes round with contraceptive pills trying to keep the population down.

  Tomorrow is residence permit day again, I feel a bit sick.

  7 July

  Since we went to see the Ayurvedic doctor, the kitchen has been lined with bottles of brown liquids: one for taking off moles, another for digestion and well-being, etc. It is difficult to decide which horror to start the day with. Ma says her moles are dropping off at the rate of knots. I have written to Q about this herb talool. I have asked around, and we think it’s St.John’s Wort in English. Maybe it can cure cancer; after all, a mole is a growth too.

  Our electricity cuts are really bad.

  2 August

  Beginning of the 10th anniversary of the UN embargo. Will it ever be lifted? One day when Iraq is not the pariah of the world, perhaps the injustice – now to the scale of genocide – will have to be answered for. But sadly, it will be too late for all those who have died

  11 August

  Waiting for the total eclipse. Everyone has gone crazy with terror, expecting the end of the world.

  15 August

  It was not that exciting, only 82% so not a total eclipse for us. The paranoia was extreme; people bolted themselves inside their houses with all shutters shut and sat terrified at home. I saw it through an old X-ray of my back.

  20 August

  Ma’s latest medical cure: she wraps her knee with a piece of cabbage and sleeps all night with it – an old cure, she says. What do you do with the cabbage leaf next day, I ask her, as Ma is a natural-born recycler. She said, ‘I throw it on the hillside for the chickens.’ I heave a sigh of relief.

  Amal, the director of my art gallery, came to see my artwork today to see what she had let herself in for, but she liked what I had done and laughed and said people were fed up with the norm. I have a whole series of paintings dealing with cell phones.

  My residence permit has been refused yet again.

  10 September

  Went to Deir al-Kamar with Minni to watch Shahla make fig jam. Shahla is a fount of information about old traditions. In the old days, she said, three months before Christmas, each family would get a sheep or two depending on the size of the family. They would tie it up and feed it three times a day with mulberry leaves stuffed with silkworm droppings, which is only mulberry leaf concentrate. At the end there would be a competition to see whose sheep was fattest. Another trick for last-minute fattening was to give it salt, which would make the sheep drink a lot of water. The sheep would get so fat that they would have stretch marks like a pregnant woman. Most of the meat would be preserved, so that it could be eaten during the year.

  29 September

  Between Nidal and Yahya’s string-pulling I am now sitting in the office of the head of security, the big boss. There is hope; his second in command is a lady also named Nuha. I am to come back Friday for a final decision.

  No date

  Got it in one hour! I cannot believe it, after seven months of jagged nerves and hysteria a miracle. Open sesame, thanks to my friends.

  28 October

  Nearly the end of my exhibition, have not done too well but am doing the stage props for Nidal’s new play, an Arabic version of Three Tall Women by Edward Albee. Such fun. There is a multistory, unfinished building from wartime Beirut in front of the theatre, a huge space, so I am working on the third floor in the open. It is full of dirt, empty bottles and spent bullets. I am painting seven metres of sea and sky.

  2 November – Dubai

  I am in Dubai for the longest painting in the world, and am staying at this plush hotel with highly polished marble crawling up the walls – but in the bathroom, a rude sign says ‘if you want a souvenir you can buy any of these items in the shop downstairs’.
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  Petra, the organiser, says ‘Please, please, you have to paint at least ten metres.’ We have to dress for dinner and go out for this big ‘do in tents, one hour deep in the desert. Robert Rauschenberg is our biggest star. What excitement.

  4 November

  At eight in the morning we meet downstairs. A taxi is waiting; there is a wind blowing. Oh! Oh! We get to the site, miles of cars already there. Fifty schools have been invited to participate, and some had already started. With horror, we saw that the wind had blown the canvas that had been neatly laid out in great tangles all over the road and desert. Our stop was at Kilometre 5. We get there and begin, but the wind is blowing everything away. Have to sit on the canvas. A German artist wearing a super boiler suit outfit with kneepads is beside me. She is dancing while throwing and dripping the paint: a Pollock! The press are thrilled with her. Meanwhile all are having interviews in the sandstorm. The whole thing is quite unreal. At eleven, we are told to pack up and go, as it is raging by now. After lunch we artists are taken to a large hall, where we continued to paint. It was great. By the end I had done 25 metres.

  5 November

  I can hardly move from all that activity yesterday. Everything feels sore. Medécins Sans Frontières’ efforts to bring the world together and make the world’s longest painting – a picture of hope for children – did not succeed. They wanted to show art as an international medium that has no borders. But nature has a funny way of answering such impossible ventures, and brought us a sandstorm that blew away our hopes.

  6 November

  Have read ‘Diary of a Political Idiot’ in Granta. The writer is Serbian; it’s far more literary and poetic than mine, but there are many similarities. I wonder if she had read mine. They are also political prisoners of their leader. I really wish the USA could get some of its own medicine. They are so reluctant to have body bags come home but have no thought of the body bags they are inflicting on others. These modern wars, Vietnam, Kosovo, us, are too big to handle by the human beings on the receiving side. They are totally devastating.

  10 November

  Got caught in a downpour today and totally drenched. I took shelter in a nearby shop. A chap standing beside me asked,

  ‘Do you know what is happy and revived?

  ‘What?’

  ‘The flower in your hair,’ he said. We laughed and had a chat. Rain doesn’t seem to want to stop. It is a compulsive habit to always have a flower in my hair.

  16 December–14 January 2000

  We are spending New Year’s 2000 at Dood’s house, ‘l’Averina’, in Tuscany: a family get-together. Solstice night on the 22nd, and the moon was shining like a beacon. It’s the closest it’s been to Earth this century.

  For New Year’s we have thirty people for dinner, and there are fireworks in the town across the valley from us. Beautiful sky, but very cold. I’ve had five of those dreaded scorpions in the house ‘til now, and we have had the usual family squabbles.

  20 January 2000 – Beirut

  A storm has been raging now for two days. It takes small breaks and starts up again, winds of up to 60 mph, waves 10 metres high, floods everywhere. And today of all days they have come to change the electricity in our building from 110 to 220 volts. Cranes and huge transformers are parked outside in the raging wind. The ground floor ladies had a huge drama around 7 p.m. – their boiler burst and went up in much smoke, lots of screaming. It’s always like an Egyptian movie down there.

  Since we have had our 220 volts, there have been nothing but dramas. For Ma’s farewell dinner last night, the electricity disappeared in the afternoon and all the cooking and dinner had to be done by candlelight. All the guests were given some rhubarb root to take home. It eases the nerves, helps constipation, cleans the blood and so on, according to our Ayurvedic doctor. Electricity didn’t come back ‘til ten this morning, whereupon shrieks and puffs of smoke emerge and waft up into our living room from the ground-floor ladies.

  The crazy storm is still with us, it’s now nearly a week.

  5 February

  I have made contact with Jasmina, what fun. she wrote the Serbian diary. I had sent her a letter c/o Granta and just got an e-mail back. I want to start an anti-war group. She, it seems, is a feminist in Belgrade; I have never been inclined towards segregation. It exists in such a large sphere in our society socially that I don’t think it’s the answer, after all it’s men who make war – so what is the point of a bunch of women being pacifists? This new anti-war group must have no gender, colour or creed limits.

  What is happening in Chechnya is just horrific. I am sure Russia has been allowed to get away with doing all this in Chechnya so that the USA could do what they like in Iraq.

  7 February

  Bombed again, this time worse than in June. I was woken up by the sound of the jets, but as it is quite a normal happening, I had passed out again. The electricity stations in Beirut, Tripoli and Baalbek have been hit. Iraq invaded Kuwait for six months, was defeated and left, and is still being bombed on a daily basis for it. Israel invaded Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and let’s not forget Palestine – it seems like centuries ago. They don’t move out and feel it is their due right to bomb. They don’t get ‘sanctioned’ – just a pat on the back, and commiserated with: poor Israel is just trying to survive. What a lot of bull this Western justice is.

  Went out and bought a rechargeable lantern. Came back to see it’s made in China with instructions saying do not put into fire – what could that mean?

  9 February

  I bet Barak bombed Lebanon like Clinton bombed Iraq, whenever he was in a political jam. Israel has all its corruption scandals going on.

  Sol and Dood phoned to ask how things are. I said I am so used to it I just switch into automatic. We have been rigged to a building opposite that has a generator and we get 5 amps each; it’s a small generator. They say we might get electricity back by May.

  11 February

  Cess is back from the USA. He says he didn’t know the electricity situation was so bad. They don’t write the doings of Israel in the US papers.

  Magda gave me a Chinese fortune cookie today. It said, ‘Anyone has talent at twenty-five. Try having it at fifty.’ I am afraid I am heading in that direction, long past fifty. Time is up.

  16 February

  Today, not only has the head of the UN, Hans Von Sponek, resigned in Baghdad, so has Utta Berkhart at the WFO – because they feel sanctions are only harming the people and not affecting the authorities. Dennis Halliday had resigned a couple of years earlier for the same reasons. The USA said they were relieved by the resignations because they had gone against their wishes. Imagine that!

  Our electricity is functioning miraculously, with only short cuts.

  It’s pouring rain with huge winds again, and my inspiration has totally vanished since Magda gave me that Chinese cookie. How am I going to earn a living?

  Told Jasmina today if more people knew people like her they would stop thinking Milosevic is Serbia. And if more people knew people like me they would stop thinking Saddam is Iraq.

  I have one female and six male cats, and it’s February and there is pandemonium on my balcony.

  18 February

  The big student demonstrations in Beirut managed to get on BBC English radio. They are objecting to the USA, saying it’s all Hizbullah’s fault – Hizbullah are becoming the heroes of the day.

  29 February – Leap Year

  Angela Flowers on the BBC says today is the day when ladies propose to men. Got an interesting piece of information from Bert today: the Medicis made their money through drugs and medicine, and that’s where the name come from. Medici – from medico – is plural for ‘doctors’.

  3 March

  I am now waiting for a Cypriot visa. I am supposed to have an exhibition in Nicosia, but the usual excuses – I wait.

  Amir Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is here and has given millions to help with the electricity.

  11 March

  Still no
sign of my visa. Jasmina and I are going to write about ‘the globalization of evil’ – the title is her idea. She is compiling our letters and wants to publish them one day. Serbia and Iraq, war and embargo.

  The most exciting offer I have had is from Sol, who has arranged for me to work as assistant to her master plasterer for her mosque in Yemen in October.

  The Arab foreign ministers are very pleased with themselves to be meeting here. No one will solve anything, I am sure. Everyone will just talk about their own problems and go away. Still, it is good for Lebanon.

  12 March

  The Arab foreign ministers did not even manage to stick it out for two days. We are a sad lot.

  It seems Cyprus doesn’t give visas to Iraqis – only if you are selling barrels of oil. But if you get washed up on shore, you are taken to prison for three months and after that you are allowed to stay. Well, I think I will give it a miss. The exhibition has to take place without me.