Naked in Baghdad

by Anne Garrels

  MARCH 22, 2003

  The Iraqis have set oil fires around the city as Amer predicted. The black smoke has cast a pall, but I can see that the bridges across the Tigris have not been hit. We still have light, power, and phones. So far, this is not as physically arduous as covering the 2001 campaign against al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. Then we slept, six to a room, on the floor of whatever accommodation we could find, had no electricity or water, and traveled huge distances on bad roads. Every war has its bizarre characteristics. If the U.S. bombing continues to be as accurate as it has been, the problem for Iraqis may well be the psychological pressure as much as any physical danger. But we are in early days yet.

  The command bus tours, announced on short notice, keep us on a very short leash. Late at night the Information Ministry rouses us for another trip. The bus meanders through the city, giving us a glimpse of some of the damage. We pass the smoldering Salam Palace, one of the most fanciful of Saddam’s creations. Surrounding the central dome, which has now been hollowed out, are four huge busts of Saddam dressed as Saladin, the Mesopotamian warrior who took on and defeated the Crusaders.

  Suddenly air raid sirens signal another attack. Being out late at night, at bombing hour, right next to Saddam’s palaces is about as dumb as it gets. I just hope our minders wish to live as much as I do. I swear off any more midnight tours.

  We are taken to four houses that have allegedly been hit by American bombs. Iraqi officials set up generators to illuminate the site. They talk of numerous deaths. But once again the stories don’t quite add up. The officials say the bombs landed at one time; residents say they landed at another. The officials say several were killed and wounded. Residents say the houses were unoccupied. At a second location, it’s the same confusion. I gratefully happen into conversation with an Iraqi Russian speaker; translators are nowhere to be found. He provides an elaborate picture of a happy family sitting down to dinner when an American bomb lands, killing them all. Others, who claim to be relatives of the victims, say no one was killed but some were injured. Once again the damage to the house itself is not consistent with a missile or an American bomb. I retrieve a piece of a shell and later show it to Amer. He says it is from an Iraqi antiaircraft gun.

  BRENDA BULLETIN: MARCH 22, 2003

  Saturday, 6 p.m. Annie’s gutsy, gravelly reports of the last twenty-four hours have been memorable—she spun out a continuous stream of superb word pictures—but tonight her expected report did not occur. A British reporter in a different location gave the update. I just don’t know what has happened.

  The onslaught last night literally blew her back into the elevator as it opened onto the 11th floor of the Palestine Hotel, where she and her dirty dozen of old hands are still camped. She got through to NPR on her satellite phone and started to describe the huge billows of smoke and fire erupting from the edifices of Saddam’s regime across the Tigris: the immense new palace complex with its distinctive ziggurat. She was trying to answer Washington’s queries as to what specific buildings had been struck—all but impossible given the tumult and her own directionally challenged inadequacies—when all of a sudden directly outside the window of room 1133 cruised a very big cruise missile. Now THAT sort of got her attention. Presumably it hung a left at the corner and headed downtown, because by the time she recovered it had disappeared as fast as it had come.

  We were able to talk at some length this morning and she tried to allay fears. She said that she believes she has, in fact, an advantage as a woman; the Iraqi secret police don’t deal well with a Western “dumb broad.” She told the following story: as she was leaving her room last night a large thug of a man wielding a video camera barged in. Assuming that he was a TV cameraman looking for a vantage point from which to film, she lit into him with all the invective she could muster. He retreated in confusion. Only later did she learn that he was in fact a member of the secret police looking for illegal equipment.

  Later in the day Annie was still upbeat when she talked to NPR, who relayed the gist to me. Her main gripe was directed toward USA Today, who added a year to her age in yesterday’s piece. She remains sensitive to this kind of arbitrary behavior, having been mistaken for a seventy-year-old man in Afghanistan.

  Lastly, I know that it had to happen, but nonetheless there was a twinge when one of you asked how I was enjoying my role as a lesser Denis Thatcher … .

  V

  MARCH 23, 2003

  Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian is as frantic as I am about the restrictions put on us. She knows a family she wants to visit so we elude the minders at the Information Ministry by sauntering down the street and hailing a taxi. I deliberately don’t tell Amer what I am up to, because going to visit families is against current regulations. I have no fear that he would report on me, but he would try to dissuade me from doing something that might complicate my stay here, and if it were found out that he knew what I was doing, he could get into trouble.

  The family is scared, so I don’t record their voices and I don’t reveal their names. They are only seeing us out of friendship for Suzanne. The first words out of the woman’s mouth are, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She and her family have been huddling in one room on the ground floor of a spacious house that could have been transported from Los Angeles. The only difference is that they live next to an Iraqi military base. In the past few days, four cruise missiles have slammed into the installation. With each blast, the woman says the combination of dust, vibration, and noise makes her lose her bearings. She finds herself weeping uncontrollably in their wake. The windows upstairs are broken. The family has covered the furniture with sheets to protect it from falling plaster and shards of glass. Mattresses have been dragged down to an interior room on the ground floor. She coughs. The smoke from the fires set around the city is giving her problems. She asks a friend, who’s come to stay, to get some wet towels so she can put them over her face.

  Suddenly there’s a loud noise. Instinctively the friend jumps back from the kitchen window across the room. It’s just the clang of the front gate. The phone rings constantly as relatives check in to make sure everyone is all right. A nineteen-year-old girl, who’s also staying here, looks numb. All she can say is that she wants a future but isn’t sure she’ll live to see one.

  As bad as it is, this family says it’s still better than during the ’91 Gulf War, when electricity, water, and phone lines were immediately cut. But they say the intact infrastructure may be emboldening Iraqi fighters. The family is surprised by the resistance shown by Iraqi troops in the south; they have an illegal satellite dish and have seen reports that Allied forces have faced fierce fighting around Najaf and Nasiriya. Iraqi television has shown video of five captured Americans, one of them a woman. These soldiers don’t look very threatening, and this family is wondering how long this will drag on. It’s now Day Four, and they have no idea what to expect. That’s adding to the psychological toll.

  Asked if the armed militias and Baath Party cadres out on the street will fight, the family just shrugs. They heard Saddam’s speech in which he said the Americans were lost in the desert. They get the feeling many Iraqis might now think the United States is weaker than they anticipated.

  The family goes out sporadically to stock up on fresh food. A few shops are open. There’s even a barber who’s raised his shutters. In a surprising semblance of normalcy, a garbage truck rumbles by to pick up the trash. But it’s far from normal here. The woman’s son is not allowed out of the house. He’s twenty-two and prime draft material. The family paid a hefty bribe to keep him out of the military but his mother fears he could now be dragged into one of the militias patrolling Baghdad.

  While this family and their friends blame Saddam Hussein for many of their problems and believe that Iraq does need a change, they resent what they see as American arrogance. What gives Americans the right to change things that are not theirs to change? they ask. This is a constant refrain. They express prid
e in Iraq and its history. They are clearly caught in the middle.

  Back at the hotel there is a sudden flurry of activity, and reporters surge down to the river. Hundreds of security men are searching for one or two downed American pilots who reportedly ejected over the city and parachuted into the area of the Tigris. Security forces set fire to brush along the banks. Small boats patrol the river with armed militias and volunteers shooting volley after volley into the water. But there’s an unspoken tension. As Baath Party members are determined to kill the pilots, other Iraqis just stand by watching, some quietly giving a thumbs-up as the militias fail. They make it clear that they want the pilots to survive. (As it turns out, there were no pilots.)

  Press conferences are now impromptu affairs held in the lobby of the Information Ministry, the better to flee the building should it be hit, perhaps. Looking around at the reporters who are left in Baghdad I am struck by how few Americans there are. Who would ever have thought it would be pared down to sixteen, including photographers, with NPR, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books among them? The absence of CNN, Fox, and the other large American networks has created an intimacy and a lack of hysteria in the coverage. The perception that television is most important, their money, their sharp elbows, their need for pictures, and their shorthand coverage all tilt the way a story is reported. I have to confess that this is a precious time that will undoubtedly never be repeated. Given what little access I have to outside news (at $8 a minute on the satellite phone, I don’t log on for long), I really have no idea what the comparatively large numbers of Spaniards, Greeks, French, British, and Italians are producing. I feel as if I am in a cocoon, documenting the small world that I can see.

  BRENDA BULLETIN: MARCH 23, 2003

  Annie slept soundly through the lullaby of Baghdad last night. Even through the dodgy satellite phone connection, her voice was strong and her mood determined. Like the rest of us, she is seeking some level, some pattern of normalcy in this madness. The very accuracy of the bombardment of Baghdad is having a curious and perhaps unexpected effect. The people with whom she has spoken are on the one hand surprised and appreciative that the “Campaign of Shock and Awe” does not mean Dresden, but neither has it driven that anticipated wedge between them and the regime. It seems almost as if we are not serious.

  Her ability to move on her own about the city is curious and unexpected. We talked around the obvious fact that Amer is not always with her. What degree of complicity exists for her solo forays is unclear, but she was able to visit a family on her own to get a sense of the changed mood of the city. There exists something of a pendulum swing. Emboldened perhaps by the fact that they still have water, electricity, and telephones, those she spoke with now feel that they will survive. And there is the fact that at least some of the Iraqi forces are fighting back. This won’t be the four-days-and-out scenario that many expected.

  Again and again she has been struck by the lack of animosity toward her personally. Indeed quite the opposite. Ordinary people have gone out of their way to be friendly. She was on a bridge observing the crazed mob firing wildly into the Tigris where bailed-out American pilots were reported. Yet another friendly Iraqi came up to her and told her not to worry; those in the mob, he said, were “nutcases.”

  Lastly, those of you, who like me—and against our better judgment—find it almost impossible to avoid CNN etc. might have come away with the impression that CNN was kicked out of Baghdad over issues involving high journalistic principle. Well, apparently the expulsion had far less to do with principle than with hubris. After its solo run in ’91, CNN thought it owned the story, but this time the Iraqis have invited others to watch the fireworks, including Al Jazeera and many European broadcasters. CNN demanded that it be allowed to move its broadcast operations from the Information Ministry, a likely U.S. target, to the Palestine Hotel. A perfectly reasonable demand on the face of it, but there are others in the game this time, who are willing to play by, or work around, the Information Ministry’s rules. CNN overplayed its hand. Its demands were met by a flat no, a word they apparently hadn’t expected to hear. A heated exchange ensued and the managing director of the Information Ministry ordered CNN out. At the briefing to announce the expulsion there were not a few knowing nods from the Dirty Dozen and others. The remaining press corps has been warned that anyone caught collaborating with CNN would also be expelled.

  Annie remains beneath the radar. For today she’s OK.

  V

  MARCH 24, 2003

  When I get down to breakfast, or what passes for such at the Palestine, John Burns, mirabile dictu, has beaten me to it. That should have tipped me off that something was up, as John works until the wee hours of the morning and is not usually seen until a far more respectable hour. With his halo of tangled silver curls, John is not hard to miss, and his reporting, with its relentless digs at the tyranny of Saddam, has infuriated our keepers. He’s been existing on borrowed time, and when I catch him in the restaurant he’s deep in conversation with our super-keeper, Uday al-Tae, undoubtedly trying to negotiate some kind of truce. By the time I collect what edibles I can face, their conversation seems to have flagged, so I dare to join. If John has a tempestuous relationship with Uday I have none whatsoever, which can be both bad and good when it comes to the inevitable visa extensions. Uday, as I have mentioned, has an eye for French girls, and my aging feminine charms, lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, have not endeared me to him. Neither, however, have I managed to anger him. I figure I’ll seize this moment to just say hello. As we sit talking about nothing in particular, a strange-looking creature with glassy eyes appears at the table. He rants on about his wife being taken away in the night. We try to calm him down and establish what’s what. It turns out he’s Nate Thayer, a freelance journalist, who had slipped in on a tourist visa along with freelance photographer Molly Bingham. They are not in fact husband and wife, but she has indeed been arrested. Nate directs all his comments to me and John, ignoring Uday who, as super-keeper, is the man he should be talking to.

  Two other journalists—Matt McAllester from Newsday and his photographer, Moises Saman—are also missing. We’ve known each other since Afghanistan. Overnight I had heard a commotion outside in the hallway. I looked through the peephole and, seeing nothing but the usual thugs, decided it was just another phone sweep. In fact, security was in the process of arresting these friends, who were staying a few rooms away. This morning their room is ominously empty. Nate, the dubious but so far sole source of information, says they are all to be deported to Syria. When we later approach Uday for clarification he won’t answer our questions. Qadm similarly has nothing to offer. We are left to speculate on why they were taken. Perhaps they were arrested for visa violations. Perhaps they were caught with Thurias. Their detention sends a chill through the press corps. This is just what we fear most. We wait for news that they have safely arrived in Damascus. In the meantime a French TV crew, which had been picked up by the Iraqis in Basra, is brought to the hotel unhurt, but they have been put under hotel house arrest and are not permitted to work. Their van, with all their equipment, has been impounded. With little else to do, they sit in the overpriced carpet store within the hotel compound puffing on a water pipe known affectionately here as the “hubbly bubbly.” It contains nothing more than scented, rather coarse tobacco. Lorenzo Cremonesi, on the other hand, is madly dashing up and down eighteen flights of stairs. Now that the swimming pool, where he once released pent-up energy and frustration, is a sickly green, he has taken to ascending the hotel heights and now estimates he has climbed the equivalent of several Mont Blancs.

  Iraqi officials, who brief us on their perception of the overall situation, seem more upbeat, given the unexpected battles in the south. The U.S. invasion has been slowed by stubborn resistance from Iraqi fighters and by a developing sandstorm. Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, has held a news conference warning Americans that they were getting themselves into a quagmire. Iraqis I manage to s
peak to seem surprised at the durability of the regime. It does seem that this might go on longer than either we or a great many Iraqis had initially anticipated.

  MARCH 25, 2003

  We’ve settled into a routine of bombing and briefings. The Palestine can best be compared to a reform school. Amer encourages me to at least behave well in public, and all of us dutifully appear at the daily press conferences. Attendance is not taken, but our keepers appear to keep notes on who is there and who is not.

  Even at midday Baghdad is almost dark, shrouded with thick smoke from oil-filled trenches deliberately set on fire by Iraqi forces to interfere with American remote guidance systems. Streets in the capital are all but deserted as residents watch and wait for the ground assault to begin. I am having trouble finding new material that goes beyond official rantings and more “thud, thud, thud,” but my foreign editor, Loren Jenkins, will not listen to my weary protestations that I have nothing to offer. He tells me to just keep reporting “all I see, hear, and smell.” In a note fondly signed “The Ogre,” he reassures me that I have no idea how much every little detail is appreciated. I have no way of telling how this is all being received in the States and feel quite isolated from the rest of the war coverage.

  There is no sign of the missing journalists, now up to four, in either Syria or Jordan.

  MARCH 26, 2003

  The wind has been howling. The combination of a raging sandstorm and smoke from the oil fires has turned day into night. With the city bathed in an eerie pinkish-orange haze, Iraqis say they can’t ever recall weather like this. Some call it God’s revenge on the Americans.