“Maybe if we make a list of all the suffering in your family, like the story you just told us about your mother dying as a result of the bomb blast, maybe the lawyer would be able to argue your case better,” I suggest.
Maha nods, wiping her eyes.
Siham asks them, “Tell us, did you know that the war was coming in Iraq? You know, at the beginning?”
Maha answers, “No, no, no. Of course not. We didn’t have satellite then, or Internet, or mobile phones, we only knew what Saddam told us. We didn’t even know about mobile phones really. There is a joke in Iraq about an old man who is offered a mobile phone, but he won’t take it, even though it is free, because he says, ‘This one doesn’t have a wire. I want a phone with a wire to the wall.’ ” Maha laughs. “Not that those work anyway. We thought it would be like when the US bombed us in 1998, when they bombed some government buildings in Baghdad. No, we didn’t know it was going to be war, invasion and occupation. We knew nothing about what was coming.”
I explain that we knew for six months before that the US government was building a case to go to war with Iraq, arguing it at the UN, and that we knew how massive the bombardment would be, how they’d been building up the military for the attack, that we all went to demonstrations to stop the war. I tell them that there was a huge worldwide demonstration against the war on February 15, 2003, when millions of people around the world took to the streets to show that they were against this war.
Maha shakes her head. “We knew nothing about this. We didn’t expect anything,” she says. “Twenty nights we sat by the walls away from the windows.” Maha moves her chair against the wall and sits in it, demonstrating and re-enacting what she had done. “Twenty nights we sat against the walls so we might be safer if the ceiling caved in, rocking and praying to the Virgin Mary to spare our lives. The plates on the tables shook as the bombs came over. We could hear the missiles flying by our house. We were terrified. We thought we were going to die.”
I picture all the houses in Iraq, mud-brick homes in small villages, concrete apartment blocks, the slums of Sadr City, the suburban houses of Baghdad, and I realize that for those twenty nights, every human being was doing the same thing, praying not to be killed, praying to be saved. Some had their prayers answered, others did not.
“When we went out after the war, the city was unrecognizable—they bombed so many buildings,” Maha adds.
“Like which ones?” Amal wants to know, so she can imagine it.
Maha starts to list all the buildings that were destroyed and how the corniche along the river which used to be lined with fish restaurants serving masgouf is now completely inaccessible.
“You can’t walk by the river?” Amal exclaims.
Maha tells her that they don’t go out, that you don’t go anywhere anymore.
“You can’t cross the city anymore anyway because of the Green Zone. . . . We never go to Mansour district anymore,” she says. “It is America,” Maha answers when I ask her what she thinks of the Green Zone (now trying to be renamed the International Zone by friendly US media).
“Do you remember there used to be a very nice restaurant in Mansour where they sold the best shwarma in the city?” Siham asks.
“We never go there now,” Maha says. “We can’t get there. You know the bridge you cross to get there, to get to the area where Saddam’s palace was, we cannot even cross that bridge, it has a huge blast wall up. To be honest we can’t even see the bridge anymore. To get to the other side of Baghdad would take all day and it would be far too dangerous.”
“So you didn’t see the statue of Saddam coming down in the square?” I knew it was a stupid question, but the image was iconic in the West.
“What? No, of course not. We didn’t have electricity, television or telephone! We saw it much later,” Maha responds.
“So how did you know the Americans had entered Baghdad?”
“We saw them.” Reeta says quietly.
“You saw some soldiers?” I ask Reeta. She nods.
Maha answers for her, “Our neighbours came to the house and told us that there were American tanks nearby. We live near the street that you have to take to get into the centre of the city. We saw the colossal convoy of tanks and black army cars and soldiers entering the city. They came right near our street. Everyone went into the streets to watch them enter. They were waving at the people; people were just standing, watching them. A few tanks were stationed in our neighbourhood. The people were angry, not happy. The Americans tried to throw people chocolate.”
“Soldiers threw chocolate to all of you who had been through all that?” I say in disbelief. “How long were you there watching?”
“All day. They had so many tanks and cars and guns. It took all day for the convoy to pass us,” Reeta adds.
I realize that I hadn’t seen that image of the American army taking the city. What did the convoy look like? What did the endless American military machine sound like when it was roaring into the city?
“There were fires burning all around Baghdad. Saddam had started fires with oil. He thought that the US missiles wouldn’t be able to see the targets through the smoke,” Maha says.
“These were Iraq’s famous weapons of mass destruction, our sophisticated technology. Smoke from oil fires,” Amal states.
“And to think that we thought it would be heaven the day we got rid of Saddam Hussein. We’d dreamed of it for so long,” Maha says bitterly. “Reeta was sad, she cried but she had only known sanctions and Saddam Hussein. But it was so painful living under sanctions for anyone who knew life before.” She pauses. “Karim told you about the family we know who were shot as the Americans entered the city?”
“Yes.”
“That was so terrible,” says Siham after Maha tells her the story, since she hadn’t heard it before.
“Yes, we were so lucky that we weren’t one of the people who were killed,” Maha says. “A few days after the Americans entered Baghdad, we all went to Karim’s parents’ house. We had to make sure they were all right. Just as we were turning the key into their front door, a house two doors down was struck with a bomb. It was a cluster bomb. Shrapnel flew out and whizzed past my head.” Maha touches her head, and you can tell that she still hears the sound of the shrapnel escaping past her skull. It shattered all the windows in Karim’s parents’ house. “We hadn’t even entered the house yet. We ran into the streets crying and ended up running to your house, where Lina was staying.” They stayed there for a whole day, too traumatized and terrified to risk going home.
“Oh, we are so lucky no one was killed that day,” she continues. “You know, during the war, when elderly people died, no one could take them anywhere to be buried; it was too dangerous. So they buried them in their own gardens. And when the war was over they went and dug them up and reburied them in the proper way. Imagine, their own parents or grandparents.”
We sit in silence. Reeta and Maha remembering, Amal and I imagining.
“And you know, when they invaded, they should have thought about security,” Maha says angrily. “They just destroyed government ministries and didn’t stop people looting, even at the university. We heard that the Americans came with their tanks and destroyed the front doors and encouraged people to come in, saying, ‘Go and take everything, it was all Saddam’s. . . . Now it is yours.’ That’s what they said.”
“They saw it as giving it back to the people,” I offer tentatively.
“But it belonged to Iraq as a whole, not just to be taken by anyone. It was robbery.”
We all sit silent.
Then I ask, “Has anything been rebuilt? Have you seen anything new?”
She laughs. “No, nothing has been rebuilt. You know before, we had no suicide bombers, no problems between Sunni and Shia. Ambassador Paul Bremer was the one who talked about the Sunni triangle. What’s the Sunni triangle? I’ve never heard of it. And we had security.”
Maha adds, “You know, they say that American soldiers who ar
e killed in Iraq, who don’t have American citizenship, are buried out in the desert. They don’t want to bother sending their bodies back home. Too expensive.”
No one knows if this is true or not, but after everything that has happened, it seems a plausible rumour.
The next day, we take Maha and Reeta into central London for the first time. Once settled on the train to Victoria, Reeta says matter-of-factly, “This is the first time I have been on a train.”
“A lot of firsts on this trip for Reeta,” says Amal. “First time on a plane, a train, and what about buses?”
“No, I’ve never been on a bus either,” she says.
“How did you sleep, Leilah?” Amal asks. I tell them I had hardly slept thinking about all the stories they’d been telling me about the war. Rose and I had stayed up very late, talking about all their tales, and how hard it was to comprehend that Maha and Reeta had experienced all that they had.
Amal translates, giggling, “Oh, they slept so soundly, like logs. It’s funny that you were feeling stressed about their stories. They forgot all about them when they went to bed.”
I look out the window, the familiar route into London, showing the backs of houses and straggly gardens, and I wonder how it looks to Reeta. I imagine the landscape she is used to experiencing in Baghdad—a ruined city, blackened buildings, poverty, beggars, street children, markets, noise, music blaring from dented old cars, tension on people’s faces, fear. Once we arrive at Victoria Station, we get straight onto a double-decker bus and clamber to the top deck, seating Reeta and Maha in the front so they can watch London unfolding below them.
The bus goes past all of London’s landmarks. We point out Westminster Abbey, the Parliament Buildings where Blair and the British government decided to go to war, Downing Street where Blair and his family live, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square. We find ourselves getting off at Oxford Street. Even though Baghdad is a populous capital city, London’s population is overwhelming. I see all the shoppers through my cousins’ eyes, and the prices, when compared to those in Iraq, are astronomical.
“You can get everything in Baghdad; jeans are only about five pounds,” Amal tells me.
We duck into a bookstore when it starts to drizzle, and while we are browsing, Maha says, “You know, Uncle Daoud wrote a book.”
We all turn and stare at her.
“What about?” I ask.
“When he died, he was writing a book, he hadn’t finished it. It was a book about everything America had done in Iraq. It’s a history book. His second wife has the manuscript. But it is written by hand in Arabic script,” Maha says.
“Did she keep it? His wife?” I hadn’t even known he had remarried to, it turns out, one of his first wife’s cousins.
“I don’t know, I think she still might have it.”
“I wonder if we could get a hold of it,” I say.
“It’s in Arabic though,” Maha repeats.
“I’d love to read it. I’m sure my father would too.”
“We’ll see if we can find it.”
For Reeta and Maha, seeing such a swarm of people out in the streets is a novelty.
“That is the biggest difference,” Maha says, “between here and Iraq. Here, everyone is going about their business without fear. Unless people are at home in Baghdad, they are afraid. They can’t go anywhere, nowhere, without fear. And, of course, Baghdad is in ruins compared to London, but we are used to that now.”
We stop in a trendy pub that serves food. Maha asks Rose and I if we’ve ever worked in a restaurant.
“Of course,” I respond.
They think it is very funny that we have worked. Maha went straight from school to being a wife and mother. Many Iraqi women have careers but they go straight into university and don’t take part-time jobs in restaurants while studying. We explain that many women in the West get jobs when they are young, sometimes to pay for their tuition. An Iraqi friend of Amal’s has a son close to Reeta’s age who is working at a Salvation Army shop in order to make his application for medical school more appealing. He’s asked if Reeta wants to come with him for the day. Maha is trying to decide if she should let Reeta go. Reeta really wants to work in the shop, and no one seems to notice the irony of a young Iraqi girl working at a charity shop in Britain.
Then they start to quiz us about whether we drink alcohol.
I say, “Yes, we like drinking wine but not really beer.”
They had seen the pubs closing in a town near my aunt’s house where they’d gone out for dinner before we arrived.
“The girls were wearing such short skirts and high heels,” Maha remarks. “One girl was falling over in the street, right beside a policeman. But he didn’t do anything. In Iraq, he would have slapped her face and sent her home to her family. But he just ignored her. It was disgusting. Everyone was so drunk. We saw two people being sick in the street. Why do they do it?”
Rose and I look at each other.
Rose answers, “Well, I guess they think it is fun.”
“Fun? Would you do that for fun?” Maha asks.
All the women are looking at us.
“No, not like that. But that is what people do,” I say.
“They should see what it is like to live with suicide bombs going off all the time. Then they might know what life is really about.” Maha just shakes her head.
Luckily, our food is served and, distracted, we stop the discussion.
Over coffee, the conversation turns to the Gulf War.
“What did you think the reason for that war was then?” Rose asks Maha.
Maha says, “I remember, we woke up one morning, and they told us on the news that there was a coup in Kuwait. No one was to leave Iraq, and the popular army was being called up to get ready to help the Kuwaiti people. That’s what they said. On television they showed a group of men wearing dishdashas who were said to be responsible for the coup. Remember, this was in 1990, only two years after the disastrous war with Iran ended. The next day we realized that they had actually invaded Kuwait.”
“Did you know why they did it?” I ask.
“Kuwait was stealing our oil, apparently,” Maha says. “They said the Kuwaitis were provoking our Iraqi honour saying things like, they can buy an Iraqi girl for one dinar. Because Iraq was so poor after the war with Iran. They say that the American embassy gave the green light. Of course, Iraqis didn’t want another war. Exhausted soldiers who had finally been released from army duty after ten or fifteen years were called up again. The sanctions began on August 3, 1990.”
“Did you know that the UN was preparing for war against Iraq?” Rose wanted to know.
“We knew that the UN was telling Saddam to leave Kuwait,” Maha confirms. “People were withdrawing money beforehand and buying as much as they could because they knew that there would be shortages. On January 16, the Iraqi news announced that the UN had given an ultimatum that the Iraqi army had to leave Kuwait, but they didn’t. At 4:00 a.m. the bombardment started and went on for forty days, until February 28. Until the 2003 war, it was the worst days of my life. Each night we went down into the shelter, about twenty of us . . . it was in a private hospital near our house that was owned by our neighbours. There were no windows. We prayed in the shelter mostly. One night there was a massive noise, and we were suddenly thrown aside. The whole building was shaking, falling apart; we thought that the building was collapsing on us. I was pregnant with Reeta. We were terrified, but we had to go out because we were afraid that the building would fall in on us. When we got out we saw that they had hit the telephone exchange next door. The policeman came and asked us where the bomb was. That was the first thing the Americans did; they cut communications. There was no telephone, no bridges. The bombing was less intense during the day. It would start at around seven at night and go until seven in the morning. There were no shops open. Once in a while a little shop would open, and we could get bread. We had our rations; the rationing had started before the war. We got black f
lour, rice, sugar, tea, oil and soap. No fruit or vegetables. By the second day of the war, white bread began to look brown; they were mixing something else into it. We think it was ground date stones.”
I remembered the stall on Denman Street in Vancouver that I had stopped at in 2000; they had had a sample of the small rations that Iraqis received because of the UN-imposed sanctions. At the time I couldn’t believe that this was how my own relatives were living on the other side of the world.
“From 1990 to 1997, we got the same rations every month,” Maha continues. “The food usually lasted for about ten days. Everything else you had to pay for, but it was very expensive. You couldn’t afford a kilo of rice or half a kilo of sugar. Before we used to buy it in huge sacks, but we couldn’t anymore. After 1997 when the UN started the Food for Oil program, we got enough food to last a month, dry beans, lentils, powdered milk. We made our own bread, pita bread on the Aladdin stove, you know the one?” I knew from my time in Beirut about these stoves on which many people in the Middle East cooked and made tea, and sat around for heat in the winter. “So you know the Aladdin. I love it. But fruit and vegetables were very difficult to find then.”
“What did you do all day when the Gulf War was happening?” I ask her.
“Lina was living with us, and we stayed inside mostly. We went to your house once a week; we’d take an oil lamp and make sure everything was all right. It was winter, and we didn’t have oil or petrol. We had no heating. It was very cold,” Maha explains. “You know, one of our cousins had to go and fight in this war. He was the kind of gracious young man that everyone wants in their family. He’d be the first to put up a curtain rail, fetch watermelons from the market or fix the roof. He was conscripted into the army. He had been doing a business studies diploma and he was sent to the front line without any history of being in the army, near the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. After a few days of training he came back to visit his parents and brothers. They begged him not to go back to the front because they knew it would be a disaster for him. But he was afraid that if he deserted the army Saddam’s men would bring him back to the house and kill him in front of his parents. So he went back, and on the second day of fighting he was killed anyway. His body was brought back to the house in a cardboard coffin on the roof of a car. His father, your great-uncle Edward, had a heart attack at the same time, but maybe you know this story. He knew he wouldn’t survive anyway.”
The Orange Trees of Baghdad Page 25
