Baghdad Diaries

by al-Radi, Nuha;

  15 April

  Tragedy. I thought there was something wrong with the film in my camera that never seemed to finish. When I bravely opened the camera in the dark, there was no film. What sorrow and horror! How am I going to get another war again? On second thoughts, at the rate we’re going, we may have another quite soon. We have no proof of what we went through now. All those unbelievable images. Gone.

  That is where my diary ended. I must add a few things. I can’t understand how I forgot to write about them at the time.

  After the war ended, the Allies spent all day and all night flying over our heads and breaking the sound barrier. Just like in Panama when they blasted Noriega, holed up in the Vatican embassy, with music. For fifteen days, Bush deafened the poor ambassador and Noriega with hard rock. Our torture went on for months – twenty or thirty times, day and night, jets broke the sound barrier over our heads, horrific deafening noise, swooping down, rubbing our noses in the dirt. As if we hadn’t had enough noise and dirt. The Israelis used to do this to us in Beirut – a daily, though not nightly, occurrence for years.

  On 26 April, Sol opened the door and walked in on Ma and Needles as they were having their afternoon nap, each on a chair. I didn’t see her ‘til five hours later. I was gadding about seeing friends. Always said that she would be the first one to brave coming back to Baghdad after the war. Our contact with the outside world was somehow reconnected.

  Bush says he has nothing against the Iraqi people. Does he not know or realize that it is only the Iraqi people who have suffered? It’s us, and only us, who’ve been without electricity and water – a life of hardship.

  I am sending this to my sister in New York.

  Baghdad, June 1991

  P.S. – August 1992, Frenchman’s Bay, Maine

  I sent two copies of this diary to Sol. They both got lost in the mail. It’s a good thing that Ma had made three photocopies. The third time it arrived safely – that was in January 1992. Was it the notorious US mail service or did I just put the wrong postal code? I swore that I would not come to the West again, but I was nagged into it by Sol – life must go on, as she says. Everybody who knows Sol knows how determined she can be. Letters were written, and visas obtained. Long queues, humiliation, no country wants us. We are the pariahs of the world.

  When I first arrived in London, I felt sad and distant. With the drama of the war over, no one seemed interested or even aware of our tragic situation. The papers only write about the Kurds or about the UN inspections.

  Now I’m in Maine, staying with Sol and the Doc. A family reunion: Ma, Kiko, all of us together, only Dood and family missing. We are editing the diary; Sol is chief editor.

  The reconstruction process in what is left of Iraq has been dramatic – most utilities, factories, buildings and bridges that were bombed have been rebuilt with true Iraqi ingenuity. Even if a lot of it was true Third World jerry-rigging, we did it ourselves with no help from the outside world. But the social system has suffered. Inflation, counterfeit money, poverty and hunger are the order of the day. There are shortages of everything – medicine, food, spare parts – though most things can be had for a price. Medical and social services are in a mess. Burglaries are now a common occurrence and Baghdad, once a ‘safe’ city to live in, is safe no longer.

  I am returning to Baghdad in September. The second anniversary of the Kuwait invasion has just passed and war cries are sounding again. It all sounds too familiar.

  ______________________________

  * BBC correspondent.

  * The author’s aunt.

  * Cured sausages.

  * A type of stew, made with a strongly flavoured green vegetable.

  * New wealthy, middle-class area of Baghdad.

  * Mourning ceremony.

  ** Part of the mourning ceremony during which the opening sura of the Qur’an (the fatiha) is recited.

  * Long-established, wealthy, middle-class area of Baghdad.

  * The author’s nephew.

  ** Stuffed meatballs.

  * Aniseed-flavoured drink.

  * BBC correspondent in Iraq.

  * Typical Iraqi dish, made of pieces of bread with various sauces.

  ** Leader, teacher.

  * General Norman Schwarzkopf was commander-in-chief, US Central Command, during the 1991 Gulf War.

  * Baggy trousers.

  * Clay oven.

  Embargo

  3 November 1994 – Baghdad

  The first thing I noticed coming into Baghdad at four in the morning, after being away for ten months, was how wide, clean and well-looked-after the main streets were. I’d forgotten that. Naturally, there wasn’t a soul on them. At the border they took a blood sample for an AIDS test, luckily with a disposable needle. The guards at the border looked well fed, but they still wanted something to eat. Heard a few good stories – the best about a woman who took a whole cooking pot full of drugged or poisoned dolma* as a present to the guards of the Abu Hanifa mosque. While the guards slept, the whole place was robbed – carpets, chandeliers, everything. It took one of the guards two days to wake up – imagine the quantity that was administered.

  Salvi wasn’t around when I arrived at the house. He came later and leapt all over me, crying and whining. He had two friends with him – the old faithful black lady and a young, odd-looking Alsatian with a very short tail sort of tucked into his hind legs. Salvi never did have good taste in dogs.

  Hashim says he’ll give my car to a friend who will renew the licence – that’s what he did for his own car. He gave him 1,000 dinars and a bucket of yoghurt. A strange combination. My telephone is naturally out of order and there are moths flying all over the storeroom, even though it reeks so badly of moth balls that I could scarcely breathe.

  4 November

  A lot of talk about food and prices. An egg costs 60 dinars – even during the war a dozen eggs only cost 4 dinars! My new car battery is going to cost 16,000 dinars. Cars crawl round the streets of Baghdad, their tyres as smooth as babies’ bottoms – not a ridge left on them. People are living by stealing and cheating. Leila and Hatem had all four tyres stolen. Their car was propped up on bricks and parked at their front door – the thieves also took their washing off the line in the garden. Jassim’s ex-nanny, who now works at the ‘palace’, says they keep the staff on starvation rations and watch them like hawks in case they steal (or use poison, I added). She said that when someone was caught stealing, they gathered the staff together, brought in a doctor who chopped off this guy’s hand, and immediately dunked it into boiling oil to cauterize it.

  6 November

  This year’s war is against worms and caterpillars: black striped, grey-green, horrid things – millions of them everywhere. Nature is odd; how come worms are thriving while people starve? I’m killing them by the dozens. Horrid green mush oozes out. They’re riddling the garden with holes. I have been homebound because the car is battery-less though a battery has been bought. An Iranian battery costs 24,000 dinars (which is what I will have), a Turkish one 18,000, while an Iraqi one costs 12,000 – I can’t remember what a Korean one costs. It’s pot luck how long any one of them lasts. I can use my car only in this neighbourhood, otherwise I can be fined 2,000 dinars because I don’t have a numbered sticker on my car. A new law came into existence in my absence that stated that Japanese cars had to have a number etched on them, like cattle. I’m surprised that they haven’t started doing that to Iraqis – a stamp on our foreheads would be most fetching. Better not to even think of such an idea or someone with a sixth sense will pick it up and before we know it, it will be law, then God help us.

  Said rented out a room in their khan for two trays of eggs a month – a contract was signed, stamped and legalized! Quite clever of him. The tenant is now losing money as the price of eggs rises ever upwards. Mu’taza’s mum said she asked the people renting her house for one chicken a year. They refused – imagine not even being able to afford one chicken. How can one not be resentful about the
situation? Today at Ma and Needles, we were suddenly eight people at lunchtime and there wasn’t enough reserve to feed them – so we just sat. No wonder people are not going out – they can’t afford to repay hospitality. Ma said the freezer only had dates and flour. All the talk was of a TV movie that was shown a couple of weeks ago about a bunch of special recruits?/soldiers? leaping on a small wolf or dog, tearing him to bits and eating the liver. No one seems quite certain of the purpose or message of this film – to scare people? It’s not a new film.

  7 November

  Tariq Aziz is called ‘Tariq ‘Aza’ by the Christians in Baghdad – aziz means dear but ‘aza means mourning. Today there was another bomb scare in a Christian children’s school in Karrada. I wonder if it’s the fundamentalists getting at the remaining Christians. It always seems to be in that same area.

  8 November

  Paolo says three Scuds hit Abu Ghuraib today and broke all the windows in their Haifa Street Institute – there has been no official acknowledgment of the attack.

  We went to get vegetables from Jamila – sacks in hand. It’s cheaper this way and we share them between three households. Assia was sneezing and blowing her nose in a strange flowered rag. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘write that down. I don’t have the money to buy Kleenex and am using Zaynab’s doll’s dress as a hankie. This is the embargo.’ Mind you, she spends at least 200 dinars a day on cigarettes – her priority in life. Jamila was a sea of mud and slush. Assia had a hole in the top of her clogs, and as she waded through it, a jet of liquid mud shot out of the top of her clogs.

  Salvi brought his son to me today: black with a white dot on the bum. They all take after their mum. He was trying very hard to ingratiate himself with me, grinning wildly and wagging his short tail. He dumped a dead chicken by the car. I’m not certain whether Salvi kills them, or finds them dead and brings them back as an easy trophy. I have never seen him in action.

  9 November

  Went and ate fish in Abu Nawas Street with the Italians at night, streets full of little kids aged from five to twelve, selling Chiclets and shining shoes – sad, haggard, forlorn and listless faces.

  If one deposits money in the banks these days, they weigh it in bundles. People go in and out all day with gunny sacks in their hands – if the bank tellers had to physically count these millions, they’d only be able to manage four customers a day. It is really funny-looking, photocopy money.

  Latest Saddam joke going round the souq: in a meeting he asks his ministers what the time is; someone answers, ‘Whatever time you say, sir.’

  11 November

  People are being warned by their doctor friends against having an operation in Baghdad. The anaesthetic is bad. It makes the patient hysterical on waking up. The embargo has been on against Cuba for thirty-five years. God forbid that we have to wait that long – I would love to go there and compare notes.

  12 November

  Muayad is cross with me for saying he has a big stomach in my diary. ‘I can’t help it if you have a big stomach,’ I said. While waiting for Paolo to finish his papers at the museum, an employee there starts telling me about a retarded nephew of his who disappeared for a week. Yesterday the army called them up and told them that they had him and that he was listed as a deserter. They threatened to chop off an ear if they didn’t come and show proof that he was exempted from being in the army. Anyone who catches a deserter gets 10,000 dinars, so all types are getting caught up in the mess.

  Met some new relatives today. We live two streets apart but have never heard of them. We might be coming into wads of money. This dynamic, slim and elegant lady with beautiful fingers has come across a huge lot of property that we have inherited from a great-grandmother. It’s an hour away from Baghdad, in a place called Sultan Abd al-Hamid, and is supposedly the most fertile land in the whole of Iraq. This cousin, accompanied by two carloads of government officials that she had brought along, marched into these usurped orchards and laid claim to them. I told her that she had better go in disguise when they auction them. ‘Not on your life,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared.’ I can well believe that. Needles was busy filling her in on the historical background of the family and who’s who in it. Ma will go with this cousin to follow up on this new source of wealth.

  Needles spent a day making a portable cupboard out of old curtains. She had an old plastic one that was beginning to fall apart, so she took the frame apart and hung it with recycled old curtains. Everyone is recycling everything.

  Told Salvi that he had received a fan letter from Canada. Sol told me about it over the phone. I haven’t seen it yet. Anyway, I think he purred and scratched at a few flea bites. The streets around us are full of baby Salvis – he has been active. He’s most keen on blackie with white dot on bum, they play like father and son.

  13 November

  Hatra.* The entire landscape has changed – walls and columns stamped with his initials, everywhere concrete. They could have left Hatra alone, it was so wonderful. They ruined Babylon but in reality there was nothing left to ruin. Dinner at the Hatra Hotel; nouvelle cuisine – five bits of very charcoaled meat, three slices of tomato and three small triangles of bread for 4,000 dinars. My Toyota Corona cost that much in 1981. Moon so bright we couldn’t see the stars. Iraqi dogs have proprietary rights to the archaeological sites – each group with its own area – and terrible wars go on between them. They chased me away.

  14 November

  Hatra. This morning at dawn I walked through the temple area, the stone pink and luminous in the early light. Dogs lounging on the steps saw me, a lone tourist, and started up the most terrific racket, echoes everywhere. Went on to Mosul, Nimrud and Nineveh, where we were taken to see the new winged bulls discovered on Nabi Younis – a most distressing sight. These wonderful and majestic stone carvings, broken and scattered in pieces all over the place – people have been stealing bits, kids are breaking off fragments. The place is full of robber holes. Nimrud is a little better, although the carved exposed steles are also eroding and breaking up. We visited the royal tombs of the wives of the Assyrian kings which had contained wonderful gold objects and jewellery. I had my little Beirut hand torch with me so I was able to climb down and look at them – a really exciting and weird sensation. So clean and neat, as if they were built and tended with lots of love and care. The guard said that he had found the first tomb (I’m not sure that I believe him, although he was there) and that it was spotless, no dirt anywhere, just kilos of gold! I asked him whether he ever dreams of the ancient inhabitants or tries to communicate with them, and he said no, they are all gone – not much imagination there. The tombs are on such a human scale – unlike the more grandiose Egyptian ones – that one can easily relate to them.

  15 November

  Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukaemia. They will never lift the embargo off us. Saddam appeared on TV this evening, stating that Albright’s* speech was a pack of lies. Nothing is in my name, he said, it’s all for the state. True enough, he doesn’t need to put anything in his name. The whole country is his.

  Thamina, as usual, wonderfully funny with her throw-away remarks, talking about immigration – everyone is leaving, she said, and we were never a country of immigrants. Now you can’t even find a first-rate prostitute in town, they too have gone. I asked her how she knew that. She said, ‘Look at the terrible singers we now get on TV!’ Twenty-one members of her family have left, only eight remain in Baghdad. Her daughter said that a lot of kids have stopped going to school, the parents can’t afford to buy exercise books and pencils. A friend of hers who lives in Mansur told her that her thirteen-year-old daughter had locked herself in her room crying because she wanted to walk down the main shopping street and her mother said no. ‘I can’t afford to let her,’ she said. ‘Everything costs in
the thousands. I can barely afford to give them a sandwich to take to school.’ This is a middle-class family living in a good neighbourhood, and reasonably well off.

  There is a popular song on TV which is constantly being requested. It shows a boy lying down dying on his bed: he has just cut out his kidneys and is handing them out for love – it sounds grotesque. I hate TV and never watch it, but I must look out for this true-love scene. We are weird even when showing our ardour.

  17 November

  Abu Ali passed by today. He has two sons in the army now. One is in a military prison because he was so hungry he went home to eat, but was caught as a deserter and locked up for three months. The army doesn’t feed or clothe its soldiers any more. The other son, Ahmed, is out in the middle of nowhere guarding an arms depot. Poor Abu Ali, he looks worn out. He has tried to get his sons out of the army but has been unable to do so; it’s a presidential decree that all young men should be in the army. It has been raining for the past two days, just pouring. Naturally, the telephone isn’t working. I keep rushing out to the garden to check on my seedlings, to see if they’ve been drowned. Some are beaten to a pulp, others have emerged but are in heavy disarray.