Atta also heard the rumour that Saddam’s sons-in-law had left their kids behind in Amman. They could have been considered sons of traitors.
We called Ma. She said that they had a very tiring day yesterday. Must have been tense with all these goings-on. They were told nothing but the official version, not that we know that much more on the outside. I wonder where Hussein Kamel’s father’s house is in Baghdad.
1 March
Well it’s done. Forty-five people killed after a five-hour siege; grandchildren too, if the reports are correct. The house flattened. What happens to the daughters now? They can’t appreciate having their husbands killed, divorcing them was another matter. I wonder what really happened.
2 March
Drama last night at 11.30. I went into my bedroom, switched on the light and saw a giant tarantula on the wall, black and furry. I screamed and Sol came running from her bed. We fetched brooms and hovered around. It was pouring with rain outside and the spider might have come in for shelter. Sol asked why the cats didn’t eat it. I said, ‘They have better taste.’ There are more than seven resident cats on our balconies. I feed them. My favourite is happily asleep in his cardboard box. He sleeps while I paint, and we chat on occasion. The birds get fed separately on Sol’s balcony, so that the cats won’t eat them. Sol says it’s like living in a menagerie.
Anyway, the tarantula was not welcome. Sol was braver than me. I asked her whether she had her glasses on because I didn’t want it to fall on me. Suddenly I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I ran and opened our front door and saw a youth descending. I asked him whether he felt brave. ‘Yes,’ he said, so I asked him to help us. We handed him a couple of brooms and he carried out his task efficiently. He took the tarantula away between two planks of wood. We thanked him profusely. We don’t know who he was. Of course, I couldn’t sleep a wink after that. I watched two films on TV.
This morning two furry, broken legs were all that remained on the floor – a terrible reminder – as if one could forget.
4 March
Sol said I have to end with a proper finale. I can’t end this diary on a spider note.
So what is exile? My father died in exile in Beirut in 1971 and Ma thought to take him back and bury him in Baghdad, which she did. Does it make a difference? I myself want to be buried wherever I die. I dislike the West temporarily for making us suffer more than we already have, and so will keep myself and my travels limited to the East. Not that the West is dying for my company. It’s a kind of self-imposed or -inflicted embargo, a little gesture. Sol brought Mahasti to dinner last night. She said she found exile hard to take. There is a purpose and a pride that you lose when you don’t have a country. That purpose means you are acknowledged, recognized. In the outside world you’re nothing, you have to constantly introduce and reintroduce yourself. You start from scratch every time: ‘Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?’
‘Look at me,’ she continued. ‘I love my job and I’d never have been able to do such work at home, but we are rootless, floating and all alone.’ She took one look at my work and said that my artwork is ‘world art’.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘No barriers,’ she said. ‘You talk right across.’ She’s quite right. I feel no barriers. I can work anywhere, live anywhere and be influenced by anywhere. When I returned from Pakistan, I couldn’t stop myself from putting sequins and glittery studs on everything, but after two months, here I am, gradually becoming more Lebanonized, if there is such a word.
Mahasti says the future lies with the New-Age children – the environmentally conscious generation. ‘Do you think they will not be corrupted too?’ I asked. ‘People get corrupted once in power.’
‘Well, at least a few good things will filter through them, it’s as much as one can hope for,’ she replied.
Communication is so easy now. Look at the Internet. A couple have even been married over the Internet. Even the bats in Mamduh’s orchard worked it out to their advantage, science and nature. It’s bloody politicians who need to have borders to protect their territories. They need to be reborn. When will we be civilized enough to be able to trust each other? Look at our immediate family: Sol is off to New York in a few days, Kiko is in Urbana, Ma and Needles are in Baghdad and Dood is in Abu Dhabi. Most Iraqi families are like that now. They have joined the Lebanese and Palestinians who are already well-dispersed across continents. In fact, probably half the world’s population is making do or trying to make a living somewhere other than in their native home towns.
Tawadud is dead, Dhafir is dead, and so is Naila’s dad. The toll continues.
Nidhal thinks that although one romanticizes one’s country when in exile, one can look at it more objectively. I asked her whether she was happy now that she’s back in Lebanon. ‘Well, yes and no,’ she said. ‘It may have been easier to be born a Swede, or belong to any democratic country where humans are treated as humans. But as I wasn’t, I try to do the best I can within my own. I have made my theatre an open place for dialogue between the public and the actors – between the arts and the real world – because I think that the theatre is the only place where one can perform the thin dividing line between fiction and reality, present and future.’ The other night we attended a performance of Camus’ Caligula at her theatre. It was performed, with full visual horror, violence and sexual overtones, by a young troupe of Syrian actors. The troupe had already performed this play in Damascus. They had been allowed to do so by the Syrian censors, even though it must have been obvious to even the densest of them that this play resonated with comparisons to the political situation they, and we, all live in. So maybe Nidhal does have a point.
In Lebanon, even after seventeen years of civil war, viciously fought by all factions for no rational or fathomable reason, there still is some semblance of free speech left. The right to grumble and complain, a national characteristic, has not been banned. That is why Lebanon has always been the perfect place for political exiles from all over the Arab world to retire to – this was true for our grandfathers’ and fathers’ generations, as well as our own. One could not wish for a better place of refuge.
______________________________
* Saddam Hussein’s two daughters, together with their husbands and children, fled to Jordan in August 1995.
* Salvi was left in Baghdad to look after the orchard in the author’s absence.
* In February 1996 Hussein Kamel al-Majid and his brother, Saddam Kamel al-Majid (both sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein), returned with their families to Iraq after a brief exile in Jordan. They were both divorced by their wives and were killed soon afterwards.
Identity
9 June 1996 – Beirut
Ma told us a story of her great-grandmother today. She was from the Iraqi tribe of Delaym, a tiny and ugly woman given as a bride to Rifat Beig, who was serving in the Ottoman army in Iraq. He was tall and good-looking, but never took another wife. She used to make him dolmas (usually made by stuffing vegetables), but she made them from parsley leaves as a mezze for his araq, which he loved to drink. She ground her own herbs for medicines and poultices, and my mother remembers that Bibi Salha would make these into little square shapes and pop them into mouths. She herself had two daughters.
27 July
I had a blackout, fainted flat on my face, broke five teeth, fractured and dislocated the top part of my jaw and broke the right condyle. Twenty -two stitches under my chin; that was twenty days ago. I now know what it’s like to have a mouth full of broken teeth, just like in the movies.
23 August
Election fever has hit Lebanon, and they are something else here. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has plastered his photos everywhere. On trees, all the way up the lampposts, walls, garbage bins – every available space is covered. Hariri’s name is even stencilled on the walls. But at least they have elections.
No date
Uday is shot and badly injured in Baghdad.
Due to my broken
jaw I have to wear a horrid painful brace like a horse’s bridle. I do not feel like the most sociable human being right now.
10 March 1997 – London
Baghdad Diaries still not published. I had dinner with Toby, who says he thinks it’s political; there are lots of nice remarks about it, but they all say there is no market for it.
14 March – New York
I arrive at JFK. When my turn comes in the queue, I hand in my passport. The lady behind the counter says, ‘Ma’am, did they tell you what they do to you when you arrive at this airport’?
‘No,’ I say, horror written all over my face.
She softens her tone and says, ‘Well, it’s not that bad’. I am given a red file and sent to an end room. About ten people are there already – Poles, a few Spaniards and an irate Irish boy who wants to break everything. So I try to calm him down. He yells, ‘This is racism!’
I tell him, ‘No it’s democracy; and you Irish are always up to no good, just like us Iraqis.’
‘But I have only come for St. Patrick’s Day, and why did the lady at the counter not know what that was?’
I say, ‘New York is a big place and she might not be a Catholic’ I spent five years in an Irish convent, so I know.
My turn comes; I stand in front of a white sheet, where a Polaroid is taken. Two pictures and two sets of fingerprints; my fingerprints are full of whorls and lines, easy to identify. ‘That’s good,’ the officer there says. The people who worst off are those who work in agriculture – they have nearly no markings from the chemicals they use. I ask him why this did not happen four years ago when I last came through New York. He says, ‘you were shooting at us.’
‘What do you mean,’ I say, ‘you were shooting at us!’ He looks confused.
Then comes the customs officer: ‘When were you last in Iraq?’
‘Two years ago,’ I say.
‘Have you been to Turkey?’
‘Why Turkey?’ I ask.
‘I am asking the questions, not you,’ he says aggressively. ‘You can ask me when I am finished.’
I ask again, and he says, ‘Are you a Kurd?’
I say, ‘I have some Kurdish blood; most Iraqis do, we are a very mixed race.’
‘Are you Kurdish,’ he asks again.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Just some blood.’
‘Well you’re not,’ he decides. It seems that the Kurds are all escaping through the north and into Turkey, so I could have been a runaway Kurd.
15 March
Cannot change a hundred-dollar bill; the subway lady won’t take more than a twenty-dollar bill – Q says no one will change a hundred-dollar bill except the university co-op. My frozen bank account in England doesn’t allow me to take out my money, let alone have a plastic card. The UK was the only country after the Gulf War to freeze the assets of every Iraqi. They said it was because of the UN sanctions, but that’s not true – it’s the Brits. I am just an artist with a few thousand dollars in the bank; it’s pathetic. I wouldn’t even know how to buy a screw for a tank, let alone a weapon of mass destruction.
18 March
This morning I had an appointment with Christine Nelson, the curator of manuscripts at the Morgan Library. They are going to have an exhibition of diaries and mine might be included. At the Morgan Library café, where we met, each table had a vase with yellow freesias in them, and guess what was in my hair– a yellow freesia! It was the first thing she noticed. I owned up to pinching them on occasion for my hair but certainly not today – just a coincidence ... It turns out to be a good omen because I am going to be in the exhibition ‘Private Histories: Four Centuries of Journal Keeping’, which will open on 24 April 1997. I am going to be among the greats like Thoreau, Pepys, and Brontë. What a thrill!
20 March
The paper wastage in the USA is something horrendous. Each morning a ton of junk mail arrives at the door. As for the ‘Zion Times’, as Sol calls The New York Times, it’s half a tree’s worth of paper that has to be thrown out everyday. I am trying to find a dentist – it’s a thousand dollars a tooth. Everyone is insured, so it does not bother them. But what about the uninsured? Another characteristic of the USA: everyone seems to sue everyone else all the time. It’s like a national pastime.
Vegetables and fruit have no taste or smell in case someone with an allergy sues. It is all appearances.
One hears more Spanish than English everywhere; I sometimes wonder where I am. South America must be empty.
25 March
Q says the most expert doctor to see my broken jaw is named David Israel – that’s a little too much, I will have to keep my broken jaw. Q says most good doctors are Jewish. I say, just as long as he is not a rabid Zionist.
Had this excellent idea today after endless talk of Palestine and Israel. All Palestinians living in Israel should wear a yellow star and stick one on each shop and house they own. They cannot move a centimetre in their own towns and villages without their passes; would the Israelis then realize what they are doing?
2 April – Washington
Ma, Sol and I go to get a new passport for Kiko at the Iraqi Embassy. We come out with new passports for all three of us. Most extraordinary, no hassle – they needed the money. The embassy was like a morgue.
8 April
Q has this brown spotted jacket that Sol hates. Q says, ‘but it’s Missoni, and it’s my favourite.’
Sol says, ‘It’s twenty years old!’
‘Well,’ I add, ‘it’s a little small.’
Sol says it looks like vomit; Q tells her she must never have seen vomit to say that. I say, perhaps dried vomit; and so it goes. Ma later says perhaps Q could give her the jacket for her to turn it into a cushion.
Ma has just heard that Madeleine Albright said that if the USA doesn’t sign the treaty against chemical weapons, it will be listed in the same bracket as Iraq and Libya.
26 April
I am writing this aboard the plane on my way to Chicago. When they saw my passport at the airport in New York, a horror-stricken lady escorted me to the checking area, where everything had to be X-rayed. My bags had to be emptied, searched and X-rayed again. Then I was told to pack them up. Everyone was very polite and nice about it. Government policy, they said. Only then was I allowed to board the plane.
In contrast, there I am with the greats at the Morgan Library, my manuscript in a glass showcase with Walt Whitman’s under the heading ‘War’.
In the exhibition a blown-up statement of mine says ‘So many more people have to die and for what? Who the hell wanted Kuwait anyway?’ (This statement was edited out of my published diary.) At the entrance to the exhibition a large plaque says, ‘FROM ISAAC NEWTON TO NUHA AL-RADI: FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF DIARY KEEPING.’ I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that. Undoubtedly, this is the highest peak I will reach in my life; it could be downhill all the way after this. So there I am, keeping the highest company and the next minute I am a would-be criminal. Can I understand the USA? Why did they give me a visa?
25 July –New York
Went round the Statue of Liberty in a boat – she is a very large lady, not a fashionable anorexic New Yorker.
August –Beirut
Hope seems to have vanished for the Iraqi people. Reality becomes worse by the day. We are being depleted like the depleted uranium used on us. Perhaps that is their ultimate aim. Oil does not contaminate. After all, that’s what this whole issue is about, oil and more oil; but it’s the Iraqi people who have borne the brunt of it – the war, the embargo, the thousands who die every month from the lack of nutrition, medicine and the pollution of war.
3 January 1998 – Abu Dhabi
I’ve been a month with Dood and family working for my exhibition at the cultural centre. Today I went to the framer’s in the pouring rain. He is a Pakistani. He told me that in his old house where he had lived earlier in the seventies, it used to rain and the water would pour in from the roof and from the road into the house; when he called the landlord t
o complain, he answered that he would raise the rent to 600 dirhams instead of 400, because now they had water in the house!
27 January
Since the Italians told the cultural centre they were bringing an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s work, they have totally forgotten about me. I thought I was going to be in the same monthly programme as Leonardo, but no, not a mention. Their heads are completely turned and all they are getting are plaster casts and maquettes of the wooden machines he invented, plus some photos. Needless to say, Mona Lisa is on the cover of the pamphlet. They have changed my exhibition date as they were on the same day, and they thought no one would attend my exhibition. Someone unknowingly sent an air ticket for Leonardo; perhaps he could come out of his grave and attend the opening!
I had two deliveries of camel bones. I had asked for some from friends who go out into the desert, to use for my recycled sculpture – but they are not as good as the beautiful sun bleached shark fin bones that I found by the sea. The seashore is full of wood, debris washed up; poor trees.
28 January
Fax from Toby – Saqi is going to publish my diary sometime in autumn – whoopee!
9 February
Tons of people came to my exhibition, and Leonardo’s is empty. They are bewildered with what they got – no Mona Lisa. (I remember when I first saw her in 1960, I thought, ‘what a small thing to be so notoriously famous.’ But then the trick is the look in her eyes.)
Baghdad Diaries Page 15
