Baghdad Diaries

by al-Radi, Nuha;

  2 March

  Am writing this in Abu Dhabi Airport. There is a story about how the legal system works in this country. A foreign woman was hit by a car; during the trial in court the judge said, ‘You are over fifty, of no use any more ... You are not a Muslim ... Your life is over, so you get no compensation.’ She didn’t sue because she knew it would be no use. Legal rights for women and/or foreigners are practically non-existent here. Only the natives have rights.

  8 June – Amman

  As I have a residence permit in Jordan, this is where I get my visas. It is a lot easier with a residence. Got the USA’s the same day, but the Brits have new rules for Iraqis – one to two months wait. They tell me it’s a go, but slow; and the permission has to come from the UK.

  21 July – New York

  Sailed through New York customs this time – perhaps because I had come from England and not from the Muddled East.

  24 August

  The USA has exonerated itself of the bombing in Sudan by saying that Iraq has helped them make the VX in those supposed factories they hit, so I suppose now Iraq is going to be bombed again.

  October

  There was the book launch at Saqi’s in London. Tim Llewellyn introduced me, and I read extracts from the book. Lots of people came, including two British ex-ambassadors; it was great, and later we had a party.

  17 November

  Ma and Needles went back to Baghdad a week ago and I just don’t believe what is happening. It seems we can make bombs in a second, we are so brilliant. How we can get all the raw materials for making all these ‘weapons of mass destruction’ when everyone is watching and the satellites are spying away? It is beyond me. The government has accused some of the inspectors of being spies. It seems they have put listening devices everywhere, and they know where Saddam can be at any given moment.

  Clinton will hit, without a doubt.

  I am working on a series of Iraqi paintings just in case the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris gives us an exhibition next year. It helps to be working for a cause right now – there is little else one can do.

  Just talked to Ma: Salvi is dead. She didn’t want to tell me. There is another dog now.

  It seems all they do in Baghdad is go to funerals and console those who have lost families in their absence.

  The Americans and Brits are determined to hit. They have some new weapons to try out. The Sunday Times says that Israel is working on a new virus that can only get at Arabs. They don’t give the name of the scientist.

  17 December

  The Observer of London has just published a piece they asked me to do in the style of my diary about the bombing in Baghdad. Here it is:

  17 DECEMBER 1998: Well, the scenario repeats itself. It could be 17 January 1991. Has time stood still? Stayed up all night with CNN. I knew it was coming; with only a few days to Ramadan, it just had to be now. Little did I realize when I wrote my diary in Baghdad in ’91that I would be watching the bombing of my city on CNN in Beirut eight years later. ‘Live,’ they keep saying, but it’s not. It’s quite different. There is no danger; you can lower the volume, switch it off. It’s safe, just a realistic made-for-TV movie. It gives no idea of the scale of its actual fright, of the enormity of war.

  What really irritates me is that they keep talking and worrying about their boys, brave soldiers, how to protect them. Never mind that they are bombing people on the ground.

  Clinton looks straight into the cameras, tries to look candid, and lies. Just how are we threatening America exactly, and why is it in danger? Blair has become poker-faced and shifty. We did not get an up-to-date picture of Saddam, so I can’t compare.

  Out of 500 UN supervision visits, five were contested. Is that fair? We have to be bombed for that? I’m not so sure Saddam didn’t want the bombing, either. It breaks the stalemate: the embargo is not likely to be lifted. Clinton, it suits, but I just can’t make out what Blair thinks he is doing. The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing since 7 a.m. At least people care.

  It’s now 2 p.m. Have finally got through to Ma in Bags. She said the house shook a lot and it was very loud. She and Needles just sat in the hall and drank herbal tea. She said they had been out to dinner that night: 500 ladies at the Alwiyah Club. She told Dood on the phone that morning that Iraqi women are tough as old boots ... forgot to ask her if they got home before the air raid.

  CNN says 70 percent of Americans approve of the bombing. Are they sick or something, these Americans? I wish someone would bomb them at home. As that’s not likely we’ll have to settle for a few natural disasters. Let’s hope another hurricane hits them and devastates half their land. I can’t believe how callously they talk. They calmly give times for when they are going to bomb. And even the places they bomb are full of UN cameras monitoring. These supposed weapons of mass destruction. Hidden away. Secret. Underground. Surely they must be rusted by now. We have a very harsh climate.

  Now it’s 11 p.m. and I have dragged my mattress into the sitting room because I had a very uncomfortable night last night on the sofa. Why do they keep giving us desert names: Desert Storm, Desert Fox? We are actually the Fertile Crescent.

  Christiane Amanpour on CNN says: ‘The noise is so loud, can you hear me?’ It’s what never leaves me, the noise, ‘til now.

  Why are we singled out for special punishment? And a worse punishment than the bombs would be to have that lethal man Butler return to Iraq. I really cannot understand how we could still be such a threat to the world. Look at Israel: it bombs the south of Lebanon constantly; it breaks the sound barrier over Beirut nearly daily, it occupies Lebanese land. Tell me, are they not the aggressors?

  We are very alone now, but may we remain fertile like the Crescent that is our identity in so many ways. There is no quick fix to the Iraqi problem. I know we are an easy target. I know we are a thorn in everyone’s flesh. But I feel very, very sad, because we are also a people.

  19 December

  Third night in front of the TV on my mattress – it’s Ramadan. Will they continue bombing? Managed to get through to Ma again. She says they call the trio of Butler, Blair and Clinton ‘the BBC’.

  20 December

  The USA has just said bombing is off, four days have achieved their objective.

  325 Tomahawks

  90 Cruise Missiles

  About a hundred important sites bombed.

  In Baghdad today there was a funeral for 68 people.

  The UNSCOM mission is over. Butler took everyone out the night before the bombing. And Baghdad says ‘No more spies, they have bombed everything anyway.’

  UNSCOM have spent all these years installing expensive cameras and listening devices at all the sites they thought could be used for war production, naturally paid for by Iraqi money. Then they bombed all the places they had put them in! What was the point of the whole exercise?

  CNN says they lobbed the last few cruise missiles into Baghdad. I ask you. They think they are playing baseball. Nazar Hamdoun says that Butler fixed the whole thing with the American administration so that they could bomb Iraq. It seems Scott Ritter said that too last week. Butler was looking even more shifty than usual. He is a real snake in the grass, and no offence to snakes. Clinton calls Saddam ‘an enemy of peace’ – what does that make the USA and UK after this – just friendly fire and collateral damage!? Those are favourite descriptions used by the USA when a mistake occurs and innocent people die.

  There is so much news going on, one doesn’t know what to follow between the Clinton impeachment, the Iraq war and the parliament in Lebanon where everyone is accusing the other of thievery.

  23 December

  The USA bought 3.6 million barrels of oil from Iraq during this crisis. Then they bombed the Basra refinery. Now they say they will allow Iraq to produce more oil, because the oil price is down and there is not enough money to pay for the UN oil-for-food programme, but we cannot produce more because our refineries need extensive repair. We cannot get permission to make repairs b
ecause the parts needed could be used for weapons of mass destruction. How magnanimous of the USA to permit this impossibility.

  24 December

  The USA reserves the right to bomb Iraq again; Sandy Berger says they will bomb the minute Saddam starts his weapons industry. What are they talking about? Was there any response from the Iraqi side? Was there even a whiff of chemical or poison gas in the air after all their bombings on supposed dangerous sites?

  26 December

  The Iraqi’s called Operation Desert Fox ‘Operation Monica’.

  31 December

  I am spending New Year’s with Minni, Yahya and family in the Deir al-Kamar Monastery of the Moon. The moon is really big here and looms large overhead.

  2 January 1999

  We have told the UN that we are afraid we cannot vouchsafe the security of American or British nationals. They will have to send other nationalities for their inspectors.

  6 January

  I have a horrible feeling we are going to be hit again. Clinton is cornered and he has promised a sudden attack on us because we are flying in our own skies. What the strong and the brave do: press buttons from far away.

  8 January

  Butler is thinking of resigning. Would that that could be true – one horror less.

  The Israelis continue to bomb South Lebanon and break the sound barrier over our heads in Beirut. I don’t think the window panes can take much more.

  Scott Ritter says the whole of UNSCOM was organised to spy on the Iraqi government and had nothing to do with the development of the arms industry. The Arabs are in a complete tangle now – they didn’t need anything else to tangle them, because for once they teamed up together against Iraq and got fooled. A friend says the Arab leaders live on borrowed security. They pay the USA to stay in power and able to remain on their various thrones. They probably don’t even receive all the armaments they have to buy, paying an exorbitant price.

  11 January

  Phoned Ma last night. She said, ‘Pray for us.’ Iraq did not accept the 1991 Kuwait boundaries, so we are back to Square One. Are we just going to be bombed out of existence?

  Meanwhile, Israel is happily bombing away in South Lebanon.

  Samir was just saying, why can’t we do something that relates to us? Why does everything have to come from the West?

  ‘How far back do you want to go,’ I asked. ‘The Middle East is at the crossroads between East and West, with five hundred years of Ottoman rule followed by various colonial powers dividing and cutting us into bits in the twentieth century. Is it any wonder that we have managed to lose our identity? ‘

  14 January

  Outlook Programme on the BBC says 300 tons of depleted uranium in the southern battle area in Iraq are causing horrendous defects, babies with no heads, no eyes – there are no computers to make an exact count. It has seeped through the earth into the water system, which means agriculture is also affected. What is on the ground can still be cleaned, but it’s a very expensive exercise. What is in the air remains in the air blowing around. So it’s a catastrophe for centuries to come. Hiroshima is still paying for its bombardment and we are far worse off. Both are victims of American technology. All the US soldiers who took part in the Gulf War, and who had shrapnel wounds, still show depleted uranium in their sperm. In the 250 ‘Gulf families’, 60 percent of children have been born with congenital defects. So what of Iraq?

  21 January

  Clinton is backing seven groups of Iraqi opposition living in the West. What kind of standard is that? Talk about not putting all your eggs in one basket.

  There was a wonderful translation on one of the Lebanese TV stations the other day from a French programme: ‘Cézanne’ was literally translated into Arabic as ‘sixteen donkeys’ (seize ânes].

  26 January

  The USA says it’s Saddam’s fault that the missile went wrong and hit a lot of poor people ... they are now hitting targets in the north near Mosul.

  The latest with the USA is that it is threatening Europe with sanctions, because of the banana boycott. Would that it would happen, so that they could feel what sanctions do.

  King Hussein has been rushed back to the USA, low blood count. Not good news. Abdullah, King in a day.

  5 February

  Gosh, amazing, all of a sudden no more King Hussein.

  10 February

  Kiko has had a really bad accident. A friend of his backed into him in his lorry, smashed his leg: lots of blood, kneecap popped out. He had a big operation, but he is able to walk. Can talk to him on Sunday; Sol has flown over to see him.

  In Amman, two palaces are open to the public to receive condolences. He was a mighty king in the old sense of the word.

  13 February

  Went to Tyre yesterday, a tragedy of Israeli bombing. All those beautiful houses on the seafront were bombed. We couldn’t see them, but we could hear the bombing going on inland. The local fishermen are only allowed to fish close to the shore; the minute they venture out a little, they get caught by the Israeli patrol – it seems they want all the fish too.

  16 February

  Forty-two air raids on Iraq yesterday. That’s war.

  What hypocrisy! How could the Kurds be terrorists on the Turkish side of the border and have a safety zone to protect them on the Iraqi side? Are they not the same race? The USA invites the two Iraqi Kurdish factions, the Talibani and Barzani clans, for peace negotiations. Then the CIA, with the help of Mossad, trap Ocalan, the leader of the Turkish Kurds, and send him back to Turkey as a bribe so as to use Ingerlik, the Turkish airbase, to bomb Iraq – their favourite occupation. Brute force is the only method the USA knows; after all, it conquered America by killing nine tenths of its native population. Now it seems that fate awaits the rest of the world.

  1 March

  Six thousand children die every month in Iraq: a UNICEF statistic, attributable to the UN embargo. The embargo has killed more people than any mass destruction weapon. This is all done under the eyes and the conscious knowledge of the world. Where are the human rights the UN stands for?

  About 2000 wonderful students marched into Arnoun, a border town in Lebanon occupied by the Israelis, and cut through the barbed wire and freed the town. I phoned up Minni to say what wonderful news and she says Kamal (her son) was one of the liberators. He had been late coming home, and she was ready to give him a piece of her mind when he told her. She sat him down, brought out her video camera, said, ‘now speak’ and recorded him, LIVE.

  In Iraq the air raids are non-stop, and we have turned down the inspectors.

  6 March

  I love the banana war. It’s getting serious, and now the Italians are also outraged at the American pilot who severed the téléferique wire, killing all those people. All the earlier complaints that the planes were always flying too low went unheeded. The pilot got away with nothing; the Americans had tried him in the USA and said the machine was faulty.

  Today Rifat told us a story of his prison time in Baghdad. He asked the chap beside him what he was in for. He answered, ‘I dreamed one night that there had been a coup, and Ahmed Hassan Bakr was killed. So the next day he related his dream at the office, a security chap reported it and there he was in jail!

  10 March

  Went with Nabil, my lawyer, to see what had happened to my residence permit. He said they were going slow because a lot of bribery was going on. Now no bribery is allowed, we have this new clean government, so they only have their salaries to live on – hence the protest. There were a couple of large chaps sitting behind desks throwing paper clips at each other. I still don’t know anything about my permit.

  31 March

  Yet another horrible interview for my residence permit and I might soon have to have another. It’s the dreaded Iraqi passport.

  3 April

  We are out of the limelight now due to the Kosovo crisis. What is it in the Balkans that makes for constant turmoil? It will not finish with the bombing because they have not sol
ved the Bosnian refugee question yet. Thousands have nowhere to go. Is this World War III? I hate this no-hope situation and I feel for everyone all around.

  23 April

  It’s amazing, the similarity in people’s behaviour. The Serbians are saying the same thing as us: why are you hurting the people? And the USA says, we have nothing against Iraqi or Serb people – its Saddam and Milosevic. But it’s the ordinary people who suffer and have nowhere to go. It’s the infrastructure – the essence of a country – that gets it, every time.

  26 April

  They have started worrying about who will pay for the Serbian bombing. For continuity we are getting bombed too – lest anyone forget Iraq.

  Ma says when a baby girl was born in the old days they would collect a whole pile of ant eggs and rub it on her body so she would be hairless. I said, ‘I wish you had done it to me.’ My cyber-café has been hit by a virus. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ they say.