Baghdad Diaries

by al-Radi, Nuha;

  What gives the USA and the UK the right to bomb Iraq every day, and what gives Israel the right to bomb Lebanon every day?

  22 March

  My poor cats – they are certainly the worse for wear. It’s cat time again. My only female has vanished and the motley crew of chaps are doing it to each other. Battle signs show on them: an eye missing here, a leg there.

  30 March

  Jasmina wrote to say they were celebrating the NATO defeat as a victory. I told her nothing is new. We celebrate all our defeats. It’s a dictatorship trait.

  22 April

  How could we Arabs be such a useless bunch of people? The Arabs are silent. It is only Hizbullah that does anything. Israel is going to withdraw in a couple of months from the south of Lebanon. But will anything survive ‘til then, with all the nonstop bombing that’s going on?

  Uday has been voted ‘Journalist of the Century’ in Baghdad by 97% according to Radio Monte Carlo.

  Phoned Ma this morning. They are battling with termites in the house again.

  4 May

  A new supermarket has opened near us. We only have three others within a couple of hundred metres of each other. Huge traffic jams – it is an event. In the dire financial straits that Lebanon is in, the only thing that seems to work is food and more food. Finally I went in yesterday, thought I would buy some ham. The guy behind the counter yelled at me: ‘It’s pig! Pig!’ I said yes – he was utterly horrified, but finally started slicing some. I didn’t dare tell him I was a pig-eating Muslim. The supermarket is underground.

  25 May

  National Liberation Day.

  The occupied south has been liberated and Michael has come to report on it, so I am joining her to go down south in her taxi. We started in Naqqura; the area looks like a miniature White Cliffs of Dover. It is the UN outpost in Lebanon. Michael went in to see Timur Koksal, or Timur the Turk, as the chief is called.

  I sat in the poet’s café. Its owner came 14 years ago; their houses had been burnt by the Israelis. They took up this post and contracted to feed the UN. Journalists are pouring in. We are going to go along the whole Lebanese-Israeli border, along the newly liberated towns. We saw burnt-out tanks.

  Palestine is so visible across the barbed wire. People were standing in rows and rows just looking across, through the barbed wire demarcation line. The other side was very subdued, just a few cars every now and then, their villages or kibbutzes all identical, same very neat boxlike houses with red roofs.

  We had lunch at the UN Indian Battalion group. It consisted of two women, the doctor, the nurse and 550 men. They have clinics and treat the geriatrics in the area, as those are who have remained behind all this time. Going back took seven hours of traffic jams, but no one was complaining. No army, no guns: this could never have happened anywhere else in the Arab world. There isn’t that kind of paranoia in Lebanon. After twenty-two years of occupation, the whole country is here and celebrating; it’s wonderful. Hizbullah are the heroes of the day. There were banners everywhere saying, ‘Thank you Hizbullah’, signed by all the liberated towns.

  11 June

  Ma is in between romance novels and the making of three gallons of apricot sherbet.

  12 June

  Hafiz Assad is dead: ‘The Lion Next Door’. (I wrote that to Handy and Jasmina, and they both thought I was living near a zoo.) ‘Lion’ in Arabic is assad. The whole of Beirut was shut yesterday – a ghost town. Every body was watching TV.

  27 June

  It seems Kissinger has to telephone and ask the Pentagon if it is safe for him to leave whenever he wants to travel to Europe now, after the Pinochet issue.

  17 September

  A new law in Baghdad: the euro is going to be the new currency for all foreign transactions. What a wonderful idea. I am all for strengthening Europe. Ma says maybe it’s advice from the French. They have a huge frozen stash of our dollars. I, too, am going to open a euro account.

  22 September

  Thanks to Nidal I am now waiting for the renewal of my residence permit for this year. Am treated royally, but fear still grips with the memory of last year’s agony.

  6 October

  Beirut airport is full of businessmen talking on their cell phones making last-minute deals. How did the world function before cellular phones? ‘BC’ gets a new meaning now’.

  8 October – Amman

  Just came for two days to clock in for my residence permit here. I am on my way to Yemen. When I reach the passport checking area, the passport-control chap says,

  ‘All residence permits issued by the Palace have to have an accompanying letter permitting them to travel.’

  Histrionics are to no avail: security men are cold fish. I naturally miss my plane. At five o’clock just when Sol would be waiting to pick me up at the airport in Sana‘a, I am here at the Amman airport waiting for Freako to arrive. She doesn’t, but it is our fault. Her plane is tomorrow. So there are no-shows both at Sana‘a and at Amman – what a coincidence. Nazha says it’s voodoo. It seems the new law is due to one Filipino Palace worker who skipped the country. That’s why everyone now needs a letter. That’s why they kept asking me, ‘What do you work as in the Palace?’ I said I didn’t, I just got the residence permit through friends and I’ve had it for ten years.

  News from Baghdad – we heard that 80 pimps and prostitutes have been executed. Naila says now all pimps and prostitutes can ask for legitimate political asylum.

  11 October – Sana‘a

  Sol’s flat at AIYS is a charmer. It’s a beautiful old house and her quarters are on the top, the sixth floor. It’s full of different niches and little windows with alabaster slabs, carved stucco with bits of blue and red glass studded in it, which keeps changing depending on the light. The telephone rings endlessly but does not connect. Later the whole exchange system goes to be mended.

  Two fat bulbuls on the balcony. I give them some bread. From the bathroom window I see the house next door with a huge TV dish on the roof leaning precariously, under which a whole bunch of white chickens huddle: telecommunications meets the third world. Sol will be here by four in the afternoon.

  13 October

  I am staying with Lubna, as Sol has gone off again. I woke to an explosion this morning – later we learned it was at the British Embassy. Lubna works for WFP and one of their programmes is for educating girls. Parents get rice and oil at the end of each month if they enrol their daughters in school. It’s a very popular programme.

  It is Friday and all the imams appear to be in front of microphones ranting and raving.

  15 October

  A Saudi hijacks a plane to Iraq – what will happen next? No humanity in Saudi Arabia, he says, and is protesting against repression. What about humanity in Iraq? His reason: it is the only country in the Middle East not under US hegemony.

  I am happy to see CNN showing a bit of the Palestinian side. I wonder, is that shown in Europe and the USA, or is it just for our consumption? Lubna’s house is next door to Yasser Arafat’s – it’s an ugly house, but fancy him having a house here.

  18 October

  We are in Rada, where Sol has been working on and off for the last fifteen years on a 16thcentury mosque built by Sultan Amir in 1505. It’s a majestic, white-plastered mosque that looks like a great big beautiful wedding cake. I have been working already for two days with Ali, the master plasterer. I am sort of getting the hang of it. Here every second kid is called Saddam; this is very disconcerting. It is not so in Iraq.

  Twenty-first-century decoration everywhere in Yemen is plastic bags – black, green, pink – on every tree, barbed wire, barrier or corner. Every day nearly every Yemeni buys a plastic bag’s worth of ghat (a Yemeni version of cocoa leaves), chews it and throws away the bag. Before nylon they might have wrapped it in cloth or banana leaves which would disintegrate, leaving no litter.

  One week later

  Sol and I go to work at seven, come back at noon, go again at two and stay ‘til four or five
in the afternoon. I think I have learned the trade – it has a lot in common with my old ceramic days – but it requires backbreaking positions to work in. The lime kiln was fired yesterday: very exciting, as they chant and work in a chain with great rhythm. It’s a very laborious process, this making of qudad (a waterproofing material made partly from lime and partly from volcanic dust cinders). In the afternoon most workers chew ghat, lounge about and talk. There are lots of weddings, just about every night, with shooting to celebrate. I ask them if they are all related and invited to go to all the weddings. It seems a notice is put up giving time, place, etc, and all are welcome. Unfortunately guns are imperative in Yemen. It’s the first prerequisite for any male Yemeni. The noise is tremendous at almost every hour. There is always some imam or other ranting from a minaret at full volume – another modern curse, the microphone. I awake at all sorts of hours during a night that seems eternal. Now it’s 7 a.m. and all is quiet.

  27 October

  We went on our first trip today, to Hilla, a pre-Islamic Himyarite site. We started out with two Toyotas and eleven people and we pick up various tribals with Kalashnikovs on the way, each to cover his tribal area ‘til we reach our site. It is huge, with lots of black stone and fossil plants and rocks.

  Heard lots of gunshots in the distance. By the time we get back to the cars there are more chaps with Kalashnikovs, and everyone is screaming and yelling. They think we are stealing their gold and treasure. Just as quickly everything settles down, and we are passing fruit all around. Everyone is cheerful. Then they invite us to lunch, but we apologize. Many photos are taken. We all left in a pile of dust.

  We have two more with Kalashnikovs in the car now, and we can hardly breathe. I cannot see how an excavation is going to take place here, but Sol says it’s always like this and in the end it all works out with just a yelling match every now and then. When we left Rada in the morning our original guard was a big chap named Saleh Arafat who used to be in the National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen. At lunch he sat opposite me and I realized he looked amazingly like Michelangelo. Sol says, ‘Well he certainly isn’t’ ... Such a fantastic face, but they all have the most horrid teeth from all that ghat chewing.

  31 October – Sana‘a

  There is an American lady also staying at the Institute who just came from Jerusalem where she lives. She is a born-again Christian and thinks religion is very important – she is voting for Bush ‘because he has religion and is not a liar; the USA needs a good Christian to be President.’

  I said, ‘What about all the other religions in the USA’? She was silent.

  Then she said, ‘If he is a good Christian, he will treat everyone okay.’

  1 November

  The cyber-café here is completely run by Iraqis. First I met Ibtisam, a chemist who used to work at the nuclear center in Iraq. ‘How did they let you out,’ I asked. She answered that for two years she was not allowed out, but then it was alright. She has been in Sana‘a for four years and does computer programming. Then in walks the son of a relative who recognizes me. He is also doing computer programs and has part ownership in the café. Another Iraqi lurks in the back, a poet from Basra. I was given a huge ice cream and not allowed to pay.

  Friday

  Just had lunch at Marco’s. What a beautiful house and a super collection of oil lamps! He is a fixture in Sana‘a. Yemeni lunches have intervals where you change the taste in your mouth with a pastry and honey called bint el-sahn, then go back to meat and other dishes. One also has to leave stuff on the plate so as not to show greed, and to indicate that one is no longer hungry. What would the nuns say to that? I think chewing ghat is the most unattractive feature of Yemen. Marco says it’s unique to Yemen and Ethiopia, so it’s one of the special things that makes this area different.

  9 November

  I am having an exhibition at Dar al-Hajar, the old imam’s palace built on a rock, one hour out of Sana‘a. It will stay there for one week, then transfer to the museum in Sana‘a for another week. I hung my etchings on a line held up with clothes peg – it’s fun even though the clothesline has drooped a bit now.

  11 November

  We walked along the ridge above Dar al-Hajar, where there are many archaeological sites, probably dating to the Himyarite Period. The mountains are so amazing in Yemen. It’s almost as though they have been cut out with scissors, the outlines all sharp and jagged.

  17 Friday

  We meet outside the museum. A convoy will go to Ma’rib to attend a ceremony – the handing over by the German team of the excavated Temple of Barran. I tag along with Sol. We go in a great stream of Toyotas snaking through the landscape, the Minister of Culture in the lead car. More strange mountains, black volcanic tops and yellow and white sand dunes lower down. We reach Ma’rib, dump our stuff at the hotel and head straight for Jidran, the French site, with François, the head of the French Centre in Sana‘a.

  Jidran is an enormous cemetery – round flat stone tombs, each with a long stone tail -thousands of them. But there is trouble again with the qabilis (tribes), who were there in full force, not allowing the archaeologists to work. They say if they are not employed on-site, no one can work. The tribesmen have made themselves a sort of mafraj on the ground in the shade of their Toyotas and just sit there. More and more keep arriving. The oil refineries, which can be seen dotting the horizon, are another sore point, because they don’t employ them either – only foreign experts. François stays the night as a kind of hostage; he signed a paper stating that next time he would hire them.

  To get back into the hotel we had to literally wade through an army and the qabilis trying to see the Prime Minister, who is also here for the ceremony. Earlier we had had lunch at a wondrously decorated, kitschy restaurant, all hand-painted by an Egyptian who is a teacher in Ma’rib – the ceilings, the walls: every bit was covered; the food was the worst ever. At dinner there was music and Yemeni dancing – only men. They dance with a very straight back and a half-beat rhythm.

  Before the opening ceremony the next day we visited the Ma’rib dam, supposedly one of the seven wonders of the world. It is an object lesson to see that the destruction of a dam could cause the destruction of an empire. On seeing the solidity of the remains, of how this dam was built, one is full of admiration for the craftsmanship. Later, I saw the Turkish ambassador to Yemen and told him to go see the Ma’rib Dam. We talked a lot about the fifth dam being built in Turkey on the Euphrates River that will drown so much territory and deprive Iraq of most of the water from the Euphrates. But then Turkey is one of those countries that is allowed to go beyond all international quota systems.

  François came back after signing seven agreements!

  22 November

  Amman airport. I had to spend fourteen hours at the airport because Yemenia decided not to go to Beirut, as there were only two passengers. So I was dumped in Amman. Yemenia would take no responsibility for their action. I don’t dare leave the airport in case I have to get another letter from the Palace, so I transit on chairs and wait for the morning. I stood by the escalator in case I saw someone I knew: so far, only Uns, who is off to Paris. Am watching CNN now, drinking a beer and eating a nasty sandwich, also made by an Iraqi. It’s made with awful bread – not his fault. Everyone just laughs when I tell them that Yemenia cancelled. It must be a joke amongst the airlines.

  It’s 1.30 in the afternoon and I have just met up with Juan and Nabil Tawhala. I usually meet up with Juan because we have our six-monthly visit to Jordan for our residence permits. We always seem to coincide. Anyway, Nabil says he works for the Hunt Oil Company, so he’s been to Ma’rib. He has never managed to see the ruins there because he is afraid of being kidnapped. I say, ‘But you are an Iraqi; no one will kidnap you.’ He says he is Iraqi but he is also Hunt, which means they can extract something for him – so he always goes by helicopter. Sol spends all her time yelling out the window of her car, ‘We are Iraqi!’ and we sail through all checkpoints. In Yemen they lo
ve us.

  22 November – Beirut

  Coming back from the airport I get a randy taxi driver who said he loves Iraqi women. ‘They have feeling,’ he stated. So I tell him I am happily married and have three kids. He says he has seven kids and adds, ‘I can’t help it. I just love the gals.’

  10 December

  Am in the air again going to New York and then Mexico and Honduras to visit Kiko. I have another horrid time at Amman airport. This time I have a dual-entry visa into the States – they can’t believe it. They have it photocopied and keep fingering it suspiciously. I handed over my letter from the Palace and asked if I would have to have this letter for life. The officer said yes, but he wasn’t sure.

  New York – JFK

  The passport control lot were very grouchy today in New York. I sat with a bunch of Indians, Iraqi Chaldeans and odd bods, waiting ‘til my passport was cleared. The Chaldean lady chattered away to the Indian, not in the slightest bit bothered that he did not understand a word; she is going to Detroit. I have been fingerprinted and photographed, eight pictures in all. What could they do with so many of them? It took one and half hours to finish with me – two plane-loads had come and gone. The Chaldean lady missed her connection to Detroit, too. My bag arrived torn and wet.