Iraq » Page 2

Category: Iraq

Carnage in Christian Street

Samir stands speechless amongst the carnage outside his Christian church where four charred cars lie wrecked in the street. People are standing staring, speechless. “So Bin Laden’s lot finally came for the Christians.. they are trying to create a civil war here.” I follow Samir through the slaughter, we approach a crater in the road. “See Sean, what a bomb blast does.”

I stare into a huge empty hole in the road and notice a man standing next to me with blood on his trousers. He points to the half demolished house behind him and beckons us inside. In the doorway is a Kalashnikov next to a child’s bike. The dining room is covered with splinters of glass, everything is completely destroyed. “My children were sat watching TV when the bomb went off… it’s a miracle they survived.” He points to his blood soaked trousers. “I had to pull splinters of glass out of them before the ambulance arrived.” He breaks down and cries. “I have just been staring at it.. I don’t know where to start repairing it, let alone where we will get the money..” Samir consoles the man and we leave.

Outside I pass a woman in her fifties, she grabs my camera.. “This is Bush’s fault.. America’s fault… I’m a Christian but I’m an Iraqi first!!” The woman moves on. I look around at the bloodshed in a Christian street I know so well. This is just one of 4 Christian churches targeted yesterday.

I move on to the other church five minutes away. The carnage here is even worse. I step over a charred car engine 200 metres away from the wreck of a car. The bomb blast sent it flying. I walk among blackened burnt out cars, a wrecked bus, destroyed buildings. We are told of an eight year old child who is currently having surgery to remove both her eyes, destroyed in the blast.

Samir looks into a graveyard inside the church compound where graves are smashed into pieces. “You know it has got so bad here that it is funny.” Samir breaks into fits of laughter. “Look, even the dead cannot rest peacefully.. they’ve even managed to disturb the dead.”

We go to Samir’s brother’s house. Maher greets me with a piece of twisted metal. “It landed here after the blast.. What did I tell you Mr Sean.. Last week they bombed all the Christian alcohol shops, and now they are turning on our churches.” Outside, his neighbours are repairing the windows. Maher sits down, his head listening to the familiar sound of broken glass being swept up. “You know glass is very expensive in Iraq now.” An American tank thunders past, followed by two humvees. Samir is angry “Iraq wouldn’t have these problems if we didn’t have the oil. If we were a poor African country with an evil dictator, who would care? Nobody!” Maher shakes his head, “It is very difficult Mr Sean.. We know these families that have been killed, my son’s best friend was killed as well. There is no one here to protect us now.” Maher gets up to leave. He stops, thinking for a minute, and turns to me.

“You know Saddam would never have let this happen to us. He used to protect the Christians.”

Saddam’s Man

I am introduced to the new restaurant manager of the hotel. The man has a polite look about him and speaks good English. But he looks nervous. Within a minute of speaking to me he confides that he worked inside Saddam’s main palace in Baghdad for 28 years. He was responsible for organising all Saddam’s parties and formal engagements, as well as his daily meals.

What was Saddam like? I ask. The man shakes his head. “Did you like him?” “No… but what could I do, you cannot leave such a job. Anyway Saddam liked me. If he ever had a problem he would call on me personally and I would sit with him.” “Did he ever harm you?” “No not me but I saw him harm others.” “Who?” The man thinks for a moment. “During the war with Iran, I saw him shoot 4 Iranians with his own pistol in the grounds of the palace.”

A waiter passes. The new manager pauses, waits for the waiter to pass, then continues whispering to me. Our conversation has an eerie feel of the ‘Saddam days’ about it, days when it was impossible to speak freely. “When did you last see Saddam?” “He was sat with us in the palace when news came through that the Americans were 45 minutes from Baghdad. I remember, he said to his staff, ‘Stay inside here .. you will be safe .. I need to go and look after my people.’ Saddam left the palace and made his last public appearance on the streets of Baghdad surrounded by cheering crowds. He never returned to the palace.”

The new manager looks nervous as he tells me of his stories. On the one hand it isn’t something he is proud of, but on the other hand he is trying to show me, the British man from the BBC, that he was once ‘somebody’. There were thousands of Iraqi’s that used to work for Saddam, thousands of people that used to be ‘somebody’ who today are unemployed.

I imagine the status this man had in the ‘Saddam days’, when he was ‘somebody’, when he was effectively the President’s personal assistant, in charge of all the palace staff. He was well paid, had a big house, always carried 3 pistols, but now he has nothing to protect him. The man wipes sweat from his brow… “You know my family have received death threats.. I’m a target because of my work with Saddam. I really have to leave Iraq but it is hard. I have 5 children, the youngest is only 3.” “I’m too scared to go home, at the moment I am sleeping here, on the restaurant floor at night.”

This man is a shadow of his former self. Samir offers him a reassuring nod. For Samir knows what it is like to fall from grace, once Iraq’s most famous pianist, he now plays this empty hotel bar just to eek a living out of this newly liberated land.

When we were Kings

Iraq’s top doctors all meet on Fridays at our hotel pool, they drink big pints of beer, eat crisps and swim. They have a British look about them. A 1950’s English style. It is a look I always liked about Iraq.

Are you British? one of them asks me in the pool. “Yes..” I answer. The big burly doctor smiles. “I studied in south London, in 1986.. I lived in East Dulwich..” “So did I” I reply. “Why didn’t you stay there?” I asked, “I wanted to, but we are a big family here in Iraq, my father was a merchant, we inherited many properties, factories, businesses all over Iraq. I came back to look after them with my brothers.”

“What was business like under Saddam?” the doctor shakes his head. “We stopped all business because of Saddam, he didn’t care about business, he believed that this country was rich only in oil. Anyway it was dangerous to get into BIG business in Saddam’s time. Anything that threatened him would be cut.” So where you for the war?” I ask him. “No, but I’m pleased Saddam is gone.” Another doctor joins us… “It was the only way of getting rid of Saddam, the war was necessary.”

“What we Iraqis need to realise is that Iraq is a rich country, but that it is impossible for us to have this on our own. There is always someone who wants to share it. During theBritish rule we did well, so lets hope that the Americans get what they want, and maybe we can all do well again.” The other doctor looks at me, “Iraq was the envy of Middle East. We were living like kings while Jordan was still a piece of desert, Bahrain, Dubai.. they never even existed. Now they look at us as second-class citizens. That is Saddam’s fault. You know the people of Europe used to say that the Arab world should take it as a compliment that Iraqi’s consider themselves as Arabs.”

“But you know the best period in Iraq in the last 400 years was between 1920 and 1985 when the British ruled us. Our economy grew, we had 3 Iraqi dinars to each dollar. The other doctor interrupts, “When Bremmer first arrived in Iraq we met with him. I told him, Iraqi people are not poor, we have food and enough to eat and live, but what you have to realise is that we are 5000 times poorer than we were.

The crippling inflation of the 1990’s with the UN imposed sanctions saw Iraq’s inflation rise 5000 fold. It will be along journey to restore such wealth, and for most who left their money in Iraq it is too late. Samir sits listening to the doctors. He shakes his head, “You know at the end of the 1980’s I had 200,000 dinars in the bank, about half a million dollars. It went to the wind, inflation, the sanctions. Now I don’t have the money to bury myself.”

The man without an eye

I’d always seen this man, the man without an eye. I’d always admired how he cared for the NBC T.V network’s fleet of cars that he cleans each evening. I’d noticed how he scrubbed the tires, so the car looks brand new again. This man just works, and works. Then sleeps on the ground in the open air next to his cars. He is happy to have a job, a good job, with the Americans.

Today I stopped and let my curiosity end. I wanted to know who he was and how he lost his eye. Samir always says “Every Iraqi has a story.” So what was this mans? The man lost his eye in the Iran war. He was taken to war in his late teens. One night Iranian bombing killed most of his friends, but a few, like him, were found alive amongst the dead. For some reason they were not executed but taken prisoner, and that was his story for the next 18 years.

He was released from prison in 1998 and received $300 from Saddam for his troubles. He spent the money on fixing his blind eye. He looks up from a dirty tire he is scrubbing in the unbearable heat.. “You know some people here resent me having this job.. you know, working with an American network, but what have I ever got from this country after all I’ve given it..?”

LOVE

We are driving in Baghdad, looking for pizza, Danielle is on Samir’s mind today.. “Sean, I keep thinking of her. Really I still love her.” I point out to Samir that he said he still loved his ex wife a couple of days ago.. “Yes.. I love her as well..” Later we open an email, it is from Angela, another NGO worker.. “Really Sean I love this woman also!” Samir is passionate about love.

“Sean we need love to live.. that is why we are alive. If we don’t love what are we? You know every year I’ve been in love. And every year I’ve composed beautiful ballads for the girls I love.” Samir’s face changes. “This is the only year that I’ve not been in love.. that is why I’m so miserable.. look at me.. not composing.. nothing..”

He plays me a medley of his own compositions; A Ballad for Danielle, Ballad to Marie, Ballad to Angela….

Danielle worked for a charity in Saddam’s Iraq, in a time when Samir enjoyed a life of ‘fun with fear’. She was a piano student of his, but when they fell in love he became her student. “She used to push me, encourage me to play, to write. After years in a stale marriage she gave me my life back.”

Samir has sacrificed many things in life for his women, but nothing compares to what he gave up for Danielle. 3 years ago he had an invitation to go to America, to join his daughters and ex-wife. America has always been Samir’s dream, he wants to be famous there. Danielle was leaving for a new job in North Korea. Samir had his papers to leave as well. He waited to spend a little more precious time with Danielle before leaving. But as he waited, events that would change the course of history took place on September 11th in New York. Samir was refused entry into the USA as all visa’s from Iraq were withdrawn.

They stood kissing, in floods of tears in a crowded airport and Danielle left forever. Samir was lost again waiting for his way out to America. He bought a packet of cigarettes and started smoking again. He smoked the whole packet crying for Danielle, sat on the kerb of the busy airport road. As her plane left he made his way back to Baghdad, to his piano, the empty restaurant, his empty life. Samir has made a new application to live in the States which has been agreed, he is waiting for his papers to arrive before he will leave Iraq forever.

Each night he counts the days, the hours and minutes to the moment he can leave. Staying here is painful, seeing what is happening to his country upsets Samir. He worry’s about the future, “This place is finished now… I blame Saddam for giving the Americans an excuse to put their dirty feet on our soil and soak the land of it’s oil.”