Baghdad » Page 2

Tag: Baghdad

Out with the old, in with the new

We drive off for the best pizza in Baghdad. It is in a dangerous place, a suicide-bomber struck the area recently killing scores. Samir isn’t happy, but I’ve had it with the hotel food. On route I notice teams of road sweepers dressed in red clothes, “Look the only work available for the young in Iraq.. sweeping the streets” Samir points out. “They get paid $3 a day which is more than what our hotel staff get.” We arrive for our $4 pizza. It is a privilege, and tastes delicious. We leave and get stuck in the heavy traffic. Samir has to turn his air conditioning off when the car isn’t moving, so we open the windows and let in the belting 50c heat. An armoured vehicle passes, inside men hold guns. I notice that each window has a bullet hole in the centre. It looks like they’ve all been shot at.

Samir knows these vehicles. “It is bullet proof glass but they make a hole in it themselves so they can fire out of the vehicle if they are attacked.” The men sit like birds in a cage, staring at everyone and everything they pass, sub-machine guns poised on their knees. One false move could really upset the apple cart here. I look to my video camera in my bag. “Don’t film them Sean, they will kill us. They will say they thought your camera was a gun.” We both sit silently, looking straight ahead until the armoured van pushes its way through the busy traffic. Other drivers look up, see the armed men staring through the bullet proof glass, and give way. The ‘law’ of this ‘lawless’ land is the gun, although every driver around me right now is probably armed, these guys have the biggest guns.

We get back to the hotel and queue outside the checkpoint. We wait like sitting ducks outside the hotel. As we approach, the four Iraqi guards recognise Samir and wave us on. Samir laughs, “Look that is our security, they are there to protect us. We could have TNT in our boot. Who cares?” He is in fits of laughter as we zigzag through the concrete slabs in the road that lead up to the hotel. The raging heat has us both dripping in sweat, and now we can’t find a place to park. Samir swears furiously, looking for a place to park his battered old ‘Super Salon’ car. We disembark and race to the air conditioned hotel.

The pool is cool. We meet the new restaurant manager, he is looking troubled again. I imagine the weight of responsibilities on his head. After being Saddam’s palace manager for 20 years he is working and sleeping here in the heavily fortified hotel, for his own personal safety after receiving death threats. We have a dip in the pool and meet Khalid, a 22 year old clean cut man man. He is the new legion of Iraqi security men, a much cheaper version of the notorious Blackwater company who looked after Paul Bremmer, and currently look after the Iraq Prime Minister. Khalid looks happy. He has every right to be, he is earning $1500 a month in his new job. I feel happy that the liberation of this land has brought fortune and opportunity to Khalid and others like him.

I sit with Samir as Khalid leaves with a spring in his step. The new restaurant manager follows him dragging his feet. Samir shakes his head. “Iraq is becoming so complicated.”

An American journalist enters the pool, “Hey Guys I’m leaving.. see you next time.” Samir looks at me. “See you next time.. you know I’ve spent most of my life trying to leave this country and I’m still waiting!” The American journalist is wearing a bullet proof jacket for his journey on ‘the world’s most dangerous road’, the airport road. It reminds me that I’m set to leave also on Friday.

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.”

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.”

The great Iraqi sale

New Iraq sometimes feels like Woolworths Christmas sales. I met an American guy the other day who called himself the ‘only true carpet bagger in Iraq’. The American had been here over a year and lives in a dangerous part of Baghdad, he touts work trying to win the many lucrative contracts. This guy is on commission only and hasn’t made a buck in a year. If he does win one of the many lucrative contracts he stands to become a millionaire over night.

But the risks are great. I always look out for people like him when I turn on the news each day to see who has been kidnapped or beheaded in the ritual slaughter that takes place here every day. Of course only westerners make international news. I met an Iraqi girl yesterday who has been working as a translator with a US company for 6 months. She hasn’t seen her Iraqi driver for 5 days now. He was kidnapped and no news has emerged. But there is little ransom on his head. The truth is that they are simply waiting for his body to be found in the gutters soon. He will be dragged into the hospital fridge waiting for identification from his family.

Like the only time I visited the hospital with a French journalist friend after a suicide bomber had killed scores outside Samir’s music school. Then, a man in his early 30’s was dragged in from the street with a single bullet to the back of his head. He’d come to find work from outside of Baghdad – to support his family. As we went through his belongings we found pictures of his young children, a boy and girl that didn’t yet know their father was dead. He had been killed for working with the Americans. A simple crime in country where the only source of work – real work, is with the Americans.

So it is a tough choice here; to work and be killed for $1000 a month, or work in safer jobs, like the swimming pool attendant at my hotel who is married with a child and earns a meagre $20 a week. My swim costs me $5 a day, my favourite pizza $4. But here in Iraq most families are spending that in one week. They eat basic simple food, just enough to get by. They drive clapped out cars, queue for miles for fuel in the raging heat, get home to find they have no electricity for air coolers or money to feed the family. All this in a country built on oil, where a litre of petrol is cheaper to buy than a litre of water.

‘Blame Saddam, blame Saddam!’ Yes.. but it’s over a year now since ‘the liberation’ of this land, with no hope in sight, people are looking back to Saddam. ‘Remember the ‘good old days’ under Saddam, when you could go out at night without fear of being killed robbed or kidnapped… the days when you didn’t have to camp outside school all day in raging heat waiting for your children in fear that they are kidnapped. Even Samir has started looking back to the days when ‘we had fun with fear.. but at least we had fun’. Now my Iraqi friends tell me to be careful on the streets with my camera. The microphone looks like a rocket propelled grenade. ‘Be careful please Mr Sean.. the Americans will kill you without question…they think later..’ All Iraqi’s know that the Americans ‘deal’ to remain here after the handover of power is that they cannot be prosecuted for killing people. But of course the more people they kill the more the resentment rages, the longer they stay the more animosity builds. Iraqis have had years of war and oppression and see this American occupation as just one more. There will be no peace in this land until America leaves. There will be no rebuilding until they realise, as Samir says, “Only Iraqi’s can rebuild Iraq.”

So where is there hope in Iraq today? I look around the pool at the reporters drinking beers, the mercenaries sitting with the contractors responsible for rebuilding Iraq. I wonder if they know what is actually going on here. They are part of the ‘rebuilding process’. I want someone tell me where the rebuilding is going on. I want to be able tell the many Iraqi’s that ask me day after day. “What are all these people doing here? We haven’t seen anything in over a year..” My clever answer used to be ‘these things take time.. have patience..’ but now having been here and seen Iraq in the hands of the Americans, I am less clever, more real, more cynical. How much longer can people wait? In true American style Iraq is a catastrophe that is only getting worse. I met a French Businessman who has come here to win a contract. He wants to earn some ‘good money’ before he retires. He visited the Coalition Provisional Authority to see how he could tender a competitive bid, but he wasn’t allowed. The ‘sale’ was closed. The selected companies were chosen. The American’s only deal out the contracts to their friends. They decide who gets what in the Great Iraqi Sale.

But the French man has hope. He is giving himself 5 years here to make friends with the right people, he is hopeful of getting a contract and securing his pension back in France. Lets hope he makes it through the stormy days ahead, for the sooner the Americans distribute their contracts and leave this land, the sooner there will be hope for ordinary Iraqi’s to have a peaceful normal life.