Iraq » Page 2

Tag: Iraq

-18 in Oslo

The misery around me is snow and ice. I slip with my heavy bag, why is no one else slipping? I’m clearly the newcomer here, my first time in temperatures of -18. “Welcome to Norway, Sean my dear” – It’s great to hear Nizam’s voice again even if it is only on my answerphone – but it is impossible to comprehend how he can tolerate this cold. How did the ‘Road to Damascus’ lead us here?

I’m freezing. My ears worst, then my nose. My nose runs a little bit, and then it freezes on some nose hair. A brave painful tug removes the tiny snot ridden icicle. A homeless guy sits staring at me. How can he sit there in this weather?

I continue delicately making my way down a dirty public staircase. Is this the clean Norway life Nizam told me about? I spot a film of oil that makes beautiful colours down the dirty stairs, oil can’t freeze I tell myself, then it dawns on me that this is another oil rich nation I have found myself in, just like Iraq, Iraqi’s always blame the oil for the war – ‘We had to share it with the American’s’ – but here in Norway it’s peaceful. Why don’t they have to share their oil with the Americans? Maybe Norway will be invaded next? I doubt it; Norway is far too cold for American GI’s.

With a tiny population of only 5 million Norway is one of richest countries in the world. I am always fascinated where the oil money goes and how it reaches the people. The oil money goes to provide better social services I am told, that is why immigrants want to come here they say. People will always follow the money I reply, it is the natural way of things.

I pass some prostitutes standing in the freezing cold outside of my hostel, I refuse to imagine how can they have sex in this weather, as I climb the stairs again and disappear into my room to wait for Nizam.

Waiting For The Red Man

If Iraq was a pressure cooker waiting to explode then Japan is a pot of rice silently simmering away. Rarely does it over boil, life just simmers away.

Waiting for the red man to change to green can often seem like an eternity at pedestrian crossings in Japan. I am standing with an exhausted businessman whose eyes keep opening and closing. I look around the neon lights of Shinjuku and my mind drifts…

In this relative freedom I think of friends like Jill Carol kidnapped in Iraq, no news for months. I often think of her life now and mine here, relative luxury in comparison. Then I feel lucky. I get frustrated waiting for so long at these lights, they take forever. Sometimes I think about crossing on the red man…

I know that as a `gaijin` (foreigner) I can get away with it, but I don’t want to stand out. Japan has that effect on even me now. It is not a fear from the authorities punishing me more from the people around me. What will they think, or say.

It reminds me of Saddam`s Iraq, except there the fear was different.

But fear brings social order which brings safety as well. And I feel incredibly safe here. I remember feeling as safe in Saddam’s Iraq. No one would ever touch me. The only time they did was when I was wandering through a market without my government minders, I’d walked ahead alone. Suddenly I was surrounded by a threatening gang who wanted to know who I was and what I was doing. My minders were quick on the scene, as soon as the gang knew I was `authorized` they were friendly. I found it touching that people care for their country and their land.

A couple of years later a friend did a crazy walk into Saddam’s Iraq following an ancient trail from Istanbul to Baghdad to Syria. He walked over the border from Turkey into Iraq. Rural Iraqi’s never knew who he was, kept thinking he was an American pilot shot down. This was during relative peace in the years between the attacks on Iraq. Rural Iraqi’s would run up and attack him. He had caught a bad disease and was on deaths doorstep. He was saved by other Iraqi’s who became his friends. They housed him, fed him and saved his life. He wrote to me the other day saying the very same people who he is still friends with had been arrested for insurgent attacks against the American occupiers. Funny, when I think of insurgents I think of the time I was stopped in the market and the time my friend was stopped walking into Iraq ~ the same people gave my friend a place to stay and saved his life.

I’m itching to cross the road but still the little man is red. The crowd builds and patiently, obediently waits and waits… as if a race is to begin. The man next to me can hardly stay awake. I look at the faces of people around and wonder what they are thinking. I wonder sometimes if they are thinking. If they have the time to think. They are all dressed in the uniform black suits shirts and ties marching around the streets on aimless missions of work, following duties so dutiful and orderly like economic soldiers of work.

15 years after the bubble burst there is a wariness amongst the Japanese. This is a country finally coming out of recession, but with scares. I met a businessman the other day, who was nearly made homeless when the bubble burst. He seems jaded today. I visited his own company who make a special brand of sake. He was showing me around his offices where hundreds of people work. He is faced with streamlining his company and has to loose 100 employees by the end of March. It reminds me of what happened in Britain in the 1980`s. full time jobs are being replaced by part time jobs in Japan.

A bell chimes in the office; it is like a chime from an old grandfather clock. The businessman tells me it is the end of the day ~ but no one is leaving. I ask him why. He laughs looking into the vast office. “They are scared, peer pressure… they don’t want to be the first one to leave… fearing what the others will say”. They all carrying on working waiting for the first one to leave. Is this why the Japanese work so many hours?

It is now nightfall at the pedestrian crossing, 10pm and businessmen are heading home. Have they all been waiting for the first one to leave? Like we are all waiting for the red man to change to green. The road clears, the crowd gets ready to cross.

It feels like it has taken forever. In my mind I have been to Iraq and back but what about the others. I look to the tired Japanese businessman standing next to me, the red man has changed to green but the businessman is fast asleep standing on his feet at the pedestrian crossing.

Japan

Another Adventure

Another 12 hour flight seems about right to set me off on another film adventure. It’s almost 2 years to the day that I set off to Baghdad taking that dangerous unknown road.

But the results have been rewarding, the film The Liberace of Baghdad won several international awards including Special Jury Prize at Sundance, in Chicago and San Paolo and Best Documentary Award at the British Independent Film Awards. Such accolades haven’t helped sales though! – having re-mortgaged my house to make the film I’m still waiting for the film to sell one year on.

I always need time and space before moving onto a new film. For me the experience is all-encompassing and this can drive you crazy. If indeed you are not already crazy. Something I question more and more as I grow older and more stupid. My last film took me to Iraq for 8 months at its most dangerous watching friends being killed and kidnapped around me.

In many ways I feel I have been trying to overcome this. The unpredictable situation that developed around me, the dangers, the deaths and the kidnappings remain vivid in my mind as I think back to my time in Iraq. I wake up in cold sweats looking back at different things of could have been, I think of friends killed 28 year old Marla a passionate aid worker and others kidnapped.

Then I get positive and think it is time to move on!! To open a new chapter in my life, to try and close this last one. It is time to make a new film. I decide on Japan, why? Well because for me it has very interesting issues of freedom and reminds me oddly enough of Saddam’s Iraq. Just in terms of how people are told to think and operate out of loyalty.

So here I am two years on heading over to Japan. After making a film in the worlds most dangerous place I’m heading to the worlds safest. As I leave I see on the TV news the face of a friend staring out at me. It seems no matter how hard I try Iraq will not let me go. It haunts me day by day. I’m sat looking at the innocent face of a trainee journalist I knew in Iraq, Jill Carol 28, kidnapped and threatened with death if all female Iraqi prisoners are not released from jail.

Her interpreter was thrown out of her car and shot in the head leaving a 4-year-old without a father. It seems some stories will never go away. For 4 months last year I tuned into the news each night fearing the worst for another friend George. He was released after 4 months and only because he was French. Carol happens to be American.

The road to Tokyo

I’m sat in the limousine bus from Narita International airport to central Tokyo with a nervous excitement in my stomach. I’ve spent most of last year doing the festival circuit with ‘Liberace of Baghdad’ and now it is time to embark on another adventure. As a place to film; Japan is not without its difficulties, traditionally one of the most secretive and private societies where very few people speak English. I’d heard of the growth in English language schools and wondered why? When I looked further into it, it seemed many Japanese were learning English out of a growth in leisure and ‘freedom’ rather need for work or travel. The English school provided me with an opportunity to meet English speaking subjects for a film. I’d heard stories about the ‘housewives’ who would learn English in their afternoon breaks. They’d often not tell their husbands and would have secret fantasies for the English teacher. It only seemed sensible for someone like me to come as film maker/ English teacher to look at modern Japanese using the English school as a vehicle to freedom.

Snowmans Welcome

I meet my friend Atsushi at the 246 café near my hotel. It’s a very western café, with a faint smell of fish. But even that disturbs me, fortunately there are loads of people smoking and it kills the smell. Smoking inside? Seems rather liberal in Japan. And women smoking everywhere I look, probably more then men.

This super clean environment is smoke filled. Why? We sit and wait for two café latte’s I watch the array of beautiful women serving us. It is difficult to concentrate here with such beautiful women. I notice Atsushi seeing that I’m now ignoring him. He understands and gives up the conversation for just enough time for me look at little longer… Beautiful… apart from the smoke and that faint fishy smell. Then our coffees arrive. It is extra creamy, a latte like never before. And on top is a snowman designed specially for me by the coffee maker. I look over to Atsushi’s coffee there is no snowman. I smile, waft passing smoke away from my face blown by a gorgeous girl next to us and then I sip the coffee. It tastes better than most – I have another sip – in fact it is amazing coffee. I look down at the menu and worry about my vegetarian diet. How on earth am I going to cope here? But now I’m just enjoying the coffee, I take another sip. This is better than Italy I think to myself.

This is my first education on arriving in Japan; you can get everything you want here, and it will always taste better than anywhere you’ve ever tried before! The Japanese get lots wrong but rarely is it ever food.

Georges Malbrunot… Kidnapped

In the three or four weeks since I finished filming in Iraq I have felt no inclination to write anything for this blog. Until now, the news came of a friend kidnapped…. an American guy called Micha who I’d actually filmed with Samir, joking about what we’d do if we were kidnapped; it was the only time I found Samir speechless. But Micha had a dark sense of humour about the whole thing, and in a funny way I wasn’t surprised to see him on TV, on his knees flanked by seven hooded guys with guns. And it did actually happen, some months later, when I was back in the UK. But Micha got lucky; Moqtada al Sadr negotiated his release…..

Then came the news that Georges Malbrunot was missing.

I’d been anxious, having not heard anything of his whereabouts for a week. Georges was my neighbour in the cheapo Al Dulaimi hotel in Baghdad.

He was known as somewhat of an Iraqi expert, having worked there for many years; he was also a great fan of tabbouleh – we’d spend many nights eating this and talking about wine, women, and where to holiday in France. He’d recommended the Loire valley, which is where I am right now, on holiday. And where I picked a newspaper up today finding his face on the front; having been missing for a week, it turns out he’s now in the hands of the worst kidnapping group in Iraq. The same gang responsible for killing the Italian journalist and Red Cross aid worker Enzo Baldoni last Thursday.

They have given France an ultimatum: to reverse their recent ruling on conspicuous religious symbols, which resulted in the banning of the hijab in schools, within 48 hours. 24 hours have passed since the ultimatum.

I find my holiday time here is spent thinking about Georges and the good times we spent together in Iraq.

It also makes me think about the eight months I was there filming. Sitting around looking at the other faces round the table, thinking … Who? When? If? What? … and how I would respond if it ever came about. And that complete nightmare is upon me now.

Georges told me about how he had rediscovered a childhood sweetheart he had not seen for 20 years – how they had got together again and planned to marry. And that this was to be his last trip to Iraq before he planned to adjust his work so that it didn’t involve any more warzones; so that he could settle back down in his hometown in France.

The whole thing I suppose ultimately makes me feel sick in my stomach and brings home the danger that Georges was always rejecting, putting to one side, in pursuit of good journalism, a conviction for what he was driven to do. He never had a driver, a bodyguard, a fixer, security, anything – he was always out there, like most freelancers, getting close to the stories. And close to the people.

Since being back in England people are constantly asking me “What is the risk?” “How close were you to danger?” And it’s only on occasions like this (as Samir was always telling me) – “The danger is around you all the time – you just don’t want to realise it.”

Having never said a prayer since leaving school, I will say one for Georges tonight. I think that in times of despair we turn to some greater power to intervene. I don’t know what more to say.

WHEN?

Samir is driving home. “Look at the roads ripped apart by the tanks. Iraq is destroyed.” We drove along the airport road. “See, they cut all the date trees because the resistance would ambush the Americans here. Now look, this beautiful park area is used for dumping rubbish. See what Iraqi’s have become, they would not have dared do this under Saddam.”

We arrive at Samir’s home. There is no electricity, Samir is sweating. The generator, which he pays 15,000 Iraq dinar each month for, cannot power the air conditioning. Tempers fray very easy in this heat. Samir can take it no more. “Let us go to your hotel I cannot stand this heat. Fucking Americans!! What have they been doing here for 15 months? Saddam had the electricity sorted in 3 months after the 91 war!” Sweat drips from me as I film Samir. After 8 months with him I dare not offer my lame excuses, ‘Reconstruction takes time…’ I realise now, that these clichés are of no help to those who are here, now, living in this hell.

Samir pulls on his shoes. “People ask me why are you going to the States? Iraq will be full of opportunities… When??? This is why I’m going.. This country will never be right… They’ve ruined it… I told you Sean.. The only people who can re build Iraq are Iraqi’s.”

As we drive to my hotel I notice that the fuel queues are longer than ever. Definitely longer than they were 8 months ago when I arrived. I cannot answer the simple question of Why? Why are people still queuing for fuel in a land built on petrol? Why are people still waiting for electricity in the second summer since the Americans ‘liberated’ Iraq?

We get back to my hotel and see ‘some building… some construction…’ We watch workers building a new accommodation block. We discover it is for private Iraqi security guards. “Good news that Iraqi’s are finally being employed” Samir remarks, “They will make the best security here.” They are being hand picked from the West of Iraq, mainly Sunni’s from Tikrit and Ramadi. They are all ex Captains and Officers, they are coming here to look after the many Western companies with their construction contracts to rebuild Iraq.

“Look this is a dream come true for them. $800 a month, a place to sleep and the best food. Under Saddam they were paid $3 a month, and many haven’t worked since then.” I’m not so sure about the nature of the work though, “Think of the risk, they could be killed at anytime” I point out. Samir smiles, “This is why we are the best security guards in the world, Iraqi’s believe that their time is written by God, so they walk fearless.”

And at $800 a month they are good value. Their Western counterparts charge $800 a day.