The Liberace Of Baghdad » Page 3

Tag: The Liberace Of Baghdad

Leaving Baghdad

I’ve just said goodbye to Fadi and Saha, Samir’s son and daughter. They have become my very own Iraqi family over the last 7 months. My leaving nearly became another all too emotional scene that Samir’s family have got used to.

Only a few months ago I filmed a beautiful reunion as Saha’s sister Rita, and her daughter Lulu came back to Iraq after 5 years away. Then, just a couple of weeks ago it was an emotional farewell as Rita went back to the United States. Samir was stood at the airport watching one half of his family leave. He took the arm of Saha, his eldest unmarried daughter, and left in tears. Now it is my turn to leave. I kissed Saha goodbye and ran out of the house as I saw her start to cry. Fadi shook my hand and asked me for my phone. I will miss his cheekiness. 7 months is a long time, and it is difficult saying goodbye when you know it is forever. When you know the chances of seeing them again are remote. It is hard, but something I am facing now. It makes me sad.

“Sean you really are like my brother” Samir tells me as we drive the dusty streets from his house back to our fortress hotel. “I didn’t tell you this before but I really learnt alot from being you.” Samir has been an inspiration to me. The great thing about making films for me is that I can absorb myself in someone’s world. My friends at home always joke, “Why don’t you get a life of your own instead of sticking your nose into other peoples all the time.” But other peoples lives are so much more interesting than mine, especially in a place like Iraq right now.

I respect the honesty and openness that Samir has given me over these months. He has opened the window of his world and really allowed me inside, in a culture where it isn’t so easy to go snooping around peoples bedrooms, asking them the sort of personal questions I like to ask, and filming so intimately that they eventually fall asleep on camera.

It is a privilege that I respect and that I hope will make a great film. It provides an illuminating insight into what is going on here for ordinary Iraqi’s, something often missed in the daily diet of news. My only aim in coming here was to make a film that showed Iraq as it is today, from the perspective of the Iraqis. I think with Samir I have done that and so much more.

But most of all I have made a great friend who I will miss. I’m often asked to describe my approach to film making, the answer right now is quite simple, it is making friends and sharing experiences in interesting places. In everyone I film I see myself, my aspirations of what I’d like to be, but also my inadequacies and my failings. I look for people who are brave and honest enough to confront this, and allow me to film them, naked, often literally.

Within a week of being with Samir I was filming him in the shower, within a month in his bed, now he falls asleep on camera and barely ever has his clothes on, apart from his y-fronts. Such is the raging Baghdad heat.

As the summer sets in, I am packing my bags for the last time. Returning to London to prepare the edit of this film. I am hoping to finish it in time for an important documentary film festival in Amsterdam in November, where I am hoping the film will premiere.

If all goes to plan I intend bringing Samir over for his first taste of fame outside of Iraq.

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.

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.”