The Liberace Of Baghdad » Page 5

Tag: The Liberace Of Baghdad

Famous

Samir seems more tired lately. We drive past ‘bombed-out’ buildings in central Baghdad. “This city was so beautiful” Samir laments, “The only building they rebuilt was the Ministry of Oil. What kind of message does that send to the Iraqi people.”

Later Samir plays in the empty restaurant. He is looking older by the day. He comes to sit with me, we drink a beer, he smokes a fag, “Only two packs today,” he smiles. But he is in pain and worried. “My bones hurt Sean.” He looks up at me like a little boy talking to his mother. “Sean I think I am dying… the cancer is eating me. I need to get my blood checked but I don’t want the doctors to tell me something that will ruin the rest of my life. I am so scared.”

“Sean, I miss my wife. You know I still love her.” It has been 3 years since she walked out on him, frustrated with his philandering with foreign women. When she left he asked her to forgive him, she looked at him and left without saying anything, just wiping a tear from her eye. Samir cannot forget this, “I’m not chasing women anymore because of my wife, I keep thinking of her. But she is sick too.. Maybe we should die together in the States.”

“But you know the one thing I wanted to do in this world was to be famous. I couldn’t to it.. I know I am good at what I do, but I couldn’t be famous.” Samir reaches for his glass and drinks his beer. I look around the empty restaurant where he plays for two hours each night. “Maybe this film will make you famous Samir.” He smiles looking back at me. “Maybe..”

The Man Without A Tongue

Woke this morning by a bomb blast, 8.30. Turn on the news and wait to hear what is was. 22 minutes later I find out that a suicide-bomber tried killing a Government minister but ended up killing 4 of his guards. I go for a swim to remove myself from the war zone, then to a shop outside our heavily guarded hotel complex. The shopkeeper is a friendly 27 year old with a good command of English. I am looking for Lurpak butter but he has just sold out. The great thing about newly liberated Iraq are the imports never seen before, luxuries like Lurpak. I fancy mash and beans for lunch despite the horrendous heat. I’d seen baked beans about somewhere but couldn’t remember where. I make do with processed peas. The shop-owner wants a girl friend. I tell him of the Iraqi girls I’d seen swimming in the hotel pool, “No I want English girl” he says. He starts drawing a diagram to help explain to me that 95 % of Iraqi’s don’t have sex before marriage and the 5% that do are dirty. “Are they prostitutes?” I ask.. “Yes” he says and shakes his head disapprovingly. We are interrupted by a man who enters holding a piece of paper. The man doesn’t speak. The shop owner hands the man 500 dinar, about 20p, the man nods and leaves. The shop owner tells me that the man can’t speak, he had his tongue cut out for speaking against Saddam. I watch the man wander outside looking for his next call of charity. I pause to think about what this man may have said to receive such a punishment. He looks destroyed, destitute and helpless. Whatever he said, this form of punishment has finished this human being. Perhaps he was a brave man that once stood-up and spoke-out against the tyranny of Saddam, when everyone else was so scared to even think bad things against him. Or maybe he’d lost it one night and swore against Saddam in a rage, a neighbour overheard him and grassed him up to the intelligence. Whatever it was, I had an admiration for him and a sadness. I watched as he strolled off in his well dressed suit looking for more charity. The shop owner tells me that his father was killed on the front line in the Iran war when he was 7. As the oldest child in a family of 4 he took on the fatherly responsibilities to look after his family. We return to my dilemma about finding Lurpak butter, he tells me to try the store next door. Next door they only have Iraqi butter, I am eager to try it. It cost 30p. I go back to my room and mash my potatoes, dropping huge dollops of Iraqi butter into it and it tastes fantastic. As I eat I can’t stop thinking of the man with no tongue. Sometimes, almost by accident you come across the brutality that ruled this land for far too long and you see the reality of what Saddam has done. I feel awkward about the war but happy that this monster has gone. The shop-keeper who was so happy about the war despite the chaos today told me “Bush deserves a place in heaven, he got rid of Saddam. The Americans can have all the oil they want.”

The Piano Lesson

Samir is giving two children a piano lesson in their home. I sit talking with the parents. We get off to a slow start, they seem afraid to speak their mind. There is a sadness in the face of the children’s mother. She looks tired and I sense angry. I am curious to know how Iraqis feel about their life now, over a year after the fall of Saddam. They both look over to their children, “We are tired, tired of it all, you know each day we take our children to school, all day we wait outside in the heat for them to leave..” I know why. The kidnapping of children has been an underground industry in ‘new lawless Iraq’. Ruthless gangs even have offices on the main shopping street where you go to pay the ransom. The couple are dignified like all educated Iraqi’s, and although they have little money at the moment they want their kids to have their piano lessons. Culture has always been important to Iraqi’s. This house has two pianos and beautiful artwork all around. Samir teaches the kids as I talk and drink coffee with their parents.

“The sanctions have destroyed the Iraqi people, ‘they’ needed to do this to us so we could appreciate ‘their’ invasion, ‘their’ gift of freedom.” This couple were so happy a year ago, they were jumping with joy when Saddam fell. They never expected that 14 months later life would be worse than under the crippling days of the sanctions. Then, for 13 years they had no money and food to eat, now they do but without any security. “This is not freedom” the proud mother speaks. Like most parents they take their children to school each day and wait outside the gates all day. They both look at me, “Tell us what do you think? will thing gets better?”

I feel sad. I want to be optimistic but I can’t. I can’t lie to these people who’ve shown me such honesty. “We cannot speak like this to anyone.. we are afraid to express our opinions now. if we support the former regime we are a target and if we support the Americans we are also a target.” Some kind of freedom in new Iraq.

This couple worked together in UN headquarters narrowly missing death by 10 minutes when a suicide bomber blew the place apart nearly a year ago. They haven’t worked since. They have many job offers, as good English speakers they could earn big money with the Americans but they are too afraid. The daily targeted killings are the consequences of earning big bucks. “We have struggled for years now.. we are tired .. we need a break…” they want to visit family in Spain and are thinking of leaving Iraq. They know little of the struggles they will face in Europe. I look around their beautiful house, the great art, books, and pianos. How will these educated, cultured people fare in the west? I fear to think.

“Iraq is not like Afghanistan.. here we are educated, cultured.. we had everything in the 70’s and 80’s, the sanctions starved us and killed more Iraqi’s then all the wars put together. But it did something else – it starved us of books, periodicals.. We were isolated culturally and emotionally from the outside world for 13 years. a first world nation destroyed into the third world and kept there by these crippling sanctions. Saddam never felt the sanctions, he had everything.” Like all Iraqis they are pleased he has gone but cannot trust the future. It is held in foreign hands, hands that have betrayed them before and are capable of doing the same again.

Freedom

I was filming the road at night, surprised that it was so busy when we missed our turn off to Samir’s home, something you don’t do on Iraq’s most dangerous road… the road to the airport. It’s a one-way road so we crept nervously along until we arrived at 4 narrow aisles heading to the airport checkpoint. We took the second aisle and drove down and found ourselves facing the bright headlights of a U.S tank. I was waving my BBC card frantically.. ‘BBC… don’t kill… don’t kill…’ I know how these tanks had squashed numerous civilian cars in the past year, but luckily these kind soldiers let us pass. We made a U-turn and were on the road back. Samir said a prayer. We held our breath, and hoped for the best, and drove the same dangerous road back. Difficult to know danger on an empty road at night. Samir was scared, I knew that because he wasn’t speaking. He spoke only to shut me up. “The danger is out there, it is around us always Sean. You just don’t realise it.” I couldn’t see anything. On each side of the road were the remains of houses and palm trees that had been hacked down by the American’s after the resistance had hidden and fired from there.

We get home safely to Samir’s and hit the whiskey. He was panicking. “Do you realise what could have happened there? We could have been killed by both sides.” Samir worries a lot in this dangerous troubled land. We relax and he opens up to me about his past. He tells me horror stories of his time on the front line in the war with Iran. He still has nightmares, waking up screaming in the night. He cannot forget the face of the young Iranian man he killed. The young mans eyes are still vivid in Samir’s mind, as he sliced open his throat. “Imagine a pianist doing such things. I want to make the world more beautiful with my music not kill people.” On the news we hear that a Bulgarian man has been beheaded by his captures. Another beheading is planned tomorrow.

Saga, Samir’s daughter enters the room looking distraught. Her lovely aunty, Samir’s ex-wife’s sister, has breast cancer. It starts Samir ruminating over his own possible cancer, but he is too afraid to have it checked out. He lights a fag from his 3rd packet of the day. We smoke, eat, and drink whiskey. Saha is flicking through the satellite channels, surfing the 200 readily available stations. I try to imagine the Saddam times when there was only two state channels. “It must be so much better now?” I ask. Saha shakes her head, “No, there are 200 channels but there is nothing to watch, only some music and a food channel.” Samir sits up, “This morning I turned the television on, it was the erotica channel, I couldn’t believe it, there were two men having sex! What is this?” “Freedom?” I suggest. Saha sits up, “No .. this is not freedom, this is dangerous, it is going to devalue our society… Saddam protected it.”

“But surely the Saddam channels were just propaganda?” Saha agrees. “Yes of course they were, they were there to protect him, but they also protected our culture, and the values of our society. Who will protect that now?” Saha flicks through the channels shaking her head. “I will never allow my children to watch this. That is why my sister Rita, will not send her children to school in America. She says it is like a jungle there. Is that freedom?”

“But surely it is better than before?” Saha shakes her head. “Not for me it isn’t. Before I had a job. Now I don’t. Before I had security, could go visit my friends, wander the streets whenever I liked, now I can’t.” Saha sits down opposite me. “Saddam was a dictator but we knew the rules. If you obeyed the rules you could do almost anything you liked. I never needed to have a gun in those days either. In a way that was freedom to me.”

Suddenly the electricity goes out, we continue the conversation in the dark. “Look, they’ve been here for more then a year now and we still don’t have electricity for more then 6 hours a day.” The bedroom is hot and sticky without any power for the air conditioning, the temperature was 50c+ in the shade. Over breakfast we hear a big bomb blast, later we find out it was a suicide-bomber, aiming for the Americans, but killing more innocent Iraqi’s. Saha looks at me. “So this is freedom is it?” “No it isn’t freedom. Freedom takes time.” I reply. Saha looks at me smiling, “Freedom takes time.. Look how long the Americans
been waiting..”

To Die For

Another hot sticking night, so I ate with Samir in the empty restaurant where I first met him 7 months ago. Haider the waiter wasn’t looking happy. “They’ve just had their wages cut.” Samir points out, “So have I.” “Why?” I ask, “They claim business is down.” “But the hotel is full” I point out. “Yes but the restaurant isn’t..” Like me the guests are bored with the hotel’s sub standard food, and now the situation seems artificially better in Baghdad people are venturing out to restaurants. This was unheard of a few months ago. Haider brings my wine back and pours Samir and me a glass. “You know these waiters are all graduates Sean, waiting for companies to come and invest in new Iraq so they can find decent work.” It is a waiting game for all Iraqis, with moments of hope that things will settle down and Iraq can be rebuilt.

An American journalists joins us, “What’s the news?” I ask. “Nothing big.” He looks frustrated. I know he is paid for every story he files and when things are quiet here, it means no money for him. “We haven’t had a car-bomb for a while in Baghdad” he points out, “But friends of mine say they are brewing up something big.” I try to read the tone in his voice, is this hope for more stories, hence work, or despair for the people of this war torn land so recently ‘liberated’?

Samir’s met many like this guy before. He offers me a knowing glance and leave’s to the piano. He plays Mozart beautifully, holding his head proud. There are a couple of guests in the empty room that appreciate him tonight. He returns to the table, lighting a fag from the end of his dying fag, and drinks his wine. “You know two people appreciating my music is better then having 100 people in here that don’t, thank god we have got rid of all those mercenaries.” “I’m not sure we have,” the American points out, “After those 4 where killed the other week they are under strict orders to not be seen.” 4 security men from the hotel were ambushed by an army of resistance in a highly organised attack, using information which can only be got from the inside. The American journalist shakes his head, “You know, we can’t afford to trust anyone in here. they all could be spies.”

Haider comes back over to pour more wine for us. He smiles at me. I smile back at him. The American is looking decidedly awkward. ‘You can get paranoid in places like this’ I thought. Which is why some months ago I stopped talking to others about ‘the situation’….. ‘intelligence’ would emerge in the form of rumours of imminent attacks on the hotel. these rumours often came from the western security companies based at the hotel. Their job is to protect big American TV networks and to justify the $800 a day per man, they would make ‘intelligence’ reports that would often put us on high alert for a week of an attack. For me it meant drinking an extra bottle of Scotch with Samir and then sleeping as far away from my window as possible shielded all night in my flak jacket. Then we began to question this ‘intelligence’, no-one knew where it came from or how reliable the sources were. Finally I decided that these security guys, sitting around, day after day, night after night, were simply justifying their $800 a day per man, with their ‘intelligence’. It made no sense and increased suspicion and hostility. So when I look at my American friend I can imagine what is going on in his head… As a result major broadcasting companies like the BBC are sheltered in what seems like safe houses secured by these companies. They are not permitted to venture outside without having a security man at their side. But at least the BBC’S security company are not armed unlike the American networks. The other day a friend of mine saw some private security men driving through a busy street in downtown Baghdad pointing sub machine guns out of their windows.

Haider stands to the side of us waiting to take our order. He is a big gentle giant, someone I have warmed to over the months. He is married with a couple of kids. He was a good time guy before meeting his wife, but now he has changed. He prays 5 times a day and looks forward to a better life like all Iraqis. I can tell that my American friend hasn’t taken the same time to get know him and doubts remain in his mind. He can’t even decide what to eat tonight.

Despite the inherent dangers of living here I feel safe with people like Haider around me, and all the Iraqi friends I have made. I know ‘I can’t afford to trust anyone’ .. but I do here. I feel an affinity with Iraqi people, a trust and friendship I have not felt anywhere else. When they say they will die for you they mean it. But when I look at my American friend, I fail to understand why.

I remember another journalist passing through here telling me a story of when she was shot in Palestine, a young boy leapt out in front of her to protect her. He died and she lived. I always remembered the story. She told it in such a matter of fact way. I doubted whether she really appreciated his actions and felt, like my American friend that some people go through life like that.