A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (9 page)

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Authors: Asne Seierstad,Ingrid Christophersen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers, #History, #Military, #Iraq War (2003-2011), #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Journalism, #Social Science, #Customs & Traditions, #Sociology

BOOK: A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal
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Mahmoud is one who can afford to eat grilled fish. A one-time owner of a furniture factory, he had to sell owing to sanctions. Now the middle-aged businessman fixes things for other people, he says, without elaborating further.
 
- The system, he whispers. - The system. Many are poorer, only a few have grown richer. They are here now, he says, and nods almost imperceptibly towards the other guests: four men at a nearby table, gold chains, black bags and walkie-talkies, a benefit strictly controlled by the authorities and a luxury awarded very few.
 
Suddenly all the tables fill up. Approximately fifty men in suits arrive and as a matter of course take over half the restaurant.
 
- Ministry of Trade, Mahmoud whispers. - They are important, they have money. Those who hitch on get rich.
 
He is alluding to those who support Saddam Hussein. - Businessmen, heads of ministries. But the sword is ever-present. Anyone who murmurs or tries to jump ship risks being murdered. I’m part of it myself, he continues. - I have eleven children. The eldest are at university. I have no choice. But I live in fear of the sword.
 
Mahmoud is not voicing platitudes. The regime of Saddam Hussein has clung to power with the aid of a complex system of informers, violence and brutality in order to crush every attempt at divergence or disagreement. The system is based on a combination of fear and a sophisticated network of informing, and also on the ability to manoeuvre economically through the closed Iraqi market.
 
Although sanctions have weakened most Iraqis’ purchasing power, an increased traffic in contraband has enriched a few. Sanctions were aimed at enfeebling the regime but have actually made people more dependent on it. Sanctions have isolated the country from the outside world and have made it easier to reward loyalty and punish deviation. It is virtually impossible to operate on any large scale without the regime keeping track.
 
Saddam Hussein makes sure that people are moderately well fed by rationing staple foodstuffs. At the same time, the monopolies caused by the sanctions render it easy for him to favour hangers-on. But woe betide them if they become too mighty or too independent. The regime constantly sends people to their death for corruption or economic activity.
 
Al-Arasat is Baghdad’s Champs Elysées. Here exclusive Armani suits are for sale, soft velvet sofas, all brands of cigars, perfume and luxury articles. Here are up-to-date computers, shops full of exclusive TVs, stereos, videos and other electronic hardware. In spite of the sanctions, in spite of import embargos.
 
But Al-Arasat too suffers from any comparison to former days. In several places the pavements have been replaced by gravel walks and rubbish is everywhere; but the neon lights keep on shining. Here is the nightclub and restaurant ‘Black and White’ with a large swimming pool in the garden. Here the well-to-do celebrate weddings and birthdays. Here can be seen videos never shown on state-owned TV channels, and here alcohol is served, if the liquid is discreetly poured into the glass and the bottle hidden under the table. Once upon a time Iraq was one of the most liberal countries in the Arab world, but a few years ago Saddam realised that Islam could help him. Alcohol disappeared from the restaurants and an increasing number of women took to wearing the headscarf. Even Saddam himself, before usually portrayed holding a gun, is now shown at prayer.
 
The country’s social hierarchy has been fundamentally changed by the hyper inflation of the 1990s. Iraq’s middle classes were once highly educated and well to do and the country’s literacy and writing proficiency among the highest in the Arab world. The salaried classes are the losers. Many have sunk into poverty.
 
A quarter of an hour’s drive away, in a poor part of Baghdad, Wahida and her sons await the month’s rations. Here the roads have not been paved for many years, there are potholes everywhere, and the doors to the shops and homes hang crookedly. As no one knows what conditions will be like next month, the UN, for the first time, are handing out two months’ rations in one go. During the last seven years Wahida’s staple food requirements have been provided for by the Oil for Food programme. The programme means that Iraq can export oil as long as the income is earmarked for ‘humanitarian aid’. To this end approximately two million barrels are exported every day.
 
The agent, as she is called, measures up on scales with large iron weights. Every Iraqi gets 9 kilos of wheat, 3 kilos of rice, 2 kilos of sugar, 200 grams of tea, half a kilo of washing powder, and a quarter kilo of soap. In addition they receive a small portion of beans, peas, food oil, salt and powdered milk.
 
Since the Oil for Food programme started, the number of undernourished and malnourished people has decreased. Sanctions had then been in place since 1991, originally introduced to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But in spite of Oil for Food alleviating the situation somewhat, a quarter of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition. That and diarrhoea are the most common causes of death amongst the youngest children.
 
The agent in this part of town is called Karima. She runs a little general store which she took over when her husband died. - Once upon a time we had ten brands of tea, all sorts of cakes, soap in all colours and smells. Today I have one type of tea, one of soap, no cakes. When people get tea through the rations they don’t buy any other brand except for a very special occasion. The tea they get in the rations is a mediocre tea, like everything else we get, not bad, not good. Just like the flour, not the best, not the coarsest. Everything is in the middle, mediocre.
 
Wahida nods while her sons carry out large sacks, the rations for the whole family. The food is heavily subsidised by the regime. Everyone pays 250 dinar, around 10 pence. But when the average monthly wage is £4, the remainder disappears fast. All extras are expensive and the majority have had to cut down on everything: food, clothes, house.
 
- Life is harder, Wahida admits. - Before I was just an ordinary housewife, looking after my family. Now I get up every morning at five, make cheese and yoghurt, which I sell on the street, from a table by our house. I only return home in the afternoon to attend to my own family, she sighs. Like most Iraqis her husband has to hold down two jobs.
 
The little woman dressed in black slips out of the door. Turkish delight, sunflower seeds and the mixture of nuts lie untouched. So does Karima’s small assortment of shampoo and toothpaste. People are using increasingly less. The quarter kilo of rationed soap is used for most things - face, hair and hands. If one can afford to keep the entire ration, that is. Some are reduced to selling part of it at the market.
 
Wahida and her sons load the goods onto a rusty car someone has lent them. One can sense the nostalgia in her face when the older woman remembers the times when Iraqis could enjoy the riches the oil brought.
 
‘Once upon a time’ children were given books at school, four million people had not yet fled the country and no one had to sell their jewels for a piece of meat or some antibiotics.
 
She waves wearily from the car as they bump off. ‘Once upon a time’, when there was life
. . .
 
 
One day a notice is pinned up on the board outside Uday’s office. Military parade in Mosul. At last we are permitted to leave Baghdad, with our guides of course, and in a group, and only as far as Mosul. The town lies in the north of the country, on the border of the autonomous Kurdish region. It is one of Iraq’s most important and oldest towns and is where muslin comes from I seem to remember having read somewhere. We skip about the Ministry of Information like little children, happy to be allowed out, to breathe some fresh air, see the country. I proudly tell Abdullah on reception that I won’t be back that night, I’m off to Mosul.
 
We dash up the motorway at 120km an hour, the radio on full blast, Aliya and the driver in the front, Janine and I in the back.
 
Janine is the prima donna of the Press Centre. She holds court in her tiny office, in Prada shoes and Ralph Lauren shirts. She is the most up to date concerning rumours and latest news. Something is always going on around her; she is quick-witted and generous with her ideas. She has covered conflicts and wars for fifteen years and won several awards in Great Britain for her reporting from the Middle East, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. She is one of the funniest of our lot and writes for
The Times
,
Vanity Fair
and
National Geographic
. When she’s not covering wars or writing books she moves in the elite circles of London and Paris.
 
Suddenly we spot a sign indicating that the road to Tikrit bears left ahead.
 
- Can’t we drop in and have a cup of tea. We need a break, we ask.
 
- Are you mad! Aliya shouts. - Our permission is for Mosul!
 
She frantically waves the stamped permission under our noses. She looks almost desperate, as though we might mutiny, take over and drive into Tikrit with her as hostage. But she need not fear; Heyad puts his foot down and whizzes past the exit. We in the back seat know who is in charge. Saddam can keep his hometown to himself.
 
The greater part of the road between Baghdad and Mosul passes through desert. Where are the fertile plains I had been reading about? The lush fields, watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, have throughout the centuries been celebrated for their succulent fruit - apples, pears, grapes and pomegranates. Now all that remains is barren sand.
 
But the desert also yields a different kind of harvest. From this area originates the very first descriptions of what was later to become both Iraq’s wealth and its curse: oil. People believed the brown liquid could heal and bathed in it when they were sick. The traveller Ibn Jubair wrote about the black gold in the 1100s:
 
To the right of the road to Mosul there is a depression in the ground. It is black, as though it lies under a cloud. From there God lets issue forth wells, both big and small, that throw up tar. From time to time one of them will throw out a large piece, as though it were boiling. Basins have been constructed to gather the pieces. Round about these wells is a black pool. The surface is covered by a thin layer of black foam, which floats to the edge and coagulates. It might be mistaken for mud; it is very sticky, smooth, shiny and has a strong smell. Thus we have, with our own eyes, witnessed a miracle. They tell us that they set light to the mud to extract tar. The flames devour the liquid and thereafter the tar is cut into suitable pieces and transported away. Allah creates what He wants. Praise be His name.
 
Scattered lights from Mosul twinkle at us. We are ravenous. But what we would really like is to have a beer, and are about to go looking for one. Heyad asks us not to, it is futile he says. And you girls on your own, it’s not safe. He refuses to leave his car, a dark green Chevrolet Caprice, with soft, beige interior. He wants to buy a new car, but we ask him to wait until after the war. He nods. That makes sense. - I might need my money for more useful things then, he says.
 
We wander from restaurant to restaurant and end up somewhere with blue fluorescent lighting and Formica tables.
 
The world’s press has made its way to the muslin town this evening, for the sole reason that we were given permission to come. Now we are gathered in the restaurants along Mosul’s night strip; our ladies’ team in one corner, a gentlemen’s team from
Le Figaro
and
Liberation
in the other. The neighbouring tables are all occupied by men. As in most Arab countries women are rarely seen out at night, unless there is an important occasion such as a wedding or a birthday. We are given a plastic saucer with chopped onion, another with tomato and parsley. Then we get a chicken each. The rumour about beer was exaggerated. Beverages are tea, lemonade and Pepsi.
 
Stuffed and dead tired we arrive at the hotel by midnight. The check-in procedure almost exceeds what the Ministry of Information could come up with. Endless questionnaires must be completed and an infinite number of enquiries answered before we can ascend the massive concrete steps to our rooms.
 
Only next morning do I look out of the window. The Tigris has followed me all the way from Baghdad. The view is like from al-Fanar, only here the river is wider and the landscape seems even flatter. The morning haze lies heavily over the river, thinning as it rises. The air is cooler than I have become used to. I shiver as I stand and hear the march participants streaming towards the main street. This parade has been arranged for volunteers to show that every single Iraqi will fight for Saddam Hussein. What more fitting a town than Mosul, a one-time remote outpost of the Assyrian empire, an 8,000-year-old urban community? The town is also the most ethnically mixed in Iraq; here Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Syrians, Turcoman, Assyrians, Jews, Muslims and Christians live cheek by jowl. Mosques and churches rub shoulders.

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