- The enemy has been weakened, the anchorman says every evening. By now he is wearing the military-green Baath Party uniform. - We are triumphant on every front.
We never find out when or where these battles take place, how many are killed, or how far into the country the Americans have advanced. The broadcasts are coated with a thin skin of information and are otherwise pure propaganda. They are designed to make the man in the street feel that he is part of the struggle against the Americans. The front pages of the papers promise a handsome reward to anyone who strikes down the enemy. One hundred million dinars to anyone who brings down an aircraft, fifty million to anyone who hits a helicopter, the same if the pilot is captured alive. Only half if he is killed.
One day Saddam Hussein appears on TV again. The message is that the Americans are about to fall into a trap.
Many believe his words have come true when a ferocious sandstorm blows up that same afternoon, halting the advance on Baghdad. It turns out to be the worst sandstorm in forty years. The wind howls round street corners, whistles outside people’s doors and knocks over everything that is not fastened or bolted down.
- Allah has come to our rescue, the mosques resound. - He stopped the infidel with His power.
The desert storm bathes the town in a magical light. The squalls carry with them thin, yellowish sand dust from the south. It blends with the huge pillars of smoke that rise in a circle round the town. The lowering clouds, the smoke, the dust and the sand lie over the city like a lid.
One afternoon while we are waiting for al-Sahhaf, the heavy soup is being whirled around by strong gusts of wind. Through taped windows we see the palm trees swaying menacingly. Suddenly Kadim comes crashing in.
- Go to Shaab market, he calls. - The press conference is cancelled.
We run to the cars, fearing that he might change his mind and nail us to the hard chairs in the press room, and tear off north. The majority of Baghdad’s inhabitants have stayed indoors on this grim day and the few who are around huddle into their jackets and coats. A few empty crates bounce along the road.
It is midday but it is difficult to see. Above us the sky looms black with soot from oil fires and desert sand.
We stop by the market.
Charred buildings gape at us. Twisted car wrecks lie abandoned in the middle of the road. People are crying. Pools of blood have percolated through the layer of sand on the ground. With the help of eye-witnesses, neighbours and relatives I try to reconstruct what happened on this stormy Wednesday in March.
It is nearly midday. Zahra will be home soon. She and her family have decided to move back to the house in the Shaab district of Baghdad. In order to escape the bombs they have been living with relatives in a Baghdad suburb for a week. Now that the ground war is drawing near they feel it would be safer to live closer to the town centre.
Zahra sits at the back of the minibus holding the baby in her arms. With her are her husband, sisters, mother and three children. The bus stops and they get out.
A tanker is parked nearby. The driver wants to have his lunch in Restaurant Ristafa, one of the few to stay open. The premises are half-empty. A bunch of children play in the dust that covers the ground after the last days’ sandstorms.
Before the driver has made it across the street the bomb goes off. A missile hits the pavement close to the lorry. Flames shoot up. The driver and those standing close by are killed instantly. The air pressure causes Zahra’s entire family to fall to the ground.
Out of a house close by Muhammed comes running. He heard the noise and wants to see what happened. A further missile zips past, hits the ground and radiates deadly fragments in every direction. The twenty-two-year-old falls, screaming. One leg is a bloody pulp, the other peppered with metal. Around bodies fall to the ground from the air pressure, the shards, the shock. The tanker is blazing and twenty other cars catch fire. Anyone who was passing by when the missile hit perishes in their burning cars. The market shops lie in ruins and ten or so apartments are a total loss. Ristafa is crushed; those partaking of lunch are killed.
Screams rent the air. Blood runs into the sand on the street and pavements. Those who can, get up.
Zahra and her family lie still; they are all unconscious. Muhammed is on the ground bellowing with pain. By his side lies a man whose artery has been severed; blood pumps from his body. They are both conscious when the ambulance arrives.
About thirty wounded are brought to al-Zahrawi hospital close by. The man with the severed artery dies on the way. Those killed are taken to al-Kindi hospital from where their bodies are collected by their families to be buried the same day.
Torn off body parts are removed from the street. After a few hours only the blood in the sand remains.
Then the rain comes and the puddles are filled with blood. Burning oil wells, desert sand, soot and smoke descend as raindrops. Cars, houses, windows, faces - all are coated in yellow-brown spots. The rain draws the blood out from the sand and fills the puddles with red, muddy water.
Angry, frightened and soaked to the skin, people remain standing there. Their neighbourhood has been attacked.
- Bush said he would only attack military targets, but what is this? someone screams. - They want to destroy us, someone else calls out. - This is no military target. It is revenge for our advances on the battlefield. He should be ashamed of himself!
Zahra wakes up. She has shards of shrapnel all over her body and four broken ribs. Her daughter Aisha stands by her bed. Aisha’s hair is matted with mud but she is unhurt. She pats her mother’s shoulder, caresses her arm.
Zahra gives her daughter a faint smile. Her husband lies in the bed next to hers; he has wounds all over his body. Her younger sister is nearby. She has leg and chest wounds. Grandmother lies by the wall. Her ear was ripped off and she wears a bloody bandage round her head.
- Where is Hamudi? Aisha asks.
- Hamudi is at home. He’s alright, Zahra says. She has just been told what happened and that ten-year-old Hamudi and the baby escaped injury. Her tears flow.
- Three babies have been seriously wounded; one has deep cuts in its head, the other was hit by shrapnel. A tiny baby whose mother lost hold of it in the blast was thrown against a wall and is seriously wounded, Doctor Sermed al-Gailani says. He is treating the first patients following the missile attack.
- Awful, the doctor sighs. - These are innocent people and did not deserve this. But such is war. More will be killed, more will be wounded. To believe anything else would be to deceive oneself. This will be far worse than anything we have previously seen, he says quietly.
The sandstorm continues to rage on outside the hospital walls. Darkness falls; people disappear indoors and only the charred cars remain. The boom of bombs falling on the outskirts of Baghdad is audible. The war carries on while the blood in the puddles is washed away by the rainwater.
It is pitch black when we return to the hotel. We hear explosions but do not know where the bombs hit. There are hardly any cars on the road. If I were to imagine the Day of Judgement this would be it: violent storms, drifting sand, smoke blotting out the sun, blended with screams, blood and severed limbs.
Drenched and covered in mud I reach my room.
I turn on the computer to write. An email from the Politiken’s foreign editor appears on the screen. Subject: Advice.
Dear Åsne,
Hope all is well, appalling about the bombing at the market today.
I would just like to give you a word of advice in this time. Make sure your bed and desk are away from the window so you will not be exposed to broken glass if your windows blow apart during bombardments - after all, they happen at night when one is sleeping.
Put a glass of water on the windowsill. When the water moves it might mean that a plane is approaching.
Make sure you soften the mental strain by getting enough sleep and reading about things other than war and Iraq. - I would suggest Barbara Cartland (however, if you make your face up the way she doe
s your TV career is over, so look out). Your thoughts must be clear and precise.
Always carry the protection gear and mask, you might find you need them very suddenly - the danger of being overcome by chemical weapons is more severe when the wind is blowing away from the American positions and in towards Baghdad, but just be careful about everything.
Best wishes,
Michael
The desk is bolted to the wall and cannot be moved; the bed is already some distance from the window. Barbara Cartland is nowhere to be found, nor her make-up box. The advice about enough sleep and minimising mental strain comes from another world. The protection gear and mask are by the bed but I don’t have the strength to carry them with me everywhere. I hope I am acting upon the advice about keeping my thoughts clear; in fact I make myself believe that my thoughts are crystal clear. The strain invigorates me, I am super-concentrated. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, yet I’m working twenty hours a day. I don’t feel myself; I’m writing, reporting, recounting. I am aware of everything, don’t trouble yourself, dear editor.
Amir has a friend called Abbas. He looks like a beach bum: sleek brushed-back hair, tight jeans, cap and colourful T-shirt. Like Amir, Abbas drives for foreign journalists. In contrast to Amir, Abbas is quick and fearless, at least that is what he says. While Amir never utters a word against the regime, Abbas is more outspoken.
- We live in a prison, he will say to someone he trusts. - We are being slowly suffocated.
Abbas looks back with nostalgia to the years when he could travel, had money and lived the good life. - This life is the dregs.
But Abbas is not one to mope. He is full of good humour and his one care in life seems to be how to keep the various girlfriends from each other and not least from his wife. He describes in detail how he gives one presents, invites another to the park, disentangles birthdays, and during missile attacks attempts to render a little extra solicitude to all.
- But not in the western way, he insists, as if it is clear to all what ‘the western way’ is. - I just give presents and maybe we kiss. They’re not really girlfriends, but friends.
I envy Pascal, who is working with Abbas. He does what few drivers do - he supplies Pascal with stories.
One afternoon Pascal knocks excitedly on my door.
- I have come across a deserter, he says when he is well inside.
Abbas had taken him to his relatives’ house. They were talking about this and that, food supplies, targets bombed, the weather. A young man entered the room and sat down. Pascal asked him where he was from.
- Hillah, he answered.
- Hillah? What was the fighting like there?
- We had no chance. We had no will. I left.
- Left?
- I ran. No one fired, no one pursued me. Here I am.
- He has deserted, Abbas explained. - Deserted!
Pascal has a scoop. No one else has met a deserter; most of us have hardly met anyone at all. We are limited to controlled interviews with tea vendors and tea drinkers, battery vendors and battery buyers, people in bread queues, people who sell bread. It is all the same - Baghdad on the surface. A surface that keeps its secrets.
One evening Pascal tells me Abbas’ story.
- He used to be high up in military intelligence. He worked for the regime, but increasingly had doubts about it. He kept his thoughts to himself, but as he saw through the cruel oppression, he started to talk to his nearest and dearest. One of his girlfriends worked in the same office. After a while he got tired of her and wanted to get out of the relationship. She begged for just one more night. The next morning he was arrested. She had placed a microphone in the bed. The girlfriend had tried to get him to criticise the regime, and in spite of not having said much he was imprisoned for four years. Had he been more talkative that evening he would not be here now. When he got out he had lost his job in intelligence. He started driving. But no one must know this, not until Saddam has gone; not even Amir.
One day Pascal lends me Abbas because Amir is visiting his family. I find him crying in the car. Suspecting the worst, I get in. Has someone in his family been struck by the night’s bombs?
- My best friend returned from the front in Najaf yesterday, Abbas sobs. - Dead. We buried him yesterday afternoon. He left a wife and three small children.
Hamid was the commander of a detachment at the Najaf front, 200 kilometres south of Baghdad. Abbas knew nothing about how his friend was killed, just that he had met death in the desert.
- He was like a brother to me. We grew up in the same street, did everything together. We got drafted to the military together, served together. Now he’s gone, Abbas cries.
- Hamid is already a martyr, he says bitterly. - I might be the next one.
- You?
- If the Americans come, I’ll fight too. I’ll never ever let them take Baghdad. Pascal will have to find himself another driver.
The previous day Amir had told me: - If the Americans attack Baghdad I can no longer drive for you.
- OK, I said, thinking he would be hiding in his mother’s house.
- If they do I must defend my country. My brother has already enlisted and this afternoon I’m going to the Baath Party to collect a weapon.
- You must do what you have to do, I answered.
- They said their targets would be military. Since when was a pregnant woman a military target?
An increasing number of Iraqis talk about taking up arms should the Americans capture the town. The propaganda is doing its work: it is the duty of every citizen to fight for their fatherland. But is that the reason for Abbas’ and Amir’s sudden patriotism? Or has the press centre ordered all drivers to tell us they desire martyrdom? Is Kadim behind it all?
Knowing what Pascal told me about Abbas, I find it difficult to picture him fighting for Saddam.
I have never liked the Ministry of Information; now I hate it. I loathe walking into the building, or up onto the roof to send my TV reports. Invariably the recordings are interrupted by planes overhead. Then we rush down the stairs and stand waiting in the car park until the planes disappear. As if that were safer. When I use my phone I keep to the edge of the car park, as far from the buildings as possible, but within the official area, in order not to break the rules. TV transmissions are made in the daytime as no one wants to remain near one of the Americans’ main targets in the evening.
Despite my dislike of the Ministry, I am obliged to come. The press briefings take place here; the compulsory bus trips depart from here. One day we are gathered for a briefing on the first floor, we hear the sound of low-flying planes. A huge boom reverberates close by. Broken glass tinkles, followed by a screech and yet another boom. People plunge headlong out of the building, certain that another missile will strike at any moment. As usual I have set up my phone outside and the thought rushes through my head: Do I leave it?
No, I can’t leave my phone. As people run past me I hastily pack the cables, the phone and the aerial. The planes whine above us, we can hear the bombs dropping. I close the equipment bag and make a dash for it.
Amir is waiting with the engine running; Aliya is already in the car. I throw the phone into the boot. Amir puts his foot down and we are off, away, away from this awful place where bombs fall one after the other. I decide never to return as long as the war goes on.
That evening the Americans drop a large bomb on the Ministry. The anti-aircraft defences on the roof and the minister’s office are both hit. The top floors catch fire. According to rumours, al-Sahhaf himself was in his office when the attacks started. He got out unscathed but fear got hold of him. Next morning a notice proclaims that the press centre has moved - to the Hotel Palestine. From now on we will be able to use our satellite telephones from our own rooms. What a relief! No more rising at the crack of dawn, connecting the phone in the dusty car park, transmitting outdoors. No more playing the hero during live broadcasts, scouting for approaching planes.
Uday, Kadim and Mohsen move into
the empty offices of Iraqi Airways. Three gruff men sit outside at a table bearing a piece of cardboard with the words Press Centre, and an image of a hand pointing towards the door at the back. The men fiddle with long lists in Arabic, drink tea and smoke. God knows what is on their lists.