- Is it something I’ve done? Or not done? Is it because I don’t show up for the bus tours? Because I don’t come to all the press conferences?
- You must leave.
- Can we come to an arrangement, like before?
Kadim shoos me out of his office. - You must leave tomorrow morning.
- Tomorrow morning? Please give me one more day so I can get hold of a driver and pay my bills.
- OK.
I have one day’s grace to wriggle out of this.
What is it all about? Is he just flexing his muscles now that we no longer need him; there are no interviews to apply for, no wish to travel anywhere. The Ministry of Information has had its day, so now it’s trying to cash in on us, I think. I ask Aliya for her opinion.
She says: - Whatever happens, hide behind my back. When the Americans come I will hide behind yours.
Unexpectedly, the situation changes to my advantage. The words ‘Expulsion postponed’ suddenly appear on a scrap of paper. Is this the first sign that the press centre is about to unravel? One bureaucrat has no idea what the other is doing. Is the Ministry on shaky ground?
To all intents and purposes the press centre continues to exercise control over us. We are obliged to ask permission for even the smallest detail, and it is increasingly difficult to go anywhere without a minder. Not that I want to go out alone; Aliya provides some kind of safety, after all. Every day we are hounded around on to the buses, out sightseeing. I play truant.
We listen for hours on end to the Information Minister’s talks about Iraqi strength and American cowardice. One day he speaks about pillaging by the British soldiers.
- In Basra they stole milk powder and infants’ milk from the shops, he says.
Concealed smiles all around the room.
As always, Aliya takes notes.
- Do you really think British soldiers robbed the shops of baby milk? I ask her afterwards.
- Of course.
- But what would they do with all that milk?
- For their tea.
As long as I have known Aliya she has trusted implicitly in the Information Minister. Studiously she writes down the number of enemy tanks and helicopters captured and destroyed by the heroic Iraqi forces, including the number of cowardly American soldiers killed.
She might be a loyal supporter of the regime but she is also one of the bravest interpreters. I am lucky to have her. When the bombing started most interpreters just evaporated. They quite simply did not turn up. Aliya chose to stay with me, in spite of the fact that it became increasingly difficult for her to negotiate her way through bombed-out Baghdad to see her family. She takes me to places no one dares visit, finds food when every shop is closed, accompanies me when most people stay at home.
As the invasion forces close in on Baghdad the city’s inhabitants entertain a frustrating mix of fear, anticipation and rumours. They try to get up-to-date news through a profusion of channels, but the reports are contradictory. Someone has heard something from a cousin en route from Damascus. Someone else has been informed by a relative in Mosul. A third has been listening to the BBC in Arabic. A fourth has been watching Iraqi television for hours on end. A fifth has been listening to Iranian radio, a sixth to the Voice of America. The seventh person mixes it all up in his head in one confusing porridge.
To gauge what is really going on is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces originate from different boxes and several are missing.
I have been nagging Aliya for some time to take me to visit a normal family.
- No one dares have anything to do with foreigners, she says.
- I would love to know what the ordinary Iraqi is thinking at the moment. Do they know that the Americans are about to take their city?
- But they’re not, Aliya objects.
- I’m interested in what the people of Baghdad think.
- You can ask me.
- Yes, Aliya, but I can’t write about you. We work together. We try to find stories together. Uncover things, OK?
The next day Aliya has found me a family, a family from her own neighbourhood. They live a short way from her own street - this way her neighbours will not talk. And if we are stopped by the police we have to say that we are just visiting her family.
Hanan sits with her children in the living room. It is light and modern. The interior is pastel coloured, the ornaments of glass. On the wall hangs a faded copy of the Mona Lisa. No one knows what to believe about the war.
- I cannot believe that they are only a few kilometres away from Baghdad. That’s just propaganda. They’re not even holding a single village. They’re just rushing around the desert and shooting from time to time, says teenager Isam, a car mechanic. He listens to national and international radio broadcasts but has taken his stand - trusting in the Iraqi media. This gives confidence to most Iraqis: a tiny assurance in everyday life; a feeling that the Americans won’t take Baghdad.
His sister Reem has not adopted the same viewpoint.
- I hear the Americans have surrounded Karbala. But I don’t know whether it’s true and I don’t think they have taken Basra, says the twenty-year-old, who is studying mathematics at Baghdad University.
- Iraqi forces confuse them and they are forced back through the desert, her older sister Huda says, an engineering student.
Hanan does not know what to believe.
- The last I heard from the BBC was that they had crossed the red line. But what is the red line? she asks.
- I think it’s thirty kilometres from Baghdad, her daughter answers. - Iraq has warned them not to cross this line and that if they do we’ll teach them a lesson. She mimics official propaganda-speak, like Iraqis do when they are unsure of what to say.
- Oh dear, I’m so confused, says Reem. - Everyone says something different all the time.
She sighs. Mona Lisa smiles her inscrutable smile from her plastic frame on the wall.
Reem and Hanan have both attended a university-sponsored defence course. They have learnt self-defence and how to use a Kalashnikov. But they have no plans to join the fighting should the ground forces invade Baghdad.
- We’ll just sit and wait, says Reem.
- We have nowhere to go; the war will pursue us wherever we are, so we might as well stay at home.
But in the bedrooms their bags are packed with personal items, some clothes, a small soap, a roll of paper and a few treasured items.
- Just in case, says the mother. - Just in case we have to leave.
The family belongs to Baghdad’s shrinking middle class and so far has not had problems procuring food, water and fuel. One room is stacked high with food, paraffin, oil, washing-powder and soap. - We can cope for many months yet.
It is not hunger the little family is fighting, but boredom. They dare not leave their district, school is closed, university is closed, shops are open for just a few hours every day.
- It’s as though life has stopped, Reem sighs. - We just sit here. Waiting. I have hardly any contact with my friends. I miss university. But I haven’t got the strength to look at my textbooks, they make me sad.
The telephone rings. In spite of the bombing, telephones still work in certain areas. Reem gets up, and returns sadder than ever. - It was Jenin. They’re going. Her father wants to take them to some relatives in the country. They have packed and are only waiting for their uncle to come and get them.
The mother and sister listen stiffly as Reem recounts the conversation. No one says anything when she has finished.
- The Gulf War was worse, the mother says in the end. Or rather, the bombing was worse. Then we lost water and electricity on the first day. Day to day life was more difficult.
She also thinks she knows why they have not bombed the water and electricity plants.
- It’s thanks to the human shields who have flocked to Iraq. They protect the buildings with their bodies, says Hanan.
Thus a new piece of the tangled information puzzle is in place.
From yet another box.
- He can see the lights from Baghdad!
Remy is excited. He has just been talking to his good friend Laurent via the satellite telephone. Laurent is travelling with one of the American units and has been south of Baghdad for a few days. Remy has only now been able to get in touch with him.
- He thinks they are moving again tomorrow. Let’s hope so.
While Remy looks forward to the ground war, I dread it. Remy lives life to the full when it is exploding around him. He would not admit it, but he enjoys war. He loves danger. Between wars he wanders melancholically around Paris; he lives in bars at night and sleeps during the day. Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan: that is Remy’s life. Now he is getting bored in Baghdad.
- I should go out to them, he says.
- Are you mad? Cross the front? You might as well commit suicide here and now.
The following evening I phone Laurent myself to hear where he is.
- We are standing by a bridge outside Baghdad, but as I don’t have a proper map I don’t know which one. Have you got a shower when I arrive? I haven’t washed in two weeks.
I do not have the heart to tell him the hotel is without water. Laurent has been accompanying a unit from Kuwait; he joined them the day I arrived in Baghdad. Now, three weeks on, he has some gruesome stories to tell.
- They are petrified and shoot before they think. One day they killed two little boys who were walking on the roadside. Suddenly they were lying on the ground. One time an old man was crossing the road. The Americans shot a warning shot but he did not react. They shot again but he continued to walk on. Then they picked him off and just left him lying in the road. When we arrive at a village they shoot in the air to warn people, a sign that they must go inside. If people don’t react they shoot to kill. One day when we approached a village we spied several men standing next to a cluster of houses. American logic runs along the lines: ‘If we shoot and they run, they are civilians.’ So if they don’t hide they are soldiers. Hence they shot and killed a woman in a field on the outskirts of the village. Everyone ran for cover. In other words: They were civilians. The Americans claim that fewer people are killed in this way. It is better to kill someone at once, in order to make people understand that they must stay inside, than to drive through an unknown village where someone might be a suicide bomber.
Laurent is sitting on the edge of the camp talking into his Thuraya. His unit might get the order to attack at any moment. He says he has learnt a lot about the strategy of the invading force.
- The American battle thesis is: 1. Protect yourselves. 2. Win the war. Their fear makes them dangerous. Today they shot at a father who was leading his son and daughter by the hand. The father was not hit but both the children were mortally wounded. The Americans just wanted to drive on, but I couldn’t take it any longer. I screamed at the driver. - What the hell! You can’t just drive on and let them bleed to death. I was so angry he had to stop. I got one of the cars to turn round and we drove them to a field hospital. I don’t know any more - we had to leave. I’m quite sure the little girl died, she had lost so much blood, was nearly unconscious when we got there.
Laurent sighs. The telephone line is silent.
- They cry at night.
- Who?
- The soldiers. I’m sure lots of them will have problems. Only a few do the actual shooting. As though they enjoy it. No one is punished. I have never before seen such trigger-happy soldiers, Laurent says. He has covered wars all over the world for the last twenty years. A bullet smashed his knee in Gaza a few years back and has left him with a limp. His trip to Iraq is the first one since the accident.
- I’m looking forward to the shower, Laurent says on a lighter note, to conclude the conversation. - And a glass.
Yves reaches Baghdad before him. A man with a long beard and wearing the dirtiest of clothes enters the reception area. I walk straight past him when he grabs my arm.
- Mademoiselle, he says, and laughs. Do you remember me?
Of course I remember Yves. He was one of the funniest people I met in Afghanistan. Meek as a lamb and with a ringing laugh. It was impossible not to laugh with him. His big passion was weapons. He knew the names of the weapons systems of all the world’s armies. It gave him great pleasure to discover the weapon and calibre used, according to sound, smell and strength. He travels the world reporting for the French weapons magazine Raids.
In Afghanistan I most remember him for the heart-rending conversations he held with his mother. He had no satellite telephone; he just travelled around with a laptop and wrote down everything when he got home. So he would borrow my phone.
- Maman! C’est moi. I’m alive. All is well. Really. Don’t be frightened, Maman. All is fine. Oh, Maman, don’t cry, oh. Your birthday? No, I didn’t forget it, but I’m in the mountains in Afghanistan, they don’t have telephones. Now? I’ve borrowed one. I’ll phone tomorrow. It’s expensive, Maman. I’m just borrowing one. I must put the phone down. Oui, Maman, I’ll be home soon.
Now here he is, in reception.
- I’ve driven from Kuwait, he says.
- From Kuwait? Through the front?
- It appears so. I lost sight of my unit; suddenly I was ahead of them.
He had driven his own car in tandem with the American forces. When he lost them he was arrested by the Iraqi police and brought to Hotel Palestine. Here Uday took care of him. He confiscated his car keys, laptop, camera and passport and placed him under house arrest. Yves was given a room and strict instructions not to leave the hotel.
When I meet him in reception his clothes are hanging in shreds, they look as though they have been rolled in sand and then in oil.
- Do you know where I can get my clothes washed? he asks.
Washed? The hotel is without water. My water bottles wouldn’t tackle that much dirt.
I spot the solution a few yards away. Amir. He is the same size as Yves. His mother has packed him off with masses of clothes, like Yves’ mother would like to have done. I ask if he can spare a few pieces for Yves. He can, and soon Yves is sitting in my room, washed and delighted in Amir’s clothes.
- Do you have vodka?
Yves empties his glass and starts to talk. About the journey, the Americans, how he got lost. In the Dora area, on the outskirts of Baghdad. The Americans rolled in with their columns of tanks. The Iraqis replied with artillery from positions by the road side. The Iraqis managed to hit an Abrams, one of the enormous American tanks, with a rocket-propelled grenade. It stopped completely and the soldiers inside sought refuge in another tank. One soldier was killed, two injured.
- The smoke lay black all over the area, from the burning Abrams and the Iraqi tank. The column turned and that’s when I got lost and found myself in Baghdad. But can you imagine, an Abrams. They left it! Never in the history of America, in the history of the American army, has an Abrams been left behind during a battle. Never!
When the Americans pulled out they bombed the tanks. No one will be able to pick over the remains. Yves has fallen silent. He drains another glass.
- This is the worst sort of warfare I have ever witnessed. Those columns are columns from hell. Every unit advances accompanied by about fifty vehicles. First the Abrams, then the Bradleys and the Amtracks for the troops, then the Miclick mine-detectors, and lastly a Humvee equipped with a loud-speaker telling people to stay inside. This column shoots at anything that moves. They don’t even wait for orders. There is obviously no punishment or sanction for killing civilians. That might have made them think and not act like cowboys. I’ve even seen them shoot cows. They love firing away with 25mm cannonballs at portraits of Saddam Hussein. They’re still taking revenge for 9/11. They talk a lot about that, but there’s no shooting discipline, it’s up to themselves, boys of twenty. I don’t blame them; I would have done the same when I was twenty.
Actually, Yves did exactly the same when he was twenty. He was a mercenary in the South African army and fought on the side of
apartheid. But Yves has come to terms with his past.
- They are frightened, and suffering losses makes them more frightened. That spurs them on. It’s their commanders who are responsible, Yves sighs. - It was awful when we got to Mahmudiya, a village south of Baghdad. The Americans attacked the village because air surveillance showed that several tanks were hidden there. According to the villagers, more than two hundred people were killed. Of course the Iraqis shouldn’t have put tanks in the midst of civilians, but still. The Americans were taking no chances and shot wildly into the village to try and destroy it. Between Mahmudiya and Baghdad I saw many wrecked cars with all the passengers dead. I saw them shoot through the open window of a house.
- They’re forgetting one thing, Yves says, looking out through the taped balcony door. - The battle for hearts. He empties his glass. - That too must be won.