The workers try to turn the Ministry into a fortress, and the area facing the boulevard, where we have our communications equipment, grows increasingly smaller. The original walls on the first floor, constructed of glass and steel, are bricked up. The new façade does not touch the glass walls, but adds small rooms outside the glass. The workers spend hours shaping arches over the windows and rounding off corners. In spite of about fifty men being employed the work proceeds slowly.
- So the Minister of Construction is hedging his bets, I joke with Takhlef.
- Hedging his bets?
- Yes, against the war.
- Which war? Takhlef asks. - What do you mean?
- The bombs that will blow the windows in, of course.
Takhlef looks at me, shakes his head and says as he walks away: - They’re building offices for you - can’t you see. They’re building offices.
But even if Takhlef does not fear an attack, most of Baghdad’s inhabitants are busy preparing for one.
I return to one of the families I had visited with the child psychologists - the lawyer family Dhafer - to see how they are coping with preparations. Only the sons are at home. Outside the house lies a pile of planks.
- To nail over the windows in case of war, Ahmed explains. He is studying law at Baghdad University. - It depends on where the bombs fall, but it might help to stop the windows from shattering, he says.
Ahmed and his brothers walk to the back of the house, stride over the kitchen garden, past the tethered sheep, past the little well, down some steep steps into a tiny, smelly room. Bottles of water, blankets and mattresses are piled high. - We are safe here, no bombs can reach us.
The bomb shelter was built in the 1980s during the war against Iran. It was used in 1991, 1993 and 1998.
The law student makes it plain to us that the Americans will be breaking all known international rules if they go to war. - We are a peaceful people.
- But there will be war, his little brother Ali says resignedly. He has been taught at school how to defend himself. - If there are explosions you must throw yourself down on the floor. If there are chemical weapons you must hold something in front of your nose and mouth.
- And you must walk into the wind, the third brother Amar adds. - Not with the wind, but into it. Or maybe it was with it? he wonders.
- It depends on where the chemical explosion is, Ahmed says.
- Yes, and which direction the wind is blowing, Amar says.
- No one can overcome the wind, says Ali. - That’s an Iraqi expression, think about that.
It’s hard to work. It’s hard to find stories. As the limits are so strict, good ideas, ideas that could be carried through, are few and far between. It feels as though I am living in a bubble; the world I live in and the one I write about are totally separate. Only now and again do I find a tiny connection to the other world, to the Iraqis.
One day the calendar tells me that it is Valentine’s Day, and I remember Nabil’s invitation. My company consists of five Frenchmen. As we arrive, the bubble we are living in becomes even more impenetrable. The distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is total. The entire pink restaurant is covered in red balloons with the words ‘I love you’. Garlands in gold and silver stream from the roof. A dance band is engaged for the evening and plays everything from melting Arab Habibi-music to ‘Lady in Red’. The tables in the middle of the room are moved to the side, and Nabil has got an elegant dancefloor.
When we go in a rose is pushed into our hands, and we are shown to our table. The bubble moves across the room, leaving dirty footprints on the floor. We are incorrectly dressed: creased shirts, jeans, muddy trainers, no elaborate hairstyles.
The Iraqis are dressed to kill in shimmering creations and sparkling jewellery; all in gold, red gold. The women’s crowning glory has been sprayed stiff to last the night. We are at two different parties.
Sumptuous dishes are brought to the table to celebrate an American tradition. Neither I nor the French have any special relationship to the day, it is the same for the ordinary Iraqi, I imagine. But Nabil seems to have made a point of making it one of the country’s festivals. One of the Frenchmen outlines his project for the evening: to chat up one of the beautiful Iraqi women. But the dazzling ladies are well guarded by brothers and spouses.
- Unfortunately there is no champagne, he sighs. - That might have helped me on the way.
Suddenly I realise I have not danced for ages and I lure the lustful Frenchman onto the floor. The Arab-style pop resounds from the loud-speakers; I copy the ladies I have seen on the music videos and wriggle over the floor. Another couple joins us, then another. At the end of the first number the dancefloor is heaving.
The bubble has burst, at least for the moment. We dance together - square dances, belly dances, folk dances or to old Elvis numbers. Sweat pours off everybody, trainers gyrate among spangle-covered pumps. I feel accepted for the first time. People smile at me. But I know it is an illusion. In any other Arab country people would talk to us, maybe invite us home, advise us on which sights to visit. But in Iraq the foreigner represents danger. The situation’s absurdity hits me. It is 14 February. This very evening Hans Blix has presented his report to the UN Security Council, a report which left little doubt of the outcome.
On his side, Saddam Hussein is calling for holy war. In the mosques, during Friday prayer, a martyr’s death was upgraded. During his TV transmitted speech and clutching Ali’s sword, the mightiest Imam in Baghdad encouraged people to fight against and resist the invader. - I have never before heard the Imam in such a belligerent mood, one man said as he left the mosque.
We of the trainers, jeans, unkempt hair and notebook-in-back-pocket have come to Nabil’s to pass the time - waiting for war to start. The well-groomed and bejewelled tables next door wait too. For something to happen.
Nabil interrupts my thoughts. He presents his beautiful wife to me and presses her hand in mine. It is her and the baby twins that Nabil wants to get out in time. When is that? In time?
Close to one of the children’s hospitals, it is said that there is a children’s graveyard. No one knows exactly where, not Aliya, not the driver, nor any of our colleagues. After a month in Baghdad we have learnt that it does not pay to ask the Ministry of Information. The less they see of us the better. In spite of the strict rules preventing us from travelling anywhere without permission, the system is far from watertight. They quite simply do not have the resources to spy on everyone all the time.
We look in district after district. After several failed attempts, we finally walk in through the graveyard gate, there we find a man dressed in a worn blue overall, a Palestinian scarf rolled into a turban on his head.
The man carries the tiny bundle in one hand. He strides over the graves and mounds of earth. The bundle of white cloth is two-day-old Haidar.
The little boy had died that morning. - Blood poisoning, says the gravedigger. - His face is blue, his body is covered with lumps, he explains, folding the white cloth back for us to see. He covers it up quickly and lays the boy on a stone.
Haidar was delivered by his father to the gravedigger at the gate. - He had no money for either grave or ceremony and asked if we could take him anyway. We accept everyone here, we’ll be paid up there, he says and points. - We washed him and wrapped him in this cloth. But there’ll be no gravestone or plaque, Kadim says.
It is early morning. Seven children have already been buried today. - One was seven months old, another nine months. The others were a few years old, Kadim tells us. One of the children has a gravestone; a quotation from the Koran and a newly painted name in red and green stands out against the white stone.
- What did they die of?
- Not enough food, no medicine, then they get blood poisoning, Kadim says. That is what he calls the illnesses he can’t explain.
The digger prepares a hole in the ground for Haidar, between two other children.
The very smallest are buried here. - Every day w
e get between twenty and thirty children. A few years ago it was under ten a day, Kadim tells us. A handful are just delivered at the gate. The parents cannot afford a proper burial. The graves are never looked after, never visited.
Haidar’s father told the gravedigger that his wife was in a critical condition following the birth, and that he must hurry back to the hospital. Haidar was born two months early.
There has been a large increase in premature births in Iraq. Between 1990 and 1999 the number of children born with a below average weight has increased fivefold, which might imply that the mothers are also undernourished or malnourished. In the same period, the number of deaths during labour has doubled.
Primarily children have been affected by the decline in standards of living following the implementation of sanctions. The mortality rate among the smallest children has doubled in the last decade. Most children die of what would be run-of-the-mill illnesses in the West; two thirds die of diarrhoea or infections. An average Iraqi child suffers from diarrhoea fourteen days every month, as opposed to three days every month in 1990.
Following the UN Oil-for-Food programme which was put into effect in 1996, the statistics have levelled off and even show a slight improvement in children’s health. This is due to the monthly rations received by all Iraqis. But rations sometimes make matters worse. Mothers of very young children get free milk substitutes as part of their monthly package. Because of this, fewer women breast-feed, and others give up breastfeeding earlier than usual. The contaminated water supplies mean that this practice leads to more sick children.
Many fatal illnesses are caused by impure water. Before the Gulf War, Iraq had a modern water system, but lately the water quality has deteriorated drastically. Bad maintenance of water-works and purification plants, power cuts, lack of reserve parts and even chlorine have put many of them out of action. The generators at two of the three plants have stopped functioning owing to a shortfall of batteries and spare parts. There is fear of a catastrophic breakdown in water supply should the power plants be bombed. Many of the sewerage plants are not working. Half the purification plants in Baghdad, a city of five million inhabitants, are out of service. Half a million tons of raw sewage are emptied into the Tigris every day.
The gravedigger has finished. Haidar is laid down in the grave accompanied by a short prayer. Three bricks are put on top of him and the man throws earth over and treads it down. All that bears witness to the small child in the ground is the freshly dug, darker earth.
Kadim does not believe that Haidar’s father will return.
- Those who don’t have a burial place don’t usually return. After all, they don’t know where the children are buried. I’ll remember Haidar for a few days, but then new ones will be brought in and I’ll forget.
A little way off a man sits by a grave polishing the marble headstone. It is dominated by a large painting of purple lilies on one side and a quotation from the Koran on the other. Shehad: 1.7.95-3.2.99
- Leukaemia, says the father, who has put the rag aside and stopped polishing. Not a speck of dust remains on the shining white marble. - It is as if life stopped when she died. Our only child, and it doesn’t look as though we’ll have any more, he says sadly.
- She had blue marks all over her body, but the doctor said it was nothing. Then she became very ill, and we took her to hospital. There they gave her injections but she died after four days. Four days. They didn’t have the right medicines. My wife has been sick ever since, she only comes here on Fridays.
- Honey, he says. - Her name means honey. And she had honey-coloured hair and white skin. She was beautiful like a flower.
He leans back on the gravestone and lights a cigarette. He comes here every day and shares a few moments with his daughter.
A wind picks up. Further down the hill the packed earth whirls around. But Haidar is safe under three bricks.
For a long time I have wanted to visit Baghdad’s forbidden quarter - Saddam City; a place one should not talk about, not visit, and preferably forget the existence of. Each time we mention the place to the Ministry of Information they look at us and say: What do you want to do there? It’s just like every other place. No, keep to the centre of town.
When I ask Aliya she gives a start.
- Don’t ask me again, she says. - I do not want to go to Saddam City.
- Why not?
- We won’t get permission.
- We can ask.
- We won’t get permission.
- If we don’t ask we’ll never get permission.
- But I don’t want to.
What Aliya does not want she does not want. She denies that it has anything to do with it being a Shia area.
-There is no difference between Shia and Sunni. We are all the same.
There are fears that the whole area will rise up against the regime when the American attacks start, as they did during the Gulf War. Then the republican guard tried in vain to calm the inhabitants down. When the uprisings spread, Saddam’s son Qusay gave orders that unless the riots ceased in two hours, the entire neighbourhood would be attacked by missiles. The head of the Baath Party in Saddam City asked for twenty-four hours and got them. The riots were stopped.
- There is no difference, Aliya says sanctimoniously. And when I insist she hisses. - Must not talk about Sunni and Shia.
One evening when Amir, my regular driver, brings me home, he advises me against visiting Saddam City.
- They are dirty. Lazy. Not like us. They are uncivilised, look how they whip and beat themselves, he says, alluding to their religious rites. - They cause nothing but trouble.
I am surprised. It is forbidden to criticise the Shias openly. The oppression is supposed to occur in secret, preferably under cover of darkness, under the command of the mukhabarat, the dreaded intelligence service. Tens of thousands of Shias have disappeared, just for belonging to a mosque which the regime insists is plotting revolt.
On the surface everything is supposed to be quiet. That is a cardinal rule in Saddam Hussein’s kingdom.
- You can’t trust them; they smile in your face, but thrust the knife into your back when you turn around, Amir continues.
Amir is a large, huggable bear of a man. He is built like a boxer and has a liking for jeans and leather jackets. In spite of his tough appearance he isn’t a bully - his round face gives him away - he is a kind and conscientious driver. When he picks me up in the morning he always brings with him the Iraqi Times and the English version of Babel, the paper owned by Saddam’s son Uday. On trips out of town he brings a thermos with tea or coffee and cakes baked by his mother. Amir is thirty-five years old but still lives at home. His father is dead and Amir provides for the family. Normally he never speaks about politics so I am most surprised when he tells me the Shia Muslims are dirty. I let it lie. There isn’t much we can talk about anyway - his vocabulary is limited. But he improves every day. When he sits and waits for me in the car he learns new English words or tries to pick his way through the Iraqi Times. When he drives me through the deserted streets at night, on my way home from the Ministry of Information, he plays classical music before dropping me off and returning to his mother.
One day, however, I get the chance to visit Saddam City, not with Aliya but with Janine’s interpreter Hassan, himself a Shia. - But he never talks about it, Janine whispers.
Having crossed the river to Saddam City our first rendezvous is at the Baath Party offices. Foreigners need a special permit in order to visit the area, and two minders - one from the Ministry of Information and one from the local party office. Hassan and the local guide sit squeezed into the passenger seat in front, Janine and I spread ourselves over the back seat. There is no way the local guide wants to share the back seat with us.
A dried out canal-bed separates one world from the other. On one side Baghdad’s broad avenues, high-rise buildings and monuments. On the other a slum metropolis. Stinking sewage seeps between the market stalls. Children run barefoot over v
egetable refuse and decaying fish-tails. The canal dried up many years ago. Now it serves a different purpose - as a military site, it is rumoured. The canal will act as a trench - several defence posts have already been erected in the dry mud. Not to protect people from the Americans, but in order to protect one district from another.
Saddam City was built after the overthrow of King Faisal in 1958. Two years later the houses were ready, and the poorest citizens moved in. Out of Baghdad’s five million inhabitants, one and a half million live here. The palms are dead and the grass scorched. The ostracised of this world live in a slum that was named after Saddam following his visit here ten years ago.
We stop by the market. The first thing that strikes me is the number of flies everywhere.
Led by the two guides we start the first interview. The situation is unbearably meaningless.