Baghdad Diaries Read online

  They say the Americans are in Nasiriya. Will they come to Baghdad? Like my dream, will they come marching down Haifa Street?

  3 March 1991

  The war has been over for some days. I lost count but for the diary which says that it lasted forty-two days. I’m sure they ended the war when they did because of the ‘turkey shoot’ outside Kuwait. Too much gore even for the eyes of television viewers and bad publicity for the Allies.

  Today, Schwarzkopf met with whoever we sent as representatives, and we agreed to everything. After all the hyperbole that they used against us, the Americans are now simply sitting in Nasiriya and checking people’s IDs. Meanwhile our national radio continues to broadcast our victorious state, it’s utterly disgusting. Their line is that we fought against thirty-two nations and are still here, which is true – until one looks at the condition we’re in. We are an occupied nation.

  Stories of returning soldiers are endless, even the high-ranking officers are walking back from the south; total breakdown of the system. It apparently takes a week to ten days to walk the distance from Kuwait to Baghdad, all the time dodging Allied planes; the Jaguars in particular keep trying to pick off the stragglers. Who flies Jaguars other than the Brits? And they call themselves civilized, hitting at retreating and unarmed soldiers. All the wounded who could not run away fast enough got killed. The others walk with no food, no water, and simply collapse in heaps when they arrive at their houses. The whole army is in retreat and no one seems to be in command.

  Stories of counterfeit money thrown from helicopters are rife in the south – presumably another way to destabilize us.

  7 March

  For the first time, I think there is no hope left. Life is going from bad to worse with no relief in sight. We had such a storm yesterday – wind, black sky, rain, then an orange-coloured sandstorm, then rain again, and howling wind. Two palm trees came down in Needles’ orchard. They crashed on our fence, bringing it down. Now it’s an easy walkover for the packs of dogs. We have killed six dogs so far, and buried them in the orchard. Now it’s forbidden to use firearms, not allowed to fire a single bullet, so we have to wait for the next killings. I hate doing this, but I can’t have these wild packs roaming through the garden and orchards. They’re dangerous and destructive.

  Sections of Baghdad already have electricity. Some say we will get it tomorrow. I don’t believe it. It apparently comes for a day and then goes off. I’m sure they are trundling the same generator round to different parts of Baghdad to give everybody a taste of electricity. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to switch a light on.

  Rumour has it that Basra has fallen again. It seems Iranians are in there fighting, swarthy guys in sharwals* Too many rumours not to believe there is some truth in them.

  8 March

  Just returned from a yummy lunch of smoked salmon. You might well ask from where? Lubna gave me some before the war, and I stored it with Abbas who had a generator. Withdrew it today, and ate it at Dhafir and Mutaza’s. They had electricity and I consumed my first bit of ice in ages. Mutaza says that electricity shows up the dirt in your house. Ever since hers came on, she has been cleaning like a demented woman. I dread to think what my house is going to look like, all that soot from the chimney must have left a thick film on everything. Better to stay in the dark. I kept the shutters down throughout to protect the windows, so it was dark even during the day.

  9 March

  I had a nightmare last night. I was holding a little carving, a beautiful white Sumerian head with ruby eyes. Someone, an Iraqi, maybe Fulayih, broke it while trying to pierce it – I think he was trying to turn it into a bead. Then Fulayih’s father comes into the kitchen and I tell him about my dream. He throws up on the table. I rush out crying, to find a mass of dogs in the orchard, but am too sad to shoo them away.

  I hope everyone who had a hand in this disastrous mess falls into the burning oilwells. How can one live with so much hypocrisy?

  The Soviets say that they never expected us to go to war with the USA and so did not give us their latest and best equipment, only what was adequate to fight with our Third World neighbours. I wonder if that was the truth or just a cover-up, an excuse for their inferior weaponry.

  10 March

  It is 10.30 at night and I have five candles burning in my room. What an extravagance. Hopefully we’ll be getting electricity soon. Life is becoming boring. Before we at least had the excitement of the air raids and the bombing fireworks. Now there is silence and a humdrum existence. By the time one has filled up the bottle candles with kerosene, cleaned the lamps and the grate, picked up the day’s fallen oranges in the orchard, swept and cleaned the house, gathered firewood, and thrown a few stones at roaming dogs, the day is over. I sold 52 kilos of oranges today for 1162 dinars.

  There is no petrol, no electricity, no running water and no telephone.

  Hala was very funny today, ranting and raving about how she has missed out on life, no future, to die a virgin ... yelling hysterically at her mother, ‘At least you have your husband to sleep with!’ Nothing but bleakness looms ahead, certainly not a fancy love life. In the streets one sees lots of men but our houses are full of women. There are so few men in our lives.

  I have been saying all along that Bush and Saddam are alike. They both carried out their threats. They bombed and we burned. Now Bush is also handing out medals; soon he will be giving away cars as presents. His speeches are now studded with heavy, sycophantic clapping. History, I think, will not see Bush as a hero but as a destroyer. We are a Third World country, well known for not having too much common sense. Why could he not have negotiated a peace instead of an annihilation? Just look at what has been done to the environment.

  11 March

  Talk about being buried alive. We may as well not exist. Nobody talks to us. No news about us. Only rumours thrive.

  My first iris opened today.

  Ma and Needles got their windows repaired; 305 dinars to replace three bloody bits of glass, a shattering expense – pun intended. Poor Amal paid thousands of dinars to replace the glass in her house and shop. Maybe we should send the repair bills to the US president who ‘has no fight with the Iraqi people’.

  Riding my bike back tonight from dinner at Suha’s, the streets were black and empty. No moon; silence but for the drone of a few generators.

  12 March

  They say there are tanks placed between the houses in Nasiriya, bulldozing people and everything in sight. Sounds like civil war. Ma and Najul had made a pact that if things remained the same after the end of the war, they would commit suicide together. They have now changed their minds. They say it’s not worth it.

  Sheikha said that the Western media exaggerated and fantasized us to be this great and mighty power, the fourth largest army in the world, and that we actually believed it. We went into the war convinced and certain about the strength of our glorious army, that conclusion based only on Western propaganda. We fell for their line, how stupid can we get? Sheikha says that it’s because we instantly believe compliments, it’s one of our major weaknesses as a people.

  Many macabre and funny stories going around town. One about a taxi-driver coming back from the front with a dead soldier’s coffin strapped on top of his car. He was searching for the poor bugger’s parents and went into a house to ask the way; comes out to find his taxi and the coffin gone. There are no police to complain to. Another story is about a government truck selling gas canisters in the street; when they’d all been sold and the driver was ready to move off, he discovered there was no petrol in the car. It had all been siphoned out. Thievery is the order of the day. Sheikha says that the only thing the West knows about us is the fable of The Thief of Baghdad. Maybe there is some truth to that story.

  Nofa has accumulated over 100 empty gas canisters in her garage because someone promised her a lorryload of full ones. In the meantime, the boys in the neighbourhood are extracting a sort of petrol out of the gas dregs at the bottom. Every five gas c
anisters produces about a litre of this ‘petrol’. Smart alecks who do not mind ruining their cars are using it. It has left a reeking smell in the garage which has lasted for days, and it is driving Asam crazy. The lorry has not materialized.

  Went to my grocery shop today to pick up rations for the month. Tahsin, the shopkeeper, told me that he had heard me talk on the BBC. He asked me what it was like outside, in the UK. I couldn’t think of much to say except that it rains so much there that your bones get wet. He thought a minute and then said, ‘I guess every place has its pros and cons.’ A sweet chap. His mother Khairiya, a lovely, smiling lady, took literacy classes and came first, but now she says that she can’t read a thing. She forgot it all – she failed in religion. She wants to start classes again after the war. Ma’s and Needles’ maid also had to take those classes, but after three years she was unable to read even bus numbers. Even so, those literacy classes did teach.

  Munir crashed into a pole while on his bike and smashed his face and nose.

  13 March

  We had the black clouds with us again today and it rained. What are we breathing? All our houses are streaked with huge black drips, dripping from the parapets of the roofs. It’s the new fringed look. We might start a fashionable trend in external house patterning.

  No changes in our lives. Only rumours, which one can take or leave.

  Abu Ali came today and we decided to build the tanoor* that I’d bought. He encased it in mud and plastered it with plaster that we found in the garage. The top surface was finished with turquoise tiles from Karbala and the sides were decorated with some old glazed tiles which Ma had bought. One was from Karbala, another from Kufa, two from Hamza and one from Abu Hanifa – a real cross-section of sects – a holy tanoor. We smoked it carefully the first day, firing it slowly so that it would not crack. An old dustbin lid works well as a cover. It looks lovely. As of tomorrow we can cook bread and cakes in our own tanoor.

  14 March

  What a way to raid a country! Apparently we denuded Kuwait of everything plus the kitchen sink. Aeroplanes, buses, traffic lights, appliances, everything. Shops all over the country are full of their consumer goods. Imagine!

  We know, and learn nothing new about our situation.

  We may have petrol by Sunday. Bush says he’s worried about the mess we’re in – how decent of him.

  I wish I’d kept a diary in the six months before the war started when we had that endless array of dignitaries coming to visit, starting with Waldheim and ending with de Cuellar. Then there was always hope. Now, nine months later, we’re a beaten nation. We are told to rebel by the West, with what and how? I must do something or go mad. Build a swimming pool?

  16 March

  Yesterday Suha got electricity. M.A.W. passed by and said they were all meeting there, including N. Imagine seeing N. as the first face with electricity. I chose not to. Instead, M.A.W. came here and we played cards. He’s always complaining that I cheat because I peer into his hands. What difference does that make when I can never remember what I’ve seen anyway? He still holds out his cards right in front of my face. He can’t see too well by candle and lamplight – not my fault.

  More irises are out.

  It was deadly quiet during the day because the security forces were out checking for arms in houses in the Grey’ at area near us. They searched Khalil’s and Amal’s houses. They took away Khalil’s typewriter even though he has permission for it. I wonder if I should hide mine? He was very upset with the officers because they fingered everything, including his wife’s underwear. I asked him how he could have eaten his favourite pet cockerel, and told him that I thought it was cannibalistic. He said that he’d been feeling so guilty about the whole episode that he’d been having disturbed dreams about him for days.

  17 March

  The stories are getting more grotesque. Kufa, Kirkuk and Basra – bodies and bodies lying everywhere. In Kufa it seems they have pillaged the university buildings and burned papers and documents in the library.

  18 March

  I had an endless stream of visitors today at the studio, Assia and Suha included. The bombing had been so bad near them that they spent the entire time on the floor of the laundry room, all piled up together, sharing the space with a large rat who delivered a litter in the midst of them, so she says. It was the only room in the house that didn’t have outside windows and they felt safe there. All their windows went, all that expanse alongside the river across from the Dora refinery. Said S. also came by, riding on his bike dressed in an impeccable white linen suit with a bottle of lemon juice in one pocket, a bottle of vodka and a glass in the other. An eccentric sight in Baghdad. He gave us a good explanation of why one has to keep fridge and freezer doors shut. If the doors are left open, the seal dries and cracks and can no longer function properly. Whether the appliance is off or on is immaterial.

  The Mansur gang have run out of petrol, that is why we haven’t seen them for a week. We were worried enough to go for a visit. Lubna regaled us with many stories about robberies in their area, apparently the hot favourites are now chandeliers. Does someone have a chandelier shop that needs restocking, or is someone collecting enough to open a store?

  Our situation is not getting any better.

  19 March

  In the coffee shops the talk is not of nationalism, but of the desire for the US to come in and take over – get it over with. Saddam still appears on television. I suppose the powerful must feel naturally immune. Hasn’t history, especially our violent one, taught them anything?

  20 March

  I was on my bike going to pick up some bread when a white van starts hooting frantically at me. It was Mir and Ilham signalling me. I haven’t seen them since the first night of the war. They came back to Baghdad a few weeks into the war and remained. Her father died the day of the first black rain and none of us even knew about it. They had a macabre time trying to get him buried, finding a priest for the last rites, finding a taxi to take them to the cemetery, even finding a man to dig the grave – a horror story. We had similar problems when we had to bury Mundher Baig.

  A gang robbed Umberto’s house of 1,000 crates of beer which he was storing for his company. Only his clothes and the beer were taken. Each crate sells for 80 dinars – that’s 80,000 dinars right there: a fortune. No one steals electrical goods any more except for chandeliers. Petrol, beer and cigarettes are the popular items. Oddly enough, they all go for the same price.

  It seems we will be allowed to travel from 1 June. Human rights dictates that people can travel and we must follow those guidelines. Human rights?

  Many days later, 28 March

  It is too depressing to write. One keeps on saying that it can’t get worse and it does. How much worse can it get?

  I went with Nofa to Salman Park. She had to go and see about the orchards there. I found a whole field of those dandelion-like flowers, puff balls; when we were kids we used to blow on them and make a wish. I tried it three times. Every time I wished to know when all this would end. But there were always some tufts left clinging on. I counted them: seventeen altogether. Does that mean seventeen days, weeks, months or years? I say seventeen months is how long it will last, or could it be years? God forbid.

  Met Muhammad G.’s sister today, recently fled from Karbala. She saw horrific sights, dead bodies left on the street, their relatives too frightened to remove them. Bodies being eaten by dogs and cats. They’ve been bulldozing the area around the mosque and shrines; people were given three days to clear out of their houses. All of old Karbala will disappear. The whole thing is sick.

  I have a new war on, a war against snails. At least 10 billion snails have invaded the orchard – the round figure that’s being bandied around for everything these days. It might as well apply to my snail count. They eat every green thing they see. They even ate my new baby magnolia tree, transplanted recently from Asam’s garden. She says these things only happen in my garden, never hers. The dogs are on the increase agai
n. Poor Salvador. He has to pee so much to mark his territorial boundaries that his leg is permanently poised in mid-air. He’s quite exhausted and may be dehydrated.

  We came back walking tonight, pushing our bikes. Nearly a full moon. Naila only found out her brother was alive when Yaki saw him on television in London, a hostage in Saudi Arabia – live on CNN, as they say.

  2 April

  I have decided to build a swimming pool. So when Abu Ali came by today I told him about it and he says he will find me some diggers.

  5 April

  Abu Ali came marching in with four strapping six-footers, spades in hand. They drew an outline in white chalk in the back garden between the two houses and immediately started to dig in with terrific force. In fact, a frenzy that I’ve never seen in Iraqi workmen.

  10 April

  In four days I had a hole measuring 8 × 4 metres with a depth slanting from 1 to 2 metres. A mountain of earth on the sides. They said it was not their business to remove it. I am now the proud owner of a large hole in the ground and feel much the better for it. The bad news is there is no cement, or the little there is of it is being used for government reconstruction projects. None of us had even thought of that. Imagine forgetting so soon that most factories had been bombed to smithereens.

  Our mail is working more smoothly now that Freako, good old Freako, is acting as go-between in Jordan. Excellent service, mainly done through taxi-drivers going back and forth between Amman and Baghdad. She sends on letters, faxes, as well as goodies and newspapers. What a treat. That’s about all I can read now. I still can’t listen to music, but have started to paint again. I don’t know why I couldn’t work during the war. Seen carried on painting and listening to music throughout. The same thing happened to me during the civil war in Beirut. That’s why I had to leave there. In wartime my creative process simply dries up, the destructiveness around is so soul-destroying.