"Take Pictures
- Show The World
The American Democracy"
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
15 September, 2004
The Guardian
It
started with a phone call early on Sunday morning: "Big pile of
smoke over Haifa Street." Still half asleep I put on my jeans,
cursing those insurgents who do their stuff in the early morning. What
if I just go back to bed, I thought - by the time I will be there it
will be over. In the car park it struck me that I didn't have my flak
jacket in the car, but figured it was most probably just an IED (improvised
explosive device) under a Humvee and I would be back soon.
On the way to Haifa Street I was half praying that everything would
be over or that the Americans would seal off the area. I haven't recovered
from Najaf yet.
Haifa Street was
built by Saddam in the early 80s, part of a scheme that was supposed
to give Baghdad a modern look. A long, wide boulevard with huge Soviet
high-rise buildings on both sides, it acts like a curtain, screening
off the network of impoverished alleyways that are inhabited by Baghdad's
poorest and toughest people, many of whom are from the heart of the
Sunni triangle.
When I arrived there
I saw hundreds of kids and young men heading towards the smoke. "Run
fast, it's been burning for a long time!" someone shouted as I
grabbed my cameras and started to run.
When I was 50m away
I heard a couple of explosions and another cloud of dust rose across
the street from where the first column of smoke was still climbing.
People started running towards me in waves. A man wearing an orange
overall was sweeping the street while others were running. A couple
of helicopters in the sky overhead turned away. I jumped into a yard
in front of a shop that was set slightly back from the street, 10 of
us with our heads behind the yard wall. "It's a sound bomb,"
said a man who had his face close to mine.
A few seconds later,
I heard people screaming and shouting - something must have happened
- and I headed towards the sounds, still crouching behind a wall. Two
newswire photographers were running in the opposite direction and we
exchanged eye contact.
About 20m ahead
of me, I could see the American Bradley armoured vehicle, a huge monster
with fire rising from within. It stood alone, its doors open, burning.
I stopped, took a couple of photos and crossed the street towards a
bunch of people. Some were lying in the street, others stood around
them. The helicopters were still buzzing, but further off now.
I felt uneasy and
exposed in the middle of the street, but lots of civilians were around
me. A dozen men formed a circle around five injured people, all of whom
were screaming and wailing. One guy looked at one of the injured men
and beat his head and chest: "Is that you, my brother? Is that
you?" He didn't try to reach for him, he just stood there looking
at the bloodied face of his brother.
A man sat alone
covered with blood and looked around, amazed at the scene. His T-shirt
was torn and blood ran from his back. Two men were dragging away an
unconscious boy who had lost the lower half of one leg. A pool of blood
and a creamy liquid formed beneath the stump on the pavement. His other
leg was badly gashed.
I had been standing
there taking pictures for two or three minutes when we heard the helicopters
coming back. Everyone started running, and I didn't look back to see
what was happening to the injured men. We were all rushing towards the
same place: a fence, a block of buildings and a prefab concrete cube
used as a cigarette stall.
I had just reached
the corner of the cube when I heard two explosions, I felt hot air blast
my face and something burning on my head. I crawled to the cube and
hid behind it. Six of us were squeezed into a space less than two metres
wide. Blood started dripping on my camera but all that I could think
about was how to keep the lens clean. A man in his 40s next to me was
crying. He wasn't injured, he was just crying. I was so scared I just
wanted to squeeze myself against the wall. The helicopters wheeled overhead,
and I realised that they were firing directly at us. I wanted to be
invisible, I wanted to hide under the others.
As the helicopters
moved a little further off, two of the men ran away to a nearby building.
I stayed where I was with a young man, maybe in his early 20s, who was
wearing a pair of leather boots and a tracksuit. He was sitting on the
ground, his legs stretched in front of him but with his knee joint bent
outwards unnaturally. Blood ran on to the dirt beneath him as he peered
round the corner. I started taking pictures of him. He looked at me
and turned his head back towards the street as if he was looking for
something. His eyes were wide open and kept looking.
There in the street,
the injured were all left alone: a young man with blood all over his
face sat in the middle of the cloud of dust, then fell on to his face.
Behind the cube,
the other two men knew each other.
"How are you?"
asked the man closer to me. He was lying against the cube's wall and
trying to pull out his cellphone.
"I am not good,"
said the other, a young man in a blue T-shirt, resting against a fence.
He was holding his arm, a chunk of which was missing, exposing the bone.
"Bring a car
and come here please, we are injured," his friend was saying into
his cellphone.
The man with his
knee twisted out, meanwhile, was making only a faint sound. I was so
scared I didn't want to touch him. I kept telling myself he was OK,
he wasn't screaming.
I decided to help
the guy with the phone who was screaming. I ripped his T-shirt off and
told him to squeeze it against the gash on his head. But I was scared;
I wanted to do something, but I couldn't. I tried to remember the first-aid
training I had had in the past, but all I was doing was taking pictures.
I turned back to
the man with the twisted knee. His head was on the curb now, his eyes
were open but he just kept making the faint sound. I started talking
to him, saying, "Don't worry, you'll be OK, you'll be fine."
From behind him I looked at the middle of the street, where five injured
men were still lying. Three of them were piled almost on top of each
other; a boy wearing a white dishdasha lay a few metres away.
One of the three
men piled together raised his head and looked around the empty streets
with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the boy in
front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then
he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on
his arms and stretched his hands towards something that he could see.
It was the guy who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help
his brother. He wanted help but no one helped. He was just there dying
in front of me. Time didn't exist. The streets were empty and silent
and the men lay there dying together. He slid down to the ground, and
after five minutes was flat on the street.
I moved, crouching,
towards where they were. They were like sleeping men with their arms
wrapped around each other in the middle of the empty street. I went
to photograph the boy with the dishdasha. He's just sleeping, I kept
telling myself. I didn't want to wake him. The boy with the amputated
leg was there too, left there by the people who were pulling him earlier.
The vehicle was still burning.
More kids ventured
into the street, looking with curiosity at the dead and injured. Then
someone shouted "Helicopters!" and we ran. I turned and saw
two small helicopters, black and evil. Frightened, I ran back to my
shelter where I heard two more big explosions. At the end of the street
the man in the orange overall was still sweeping the street.
The man with the
bent knee was unconscious now, his face flat on the curb. Some kids
came and said, "He is dead." I screamed at them. "Don't
say that! He is still alive! Don't scare him." I asked him if he
was OK, but he didn't reply.
We left the kids
behind the bent-knee guy, the cellphone guy and the blue V-neck T-shirt
guy; they were all unconscious now. We left them to die there alone.
I didn't even try to move any with me. I just ran selfishly away. I
reached a building entrance when someone grabbed my arm and took me
inside. "There's an injured man. Take pictures - show the world
the American democracy," he said. A man was lying in the corridor
in total darkness as someone bandaged him.
Some others told
me there was another journalist in the building. They took me to a stairwell
leading to the basement, where a Reuters cameraman, a cheerful chubby
guy, was lying holding his camera next to his head. He wasn't screaming
but he had a look of pain in his eyes.
I tried to remember
his name to call his office, but I couldn't. He was a friend, we had
worked together for months. I have seen him in every press conference,
but I couldn't remember his name.
In time, an ambulance
came. I ran to the street as others emerged from their hiding places,
all trying to carry injured civilians to the ambulance.
"No, this one
is dead," said the driver. "Get someone else."
The ambulance drove
away and we all scattered, thinking to ourselves: the Americans won't
fire at an ambulance but they will at us. This scene was repeated a
couple of times: each time we heard an ambulance we would emerge into
the streets, running for cover again as it left.
Yesterday, sitting
in the office, another photographer who was looking at my pictures exclaimed:
"So the Arabiya journalist was alive when you were taking pictures!"
"I didn't see
the Arabiya journalist."
He pointed at the
picture of the guy with V-neck T-shirt. It was him. He was dead. All
the people I had shared my shelter with were dead.
© Guardian
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