Two Years...
By Baghdad Burning
24 March, 2005
Baghdad Burning
We've
completed two years since the beginning of the war. These last two years
have felt like two decades, but I can remember the war itself like it
was yesterday.
The sky was lit
with flashes of red and white and the ground rocked with explosions
on March 21, 2003. The bombing had actually begun on the dawn of the
20th of March, but it got really heavy on the 21st. I remember being
caught upstairs when the heavier bombing first began. I was struggling
to drag down a heavy cotton mattress from my room for an aunt who was
spending a couple of weeks with us and I suddenly heard a faraway whiiiiiiiiiiiiiz
that sounded like it might be getting closer.
I began to rush
then- pulling and pushing at the heavy mattress; trying to half throw,
half haul it down stairs. I got stuck halfway down the staircase and,
at that point, the whizzing sound had grown so loud, it felt like it
was coming out of my head. I shoved again at the mattress and called
E.s name to help lug the thing downstairs but E. was outside with
my cousin, trying to see where the missiles were going. I repositioned
and began to kick the heavy mattress, not caring how it got downstairs,
just wanting to be on the ground floor when the missile hit.
The mattress finally
budged and began to slip and slide down the remaining 10 steps, finally
landing in a big pile at the end of the staircase. I followed it in
a hurry, taking two steps at a time, expecting to feel a big BOOM
at any moment. I tripped on the last step in the mad dash for the ground
floor and ended up in a heap on the cotton mass on the ground. The explosion
came the same moment- followed by a series of larger explosions that
didnt sound like the ordinary missiles we had been experiencing
the last 40 hours or so.
The house was chaotic
that moment. The parents were running, dad trying to locate his battery-powered
radio and mother making sure the stove was turned off. She was also
yelling orders over her shoulder, commanding us to go into the safe
room we had specially decorated with duct tape and soft cushions,
or bomb-proofed as my cousin liked to say. The aunt that
was staying with us was running around, shrilly trying to find her two
granddaughters (who were already in the safe room with their mother).
The cousin was rushing around turning off kerosene heaters and opening
windows so that they wouldnt shatter with the impact. E. hurried
in from outside, trying to keep his expression casual under the paleness
of his face.
Through all of this,
the bombing was getting louder and more frequent- the earth rumbling
and shuddering with every explosion. E. was saying something about the
sky but the whooshing sound coming from above was so loud, we couldnt
hear what he was saying. The sky is full of red and white lights
He yelled, helping me rise shakily from the mattress. You want
to go outside and see? I looked at him like he was crazy and made
him help me drag the mattress into the living room. We rushed back into
the safe room and the bombs were still falling loud and fast, one after
the other. Sometimes they felt like they were falling right next door,
and other times, it felt like they were falling a few blocks away. We
knew they were further than that.
The faces in the
safe room were white with tension. My cousins wife sat in the
corner, a daughter on either side, her arms around their shoulders,
murmuring prayers softly. My cousin was pacing in front of the safe
room door, looking grim and my father was trying to find a decent radio
station on the small AM/FM radio he carried around wherever he went.
My aunt was hyperventilating at this point and my mother sat next to
her, trying to distract her with the voice of the guy on the radio talking
about the rain of bombs on Baghdad.
A seemingly endless
40 minutes later, there was a slight lull in the bombing- it seemed
to have gotten further away. I took advantage of the relative calm and
went to find the telephone. The house was cold because the windows were
open to keep them from shattering. I reached for the telephone, fully
expecting to find it dead but I was amazed to find a dial tone. I began
dialing numbers- friends and relatives. We contacted an aunt and an
uncle in other parts of Baghdad and the voices on the other end were
shaky and wary. Are you OK? Is everyone OK? Was all I could
ask on the phone. They were ok
but the bombing was heavy all over
Baghdad. Shock and awe had begun.
Two years ago this
week.
What followed was
almost a month of heavy bombing. That chaotic night became the intro
to endless chaotic days and long, sleepless nights. You get to a point
during extended air-raids where you lose track of the days. You lose
track of time. The week stops being Friday, Saturday, Sunday, etc. The
days stop being about hours. You begin to measure time with the number
of bombs that fell, the number of minutes the terror lasted and the
number of times you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound
of gunfire and explosions.
We try to put it
out of our heads, but it comes back anyway. We sit around sometimes,
when theres no electricity, or when were gathered for lunch
or dinner and someone will say, Remember two years ago when
Remember when they bombed Mansur, a residential area
When they
started burning the cars in the streets with Apaches
When they
hit the airport with that bomb that lit up half of the city
When
the American tanks started rolling into Baghdad
?
Remember when the
fear was still fresh- and the terror was relatively new- and it was
possible to be shocked and awed in Iraq?