Saved By The
Carrots...
By Baghdad Burning
09 May, 2005
Baghdad Burning
These
last few days have been explosive- quite literally. It started about
4 days ago and it hasn't let up since. They say there were around 14
car bombs in Baghdad alone a couple of days ago- although we only heard
6 from our area. Cars are making me very nervous lately. All cars look
suspicious- small ones and large ones. Old cars and new cars. Cars with
drivers and cars parked in front of restaurants and shops. They all
have a sinister look to them these days.
The worst day for
us was the day before yesterday. We were sitting in the living room
with an aunt and her 16-year-old son and listening patiently as she
scolded the household for *still* having our rugs spread. In Iraq, people
don't keep their carpeting all year round. We begin removing the carpeting
around April and it doesn't come back until around October. We don't
have wall to wall carpeting here like abroad. Instead, we have lovely
rugs that we usually spread in the middle of the room. The best kinds
are made in Iran, specifically in Tabriz or Kashan. They are often large,
heavy and intricately designed. Tabriz and Kashan rugs are very expensive
and few families actually have them any more. Most people who do have
Tabriz rugs in Baghdad got them through an inheritance.
We have ordinary
Persian rugs (which we suspect aren't really Persian at all). They aren't
expensive or even particularly impressive, but they give the living
room that Eastern look many Iraqi houses seem to have- no matter how
Western the furniture is. The patterns and colors are repeated all over
the rugs in a sort of symmetrical fashion. If you really focus on them
though, you can often see a story being told by the flowers, geometrical
shapes and sometimes birds or butterflies. When we were younger, E.
and I would sit and stare at them, trying to 'read' the colors and designs-
Having them on the ground is almost like having a woolly blog for the
floor.
So my aunt sat there,
telling us we should have had the rugs cleaned and packed away long
ago- like the beginning of April. And she was right. The proper thing
would be to give the rugs a good cleaning and roll them up for storage
in their corner in the hallway upstairs, to stand tall and firm for
almost 7 months, like sentinels of the second floor. The reason we hadn't
gotten around to doing this yet was quite simple- the water situation
in our area didn't allow for washing the rugs in April and so we had
procrastinated the rug situation, until one week became two weeks and
two weeks melted into three... and now we were in the first days of
May and the rugs faced us almost disapprovingly on the floor.
Within 20 minutes,
the aunt decided she was going to stay and help us remove said rugs
the next day. We would go upstairs to clean the roof of the house very
thoroughly. We would drag the rugs to the roof the next day and one
by one, beat them thoroughly to get out the excess dust, then wipe down
the larger ones with my aunts secret rug-cleaning mix and wash the smaller
ones and set them out to dry on the hot roof.
Her son couldn't
spend the night however, and he decided to return home the same day.
It was around maybe 1 pm when he walked out the door, planning to walk
the two kilometers home. He listened to my aunt as she gave him instructions
about heating lunch for his father, studying, washing fruit before eating
it, picking up carrots on the way home, watching out for suspicious
cars and people and calling as soon as he walked through the door so
she could relax. He shook his head in the affirmative, waved goodbye
and walked out the gate towards the main street.
Three minutes later,
an explosion rocked the house. The windows rattled momentarily and a
door slammed somewhere upstairs. I was clutching a corner of the living
room rug where I had pulled it back to assure my aunt that there were
no bugs living under it.
"Car bomb."
E. said grimly, running outside to see where it had come from. I looked
at my aunt apprehensively and she sat, pale, her hands shaking as she
adjusted the head scarf she wore, preparing to go outside.
"F. just went
out the door..." she said, breathlessly referring to her son. I
dropped the handful of carpeting and ran outside to follow E. My heart
was beating wildly as I tried to decide the direction of the explosion.
I sensed my aunt not far behind me.
"Do you see
him?" She called out weakly. I was in the middle of the street
by then and some of the neighbors were standing around outside.
"Where did
it come from?" I called across the street to one of the neighborhood
children.
"The main street."
He answered back, pointing in the direction my cousin had gone.
"Did it come
from the main street?" My aunt cried out from the gate.
"No."
I lied, searching for E. "No- it came from the other side."
I was trying to decide whether I should go ahead and run out to the
main street where it seemed more and more people were gathering, when
I saw E. rounding the corner, an arm casually draped around my cousin
who seemed to be talking excitedly. I turned to smile encouragingly
at my aunt who was sagging with relief at the gate.
"He's fine."
She said. "He's fine."
"I was near
the explosion!" F. said excitedly as he neared the house. My aunt
grabbed him by the shoulders and began inspecting him- his face, his
neck, his arms.
"I'm fine mother..."
he shrugged her off as she began a long prayer of thanks interspersed
with irrational scolding about how he should be more careful.
"Did anyone
get hurt?" I asked E., dreading the answer. E. nodded and held
up three fingers.
"I think three
people were killed and there are some waiting for the cars to take them
to the hospital."
Back in the house,
E. and I decided he'd go back and see if he could help. We gathered
up some gauze, medical tape, antiseptic and a couple of bottles of cold
water. I turned back to my cousin after E. had left. He was excited
and tense, eyes wide with disbelief. His voice was shaking slightly
as he spoke and his lower lip trembled.
"I was just
going to cross the street but I remembered I should buy the carrots"
He spoke rapidly, "So I stopped by that guy who sells vegetables
and just as I was buying them- a big BOOM and a car exploded and the
one next to it began to burn... If I hadn't stopped for the carrots..."
The cousin began waving his arms around in the air and I leaned back
to avoid one in the face.
My aunt gasped,
stopping in the living room, "The carrots saved you!" She
cried out, holding a hand to her heart. My cousin looked at her incredulously
and the color slowly began to return to his face. "Carrots."
He murmured, throwing himself down on the sofa and grabbing one of the
cushions, "Carrots saved me."
E. came home an
hour later, tired and disheveled. Two people had died- the third would
probably survive- but at least a dozen others were wounded. Every time
I look at my cousin, I wonder- gratefully- how it was that we were so
lucky.