Report from Baghdad:
The Growing Anxiety
By Ben Granby
BAGHDAD, February 8 - Its only a matter of time. There is nothing
we can do. Ahmeds fatalism was getting to me. At 28, the
single, Western-minded and self-described bad Muslim (he
drinks substantially) wouldnt offer me one ounce of hope. He berated
me at length for even having come to Iraq to relate stories back to
Americans. For thirteen years people have said sorry, sorry,
sorry but nothing has changed. He took a long drag from
his cigarette and stared me down. But nothing here has changed.
Whats the point?
In the past week, since rhetoric
against Iraq has picked up at the White House and in the UN, the citizens
of Baghdad have become antsier. While for weeks now I grew accustomed
to being told that people would go on living their normal lives because
they had no choice, fear finally has begun to permeate across society.
Soldiers posted around key buildings (and protecting foreigners at hotels)
dont seem to smile as much. Average people on the street glare
at me with suspicion rather than stand aglow in smiles.
Most Iraqis are still incredibly
hospitable and warm, and all have different methods of dealing with
their anxiety. At the home of Karima Umm Zawa, the family was overjoyed
to have company. While Karima, whose husband died in a car accident
and now raises eight children alone, should have been concerned with
two sons in the military, she happily served tea and laughter. One of
her younger daughters, Heesa, insisted on practicing her belly dancing
across the chipped concrete floor of their home. Yet Ahmed, Karimas
brother-in-law and presumably sole bread-earner for the large family,
wore great concern on his face.
When will the American
soldiers come? he insisted, over the laughter of the playing children.
His eyes either demonstrated deep fear or anger, I couldnt tell
which. How long do we have? I couldnt give a straight
answer, and tried to say that the UN still had some time. I didnt
want to nurse the fear of a unilateral attack by the American government,
which would most likely come without warning.
While I had been playing
thumb-wrestling games with Karimas youngest boy, Mahmud, and showing
him my Arab-English flash cards, he picked up on the conversation around
him. The five year-old boy ran across the room and giggled something
in Arabic to his sister. They laughed. I pressed them to explain to
me what Mahmud was saying. Amal, the best English speaker of the children,
pieced it together for me. Maybe Bush will bomb the school.
Mahmud laughed and clapped his hands.
A new short play was showing
over the weekend at the Al-Rasheed Theater called Oxygen.
All plays of political nature are given state funding - and ample censorship
to be sure. Nevertheless, Oxygen, proved to be a dramatic mix of interpretive
dance and symbolic reflection of Iraqi attitudes. It features a couple
in Baghdad (chain-smokers, of course) coping with life after the first
Gulf War and struggling to remain together through the present period
of sanctions. Dreams haunt them where the West entices them
to abandon their nation. Their hardships are reflections of the limitations
imposed by sanctions, and they threaten to divorce each other.
Finally, as writer/director
Hassan Mani explained, they work to change themselves and
to control their lives by seeing what is good in life. They strive
to breathe. Then in the final scene, the dreams return with the
West plotting a new attack on their lives. The common people,
Mani concluded, are always the first to suffer in these
situations.
While creative culture still
manages to thrive in these difficult times, it was the pleas of an Iraqi-American
that proved the most permeating. Amira Atakamoto, who left Iraq years
ago for Lebanon and finally America where she married a Japanese man,
returned to Baghdad for a week to meet with her family. She came with
a group of American women on a campaign for peace called Code
Pink and spoke up at their final press conference. With tears
in her eyes, she related how the night before she had a final visit
with her Iraqi relatives, unsure if she would ever see them again.
War will be a disaster
here. A disaster. The room of mainly European reporters fell dead
silent as Amira emphatically spoke in a soft, quivering tone. Her eyes
fell to the floor. This will be a disaster that lasts for a hundred
years. She looked up again, shook her head and concluded, Iraqis
and Americans will never be able to be friends again.
Ben Granby is a Middle East
activist from Madison, Wisconsin currently working with the Iraq Peace
Team (www.iraqpeaceteam.org)
in Baghdad, Iraq