Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone

One of the most frequent things I covered when I worked as a journalist in Iraq was the car bomb explosion that targeted Iraqi civilians, police and army members and recruits. After going to the explosions sites, I mostly went to the hospitals to speak with the wounded people to have their voice heard in my stories. One of the biggest hospitals I used to go to was Yarmouk hospital.

Yarmouk hospital was featured today in a documentary on HBO. Yarmouk Hospital, located in a very dangerous part of Baghdad, is the focal point of hope and despair for thousands of wounded Iraqi civilians and their families. The documentary was filmed by Salih Mahdi within the facility. It chronicles the chaos both inside the Emergency Room and on the streets of the capital.

The documentary reminded me of all the kinds of horrible stories I have covered. It was hard to be in the hospital for a few hours to work and interview wounded people and their relatives. So you can imagine how horrible it is for the doctors, nurses and other staff members to go through every single day of their lives. Any praising word is not enough for all what they are doing. And those who kill, torture and bomb Iraqi civilians will never be remembered except with disgrace and hate.

In case you missed seeing the documentary, you could still watch it on [HBO On Demand] or watch the entire documentary in the series of Youtube videos posted below.

Viewer discretion is STRONGLY advised. The documentary includes graphic images of war and violence.

For more details on the story of the doctor who filmed the documentary, read what the New York Times had to write about him.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Sectarian to the Bone

My sister’s house was robbed a few weeks ago. The robber was smart enough that he didn’t take any heavy thing. He was able to find the money my sister and brother-in-law saved. He took a the entire $5,000. It was a big shock to my sister. She said she hid it well in the house, but she wasn’t smarter than the robber whose main job is to be smart in finding money and valuable stuff.

My sister did not put the money in any bank for several reasons. There were a lot of incidents reported that insurgents and militias hover over the areas where banks are located. They wait for preys to kill and take their money to buy weapons and pay their fighters their monthly salaries. The other reason is that banks are not reliable in Iraq. If something happens to the bank, the government won’t be able to compensate the people. So, my sister saved the money at home!

After the robbery, my sister and brother-in-law have become torn. They didn’t know what to do with money. Should they put it in a bank and expose themselves to the danger of being robbed in the streets, or keep it at home and get robbed again. So, they finally decided to put it in bank. And here where all the shock came.

My brother-in-law went to al-Rafidain Bank, one of the famous banks in Baghdad that has branches everywhere in the country. They went to the branch in Ilwiyah neighborhood, near Karrada. As soon as he got in, he noticed that the bank was neglected. Dust was everywhere, the smell of cigarettes filled every room there. From behind the counter, one of the employees gave him the bad news.

You are not registered in this neighborhood. You can’t open a bank account unless you live here!!!!!

My brother-in-law was completely shocked! He has his parents having bank accounts in areas outside their neighborhood and this news was new to him. He asked the employee again, but she insisted that he cannot do it. “These are new orders from the ministry of finance. It’s the government law,” she told him.

To his dismay, my brother-in-law and sister left the bank and went to al-Rasheed Bank, another famous bank in Iraq. The employees there told him exactly what the al-Rafidain Bank employee said.

“They must be kidding me,” he said. “Probably they need a bribe or something." He tried to convince the second lady that he can buy her some prepaid cards for her cell phone. She told him she would happily take them, but there was nothing she could do. It’s a new law.

So, the couple went to another branch of al-Rasheed Bank in Zayoona neighborhood where my brother-in-law’s sister lives. The exact thing happened. My brother-in-law got very angry and asked the employee to meet the manager of the bank. When my brother-in-law saw the manager, whose cigarettes never left his purple-colored lips, he was shocked again when the manager told him why he is even thinking of opening a bank account. He told him it’s better to save it at home! Then, the manager said that he cannot do anything about it. They cannot open bank accounts to those who are not living in that neighborhood. It’s the law!!

So my sister and brother-in-law resented to the fact that they cannot do it unless in their neighborhood which they didn’t trust. They drove back to where they live and went to the bank in the neighborhood. When they asked the employee there about opening a bank account, she told them they are not opening bank accounts now to people because “they don’t have check books.”

Hysterically, my brother-in-law went to the Zayoona bank account again and met with the same manager and told him that there should be a way of doing it. The manager felt bad for my brother-in-law. He told him we can do it, but you have to go through a series of long bureaucratic procedures in order to open the bank account. He asked him to bring a letter of recommendation from the Mukhtar mayor-like official of the neighborhood to prove that his sister lives here. Secondly he has to go to the municipality of his neighborhood to prove that he lives there. And so they did. After a lot of effort to convince their neighborhood municipality, they finally got the letter and my brother-in-law’s sister contacted the Mukhtar who wrote them a letter of recommendation to take along with the other documents. Tomorrow, they will go to the bank and open a bank account.

When my sister told me about all of this just a few hours ago, I got so frustrated. First of all, it’s just a bank account. Secondly, and most importantly, what kind of new law is this? You can’t open a bank account in a bank outside your neighborhood? Isn’t that totally sectarian? Isn’t the government supposed to open the barriers and bring the people together after they were divided by them? Is there any other explanation that this government is dividing the people and the country in every aspect of life? Now because my brother-in-law is a Sunni, he cannot open a bank account in the Shiite neighborhoods? But my sister is a Shiite?!!! What should she do to open a bank account? Get a divorce?

The minister of Finance is Bayan Jabur Solagh? Familiar?! Of course, he was the Interior Minister under Jaafari’s era. He was the leader of the Iranian-trained Badr troops whose crimes were obvious to everyone. Wasn’t it enough that the militia he headed drill-tortured Iraqi civilians and killed them afterwards?

All those Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, and even the secular exiles who came to power are nothing but a bunch of killers. They did nothing to improve the lives of people. They even destroyed the few things people enjoyed Saddam.They came to take revenge not from Saddam but from the Iraqi people who lived under his tyranny. I can’t see any hope in this country any more. It’s governed by thugs, by haters and by a group of “people” whose loyalty is to their parties and the countries that hosted them, not to their wounded country and its people.

baghdadtreausre@gmail.com

Baghdad's Children of War

© NBC Around the World

Keep the flag, Change the flag.

It’s not going to be over, is it? Keep the flag, change the flag. As if there are no other important issues in the country other than the flag now. Didn’t the Iraqi people say their opinion when the interim government tried to change the flag in 2004?

What is really irritating about it is how the American news outlets changed the facts about the former flag. They attributed the flag to Saddam Hussein by the time the flag was basically chosen before Saddam came to power as a president. The other thing is that all American newspapers and websites insisted that the three stars symbolized the three Baath Party goals: Unity, Freedom, and Sociality, by the time they did not. In 1985, Syria and Egypt announced their United Arab Republic whose flag was like the Iraqi flag but with two stars representing the two countries. In hope of joining the UAR, Iraq added the third star to the UAR flag and considered the Iraqi flag, and that’s how the third star represented Iraq. Unsurprisingly, the US media did not have the guts to mention that fact. Instead, they insisted on misinforming their audience by saying these three flags represented Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party goals.

So the Iraqi people woke up today to find out their flag has been changed! But what a horrible change! The new flag is dull. Just red, white, black and dark green. They should have either changed the whole thing, or kept the original. They removed the stars and left what Saddam has already put! The “Allahu Akbar” inscription. The only thing they did is they changed the handwriting of Saddam into the Kufi calligraphy. The main idea of having “Allahu Akbar” is still there! And who put it? Saddam!! So have they really removed Saddam’s imprint from it?

OK. They changed it! But oh, for one year. So, they’ll have to gather again and change it AGAIN in a year from now. They changed it temporarily to please Kaka Masoud because the Kurds suffered under that flag! All Iraqis suffered under that flag, kaka Masoud. But the flag was our country’s, not our president’s. It was the flag which we fought against our enemies with. The flag which we grew up saluting. The flag that we grew our love to our beloved country.

This is just absurd. Don’t the parliament and the government have more important issues to resolve right now? Go look at the refugees sleeping in tents in this freezing weather which Iraq didn’t experience since the 1960s. Go find a solution to the kerosene and fuel problems to make people stay warm. Try to find a solution to the garbage hills surrounding every neighborhood in Baghdad. Rebuild what the Americans destroyed during the invasion. Protect the schools from the increasing number of infiltrated militiamen and insurgents. Go south and see what is happening in Basra and why it was not safe after the British occupying troops left. Do all these things and then change the flag. There is an Arabic saying “Do the most important things and then do the important.” But in Iraq, nothing seems important for the parliament and the government. Their priorities are to satisfy their parties, not the country and the people.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

The Last Jew of Babylon

Five Letters to my Mother

Five Letters to my Mother, a poem by Nizar Qabbani

Good morning sweetheart.

Good morning my Saint of a sweetheart.

It has been two years, mother

since the boy has sailed

on his mythical journey.

Since he hid within his luggage

the green morning of his homeland

and her stars and rivers,

and all of her red poppy.

Since he hid in his clothes

handful of mint and thyme,

and a Damascene Lilac.

***

I am alone.

The smoke of my cigarette is bored,

and out of me even my seat is bored

My sorrows are like flocking birds looking for a grain field in season.

I became acquainted with the women of Europe,

I became acquainted with the emotions of cement and wood

I became acquainted with the civilization of fatigue.

I toured India, China,

And the entire oriental world,

and nowhere I found,

a Lady to comb my golden hair.

A Lady that carries for me in her purse a sugar candy.

A lady that dresses me when I am naked,

and lifts me up when I fall.

Mother: I am that boy who sailed,

and still longs to that sugar candy.

So how come or how can I, Mother,

became a father and never grew up.

***

I send my best regards

to a house that taught us love and mercy.

To your white flowers,

the best in the neighborhood.

To my bed, to my books,

to all of the kids in our neighborhood.

To all of those walls we covered

with our chaotic writings.

To the lazy cats sleeping on the balcony.

To the lilac climbing bush the neighbor's window.

It has been two years, O Mother,

with the face of Damascus is like a bird,

digging within my conscience,

biting at my curtains,

and picking, with a gentle beak, at my fingers.

It has been two years, O Mother,

since the nights of Damascus,

the odors of Damascus,

the houses of Damascus,

have been inhabiting my imagination.

The pillar lights of her minarets,

have been guiding our sails.

As if the pillars of the Amawi,

have been planted in our hearts.

As if the apple orchards are still perfuming our conscience.

As if the lights and the rocks,

have all traveled with us.

***

This is September, Mother,

and here is sorrow bringing me his wrapped gifts.

Leaving at my window his tears and his concerns.

This is September, where is Damascus?

Where is Father and his eyes.

Where is the silk of his glances,

and where is the aroma of his coffee.

May God bless his grave.

And where is the vastness of our large house,

and where is its comfort.

And where is the stairwell laughing at the tickles of blooms,

and where is my childhood.

Draggling the tail of its cat,

and eating from the grape vine,

and snipping from the lilac.

***

Damascus, Damascus,

what a poem we wrote within our eyes.

What a pretty child that we crucified.

We kneeled at his feet,

and we melted in his passion,

until, we killed him with our love.

Happy Iraqi Army Day

To all those Iraqi soldiers who patrol the streets to protect us from terrorists, Happy Iraqi Army Day. You are our hope.

Two Books and A Movie

In the last two weeks I read two very interesting books. Before the end of the last semester I decided to go back to reading some fiction after reading a dozen of fascinating non-fiction books for two of my classes.

The first book on the top of my list to read during the winter break was Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. As a huge fan of this Afghani American writer, I knew the second book would be as good as the first one, or even better. Indeed, it was a second masterpiece. The Kite Runner which fascinated millions of people does not have the high timbre the new one does.

In this book Hosseini writes about the most victimized sex in Afghanistan. Women. A fascinating story of two women whose lives were influenced by the country’s strict traditions and the inhumane actions carried out by the Taliban regime in 1990s until the US-led invasion in 2001. I didn’t read the book as fast as I read the Kite Runner. I think it was too much for me to do so. The pain, the horror and the abuse the characters went through left me crippled and unable to comprehend how much savagery Afghani women had endured. I had to read it interruptedly in order to digest what happened to these characters. Yet, the end of the book left me with a huge smile on my face, a smile of content.

In order to break the tension of reading such a story, I surfed the internet for something different. I finally found a book called Tales from Old Baghdad by Khalid al-Kashtini, one of Iraq’s and Arab’s famous authors and columnists. I heard of al-Kashtini a while ago when Omar told me about his satirical columns in the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, a London-based Saudi newspaper. Since I started reading these uproarious columns, I became more attached to his writings. So I ordered the book and a week later it came by mail. Like most of the times, I like to read my books at the coffee shop in Borders. My friend would pick me up at a certain time in the morning and we would go there to read, chat and enjoy sipping tea or coffee.

Kashtini’s book is a fast read. Like most of his columns, it’s sarcastic and very funny. What is amazing about it is that the English version which I am reading is very well translated from Arabic. Kashtini’s first words in the dedication page were also very encouraging for me to read the whole book: “To the people of Iraq who have nothing to laugh about. Perhaps this story may put a momentary smile on their faces.” Indeed, Iraqis don’t really have anything to laugh about, yet the tales he narrated left a permanent smile on my face instead of a momentary one. It was not even a smile rather than a laughter that recur every time I recall some of the incidents he narrated.

The narrative of the book is very strong, yet it’s about the simple and beautiful life Iraqis enjoyed back in the 1940s and 1950s. The Shanasheel, Rashid Street, Bab al-Mudham, Istikan Chai, Manqala, Arak, Hasna, Benzene Khana, the prayers, even the Kalachiya, etc… it is all lurid and bona fide. It is about family bonds, children and grandmothers, honesty and respect. It’s about good deeds that seem absent from our lives these days. It’s fascinating how such life existed in Iraq. Nothing destroyed it but the successive wars and the abusive power of tyrannical regimes and then the occupation. Reading this book, one never misses the innocence of the time and how it embraced Iraqis all together. Now we live in another world, another time. A time when the country and its people became victims to these tyrants, terrorists and occupation.

The ease that accompanied me after reading the book vanished when I saw a movie I wish I didn’t see. Redacted is one of the American controversial movies that expose an issue very sensitive among Americans. It definitely breaks a taboo that is widely shocking for the American audience as well as Iraqis. It is a drama based on the Mahmudiyah killings, the gang-rape, murder, and burning of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 by U.S. soldiers who also killed her parents and younger sister. Although I was very disturbed by how perfectly the rape incident was performed in the movie, I take a bow to the cast who did a fantastic job in revealing a crime that is not even recognized by wide variety of Americans, at least the ones I came across. Although the girl’s honor and life will not be back, yet this film is a good reminder and a proof that will remain in history along with all what al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army did against innocent people of wounded Iraq.

The video below contains the rape scene in the movie. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com

Wall Street Journal Reporter's Misleading Claims

It struck me to read that an Iraqi Muslim from Baghdad celebrated his first Christmas in 2004. Sarmad Ali, an Iraqi reporter for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a blog entry describing how he “had no idea that Christmas was on the 25th of December.” If this statement was announced by someone from the remote villages in Iraq, I wouldn’t be surprised since people there are mostly Muslims. But in Baghdad the situation was different: Christians and Muslims celebrated their feasts peacefully and happily for a long time.

In Baghdad, every December 25^th, the three State Television networks under Saddam covered the Christmas Mass live on TV and celebrated the holidays with the followers of Jesus Christ willingly every year. Greetings of the holidays marked the bottom of the TV screen which showed joyful songs dedicated by Christians to their fellow Christians on the occasion. People would call the songs TV show and dedicate these songs in a live broadcast.

With all this publicity, Saramd did not know when Christmas was held. “…when we watched New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world on TV, we thought that was Christmas,” the Wall Street Journal claimed.

It is surprising how Sarmad did not notice that not only Christians celebrated Christmas, yet their Muslim friends did too. Christmas trees- the real and fake ones- along with Santa Claus’ posters and outfits were always visible to the eyes of Baghdadis. It was never kept a secret among Christians as Sarmad claims by saying his Christian colleagues in college didn’t say much about it. I remember my Christian friends in college even inviting me to their Masses and parties. When the holidays were over, they would tell us all about how they celebrated it with their friends and family.

Christmas was a holiday shared by most people, Muslims and Christians. Followers of both religions would buy Christmas trees and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve with Christians. Before Christmas day, many shop owners in Baghdad would hang the decorations on their shops' windows. Santa whom we call Baba Noel is very famous. Christian and Muslim children adore him. Like many others they think he is real because he comes at night and brings presents.

Even though this war has left some scratches in the relations among people in Baghdad, Muslims this time did not forget to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve with optimism. Many people took to the streets and bought the holiday decorations. My sister and brother-in-law bought a beautiful Christmas tree and decorated it with Baba Noel (Santa Claus.) Presents from my parents, my sister’s in-laws, aunt, and grandmother were piled under and around the tree. They all gathered, sang, celebrated and ate sweets hoping the New Year would bring happy and sweet days.

It seems that Sarmad was not interested himself in at least asking why there were Mass on TV on December 25, or why there were Baba Noel’s posters and decorations in Baghdad. He made it seem like all Iraqi Muslims were like him, unaware of when Christmas is celebrated and that only here, Muslims would realize that Christmas Eve is not New Year’s Eve! It makes me feel sad that what he said came from an Iraqi, an educated one working for a major business newspaper. Yet, when I think back of who bought the paper recently, I realize why he said what he said in this general way of speaking.

baghdadtreasure@gmail.com