I must have dozed in the heat and the grip of fever. I awoke to the echoing sound of the mullah calling the faithful to prayer. He must have had quite incredible stamina, for he kept it up for several hours. I briefly considered, then dismissed, the idea of going out onto the balcony and yelling for him to shut up.
With my stomach still firmly in the grip of ‘Baghdad Belly’, food was the furthest thing from my mind. Instead, I decided to take a leisurely stroll in the hotel gardens. As soon as I appeared in the lobby, several swarthy, moustached flunkeys surrounded me. Where was I going? Did I want a car? They looked perplexed when I said I was just going for a walk.
The extensive gardens must have been quite beautiful once, but now cracked paving, broken lights and dry fountains complemented the look of the hotel perfectly. A handful of fellow guests strolled the pathways as wild cats scurried across the shabby lawns.
Having once been a career criminal, I now have a finely tuned talent for observation. I soon became aware of several large, moustached men in white shirts and dark trousers, sweating profusely, who came hurrying along paths, visibly slowing when they saw me and then, not quite knowing what to do with themselves. As a surveillance operation it was worthy of Inspector Clouseau. But clearly they were worried about me and didn’t trust me. I would have to be careful.
On Tuesday morning Mohammed told me he had arranged an outing for me the following day. He would provide a driver and a photographer. He would be the guide. The catch was, it would cost me. The driver was 50 US dollars a day, the photographer was 100 dollars and the assistance of the Press Office another 50 dollars per day, whether I used it or not! And this in a country where the average government monthly salary was $4. It was quite a nice little racket they had running out of the Press Office. But what could I do? It was either pay, or no story.
Probably incensed by the rip-off, that evening I escaped from the hotel. I made as if to walk around the gardens, slid quickly alongside the car park and strolled briskly out of the gate. Wherever Clouseau’s men were they definitely weren’t with me. I was free, loose in Baghdad.
The evening sun was still oppressive, but at least I could breathe. The roads were clogged with the most run-down cars I had ever seen, all very old models, with dents discoloured by rust, and with cracked and broken windscreens. As they set off from the traffic lights they resembled nothing so much as some vast demolition derby. Apart from a few, new four-wheel-drives, the only other new vehicles on the roads were the big, red double-decker buses supplied by the Chinese.
Armed troops were everywhere, outside buildings, in sentry boxes, crouched in bunkers and walking in groups. At virtually every intersection, armed police directed the traffic. But whatever their respective roles, they were totally oblivious to me. I walked unchallenged along streets and through alleyways, past building so decrepit I feared that, should someone slam a door too hard, half of Baghdad would collapse.
However, whatever Saddam’s reputation for strong government, he obviously couldn’t handle the local dustmen’s union. Great piles of festering rubbish stood everywhere, even outside food shops. The shops themselves were generally well stocked though, but it was all cheap crap from China.
The people were surprisingly friendly, especially in view of the fact that we and the Yanks were still bombing them on a regular basis. But the Arabs have a great tradition of hospitality. Unlike us Brits. We’re still rude to the Germans 60 years on.
I decided to change some money. One hundred dollars US brought me eight thick wads of Iraqi dinars and a carrier bag to take it away in. It used to be three dinars to the dollar, now it’s closer to 2,000.
In one particularly poor neighbourhood, I saw children renting rides from a man with bicycles. Under a bridge, a small funfair with rides all pushed by hand catered to a crowd of children with their parents. On patches of waste ground there were impromptu games of football. The overwhelming impression was one of abject poverty. It was quite clear that the sanctions have hit ordinary Iraqis very hard.
They haven’t stopped Saddam from building luxurious palaces and strikingly grand and dramatic monuments though. They stand, incongruous in their opulence, amongst the crumbling slums. Everywhere, giant depictions of Saddam stare down on passers-by. I learned that, at the New Year’s Day military parade, there had been an impressive display of millions of dollars worth of the latest armoured vehicles and missiles, together with thousands of well-armed troops.
The following morning I met Mohammed at the Press Office and, together with the photographer, set off in the driver’s old, black Buick. Mohammed informed me that we were on our way to see the Quds or Jerusalem Army, a group of women volunteers who were undergoing military training in order to liberate Palestine from the Israelis.
We arrived at Al Mustinsiriya University where they were based and met with instant confusion. There had been some mistake, because they only trained on weekends. So for any Mossad agents who happen to be reading this, Jerusalem’s safe on weekdays.
We then drove to the bombed air raid shelter at Amiriya, which had become a shrine. As I entered the low, squat structure I was met by Miriam, a young woman in a chador, who was to be my guide.
The inside of the shelter was quite well lit, courtesy of remembrance candles and a gaping hole in the six feet thick concrete roof. Miriam explained how the first missile had drilled its way through the concrete before exploding. The second missile flew in horizontally through an extractor fan and incinerated everyone who hadn’t already been killed. As she spoke we walked past walls grimed with soot.
There had been 408 women, children and old men killed in the shelter, Egyptians, Jordanians and Iraqis, both Christian and Muslim. They had been sleeping in three-tiered bunks, with the children in the top row. When the second missile had exploded, burning children had been thrown upwards. Miriam stopped and pointed out charred remains of little hands and feet, still sticking to the ceiling ten years after the bombs had been dropped.
Further on we stopped at a wall where people had been burned, Hiroshima-like, into the concrete. Miriam pointed to the outline of a young woman and that of a child’s leg from thigh to ankle. And there, peering out of the darkness at me, was the face of a young girl. She had vapourised, leaving just the pink skin of her face on the wall.
I’m tough enough, but I don’t mind confessing that as I walked out past photos of the young children as they had been, tears streamed freely down my face. Smart bombs? It’s a shame the people who aim them are so fucking dumb!
Our next stop was at a museum dedicated to the reconstruction work that had been done to war-damaged buildings. I walked through vast, dusty halls, past hundreds of display cases containing scale models depicting the buildings before and after repair. There were models of refineries, factories and bridges, but what surprised me were the number of schools, hospitals and mosques that had also been targeted. No wonder the Russians had referred to the Yanks as ‘20th century barbarians’.
We drove around, stopping at a couple of locations so that the photographer could take some street scenes for me. Mohammed constantly hovered, controlling everything. Sometimes it was okay to shoot in one direction but not another, because that would take in sensitive buildings. In view of the number of assassination attempts there have been against Saddam, security was obviously still a major consideration.
As we couldn’t see the Quds Army until Saturday, I had two days to kill. I hadn’t been given permission to see anything else and the outings were proving to be so expensive my budget didn’t allow for much else.
To take advantage of the 50 dollars a day I was paying the Press Office, I tried to engage Mohammed in conversation as often as I could. However, there was a whole range of topics that were off limits for discussion, so he wasn’t a source of much information for me. After one conversation he did look thoughtful though. I had mentioned the idea of arranging a ‘Live Aid’ style concert in Baghdad to emphasize the plight of Iraqi children under the sanctions. I suggested that I could try to interest some pop celebrities in England and, apart from a concert for the children, we could raise some money for much needed medicines.
I had been back in my room for no more than 20 minutes when the phone rang. It was Mohammed. He asked me to come to the Press Office immediately as something important had come up. I hurried over and was met by a very agitated Mohammed. It seemed that he had mentioned my idea to someone higher up and now a Minister wanted to speak with me.
I was ushered into the building next door and into a plush lift. I emerged into a carpeted hallway and entered a similarly plush office. Seated behind a large, leather-covered desk sat a small, dapper man with a thin moustache. With no preliminaries whatsoever, he asked me about my idea in perfect English.
I explained the principle behind ‘Live Aid’, adding that it not only raised money but also people’s awareness of problems. It put pressure on Governments to act. It could well lead to a lessening of the sanctions. The Minister sat there, nodding all the while, but saying nothing. Right at the end he piped up. “But what music will they be playing”, he asked?
“Well, Western pop music, I suppose”, was my reply.
“Can’t stand the stuff”, came the Minister’s instant response, “can’t they play something classical? That really was the end of the conversation as far as I was concerned. I just couldn’t picture Bob Geldorf on third violin.
On the Friday I found a driver who was willing to take me to Babylon, 40 dollars no questions asked. We slipped out of the hotel early and were soon speeding out of Baghdad along well-maintained roads. But in view of the fact that tarmac virtually seeps out of the ground here, perhaps well-maintained roads wasn’t too great a feat.
Babylon, that great, mystical city of antiquity, was something of a disappointment. Only the foundations were original, the rest of the walls had been built out of new bricks. Any comfort I might have taken from the fact that Saddam had forebore to smother the place with great murals of himself, was dispelled by the realization that he had had his name engraved on nearly every brick!
Saturday saw me at the University again with Mohammed, the photographer and the driver. Even on a weekend the campus was swarming with students, and so I took this opportunity to study them more closely. To a soul, they were a clean, wholesome-looking lot, not an orange punk haircut or pierced body-part in sight. In fact, they actually looked like they were there to study.
The women all wore long, ankle-length dresses, which must have been quite uncomfortable in the heat. I didn’t actually enquire about specific sexual practices, but what with the climate, the dress and the religious restrictions, I feel confident in stating that there is absolutely no muff-diving whatsoever in the Middle East.
On a parade ground to the rear of the University we found the Quds Army. About 200 young women, aged between 16 and 30 and smartly dressed in well-pressed, sand-coloured fatigues, marched up and down under the direction of regular army officers.
It was explained to me that, in this first two weeks, they just learned to march. In the second two weeks they marched carrying guns. In the final two weeks they went to the army assault course to learn how to use the guns. Quite clearly, I was only going to be allowed to watch this simple marching.
As they marched the women sang, “The enemy may have American weapons, but we have a genuine Tikritian hero.” Saddam comes from Tikrit, so no prizes for guessing who wrote those lyrics then.
Back at the Press Office I paid my bills, collected the official photographs and signed forms in triplicate. That night I took several sly shots of Baghdad after dark from my hotel balcony, then agonized for hours over whether anyone might have seen the flashes.
Sunday afternoon left me with a couple of hours to spare before I had to catch my evening flight to Damascus, so I got my taxi-driver to stop off at the zoo. The pride of lions in their cramped cage looked anything but proud, their manes decidedly moth-eaten.
The Bengal tiger wheezed as if it had been smoking 50 a day all its life. To an animal though, they were ignored by the few Iraqi visitors. They were all looking at me. The rarest live specimen in Baghdad Zoo is a tourist!
Passing a compound of wild asses, I chanced upon a line of cages similar to those holding the big cats. Peering inside, I noticed the occupants cowering in the corners. They were dogs, ordinary domestic dogs. Now I’m not an expert on breeds, but in one cage there were a pair that looked like Spaniels and in another, some Terriers.
“What are these, Mahmood?”, I asked, turning to the taxi-driver. Mahmood looked suitably shame-faced. “They get well-fed and looked after in here”, he confessed, “ out on the street they get shot and eaten by the soldiers.”
So there we have it then. If the fact that our sanctions have killed over 1.3 million Iraqi children doesn’t move us Brits to anger, then perhaps this will.
For God’s sake stop the sanctions. For a society fit for dogs to live in!
THE END