It is difficult to decide what the people really think
because most have long since learnt to mask their feelings.
People do not speak openly, even though the government-appointed
“minders” who accompany reporters will say heartily: “Ask
them whatever you want.”
You may ask, but you probably would not get the answer. Fear
is an integral part of the Iraqi mentality, as real as the
whispered mukhabarat, Saddam’s secret police, who
strategically position themselves on leather sofas in the
al-Rasheed Hotel lobby to keep tabs on the journalists hurrying
past.
Even mentioning the name mukhabarat is taboo. Iraqis
do not say the word outright. They tend to point upwards to the
sky, insinuating “upstairs”.
In Iraq, nearly every aspect of life is controlled.
Neighbours can spy on neighbours. Waiters in restaurants hover
over tables, listening and noting. Westerners’ hotel rooms are
routinely searched, suitcases opened, papers rifled through.
Telephones are usually monitored, so clumsily that sometimes you
can hear your eavesdropper breathing or coughing on the other
end.
If you wander, minder in tow, through the streets or the
souks, through the winding lanes of old Baghdad where remnants
of colonial Britain survive, you can ask people questions, but
must choose your words carefully. Merely broaching certain
subjects can put them at great risk.
Politics is a forbidden subject. Even references to any kind
of change of regime are dangerous. Once, while I was exploring
the sad landscape of Babylon, a guide described the death of
Nebuchadnezzar. “No one knows how he died,” she said.
“Strange, considering the power during his reign.”
Suddenly she caught the metaphor and tried to control the
strange smile tugging at her lips. Then she controlled herself
and her face went dead.
Sometimes there are things you do not want to know. Most days
I would see a man in Baghdad with no fingernails, just raw
scars.
The first time I saw this, I was shocked, then curious: how
could this have happened to him? Who did it? What had he done to
endure such agony? But when I asked an Iraqi friend about it,
his face closed like a door slamming shut. I repeated my
question, thinking my friend had not heard. Still, he remained
silent.
I did not push, because I had seen that look before on many
faces; pleading not to be put in a position of answering a
question which may lead to a knock on the door.
For a reporter, this self-imposed censorship makes life very
difficult, but there are plenty of other reasons why Iraq rates
as one of the hardest countries in which to work.
In Chechnya or Bosnia you may have had to trek over mountains
under fire, dragging your satellite phone and computer behind
you, but at least you could write what you saw and what you
felt.
That does not apply in Iraq. The Iraqi Ministry of
Information carefully screens journalists entering the country.
Visas can be as elusive as gold dust. Acquiring one can take
months, and requires great patience and perseverance.
The process becomes all-absorbing. If and when word that your
application has been successful reaches London the relief is
huge. It can be baffling. There seems to be no rhyme or reason
why some reporters get visas relatively easily while others are
left in limbo.
When you arrive in Baghdad, either by road from Jordan or by
plane to Saddam international airport, you leave behind your
mobile telephone and any sensitive reading material, both of
which are forbidden. Your satellite phone — your link to the
world and the means to get your story out — is sealed at a
customs point. To have the seal opened you have to register at
the Ministry of Information press centre, upon which you very
quickly become dependent.
You receive a government-appointed “minder” who
accompanies you all day. You are forbidden from taking your
satellite phone outside the building. If you are caught with
your dish hanging out of your hotel window, you can be expelled.
You are never explicitly told what to write and what not to
write. The process is subtler than that. Journalists’ visas
are “extended” every ten days, which means being very
careful about the questions you really mean to ask because you
don’t know whether or not your minder will report you, or your
hapless interviewee, “upstairs”.
Life in Baghdad could be pleasant, with the restaurants —
bordering the slow-flowing Tigris — filled with the wealthy
drinking non-alcoholic beer, eating a fish speciality called masgouf,
or watching the old-fashioned Lincolns and Chevrolets that
Iraqis love to drive — cars that will shock American soldiers
because they are the cars their fathers drove.
Then, the reality of what lies below the surface would
intrude. In passing, someone will whisper to you. One night it
was a musician in a bar who said in an urgent voice: “You must
understand, we are afraid of our own shadows.” Another time,
when I was visiting a small newspaper, a simple employee bravely
leaned over his computer and hissed: “We want our freedom.”
But these encounters were rare. Most taxi drivers, merchants,
tea-vendors or families I visited spoke highly of Saddam and his
men. It is difficult to know whether they said what they said
because they believed it, because it was all they heard on the
television and radio, or because they were terrified. The coming
days will show.
“I am telling you now, we will not come out to greet the
Americans as our liberators,” said one Iraqi intellectual,
choosing his words carefully. “Even if some people welcome a
change, they will not welcome foreigners coming to rule them.”
That is one potential danger the Americans must consider. The
other is what will happen after the bombing, and whether there
will be a civil war between the Sunni minority, who comprise
most of Iraq’s present leadership, and the Shia, who are the
majority. The most likely theory is a Shia uprising.
The question everyone wonders, but no one asks aloud, is
whether the one million Shias who live in the festering Saddam
City slum in Baghdad will rise up against anyone, or anything,
connected with Saddam. Iraqis say, in their scripted voices,
that everything is under control, that Iraqis — Sunni and Shia
— will both loathe an occupier and unite to resist them.
Partly, this is true. But what is also true is that many
Shias have felt repressed and under-represented for years, and
the smouldering resentment you feel as you wander past the open
sewers of Saddam City is very real. The bombing may be the match
that lights the tinder box. Still, Iraq and Iraqis are easy to
love, and it is difficult to have spent two months in a country
and leave knowing it will be bombed.
One recent afternoon, as I wandered near the markets of
Kerrada, I watched ordinary people buying ordinary things —
hairbrushes, toothpaste, tin foil. Who among them would live and
who would die? Seeing the shop windows, one could imagine piles
of glass.
An hour after the move to get a second UN resolution
collapsed on Monday and war became inevitable, the street scenes
were the same: men in cafés drinking tea; even men surreally
and optimistically continuing building work on the Ministry of
Information. But their lives are about to change for ever.
Saying goodbye to so many people — families I had met,
drivers, even minders who had tears in their eyes as they helped
to load the vehicle for the long ride to Jordan — was hard. I
wondered if I would ever again see the man whose tea station
became the Times office inside the Ministry of
Information in Baghdad.
All of them said the same thing, sadly. Not just “goodbye habibe”
– Arabic for darling. But “goodbye, see you again, inshallah”
– God willing.
