Baghdad
Fayrouz Treasure of Baghdad
The Talk Of The Town
The Book Market Mutannabi Street
Treasure
of Baghdad zeyad
My aunt called me yesterday afternoon
Treasure
of Baghdad
Deception
Treasure
of Baghdad
Oppressed
and Displaced
Treasure
of Baghdad
Guilt
Treasure
of Baghdad
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►Treasure
of Baghdad
The Book Market was burned by a car
bomb that mixed the blood of readers,
buyers and sellers with papers,
and fire just like Hulago who once
burned the
Grand Library of Baghdad and threw
the books in the Tigris mixing its
water with the ink of the books.
Al-Mutannabi
Street in Baghdad is a well-known
book market named after the most famous poet
in the Arab history, Abu Al-Tayyib Al-Mutanabi (915-965 A.C.).
Back in 199s when Iraq was under the Embargo,
this street was never empty. Even people who
were starving for food used to go there;
some never bought a book but came to water
their thirsty souls with walking among books
and knowledge hoping they could find something
cheap to buy and read.
For three decades, book owners in this street
were not allowed to sell any book that opposed
the former regime. However, such books were
still sold secretly there.
After the fall of the former regime, Al-Mutannabi
Street is again filled with customers,
from communists to clerics, who would once
have faced jail or execution for reading some
of the materials that opposes the government.
The street is open for customers seven days
a week but the most crowded day is Friday
in which dozens of educated people,
intellectuals, scholars, students,
university professors, etc. come by and
spend hours in this wonderful place
to carry on improvement and to get knowledge
despite the bad situation the country is going through.
Fayrouz Treasure of Baghdad
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The Shahbandar Cafe near the
Sarai Market at Mutannabi Street
At the scene of the Mutannabi Street bombing, Iraqi poet
Jabbar Muhaibs put a wooden crate on his head to mourn the
death of cultural life in Baghdad. "The light will not be lit
here again," he said. Then, Muhaibs, a lecturer at the Baghdad
Fine Arts Academy, leapt atop a burnt out car and recited:
"What has happened to the poems and the poetry, all covered in
blood and lying with the scattered souls and the bodies
beneath the rubble?"
Iraqi poets and writers gather at Mutannabi Street in mourning
zeyad
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My aunt called me yesterday afternoon
Like most Baghdadi women, she used to
have relatively a normal life. As Russia-educated journalist, she’s been
working in the media field for a long time writing about the Iraqi youth,
every day life, food, and of course, women.
Under the dark era of Saddam and the darkest era that followed, she never
stopped reporting. She went to her work during the three successive wars. She
never left without a notebook and a pen. In fact, her bag had different kinds
of notebooks and pens in which I used to tease her sometimes by asking her if
she robbed a stationary. Her image with the notebook interviewing people in my
neighborhood during the 1991 US-led war is still vivid in my mind reminding me
of how strong and full of will she was. She would drive every two or three
days to her newspaper headquarters which was close to my neighborhood and hand
out her reporting to her editors who had already compiled a bunch of different
other stories form other reporters in other areas in Baghdad.
As a secular Muslim, she never believed in wearing the scarf, not because she
is against it or because she criticizes it, but because she is not convinced
of wearing it. She believes women should not be forced to wear it. She had
friends from different sects and religions, most of them were teachers,
artists, painters, and even singers. They used to hang out every week talking
about their life and their jobs and hobbies as they enjoy sipping the dark,
strong Arabic coffee which she is an expert of making.
Today, my aunt is one of the millions of victims of fanaticism that came to
the “new Iraq”. As a “Shiite” living in a “Sunni neighborhood”, insurgents
threatened to kill her not only because she is Shiite but because she is a
journalist. And that was not it. They threatened her because she doesn’t wear
the scarf and because she drives a car and uses a cell phone!
Deception
In a few weeks from now, the war in my country will enter a new year leaving
the number of hundreds of thousands of victims increase and every other aspect
of life there decreases. Seven months passed since I came to the United States
and everyday passes, I discover how Americans are being manipulated by their
TV media.
Last
semester, I met one of my professors in the English department and had a
little talk about Iraq. I was shocked of the little information she had. Most
of the students, if not all, in my university have the same little information
of what is really happening there and why it is happening. All they know is
that there are American soldiers there fighting to protect them from Bin Laden.
So many people ask me about my life there and how I survived and became able
to get out of the country. When I tell them my survival story, the expressions
on their faces become of those watching a horror movie. They are shocked and
mad at how deceived and misled they are. All I can hear from them are words
like, “really? Oh My God! I can’t imagine that! We don’t see that on TV”… Of
course, they can’t imagine or see that since these TV stations don’t cover the
real life Iraqis because their main concern is Brittney Spears’s bold head and
Anna Nicole’s mother-boyfriend battle of whom should get her dead body. I am
even thinking of writing to both of them and tell them that they should burn
the body and divide her ashes so that each one of them has parts of her.
I have had my television in my apartment since last September. If I don’t have
night classes, I tend to watch the news on the main channels: ABC, NBC, and
CBS, not that I depend on their news but to see the kind of coverage they
offer. There is nothing about the lives of people who are dying in hundreds of
thousands in a war that seems has no end in the horizon.
Most images I see on these channels are of TV shows that deal with beautiful
models trying change geeks or a woman and her husband jump like a clowns in a
deal or no deal show. Well, it’s money! Who cares about what is happening in
Iraq!?
At the Forum Theater in my university, I had the chance to watch “Weapons of
Mass Deception,” a documentary by Danny Schechter examining the US media
coverage of the War in Iraq. The film sums up why Americans are being deceived
and how they are being manipulated by the Bush administration.
In the film, John Donvan, an ABC correspondent says,We have never, including
me, shown the viewer what it’s really like and how horrible war is.
CNN’s Christiane Amani’our admits,The press is muzzled. I’m sorry to say that
television, including my station, is intimidated by the administration and its
foot soldiers at Fox News.
So! It’s been four years since the invasion. I can’t blame the media only. I
blame the American people as well for letting this media misleading them. I
said it before and I say it again here that Americans live in a bubble. They
should get out of this bubble and see what is really happening in the world.
Americans here are always shocked of how Arabs know about them more than they
know about Arabs. If you don’t find news on TV, read the newspapers, read
blogs, read news articles from other countries. Ignorance or neglect or
whatever you call it is harmful, if not to you, It’s harmful to other
countries. When I say other countries, I mean people not governments.
Oppressed
and Displaced
Aunt Sahira was in bed when someone knocked at
the door in the middle of the night. Terrified, she woke up her husband. He
jumped from his bed unable to think what to do. He had few moments to decide
what to do.
My two cousins were only five and six
years-old. They were terrified and ran to their parents’ room where they all
gathered unable to function. Their faces looked pale and their hearts pounded
like drums, my aunt recalled. They knew the father was going to be taken and
there was no way out for him to escape.
The men outside kept knocking at the door for
five minutes until my aunt decided to open it. Five men in olive-color
military uniform stared at her.
“Where is Yousif?” one man said.
“He… he.. he is … not here,” she said as she
was shaking.
“Don’t lie,” he said. “Go in and bring him,” he
ordered the other men.
She begged them and told them he has nothing to
do with politics. He was just a merchant. Her heart pounded faster and faster.
She knew that was it. She knew she is going to be a widow and her two
daughters will be orphans for the rest of their lives. She sobbed and bent to
their feet and kissed their shoes so that they leave him alone. No luck!
Two of the five men found him hiding in the
closet. They took him in front of his wife and crying daughters.
“Take care of Hana and Zeena,” he said. His
eyes were full of tears.
“Don’t take him please, please, please,” she
cried.
“If you want to see him, come to Abu Ghraib
tomorrow,” one man said as he slammed the door.
She didn’t believe what happened. She hoped
that these men would never come and take him away. She loved him to death. In
1967, she fell in love with him when they were in the same undergraduate
school, college of Agriculture. By end of the year, they got married. In 1977,
they had their first daughter whom they called Hana and in 1978, their second
daughter joined the small lovely family. Before Hana was born, they bought a
house in Kadhimiya, a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood which embraces the shrines
of two revered Shiites Imams and decedents of Prophet Mohammed.
It was 1982 when this incident happened when
Saddam was going on with his oppression against the Shiites. The government
claimed that Aunt Sahira’s husband was a member of the Islamice Dawa Party, a
banned Shiite political party that revolted against Saddam and tried to
assassinate him in that year.
Aunt Sahira took the phone and called her
in-laws. She fell into despair when she heard that her two brothers-in-law
were also taken to Abu Ghraib the same night her husband was taken. The next
day, the whole family went to the prison to see what they could do to let the
men released. At the prison, officials told them they seized the men because
they were members of the “Dawa” party. They we are all shocked because they
know that it was not true. Aunt Sahira and her mother-in-law told them they
were not members of that banned party. She knew they would not listen to her.
She knew that this was just the beginning.
For three months, she and her daughters were
able to see Yousif in his prison in Abu Ghraib. She would take money, food,
blankets, and clothes.
“Bring me pictures of you and the kids,” she
recalls him saying. His eyes were red and his face was pale.
“I knew I would never see him after that
visit,” she told me. She was right. She never saw him till this day. He
disappeared like the hundreds of thousands of innocent Shiites did. The prison
officials told her not to visit him again.
“They told me he was going to be taken to
‘another prison’. I knew they were going to execute him,” she said.
By course of time, things became worse. After
her husband Yousif disappeared, she was forced to leave the house. It was
confiscated by the government with all its furniture. She was lucky that she
was able to run with her jewelry and important documents. She went to her
in-laws house first but she found the government men seizing it as well. Then
she went to her parents’ house where she heard the worst news. After the
government confiscated her in-laws’ house, they denied them the Iraqi
citizenship and forced them to leave the country in 48 hours. They were
considered “foreigners” who should not be in Iraq.
Aunt Sahira and her daughters did not have to
leave the country because her ancestors were all born in Iraq since the
Ottoman period. All her documents said she was Iraqi. Her husband’s
grandfather was born in Iran since his father was a merchant and he was there
with his wife for business when they had their first son who was offered the
citizenship of the country he was born in.
Since that time, she and her children were
deprived from all of their rights. The daughters were treated in Iraq by the
government as Iranians who cannot get a job or go to school unless the
government approves. Aunt her sister tried to make the government issue her
daughters the citizenship as she was Iraqi but she failed. Then she did her
best to convince them to let her daughters go to school at least. Finally,
they did but they were also considered foreigners who did have neither a
national ID nor a citizenship one.
When the daughters had to go to undergraduate
school in 1995, no university in Iraq accepted them despite the high grades
they got in high school. Even private universities refused to let them
register because it was a government order. Finally, she took the risk. She
kept asking for an interview with one of the high officials in Saddam’s
Presidential Council. After two months of interviews, her daughters were
granted the right to register in a private university but not a state-owned
one.
It was very hard for my cousins, who never saw
their father since 1982, to cope with the society and school where they saw
their friends being embraced by their parents. However, they remained hopeful.
They thought they would see him again one day. One of them fell in love with a
young man in her school. They loved each other till they were about to be
engaged. I remember her telling me about him and how he loved her. Their
marriage was never meant to happen. The man’s father was a colonel in the
Iraqi army. If he marries a Shiite “foreign” women, it means he would lose his
job and lose any possible job in the future. The man’s family begged him not
to marry her in order not to destroy the family. Eventually, they did not let
them get married. His mother forced him to marry one of their relatives.
When my cousins graduated from university, they
were jobless. No government institution accepted their applications. They were
not allowed to work in any government institution. There were a few private
companies which were able to employ them but they refused so that they don’t
be in trouble with government. Eventually, they stayed at home jobless and
single. They all shared the salary my aunt got from her job as an agricultural
engineer in the ministry of Agriculture, a position she got before the
government took her husband.
Unable to depend on their mother’s $2 monthly
salary, they decided to have their own small business, a sewing workshop where
they made fancy curtains and clothes for people. Both of them were talented.
Neighbors, relatives and friends depended on them. Instead of buying an
expensive shirt, they would buy the cloth and give it to my cousins to make it
a fancy inexpensive shirt.
Before they graduated, they lived in my
grandparents’ house which they shared with my other uncle and his six family
members. My aunt and her daughters got a room in the house and shared one of
the bathrooms with my uncle’s family. They tried to rent a house but
everything was expensive compared to my aunt’s little salary. Everyone advised
her to sell the rest of her jewels but she refused because she wanted to give
them to her daughters when they get married.
In 1998, my other aunt was able to move to a
bigger house, she gave her smaller house to Aunt Sahira so that she settles
there instead of living in one room in my grandparents’.
When the war started in 2003, my aunt’s hope
revived. She suffered from Saddam’s tyranny and here was the best time for her
to get her rights back. Few days before the invasion, she asked if she could
come and stay with us. She was worried because she was by herself with her
daughters. We went through the war altogether. We ate, ran, hid, cried,
worried and survived the atrocities of the war together.
Few days after Saddam’s fall, rumors spread in
Baghdad. Radio stations reported that political prisoners were found filthy
and hungry in underground prisons. Since that time, Aunt Sahira and her
daughters started hoping that the father is still alive after even though 21
years passed. I remember one day that one of my cousins woke up in the dark
crying. She dreamed of her father. As she was crying, she told us she saw him
in her dreams standing in one of the prisons calling her to come over to free
him.
Since then, Aunt Sahira’s husband search
campaign started. Her first step was called the “Association of the Free
Prisoners” [background] which was based in Kadhimiya where they found the
records of the Shiite prisoners who were taken to Abu Ghraib or the other
prisons. The records the association found were bulky. My aunt did not lose
faith. She went every single day hoping she could find his name among the
survivors. Days and weeks passed and no luck. She did not give up. Three weeks
passed. The association told her that his name was neither among the dead nor
the survivors. It seemed there were other records they did not find.
Eventually, she gave up but kept the memory of her husband in her heart.
It was hard to for them to give up hope. One of
my cousins fell into despair. She woke up every night crying and calling for
her father. She said things like she could hear him calling her. Her mother
and sister hugged her and cried with her. We were all heartbroken.
Days passed. Aunt Sahira decided to go on in
her life. She never gave up her rights. Finally, she was able to rent a new
house and get her daughters employed in the agriculture ministry. But the
happiest moments for them was when her daughters were finally granted the
Iraqi citizenship and nationality IDs. The new Iraqi constitution considers
anyone’s father or mother is Iraqi is also considered Iraqi. They visited us
the day they received the IDs. When I congratulated them, tears of happiness
fell like rain. After 23 years, they got their rights back.
The house my aunt rented in 2003 was in
Amiriya. There was no sectarian violence at the time. Now, it’s considered one
of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baghdad where no Iraqi and American
forces could move in it without being attacked.
After the bombing of the Askari Shrine in
Sammarra and the aftermath retaliation of the Mahdi Army militias, Shiites in
Amiriya were threatened by the Sunni insurgents. Families were forced to leave
their houses. Aunt Sahira stayed there until the day where all her Shiites
neighbors were threatened came. She was afraid that she was on the list too.
So she decided to leave the house which she dreamed of having for the rest of
her life.
She started looking for houses in Karrada, a
neighborhood where the majority in it are Shiite. Finally, she found a
two-bedroom apartment there. It was twice the price she paid for the house in
Amiriya. Few months later, it became so dangerous for her brother, whom she
shared her parents’ house with, to stay in his neighborhood, Dora as Shiites
were threatened there as well.
Without any hesitation, she told them they can
live with her. A month later, my third aunt, a journalist and a secular women,
joined their small “displaced refugee camp” in Karrada.
Guilt
28 December 2006
It was 9 p.m. when my cell phone rang. The screen showed an Iraqi number. My
heart stopped for a minute! I was scared because it was about 5 a.m, in
Baghdad. I immediately thought something bad happened! It was a second until I
answered but it felt like an hour. Million things came into my mind in that
second. Who was it? Why they are calling? Something bad happened? Who calls in
this time? Someone might have died?
It was one of my best friends in Iraq. I asked her what happened immediately.
Her voice was different. She spoke slowly, sadly, and desperately. “I haven’t
even slept, B,” she said. I was speechless! I didn’t know. I was afraid to ask
her and get the saddest reply. Eventually I did.
“What happened?”
“There were clashes in my neighborhood since the morning,” she said.
There was nothing new about this, but I why she said that. My heart pounded
like a drum. I just didn’t want to hear that someone was hurt.
“No one was hurt. I am scared,” she said. “Armed men and interior ministry
commandoes fought each other in our neighborhood all day. You can’t imagine
how it was. It was hell.”
“Get the hell out of there,” I said.
“I am supposed to go to Jordan tomorrow but the roads are still closed. I
don’t know if I am going to be able to get out of the house tomorrow,” she
said.
Treasure of Baghdad
