[Note: this post is written with extreme discretion]
Dear Lisa,
The past few days have been interesting in Basra--and of course, in Iraq, "interesting" means general mayhem and bloodshed. Cases in point: over the weekend, unknown assailants--the assailants are always unknown, there are no uniforms or name tags here--assassinated five people in the streets. The victims, or so I hear, were ex-Baathists (there is no such thing as an "ex" Baathist to some, evidently), but, as Samir, the night clerk at the funduk put it, "We have courts and judges to decide matters like this. It is not up to people who chose to take life so cheaply."
On a lighter--or at least, more spectacular--note, a barge transporting smuggled diesel oil exploded in the Shatt, causing a dense black tower of smoke to rise over the northern Basra all afternoon. Haven't heard an explanation for that one yet.
The day before, Layla and I had a little adventure. It started when we taxi'd out to interview the founder and director of perhaps the most radical Shia religious party currently jockeying for influence in Basra. Established the mid-1990s to resist Saddam and his supporters, they have steadily grown in power and confidence. "They were the first group to challenge our presence in the streets by setting up unauthorized checkpoints," a British officer told me.
Like nearly all Islamic politicians I've met, the Founder (we'll call him) is a serious, soft-spoken, intensely watchful man, who moves with slow, deliberate motions and radiates the humorless self-regard of the Arab intellectual. Despite the stifling heat in his office, he wore all black--slack, shirt, jacket. The only person wearing more clothing in the room was, of course, abiya'd Layla.
During our hour conversation--Layla translating--he explained to us how his party represents the true cultural instincts of the Iraqi people; how it has dedicated itself to peaceful democratic reform; how the media has undertaken a deliberate campaign to twist his party's message into something ugly and frightening. They do not stand for violence, he pointed out, but rather God's justice and Divine Sovereignty as embodied in the life of the great 7th century Shia icon Imam Hussain.
The Founder seemed intrigued in my fascination in Shi'ism, and somewhat taken by Layla, who exuded her usual charm, and invited us back for a follow-up interview. As we stood to go, however, the Shia leader and his political officer, a heavy-set man who sat across from me fingering his prayer beads and observing the conversation, refused to let us leave their headquarters except in their own SUV, under protection of their own guards. Oh-oh. I glanced at Layla, who smiled a little nervously and winked, hardly assuring me.
We climbed into the vehicle, while the Political Officer sat shot-gun and a couple of AK-toting gunsels crowded into the rear. On the way over, he and Layla engaged in a long Arabic conversation--very frustrating, as you might imagine: seems the Founder was concerned that Layla and I might be seen leaving his party's HQ and become targeted for "assassination" by rival religious groups, Baathists or Occupation troops (!).
Obviously, since you're reading this, nothing untoward happened to us--although a curious moment occured on the way back to the hotel. We hit a traffic snarl, and to avoid the tie-up, the driver turned down a short roadway blocked by orange police cones. A cop manning the barricade took a glance at the car and immediately removed the cones, allowing us to bypass the delay, replacing the obstructions a moment after we drove through. I thought immediately of what a little Basran bird once said to me: "You see, Steeve? The police are not independent. They serve the religious parties. Many of them belong to the religious parties. It is not right."
By coincidence, the next day--Sunday? they begin to blur after awhile--found me at Basra's Criminal Investigation Division, a bustling, state-of-the-art facility packed with gleaming scientific equipment and manned by Armani-wearing detectives and macho babes with fabulous hair and long, tapering legs. (Do I have to say it?--Not.) Actually, Basra CID was a single dingy, un-air-conditioned floor of a former Baath Party headquarters, its scuffed and blackened walls badly in need of paint, cigarette packs littering the scuffed tiles and exposed wires hanging out of electrical sockets. The "Division" is so poorly furnished that the Russian-made rocket and dozen or so mortar shells the cops fished out of the Shatt earlier that morning were laid out, exposed to view, on a staircase landing. "We have no place to store them," my guide, Lt. B. confessed with embarrassment.
Unlike a cool, glamorous TV CID, Basra's version possessed exactly one computer, no criminal laboratory, a forgery department that essentially fit inside a cabinet and bomb defusing equipment that consisted of a pair of wire cutters. "We find unexploded bombs every day," Lt. B. informed me. "Cut the wrong wire and boom!" And what kind of health plan and insurance coverage does the Iraqi government offer these men, who are indispensable to the future of the country? The word nothing probably best clarifies their benefits package.
Later that night, Hassam (we'll call him) tooled by the funduk to pick me up for a little night-drive through Basra. Hassam is a stringer for various news organizations, a rolly-polly, vain and seemingly knowledgeable man who spends his days in a house with other stringers, drinking tea and watching Arab music videos while waiting for news to break. Seems a friend's uncle was one of the five men assassinated over the week-end and his family was holding his wake that evening. Desperate to get out of the hotel and see what Basra looks like after dark, I accepted Hassam's invitation to attend the gathering. (Getting in his car, I instinctively put on the shoulder-harness seat beat: "No," Hassam cautioned me, "You will look like foreigner"--which tells you something about Iraqi driving habits.)
We drove along the Corniche: couples, families, knots of young men wandering up and down the promenade beside the Shatt. Cafes lit by neon and fluorescent tubes. Chai-drinking shiska tokers relaxing at tables set along the banks of one of Basra's cleaner canals. The Jazar Street "night market" ablaze with open-shop, crowded-sidewalk, heavy-traffic energy. It felt good to see a semblance of normal life taking place, even if I could only view it from afar, stuck for safety's sake in Hassam's car...
We motor on into an increasingly desolate area of town--here, generators are few and neon signs nonexistent so a kind of hazy darkness lit only by the full moon descends over the pre-fab cement housing blocks and unpaved streets. (Basra is one of the few cities where you often need an off-road vehicle on the roads.) Eventually, we pull up to a field where dozens of people are sitting in plastic chairs or standing in a a long fluorescent-light-lit canopy, where platters of food rest on an embroidered rug. Hassam and I join the gathering, I'm introduced, nods and murmurs of "Well-kum" all around, the inevitable tea and Pepsi appears like magic and of course, the deceased's family invites me to partake of the funeral feast--but I decline, not wishing to intrude on their sorrow any more than I have.
The gathering, Hassam tells me, is winding down now that darkness has fallen. I question why all the attendees are men--it's night, he explains, women are at home now (where they no doubt belong) and besides, they held their own commemoration earlier in the day. Gender segregation even in funerals! Meanwhile, men in dishdashas are embracing, crying on each other's shoulders. "He was a very good man, a good man," the murder victim's nephew tells me. I don't have the heart to ask if his uncle were Baathi.
For alright, maybe he was a member of the "ex-regime" (as the Iraqis put it): still, there were many degrees of participation in the party, some relatively innocent, some not so. Who decides this degree, and by extension, who lives and who dies? I thought of Samir's remark the day before: "There are judges and courts for matters like this." Sitting in the plastic chair beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, watching teary-eyed men smoke cigarettes and sip their tea, I wondered about these unnamed people in Basra who "chose to take life so cheaply"--often in the name of the Iraqi people, sanctioned by their own idea of religious virtue, purity and divine retribution. They rule the streets of Basra now. Everyone is afraid of them, including me. But more on this topic, I cannot say.
Yours from the land of the weaponized surah.
May 20-23
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