In the Red Zone

SONG OF BASRA

Dear Lisa,

Located about five miles south of central Basra, it is a large, partially-tended expanse of nebk trees and palm groves, the last bearing clusters of unripened dates high amidst their spiky green leaves.  Intermingled among weeds and foot-high grasses are small vegetable plots--cucumbers, okra, red pepper, figs and bamber--an Indian fruit about the size of a cherry tomato.

"This land has been in my family for seven centuries," says Samir, walking along the banks of the Ahsahraji River, its still green waters streaked with the copper glow of sunset.  "That is nearly half the age of Basra itself."

A stocky, dark-skinned, middle-aged Iraqi with soft, sympathetic eyes, Samir is the editor-in-chief of one of Basra's largest newspapers.  A secular man, he is nevertheless respectful of, but not beholden to, the religious parties that currently run his native city.  "I am a real Iraqi," he is fond of saying.  "Not Sunni, not Shia, not Christian, not Arab or Kurd--Iraqi."  He's also as native a son of Basra as you can find--not only has his family resided in the city since the days of the Mongols, but twelve generations of his fathers have dwelt in the very house he lives in today.

We met in his downtown Basra office last week for an interview, after which he invited me to visit his 5,000 square-meter "farm"--refuge is more like it   I jumped at the invitation.  If anyone knew the answer to a question that has increasingly obsessed me, this tolerant, urbane, surprisingly Western Basrawi was the man.

"You want to find the 'soul' of our city?" he repeats, as we sit on the edge of a shallow irrigation channel running through his property.  "This is difficult.  Basra is a mixture, ever-changing.  Like it's weather.  Do you know," he adds, picking an emerald green squash from a patch beside him, "that people have called this city 'The Idiot' because it's character is so unstable?"

As if to underscore Basra's turbulent reputation, Samir outlines its history.  Founded in 637 AD as a military outpost for the expanding Muslim empire, Al-Basrah (the name has many translations --my favorite is "black specks," referring to distant palm groves rising from the desert, the first sign that approaching caravans had of the city) has experienced pillage and plunder, wealth and renown, neglect and decrepitude at the hands of numerous powers--Persians, Turks, Mongols, Portuguese, British, Baathists and, most recently, Americans. 

"But will this bring you to an understanding of Basra?  Not quite."  To the west, the sky takes on a silver sheen, as the air seems to weave a thickening skein of dusk among the palms along the river.  Overhead, a few stars begin to appear.

I ask about Shia Islam.  "Of course," he nods.  "After all, it forms the personality of southern Iraq, and the Shia have waited 1,400 years to rule this area."  Visions fill my imagination of black flags fluttering in the desert, armies of men chanting Ya, Hussein!, bearded mujtahids preaching sacred blood and holy martyrdom.  But Samir shakes his head.  "No, no...for most of its history, Basra was not Shia, but maintained loyalties to Sunni caliphs.  It even revolted against Imam Ali!  Basra didn't become Shia until the 19th century, when people from Amarra and Nasiriya began immigrating to the city.  No," Samir says again, "Shiism is not the place to search for Basra's soul."

The modern legacy of war, revolt and impoverishment?  My host nods again and begins to describe the effects of Saddam's military adventuring--the nearly incalculable death and destruction unleashed by his megalomania, the coarsening of Basran society and the nightmares that the survivors of that period carry with them.  Samir himself witnessed the death of his own brother during the Iran-Iraq War, when they were both serving near Fao.

"I saw him enter an Iranian mine field, where an explosion sent a piece of shrapnel into his spine.  It took our troops ten days to fight our way to the area, and by the time I found my brother, his corpse was thick with worms and maggots."  He relates the story with the impassive tone of someone who has long ago buried the pain of his memories.

But the obscenities didn't end there.  As the night darkens, and the cooling earth causes a soft breeze to stir, Samir describes Basra during the "Intifada" of 1991, when Shia Muslims, encouraged by the White House, rose up against Saddam, only to encounter the full might of his security forces.  The stories are gruesome--mass executions at the university, corpses torn apart in the street by feral dogs, the legless torso of a man lying in a gutter, his face staring wide-eyed at passersby too terrified to move or bury him.  I ask him to stop.  Is this where I'll find the soul of Basra--in the trauma inflicted on the city by Saddam Hussein?

Samir shakes his head no, then, after a pause offers his answer:  "Walt Whitman."  Chuckling at my reaction, "Yes, your country's poet--you are perhaps familiar with his book 'Leaves of Grass?'"  Cormorants, bedding down for the night, flit from palm to palm.  From a concrete block house nestled in the underbrush a generator coughs and sputters, and a small trickle of water comes splashing down the irrigation channel. 

"In his poem," continues Samir, eyes gleaming in the dark, "Whitman talks as if his soul were a part of nature--free, filled with love, encompassing every aspect of life.  I think of this often."  After weeks of experiencing little but shortages, poverty, frustrations and dysfunctionalities--Iraqis' and my own--this evocation of the great American Bard startles me.  Kafka, yes--but narcissistic, homoerotic, barbarically yawping Walt?

"Yes, you see, Basra was once like that.  It is, you know, a port city.  Open to influences from around the world--Asia, Europe, Africa, America.  In the 50s, 60s, 70s, life was here--if you went to the Corniche, you found bars and casinos and nightclubs.  People gambled, drank Arak, had sex and prayed.  They may have sinned, but they did it indoors, with the result that Allah forgave them."

This last theological point is lost on me, but I understand Samir's general meaning.  Again and again, I've heard similar sentiments from Basra's intellectual class:  the "turbans" who are imposing their Islamic beliefs on the city--often at the barrel of an AK--are not Basrawi, they are an aberration, a glitch in the city's history, a "transitional" phase from 35 years of Saddam's tyranny to a truly democratic future.  It is dangerous--possibly fatal--to express these thoughts too forcibly in public, but they exist on the minds, lips, tongues and soon the voting fingertips of thousands of Basrans come the next round of elections this December.

"This is what I look forward to.  That someday, insha'allah, I will live in a country without any differences from any other country.  Just a normal place where my family and I can live normal lives.  You ask about the soul of Basra?  Look for it in the humanity that your poet, Walt Whitman, expresses."

It's late.  I must return to house arrest in my downtown funduk.  We stand, brush the dirt off our trousers, walk back to the car.  Through a picket-line of palms I see the rising moon, hanging full and yellow in the blue-black sky.  With the trickling sound of water in the background and the gentle whisper of the breeze, the scene approaches a tranquil beauty I've yet to encounter in Basra.  For an instant, you can almost imagine the world inviting you to lean and loaf and observe a spear of summer grass.  The moment contains multitudes.  Walt Whitman would love it.

Yours, camerado,  from where the wisteria falling over a Basran wall satisfies more than the metaphysics of the mullahs.

June 26-27

FALLEN VIRTUE

[Note:  Readers interested in an investigation of Basra politics--in particular, the push toward federalism, or de-centralization--might want to check out my piece in June 28th's Christian Science Monitor.  Hope you enjoy.]

Dear Lisa--

What's one of the main source of the problems afflicting Basra these days?  Pull up a chair, habibitie, and I'll tell you...

...so there we are, Layla and I, chatting one recent afternoon in the funduk coffee shop with Dr. Basma, a history professor at Basra U.  Over cups of chai, the conversation meanders from the Battle of the Camel to the Dutch East India Company and the Sublime Porte to today's religious conservatism among Basma's students.  Outside, the day is hot and dry enough to dehydrate a sponge, overriding the funduk a/c system until, growing uncomfortable, Layla divests her abiya to carry on the interview in a scarf, long sleeved blouse and blue jean flairs.  All perfectly modest, of course, nothing like the T&A jigee-jiggling on the Arab music videos blasting from the television behind us.

In walks a man, who plants himself in front of the TV.  Even as Dr. Basma recounts how increasing numbers of students are shrouding themselves in hejab, this worthy sits transfixed by the televised bevy of dark-eyed houri prancing and dancing and rotating their heads until their long, thick, black-as-the -Kaaba tresses spin like propellor blades.  The irony is not lost at our table, although we don't mention it.

The man, however, feels no such discretion:  soon, instead of Lebanese teens in adornment-revealing half-cut tees and crotch-level jeans, he's staring at us--staring with the same blank, dull, malevolently stupid glare I've encountered so often in this country.  I tense; Layla, sensitive by now to my misplaced gallantry, cautions, "I know, I know, just ignore him..." while Dr. Basma talks gamely on, trying to blot the intrusive gaze from her consciousness as well.

But I can't restrain myself, it's hackle-raising, this constant stare.  "Eindak mooshkelah?" I snap, ("You have a problem?"), the man starts, garbles something in Arabic, looks back to the TV for moment--then turns to glare at us once more.  By now I'm thinking, What would happen if I punched this guy?  when fortunately, Layla leaps up, murmurs with exasperation, "It's me, it's me..." and proceeds to re-abiya herself.  Muslim dignity restored, the man returns to oggling the video vixens in their chadorless abandon, hair, limbs, hips moving with the freedom Iraqi women experience only in their dreams.

Ah yes, I think, the tanker truck men all over again, the same gutfull of squelched anger shot through with helplessness and frustration.  And once more, I'm reminded that the real agents of Iraq's fate are not media-friendly issues like the "insurgency" or the "Occupation" or even the upcoming constitutional convention--but rather subtle, ephemeral, non-documentable social norms and cutoms that permeate and regulate the lives of nearly every person in this country--especially females.  I've railed about this topic before, but it never ceases to astonish me, the ways in which Iraqi men subjugate and control their women with their obsessions on "reputation," "honor" and that all-purpose cudgel, "proper Muslim behavior."

Men, of course, maintain no such standards of conduct:  I could give a hundred examples; let these two suffice.  Recently, Layla contacted a member of one of Iraq's major Shiite religious parties, requesting an interview.  She and I actually spoke with this man in February, 2004, and athough they haven't met since, he told Layla on the phone that he remembered her.  More than remembered her, actually:  he's been thinking of her ever since--her face, her eyes, even the clothes she was wearing that day. He then asked her to marry him.  Right there, on the phone!  And not once, but twice..  (I was sitting next to her in the hotel lobby when she held this conversation, not knowing why she suddenly seemed to turn naueous)  This bastion of Muslim propriety and Koranic teachings even sweetened his proposal by promising her a position on the party's "security forces"--which is tantamount to offerng a civil rights activist a job with the Klan.  Do I even need to say it?  She refused.

About two weeks ago, we interviewed a businessman sheikh--a heavy-set guy with a fleshy face who radiated a kind of sleazy prosperity.  At the end of our conversation--translated by Layla--the sheikh told us he had many other ideas and thoughts he wanted to share.  This sounded good, and as we left his house, I asked Layla to set up another appointment with him.  She refused.  Wouldn't say why.  This angered me, we had words, she stormed off--and it was only a few days later that she told me what had occured.  Seems the oh-so-respectable sheikh had offered during the interview to make her his second wife (he already had one), showering upon her promises of a car, a house, money.  In Arabic, of course, as if I was not present in the room.  Layla had translated his comments for me, editing out the marriage proposal without missing a beat--you really have to hand it to her.

The point is, polygamy and "temporary marriages" are legal here, meaning that any single woman is subject to the advances of any man, married or not.  Even if they aren't bold enough to confess their ardor in conversation, the hope, or fantasy, burns in their minds and fills the eyes with a queasy leer.  Woman back home who complain about the "male gaze" have no idea how bad it can get.

Adding hypocrisy to chauvenism, the religious parties take the opposite tact in public, policing female behavior with a vigor that makes the Puritans look like jitter-bugging zoot-suiters.  Yesterday, I interviewed a 22 year-old Psych grad from Basra University.  She told me how, as they entered the campus each morning, she and other female students had to pass through a gauntlet of religious militiamen "hired" by the administration for "protection."  The gunsels examined each woman's hejab--no showing of hair, ladies--and the length of their abiyas, staring into their faces for signs of make-up.  (I've also learned that similar guards at a college in Amarra, north of Basra, scrutinize women's feet to insure they are wearing black socks--it's an Iranian thing--inducing many students to paint their feet and ankles black.)  Anyone failing the Islamic Dignity test is sent home, with a stern rebuke to her parents for allowing their daughter to venture out in such a degraded state.

A few months ago, the student continued, a young man and woman were ambling down a narrow path at the university when black-shirted militiamen accosted them, accusing the couple of "unIslamic behavior."  When they protested their innocence, the brave warriors of Allah began beating the woman; when the man tried to defend her, they knocked him to the ground, punching and kicking him into submission.  (Of course, those of us who follow the news remember how Moqtada al-Sadr's men last March attacked a student picnic, because the young men were brazenly intermingling with young women, many of whom were not wearing hejab!)

I asked the student how this oppression made her feel, and she grimaced and curled her fingers into two trembling talons.  "It burns inside," she added.  "We are not free to dress or act as we like.  Meanwhile, the religious parties have banned from our lives music, social interaction, relaxation.  I am depressed all the time."  I then asked her if she ever had "fun" in Basra; her face took on a blank, faraway look.  "No," she whispered, looking at her hands folded in her lap.  "I see on television the lives people live in America.  And I feel my years are being wasted."  Lisa, this is a 22 year old woman in the very bloom of youth! 

But this is what Basra has become in the aftermath of the elections.  These are the unwritten, unlegislated and unchallengeable "social" and "religious" norms that have an iron grip on the city.  And yet back home, you hardy find a public discussion or even acknowledgement of these shackles on human behavior--the Right is too busy congratulating itself on the progress of Iraqi democracy and the Left is obsessed with multimcultural relativism and discrediting Bush.  Meanwhile, Bedouin customs and religious edicts--in short, tribal Islam--is grinding the hearts and souls and futures of thousands of Basran women into the desert sand.  All they can do is curl their hands into talons, burn inside and wait for the day of their true liberation.

Yours from the land of leering cleric and salacious sheikh.

June 20-24

FAO/MESSAGE FROM BAGHDAD

Dear Lisa --

Call it the equivalent of taking a day trip out of the city.  Fed up with moseying around the funduk, or sitting in an over-air conditioned office drinking yet another Pepsi as I interview someone, I wanted to kick back in a car and let the Mesopotamian miles roll by as I contemplated life.  But where to go?  About 100 kilos to the south is Fao, a small port city where security is good, the Shatt nearby and memories of the Iran-Iraq War still fresh.  I asked Layla if she wanted to go, figuring she, too, felt cooped up in the city (actually cooped-up in Iraq, is more like it) and we scheduled our little jaunt for Friday, the second day of her week-end.

Layla being Layla, of course, she just didn't accompany me to Fao, she organized the whole damn trip.  At 10:00, a cab pulls up to the hotel, and I climb in even as Layla begins reciting a list of contacts she's arranged--the town mayor, the police chief, the head of a teaching organization called the Education Union, and so on...With traffic light on prayer-day Friday, Abbas, our sayyiq du jour has us out past the city limits in no time, bounding on the road toward the Arabian Gulf.

Although it's not officially begun yet, this summer is hotter than usual, or so say the locals here.  I have no basis of comparison, but I can believe the estimation is true.  By 10:30, the temperature is already scorching, forcing us to roll the windows part way up to keep the air inside the car from spontaneously combusting.  The a/c system is so overwhelmed that the air it blows into the car is like the blast from an electric hand-dryer.  And if I'm hot, sitting in the front seat, I have to keep in mind Layla in the back, her head wrapped in a light blue scarf, her body encased in a thin black abiya.

The countryside between Basra and Fao is flat, dry, parched except for some sickly-looking salt flats, and almost completely destitute of vegetation.  Tattered black flags--Shia flags--fly from sticks jammed into small hills out in the desert, on the horizon, an enormous oil refinery smokes and burns and shimmers in the heat.  With Layla translating, Abbas tells us how, a quarter-century ago, this expanse of dessicated earth once flowered with palms, trees, flowers, wildlife of all description--a verdant garden of date groves and streams and blessed shade.  But the Iran-Iraq War destroyed it all, Abbas continued--bombs, rockets, machine gun fire cutting down and churning up the groves like a gigantic scythe and plow.

We flash by berms and small hillocks with sloping sides--tank defenses and artillery emplacements.  Twisted, rusting metal fragments of oil installations obliterated in the Iranian fighting.  Charred and blackened stumps jutting up by the roadside--the last remains of nakhil, or date palms.  A large mural rising up from the desert floor, Arabic words carved in a large slab of black stone.  Abbas slows the car as Layla translates.  "Fifty-two thousand Iraqi men killed in the battle of Fao...One hundred-twenty thousand Iranians...over six million artillery shells falling in this area..."  She pauses.  I glance back to see she is crying.

What this memorial only suggests--and what Layla remembers all-too-vividly--is the absolute horror of the war.  Three days previously, I spoke with Mahmoud, a desk clerk at my hotel.  From 1986-1988, he served in a chemical weapons unit, specializing in skin blistering, respiratory and nerve agents.  Around Fao in 1987, he recounted, his unit fired respiratory-inhibiting gas at Iranian soldiers, only to have the wind shift and the poison blow back on Iraqi lines.  "I was in the hospital for a month," he said.

On another occasion near Fao, his unit fired nerve agents at advancing Iranian armies; several days later, he witnessed the aftermath of the shelling.  "The ground was covered with dead soldiers.  But since we were not supposed to be using chemical weapons, someone had gone to each corpse and shot them with a pistol in the head.  I don't know how thousands of dead bodies, each with the same bullet hole in the forehead, was supposed to fool anybody, but that's what the Iraqi army did."

Fao itself is like many southern Iraqi cities--a collection of widely dispersed pre-fab=fab cement blockhouses, separated by large fields of scrubby plants, concrete debris and trash.  In the "center" of town stands a deserted amusement park, its ferris wheel inert, the other rides rusting and inoperable.  Since it's Friday, almost no one's working, and the heat made even the fishermen--their colorful skiffs, canoes and boats crammed together in crowded berths--seek the relative cool of the shade.  Meanwhile, on the horizon east of the city, three huge pillars of black smoke rise into the thin blue sky, marsh fires erupting on the Iranian side of the Shatt-al-Arab.

In a small room inside building bearing the English sign "Educational Union," Layla and I meet with the town notables.  Unlike most Iraqis I've met, they are surprisingly upbeat:  security in the town is excellent, they have 24-hour electricity, water is okay--their only real problem, in fact, is unemployment, but a new port expansion project, set to begin within a few months, promises to remedy that situation.

I then ask about the Iran-Iraq War.  The mayor, police chief and a third man who had served in the conflict as an officer in southern Iraq, begin talking at once.  Fao came under Iranian bombardment almost as soon as hostilities began in 1980, they tell me, resulting in the mass exodus of every citizen from the city.  Overnight, a municipality of 80,000 turned into a ghost town--then a wasteland as the war destroyed every building.  "The Iranians occupied the barren fields and turned them into a military base," the men relate.  "All the structures you see in Fao date from after 1988, when the war ended."

The men have to break for mid-day prayers, so we gather together a small crew and drive toward the Shatt, creeping slowly among some rutted roads past Fao's shipyards--actually, the hulls of dhows under various stages of construction--passing into a thicket of rushes and wetlands, cormorants wheeling overhead, a wild boar staring at us for a moment before bounding back into the reeds--eventually disembarking from the cab and walking about 100 yards through stifling heat to the shore.  Here, salamanders and crabs are scuttling about in muddy flats, lapped by small waves from boat wakes on the waterway.  After meeting some friendly fishermen--who take Layla, our guides and me for a little riverine tour of the Shatt--we return to the car.  To the east, the flames are leaping higher and higher, spewing black funnels toward the sun. 

There's not a poignant end to this tale.  We returned to the Educational Union, where the mayor and the police chief and other assorted Faoians wanted to continue to talking.  But I was hot and tired.  I suddenly had a deep longing to be alone, something that is difficult to do in Iraq, where there always seems to be someone watching, observing, eavesdropping...and for foreigners solitude is particularly difficult, since we can't even go to a local store without someone's company...

I walked out of the building, then down the empty boulevard toward the Shatt.  Across a wide, empty field to my right, the deserted amusement park shimmered in the heat.  The wind blew with a high whistling sound, kicking up swirls of dust.  I found a nebk tree on a traffic island which cast just enough shade to make the heat tolerable.  There I sat, listening to the wind, smelling the antiseptic smell of desert heat and feeling the thoughts drain from my head as I watched Iran burn.

A MESSAGE FROM BAGHDAD

Readers of In the Red Zone may recall a section having to do with a woman named Hadeel, who, as I relate in the book, was killed in a suicide car blast in January 2004 as she waited in traffic to get to job in the Green Zone.  Recently, I received an e-mail from Zena, my friend in Baghdad, telling me that she had been in contact with Hadeel's family and had provided them a copy of Red Zone so they could read the passage about their daughter.  I asked Zena for an update on the family, and this is the e-mail she sent; I present it without comment.

Just before Hadeel died, her father passed away, leaving behind Hadeel and her sister and two brothers.  Then Hadeel's death, which further devastated the family.  Her sister was married and pregnant, and her husband had to go to Mosul to complete some documentation, as the mother wanted the family to leave Iraq and move to Syria.  On the road to Mosul, an accident occurred and the car overturned, killing the husband and badly injuring the sister.  She survived, however, and by a miracle the baby she was carrying was unharmed.  After she recovered, the mother took her daughter and two sons, both of who are in college, and moved to Syria.

The point for me is that the situation is so tragic in Iraq, but so common for us living here.  Saddam Hussein used to say that his tyranny would leave a story in every home in Iraq.  He is gone, but the stories continue.

RUDY IN IRAQ

[Welcome National Review readers.  For those of you coming in from the Redzone side, I invite you to check out my latest NRO piece, here.  Thanks]

Dear Lisa --

The sharp ripping sound erupted somewhere close to the hotel.  Automatic weapon fire, I thought, flashing back to Baghdad, where the same noise was--and still is--a constant part of city life.  Perhaps it's just a wedding.  But it was 9 a.m., and besides, everyone knows that the Hauwza--the religious establishment in Najaf--has outlawed the casualty-producing custom of celebrating nuptials by firing guns into the sky.   

A few hours later, we got the news.  On the street just behind the funduk, four masked men in a Toyota emptied their AKs into a parked car, killing a police colonel from Zubair, who had come to Basra for medical treatment.  The assassins are unknown, as is their motive, although rumors have it the murder had something to do with "smuggling."

"Summer is coming," an Iraqi man grunted in the hotel lobby.  "The Wahhabi have been quiet for awhile, but we are expecting their return with the hot weather."

One reason why, two days earlier, security was tight for the opening of the new meeting chambers for Basra Province's Mahjaless Mahafalla--or Governing Council.  Cops, soldiers, private bodyguards, Iraqi men in strange uniforms (how many security agencies does Iraq have nowadays?), everyone milling in front of the newly-refurbished building.  Layla and I passed through the armed gauntlet and found ourselves in a high-ceiling, narrow room, lined with plum-colored wood paneling and filled almost completely with a conference table, around which sat numerous GC members and representatives from Iraqi media.  Pressed against the walls were additional sahafee and officials from the British and American consulates.  (I should add for clarification sake, that the U.S. has a small diplomatic presence in Basra.)

So here it was, I thought, the august halls of democracy.  And looking at the elected officials, the cameras, the suited flaks hovering at the margins of the room, it seemed to me this resembled any grassroots council you find might across the U.S., right down to the dreadful artwork decorating the chamber walls...

...except for one not-inconsiderable detail:  all the Iraqi females in the room were bound in religiously-mandated fabric prisons.  Including one woman who approached me to say hello, her voice emanating from behind a shroud completely covering her face--with a shock I realized it was Haifa Malij Jaafir, who had evidently dispensed with the narrow viewing slit in her abiya in favor of head-to-foot black.  (She's a sweetheart, Haifa is, asking me when I was going to return to the Union for another conversation, but I tell ya, I still can't get used to talking to someone whose voice issues, oracle-like, from behind a veil.)  Anyway, by now I'm on a nod-and-press-a-hand-to-the-chest basis with a number of GC members, and since Layla knows the rest of the bunch, I spent a profitable afternoon renewing contacts and congratulating one and all on their new digs.

In truth, I don't know what to make of the Mahjaless Mahafalla.  Yes, many of the 41 members are alarmingly inexperienced with democracy, in the pocket of the religious parties and possibly corrupt--but they are a legislation born from a (more or less) free election, the first in this city's history.  "Think of where Germany and Japan were two years after World War II--Iraq today is further along the road to democracy," a Public Administration Adviser from the British Embassy crooned.  And despite one's natural tendency to become cynical in dysfunctional Iraq, I think she's right.

Still mulling over the relationship between democracy, the Middle East and the liberation of Iraq, I returned to my hotel room and turned on the TV, planning to do some writing while accompanied by Arab music videos (I've develop an addiction for those damn things).  Instead, I discovered that, by weird coincidence, Dubai-based Channel One was airing "Rudy:  the Rudolph Giuliani Story."  Work was impossible now.  It wasn't the homesick-inducing views of New York that seized my attention; no, rather, it was the dateline of the movie's opening scene:  September 10, 2001.

I don't remember what I did that day.  I do remember what we did two days before, when, on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon we walked down to Battery Park and looked out at the Statue of Liberty.  Afterward, we strolled north along the Hudson, and I recall gazing up at the World Trade Center, marveling at the way the buildings reflected the late summer sun with a magnificent silver gleam.  I don't care what the critics say, the Twin Towers really are beautiful, I thought.  A beautiful part of my city.

Ten minutes into the movie, the real-life footage began:  the gaping hole in the north tower; fire erupting from the south; smoke streaming from the largest skyscraper fires in history; people on the upper floors waving white distress flags; the downward plunge of the south tower into its foundations; avalanche-like billows of white debris pouring down Vesey Street and over the spire of St. Paul's Church as the north collapsed...and for a moment, I was no longer in my hotel room, but back in New York, on the roof of our building, once again witnessing the horrible, the unimaginable, the obscene.

Upsetting, yes; but somewhat eerie, too, to watch these scenes replayed in Iraq.  For, of course, the reason I was even in this Basran hotel room--the reason America and Britain forces invaded Iraq, drawing thousands of people, including myself, into this country--was the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11.  Strange, too, were the words I remember the real Mayor Giuliani expressing that day--especially his awful, emotionally wrenching statement that the "loss of life today will be more than any of us can bear"--given Arabic subtitles.  Did Iraqis watching this show--say, my friendly hotel staff--identify with the mayor, or with the terrorists who humbled the Great Satan?  Did they cheer the law and order sheriff or the Robin Hood of the Middle East?

I can't say for sure, of course, but knowing Iraqis, my money's on Rudy.  The people here desperately need--and deserve--law and order, a sense that justice can prevail against malevolent powers stalking their nation.  The idea that a single man can galvanize a society to stand up to Ali Baba, be they mobsters or terrorists, and survive--unlike, it seems, the police colonel from Zubair--can only bring hope to these demoralized and suffering people.  "We need leaders," a Iraqi journalist said to me over dinner last week.  "But where can we find them in such a society?"

Hollywood being Hollywood, Rudy's war on crime (the same war that cleaned our block of the heroin gang that had ruled it for years) was depicted with a montage of cops rousting the homeless and squeegie men and prostitutes, scored by a ominous soundtrack that evoked thoughts of fascist thugs crushing the spirit of democracy.  I had to laugh.  Here in Iraq, real fascist thugs--and not the imaginings of hysterical lefists--seek to crush the spirit of democracy.  Here in Iraq--where serving as a policeman is the most dangerous job in the world--people can only pray for a force that is incorruptible, efficient and effective against Saddamite psychos and bloody-thirsty jihadists.  They wouldn't call a man like Giuliani a "fascist," and they certainly would not call police officers "pigs."  And that's not just because they're Muslims.

Yours from the land where patriot acts, civil liberties and the war on crime are one and the same.

June 9-12

THE BARONS OF BASRA

[Note:  readers interested in more of my missives from Basra might wish to check out Arthur Chrenkoff, whose been kind enough to offer some space for my ramblings.]

Dear Lisa:

It's hot in Basra these days.  How hot?  Hot enough to prevent car passengers from resting their forearms on the bottom of an open window--the metal soon begins to blister the skin.  Hot enough that even without air conditioning drivers often roll up their windows because the wind outside is too scorching.  Hot enough that the air burns the inside of the nostrils when you breathe.  Hot enough that the hammer blows of heat on a long afternoon make it difficult to stay awake.  And summer hasn't even started yet...

But that's not what I want to talk about today.  Rather, it's tamer--or dates.

A few afternoons ago, I dropped by the British Consulate at "Basrah Palace"--as I've mentioned, one of Saddam's Xanadus, built alongside the Shatt-al-Arab--where I met an Iraqi man named Taha Z. Aubid.  Taha is the head of the Date Palm Department of the Agricultural Directorate of Basrah Governerate--in other words, the province's go-to guy for dates.

Dates were once one of Basra's main industries.  In 1968, over 10 million trees grew in the province.  Judging by the vintage package labels I saw displayed in one farm in Abu Al-Kaseeb, a palm-profuse area south of the city, this region supported numerous companies with names like "Babylonian Lion" and "Eastern Sun Dates" ("a product of al-Basrah").  Then came Saddam, war, bad irrigation practices salinizing the Shatt and environmental atrocities against rebellious Shiites--all of which decimated Basra's date groves.  Today, only three million trees are left, and most of them are dying.  Taha promised to take me out to one of the largest remaining farms, owned by the illustrious Musawi family of Basra--and by the way, did I want to meet the family tomorrow at their mosque?  Of course, I said, and we made arrangements.

Date groves in Abu al-Kaseeb

While waiting for my driver to motor me back to the hotel, I fell into conversation with a young British officer who was assisting with Basra's new emergency "115" line--the equivalent to our "911."  Now, the British being British, they humanely designed the system to allow a person to contact help even if his mobile lacks a SIM card--in effect, making 115 calls free to the public.  (Land lines are few and unreliable, so Basrans live by their cells, requiring them to purchase expensive "scratch" cards to replenish their minutes.)  Iraqis being Iraqi, however, the latest fad in town is to remove your SIM card and make prank calls to 115--worse, the system lacks a "release" mechanism that permits the switchboard from cutting off hoaxes, meaning fun-loving Basrans frequently tie up the lines all night. "Only five percent of 115 calls are real emergencies," the officer said, as we both shook our heads.  Sometimes, all you can do is sigh...

The next afternoon, Taha swings by the funduk and takes me over to the Musawi's mosque.  This ain't any mosque, mind you, this is one of the largest structures in town, an enormous gold and blue-green multi-domed affair built in 1981 and named after the late family patriarch Sayyid Ali Musawi, leader of the Shaykhi branch of Shiism.  And standing at the entrance to the jaami' are two elders from the clan, waiting to shepherd me in.

They are Abdul Redha--the family leader, or so I gather--and his cousin Ibrahim.  Both are in their late 60s or early 70s, dignified, patrician, quiet-spoken men, spiffily-attired in neatly-pressed slacks and short-sleeved shirts--picture a pair of well-heeled Palm Beach retirees about to hit the links.  We sit in a vestibule, where they relate the family background:  about two hundred years ago, English-speaking Ibrahim relates, the clan fled Saudi Arabia one step ahead of the Shia-hating armies of Ibn Wahhab (the same fanatical Muslim who bequeathed Wahabbism to the world), eventually settling in southern Iraq.  They became farmers--specializing in dates--bought land, moved into Basra and over time emerged as the city's aristocrats.  They are wealthy, non-politcal, powerful (recently, the bandit Garamsha gang--with whom Layla and I have twice had tea, but that's another story--kidnapped one of their members, compelling the Musawis to send several hundred men into Garamsha turf to secure their relative's release) and dedicated to the betterment of Basra.  And with that bit o' backstory out of the way, we rise to tour the jaami'.

Funny thing about mosques, and this one in particular.  The first floor is a vast, clean, white, spacious, air-conditioned expanse, illuminated by dozens of small golden candelabra, its basketball court-breadth paralleled by a second floor over which depends a crystal chandelier whose opulent profusion of lights is reminiscent of the alien spaceship in Close Encounters.  The mosque normally accommodates some 7-8,000 worshipers--10,000 on religious holidays--the majority of whom, Ibrahim notes ingenuously, are men.

The mother ship

Of course they're men.  Men are the only people allowed to utilize the vast, clean, white, spacious, air-conditioned floors.  Women have to use two narrow, undecorated, un-air-conditioned, shabbily-carpeted areas, the access to which is up forbidding concrete steps in a darkened corridor.  Worse, these prayer pens possess opaque windows that prevent female worshipers from seeing into the main floor and witnessing the imam lead the Friday services (they can watch him on wide-screen TV, though).  They can't see even view the Spielbergian extravaganza on the second floor.  This gender discrimination is not limited to the Musawi mosque, of course.  Many, if not most, jawaami' short-shrift female Muslims with entrances, facilities and salat areas that are separate and unequal.

I asked Layla--a fairly devout moderate Shia herself--why this should be.  "The dominate interpretation of Islam does its best to dissuade women from going to mosques to pray," she explained--rather diplomatically, I thought.  "In this view, women's prayers are best said at home--where women should be all the time."  Like I say, sometimes all you can do is sigh...

Another point about the Sayyid Ali Musawi mosque.  Nearly every business in Basra is family-owned:  there is no public ownership, no stock market, few joint ventures. The Musawi's various enterprises include a construction firm, which built the jaami'--and because their laborers perceived jaami'-building as religious duty, Ibrahim noted, they worked on the mosque for free. Not much circulation of capital on this project, it seems--rather, we're in the realm of modern religious feudalism.

To finish up my tale of the Musawi (I actually did accompany Taha to their date farm, but that, too, is another story), we strolled a few hundred yards from the mosque to the tallest non-oil sector edifice in Basra--the Musawi Hospital.  Yes, the family also built the largest, cleanest, most modern medical facility in the city.  One of their relations, an optamologist named Zaineldin al-Musawi, directs the institution, which boasts 36 beds, serves about 250 patients and costs a small fortune to utilize.  (Private hospitals are expensive, but the alternative, the medicine- and equipment-deprived public facilities are medical horror shows, so I'm told.) 

It was pleasant, I admit, to meet Basrans who didn't--on the surface, at least--seem traumatized by tyranny and war (especially the impishly-humored, Paris-educated Dr. Zaineldin).  And it was a relief to spend the afternoon in surroundings that weren't dirty, hot, dilapidated and beset by periodic blackouts.  Perhaps this is the emotional pay-off for feudalism, I mused.  Amidst the collapse of civilization--and Iraq is nothing if not a collapsed civilization--people who possess resources and offer protection against catastrophe become objects of admiration, respect and obeisance.  And for their part, with their mosque- and hospital-building, the Musawis exhibit the noblesse oblige demanded of the feudal lord.  Barons, barbarians, religious fervor--and cell phones.  Call it Basra, call it medieval modernity.

One final observation.  According to Dr Zaineldin, his institution lacks the one facility you'd expect in a well-equipped Iraqi hospital--an emergency ward.  "The British asked us to close it down," he explained.  Why?  Seems it was encouraging young tribal bucks to go out a-feuding, get themselves shot up, then receive top-notch treatment in the most advanced medical center in town.  Which means that should you have an accident in Basra today, don't try calling 115 for help, and don't bother going to the hospital.  Better to do what Iraqis have always done--shut your mouth, suffer in silence and hope for better days.

Sometimes all you can do is sigh...

Yours from the land of the Mosqueteers and Hospitalers.

June 6, 2005

VEILS AND BAR CODES

Dear Lisa --

This afternoon taught me some lessons in what many people consider a contradiction in terms:  Islamic feminism.

The education involved a conversation with Haifa Malij Jaafir, a reputedly feminist-minded member of Basra Province's Governing Council and the director of the Muslim Union of Women.  I was particularly keen on meeting Haifa because she is the only GC member who wears an abiya and a veil, obscuring her entire face except for her eyes--and what kind of "feminist" wears that get-up, I wondered.  After some driving and asking around for the Union (along with seat belts and trash receptacles, Iraqis continue to resist the use of street addresses), a small boy led Layla and I through the gathering dusk down barely-paved and debris-strewn streets to a low-slung house obscured by palms where, standing beside the half-open gate, was hejab'd Haifa herself. 

After giving Layla a warm greeting (the girl seems to know everyone in town!), the GC member ushers us through the house into a rectangular room--furniture pushed, Arab-style, against the wall--and we sit on sofas beneath framed Koranic inscriptions and pictures of Imams Ali and Hussain, in addition to the late Ayatollah Hakim.  A young boy pads in with the inevitable Pepsis (my sugar intake has tripled since I came here) and we begin to talk.  It's rather...peculiar, I guess is the appropriate word...to converse with a human being who is essentially peering through a narrow gap in a fabric wall, but not half as strange as I find the woman seated beside Haifa, who is completely covered in black--face, hands, feet, not an centimeter of flesh exposed, looking for all the world like something out of Lord of the Rings.

Through Layla's translation, Haifa gives us the low-down on the Union:  subsidized by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the two-year old organization has nine branches throughout Iraq and deals with some 1,400 women in Basra Province alone.   It's main purpose, she says, "is to upgrade the condition of women through education."  This includes offering classes in English and Arabic, first aid, computer skills, health, information on democratic elections and constitution-writing--they even contact lawyers to assist in domestic abuse cases.  "Many men beat their wives and sisters and try to keep them in the home, not allowing them to pursue careers," she says.  Layla, I notice, doesn't flinch.

Close your eyes, and you can hear a Western feminist articulating the nigh-universal language of equal rights and gender equity.  Open them and, well...as for the shroud & veil, Haifa tells us she wears the outfit because 1) Allah demands it; and 2) she wants to prove that a woman can "make it to the top" without having to resort to "make-up, high heels and fancy dresses."  She wants to run again for office in Basra (she claims her GC candidacy earned the most votes of any SCIRI member), prompting me to ask, if she veils her face, how will anyone know they are really voting for her?  "They will elect my ideas, not my appearance," she replies.

Meanwhile, the Ringwraith sits through most of the conversation, silent and unmoving, except to rise when her cell phone began to chirp.

We wind up the interview and Haifa sees us to the door--she and I seemed to hit it off, and she welcomed me back any time to upgrade my knowledge of Islam and feminism--and soon Layla and I are in the thick of twilight traffic.  As we pass down Jazar Street--Basra's main commercial thoroughfare--she points to a greenish building with a sign in English reading "BASRA CENTER."  "Our new supermarket," she says.

Stop the car.  Restaurant bills at the funduk are eroding my cash stash and I've been mulling over how to store some comestibles in my ghurfa (room), and this seemed a good opportunity to stock the cupboard and see what a Basran "supermarket" looks like.  Turns out BC is a crowded, high-ceiling, very clean single room, about the size of the fruit and vegetable area of an American s-market, equipped with all the trappings of home:  carts, hand baskets, aisles, freezers, cereals, soups, beans, soaps, shampoo, etc.--even a deli counter!  There's no Point-of-Purchase musak, nushkur Allah, and most of the women shoppers are in hejab, with one or two veiled faces--but squint, and you could almost convince yourself you were standing in a pocket-sized Safeway, wondering what you did with the grocery list...

Anyway, Layla and I loop through the market, doing the sign language routine (remember, in public I have to be a deaf mute--kinda silly, since neither of us knows the digital lingo, but it seems to work), loading up a basket with various items (in case you're interested, I have a fridge in the room), then get in line.  And what do I see when I step up to the cashier?  Y'allah, it's a hand-held laser-operated bar code reader!  Holy convenience store!  (To be truthful, I was a little less than surprised:  a couple of weeks ago, Zuhair Ali Akbair, manager of the city's Central Bank, told me that Basrans would soon have the privilege of using a consumer debit card, readable at machines set up in, among other places, Basra Center.)

I mention this bit of quotidian trivia to underscore a point.  To many people--obviously, Haifa's one of them--"fundamentalist Islamic feminism" is not an oxymoron.  By the same token, fundamentalist Islam and modern technology are also not mutually exclusive.  This is a error people make when they claim that Salafists want to "drag us back to the Medieval age."  Not quite.  Rather, they want to "medievalize" modernity (or perhaps vice versa), keeping their mobiles and satellite dishes and computers and Internet, while frog-marching social relations (especially those dealing with women) back a millenium or so.  One fascinating aspect of Basra is that by virtue of its relative stability, you can see the tug and pull of this process at work--debit cards and feminist unions on one hand, veils and alcohol-banning Islamists on the other.

Can they co-exist?  That's the next chapter of the Basran saga.  Most people I know (none of them fans of fundamentalism) think the religious parties are a passing phase, that Basra's fabled liberal-mindedness and port-city sensuality will reassert itself--in other words, the values implicit in a bar-code reader (not to mention the Internet and sat-TV) will eventually sweep away the shrouds and veils, and reduce the turbanned thugs to Friday rants before dwindling congregations.  I'm not sure, but I certainly know where my hopes lie.  With their charm and confidence and dedication, may women like Haifa grace the Basra political scene for years to come--make-up, high-heels, fancy dresses and all. 

Yours from the land where a BLT is never on the deli counter's menu.

May 27, 2005

COPS, CONES AND VENGEANCE

[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

SSR

Dear Lisa --

The idea, according to Captain J., my media operations shepherd during my stay at the Shatt-al-Arab Hotel--an old caravansary on the north end of town turned military base for the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards--is to discourage "insurgents" from massing in the dark and launching mortar attacks on the camp.  The means are illumination flares, two fired from mortars in various directions each night at different times, their parachute-borne coppery light exposing the flat terrain around the base to observers in the hotel's tower (actually the traffic control center for an old and long-unused airport.)

"Seems to work, too," the Captain adds, as the heavy thump! of a British mortar shakes the ground.  "The only time we didn't do this, the hotel was rocketed later that night."

The Shatt-al-Arab Hotel

Later that night--1:30 a.m., to be exact--I'm jarred from my sleep by two loud bangs!, one after the other.  That's funny, I thought, that sounds like an attack on the hotel...a moment later tumbling from bed as a klaxon suddenly blasts out a warning whaa, whaa, whaa indicating that, sure enough, we're under assault.  Beastly fuzzy-wuzzies!  To the wire, men!  Sergeant-major, form a square!

Actually, what I did was throw on some clothes, along with my blue helmet and body armor and, as per instructions, hastened to the hotel lobby (built, it seems, in the 1930s--was that the ghost of a Pan Am Clipper I saw parked on the tarmac?) to stand with similarly attired British soldiers beneath the aged chandeliers and inert ceiling fans while my hosts tried to sort out the disturbance.  About two hours later the word comes down:  seems that--illumination rounds aside--the blacked-out hotel served as a rendezvous for a Chinese-made rocket and an RPG round, fired from different locations in the city, but synchronized to land simultaneously (a degree of "insurgent" proficiency that interested the Brits).  The rocket exploded in the Shatt, the RPG struck just outside the perimeter of the camp.  Bad aim, chaps, frightfully sorry, but you'll excuse us if we don't wish you better luck next time...

Other than that bit of excitement, my embed stay has been a blur of army bases, military equipment, helicopter rides, sweaty trips in Snatches (if you'll pardon the expression), occasional forays amongst the Basran people and periodic afternoons languishing in a KBR-tent on the KBR-built and maintained Basrah Air Station, listening to the KBR-generated (for all I know) desert wind howling just beyond the canvas.  All that, and after-hours beers ($1.50 for a 16-ounce can, two cans limit) at an officers'--and journalists', evidently--"pub."

Highlights have included accompanying Lithuanian troops as they gave hands-on training to Iraqi troops in the fine art of establishing and operating vehicle checkpoints.  ("You most prri-or-i-tize whut vehicles you stup in orrdur not to tie op traffick," the Lithuanian lieutenant tells his interpreter in English, who then relays the instructions to the soldiers in Iraqi--how much information is lost in the multiple relays?)  Then we foot-patroled a small town several kilometers north of Basra where the Liths wandered through the souk, eventually purchasing some souvenir kheffiyas and prayer beads.  (Alas, when was the last time U.S. troops could interact so freely among Iraqis?)  We ended the day driving through some god-awfully poor villages, where the patrol commander pointed out a destroyed stone building where, a month earlier, a group of children found some unexploded grenades, started playing with them and...well, you can guess the outcome of this typically catastrophic Iraqi tale...

Training Iraqi "Facility Protection Service" police

The Brits took us--by "us" I mean yours truly, in addition to French TV2 war correspondent Laurent Boussié and freelance cameraman Dominique Marotel (embedded in order to do a five-part story on British activities in the Basra region)--to a couple of police training centers (one in which young Czech military instructors oozed thigh-strapped-Glock machismo as they trained Iraqis how to shoot) and went on patrols through inner city Basra, where I became acquainted with the inimitable Iraqi expression "jigee-jigee."  (Hint:  it has something to do with offering one's younger sibling to passing soldiers.)

British photographers recording police training

One of my favorite visits was at the headquarters of the Governing Council of Basra, the newly-elected body of provincial legislators.  The pols I saw (and I'll have more to say about them in the future) were an odd mixture of sheikhs resembling Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia, grim-faced representatives of religious parties and even grimmer-faced women councilmembers shrouded in black abiyas, all protected by British soldiers and the occasional Shitte security man, standing outside the council chambers with the blank expression of a hired gunsel whose importance resides solely in his AK-47 and ability to follow orders.  Adding to this exotic, if combustible, mix was Major Robert Cooper, the British liaison to the GC--a droll, erudite, witty throwback to an older tradition of English officer, part diplomat, part warrior, with a touch of the poet beneath the camouflaged khaki and neckerchief tied in a dashing cravat.  One could almost imagine him as a Victorian officer in the British Raj, flattering, cajoling and soothing the indignant tempers of Indian panjandrums and potentates.

The point of all this training--or rather, what the British were keen for the Frenchmen and I to see--is called "SSR," or "Security Sector Reform."  This bureaucratese for a somewhat abstract, objective-sounding and culturally-neutral policy in which the MNF, rather than behaving like an occupying foreign power of yore, seeks to act as instructors, teaching the Iraqi police and army to handle their own security, thus allowing--some day--the various nation's troops to decamp from the Big Sandbox.   Or, to put it less diplomatically, to teach the Iraqis to be our allies against the Ali Baba, "insurgents" and foreign terrorists without--insha'allah--getting sucked into their not-inconsiderable psychological and cultural pathologies.

On patrol in the Qarmat Ali district of Basra

The Iraqis express gratitude for the training--I did not detect among the soldiers and policemen any resentment or feelings of humiliation regarding the MNF.  Instead, I heard constant variations of "Brit-tish zay-neen!  Ameriki muu zay-neen!"--yeah, you guessed it, "British good.  America no good."  (Interestingly, one UK officer said to me, "We are incredibly paranoid about doing anything that makes America look bad...")  Anyway, it's only when you pull the trainees aside that the complaints pour forth--crappy equipment, no boots, shoddy uniforms, terrible accommodations, no one listening to their complaints--and, most bothersome of all, it seems--no pistols!  The Iraqi men (probably some women, too) all want their pistols--Glocks, especially.  "We are in danger 24 hours a day," a police cadet told me.  "We need pistols to protect ourselves."  No doubt--but nearly every Iraqi household possesses at least one gun (legal under Saddam--so much for the NRA argument that private gun ownership deters tyranny...)  One suspects, of course, that strappin' a handgun to your waist or thigh is some sort of cultural trope for social status and manhood that goes beyond mere protection...

I should add, in this already over-long post, that the Iraqis don't blame the MNF for their shortages--although they gripe that British promises of aid do not always materialize.  ("With them, its always 'gimmee, gimmee,'" one Brit complained.)  No, rather, they fault their commanders, who, they whisper, take supplies earmarked for the rank and file and sell them on the black market.  True? Who knows?  The point is, the Iraqis think its true, which undermines their morale ever-so-slightly and resurrects the ghosts of their corrupt, feudalistic and dysfunctional past.  As if those ghosts needed resurrection---around here, they still walk about as plain as day, stalking Iraqi lives and imaginations.

Yours from where the Glocks always run on time.

May 16-17, 2005

BORDER PATROL

[Due to security and Internet restrictions, I have been unable to send regular posts from the U.K. military base at Basrah Air Station, where I've been partaking of the Crown's hospitality for the last 10 days.  This entry is actually entitled May 10th, but since it gives something of the flavor of the British experience in southern Iraq, I've decided to post it anyway--and with a minimum of editing to keep the freshness of my observations--despite the fact that it is over a week old.  Most regular posts to come.]

Dear Lisa,

Embed duty!

Checked out of the funduk at noon today and had Sa'ad pilot me over to the Shatt-al-Arab, where the British Consulate, a.k.a., "Basrah Palace" is located.  The plan was to kill a few hours, until the Brits were ready to chopper me over to the Basrah (I'll maintain British spelling here) Airport about 30 kilometers away.  While I was waiting at the BP, however, a convoy of three "Snatches"--lightly armored Land Rovers, what the U.K. generally uses to move its troops around, rather than Humvees--was leaving for a media event on the Iran-Iraq border.  Seems the MNF (as in "Multi-national Force," the preferred term these days for the "Coalition") was turning over a newly-refurbished border fort to Iraqi control and did I want to go?  Sure, why not, throwing on a blue helmet and flak jacket, `s only gonna take an hour or two, right?

Off we go, crowded into the back of the third Snatch--Emile, a civilian media coordinator for the military, and three soldiers, Roger, Joan and Marcia (all names have been changed), while up front is a driver and another Tommie in the shot-gun seat.  The only air circulation comes from a laughably ineffective a/c system and a open portal in the vehicle's roof which is usually filled by a couple of soldiers standing up and scanning the surrounding environment for potential bad guys.  (These Land Rovers evidently proved useful in Northern Ireland, where they allowed the British to patrol streets without appearing too aggressive, as they might in U.S.-style Humvees.  As one English officer explained to me, "We've had decades of experience in this sort of thing.")

We bounce north, along back roads Basrah--palms, rivers, cows, goats--the scenery looking a bit Vietnamish here--grassy fields, irrigation ditches and small villages producing streams of children scampering out to wave at our convoy.  We cross the Shatt, see a tanker plying the gray-green waters, plunge back among date groves and crumbling hovels crowned with satellite dishes...donkeys, feral dog packs, women in abiyas waiting for a bus or taxi cab...on and on...gets hot crammed in the back of a Snatch, jouncing on the pitted roads, the soldiers beginning to sweat from the kilos of equipment--or "kit"--they carry...

On and on.  And on.  It soon becomes apparent that the British are, well...lost.  Several times the convoy pulls over, middle-of-the-roadway conferences, maps pulled out, soldiers pointing in various directions, squinting in the blazing sunlight--Emile and I, civilians, cannot dismount and instead remain roasting in the vehicles, the sun beating fiendishly down through the open portal--

And it's about to get worse.  Evidently re-discovering their bearings, the Brits turn from the plush Shatt scenery and careen east into the desert wastelands toward Iran.  Now it really gets hot, the Snatches churning up dust and sand, obscuring the roadway as we bounce and sway into divots and ruts. On either side, flat, dun-colored earth, with a few scrubby plants, hardly a rock to break the horizon.  Occasionally, we pass a destroyed tank, its barrel erected in a kind of permanent impotence, or rusting tangle of barbed wire, reminders that here some of the most ferocious fighting of the Iran-Iraq War took place.  (Under the earth, of course, lay untold numbers of unexploded land mines, making the terrain impassable to all but the most knowledgeable and fearless smugglers.)

On and on.  Through the windshield of the Snatch, I see the lead two vehicle enveloped in clouds of grit and sand and for a moment almost sense what it was like when the Monty's 8th Army chased--and was chased by--Rommel across the trackless marches of North Africa.  At last, humans--a checkpoint, three soldiers in russet-on-beige desert cammies beside a Swiss-built APC--we wave, pass through, grind further into the wasteland.  Another checkpoint, more soldiers, these irregularly attired, wraparounds, fingerless black gloves, tatooed biceps bulging out of olive green t-shirts, a khaki bandanna tied pirate-style around a shaven pate--Special Ops guys, it seems like, appears we're getting close--and finally, there it is, our destination--the "Zaid Iraq Police Border Station."  "WELL-COME," a banner reads, affixed to a wall.

All this way for..well, it looks rather like the grand opening of a White Castle burgateria in Queens--the qasr (fort) sparkling white with four crenelated towers and a festive string of multi-colored triangular banners and little Iraqi flags.  At the same time, though, there's enough firepower around to support a border incursion into Iran--Iraqi, British, Danish soldiers, Special Ops teams and Aegis private security guys as big as ambulatory refrigerators.  Along with this weapons-bristling crew are uniformed personnel from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who actually refurbished the joint--along with Iraqi contractors and a gaggle of PR flaks shepherding military reporters and camerapeople around.

Qasr Zaid

Unfortunately, due to our GPS-free desert detour, we missed the opening ceremonies--which included, I gather, the ritual sacrifice of a goat, a small puddle of its purplish blood staining the rock-strewn esplanade leading up to the fort...seems its an Iraqi tradition to slaughter a goat, lamb or other suitable barnyard creature on auspicious occasions.

Such as this.  The transfer of border forts to Iraqi control is an important sign of their increasing sovereignty and they seem proud and excited by the event.  I mull this over standing of the roof of the outpost--squint, and you can imagine Beau Geste--looking across a water-filled canal and pee-colored weeds toward an yellowish blockhouse--it's the Iranian equivalent to Qasr Zaid, staring at us across a muddy no-man's land.  "Anybody home over there, you think?" I ask an Army Corps of Engineers photographer.  "I would think so," peering into her lens, snap, snap, "kinda defeats the purpose of a border fort if its empty."  Practical-minded people, these engineers.

Iranian border fort

Downstairs a typical multi-course Iraqi feast is underway, lamb and chicken (fresh goat?), rice and salad, fruit and sweets presided over by a bulky Iraqi general wearing a maroon beret and epaulets with enough stars to comprise an additional zodiac.  Whoof, the smell of the akil sits unwell with my overheated body, so I wander outside to sit in the shade, take some photographs and wonder what, exactly, the men stationed here will do for entertainment, beside shout dirty Arabic limericks at their Iranian counterparts.  Within a few moments, Roger comes to usher me back into the Snatch,and soon, we're churning dust again, thumping and rocking toward Basrah Air Station.

During the return trip, I consider the passengers in our merry little caravan.  The soldiers impress me with their high level of pride, professionalism and morale--in fact, all the Tommies (are they still called that?  Forgot to ask...)  I met during my10-day stay seem "switched on," as Brit parlance has it.  There's a kind of managerial sense to everything--many of the soldiers, especially officers, see the military as a kind of scaffold for their personal goals, whether it be a future in photography, environmental work, language skills and whatnot.  It's the same with the U.S.--along with increasing humanitarian work and nation-building, these vast, powerful killing machines called modern armies double (triple?) as corporate-like career advancement programs for adventurous men and women.

Still, they are soldiers.  Back in Basrah--five hours and a couple of Tommies who succumbed to heat exhaustion later--the Brits have to clamber out of their Snatches each time we stop, the idea being they present a tempting target when halted in traffic.  (Emile and I, however, have to remain in the vehicles, giving me a whole new appreciation of the term "sitting duck.")  This means for Roger, Joan and Marcia its out of the Snatch, back in, out, back in, out...it's hot, they're tired and lugging kilos of kit, nary a gripe or complaint, I try to work the back door a little to help them out but fear I'm only getting in the way...

And indeed, they are soldiers.  A 16-year vet, Joan, for one, has been all around the world--from Iraq to Afghanistan to tsunami relief work in the Indian Ocean.  At one point in our sojourn, I was telling the soldiers about how the religious fundamentalists have seized control of Basrah (restricted to base except on patrol, the average Tommie is rather ignorant of political life in the city)--noting, for example, how they've targeted hairdressers for assassination.  With this, Joan grunts, "I hate hairdressers."  I give her a quizzical look and she adds by way of explanation, "My ex-husband ran off with a hairdresser when I was in Bosnia."

"Usually its the other way `round," Emile replies, expressing my thoughts exactly.  Joan gives an ironic smile, takes a swig of water through the tube connected to a canvas canteen attached to her back and shrugs. 

This is the army, Mrs. Jones...

Yours from the Queen's own gender-neutral armed services.

May 10, 2005

 

A VISIT WITH THE SHEIKH

[I'm typing this from the British military base at Basrah Airport, where the internet access is somewhat restricted.  I will continue to post as opportunities present themselves.]

Dear Lisa,

"You will find my brother-in-law interesting," Layla promises, as her driver Ali turns down a narrow lane of Basra Qadimah, or Old Basrah.  "I have to warn you, though, he is a very talkative sheikh and sometimes says foolish things."

"That's fine," I reply.  "We journalists love talkative people who say foolish things."

Ali winds along the bumpy, barely paved streets of the ancient quarter.  Soon, we're embraced in a seeming maze of sagging, sand-colored structures, each surrounded by high stucco walls and rusting metal gates.  Above, extend the gray-green branches of palm trees, shading enclosed wooden balconies with slatted windows and intricate carvings--the fabled chenoshile style of old Iraq.  Meanwhile, passing by us are donkey carts, women in ankle-length abiyas, nebk trees, barefoot kids, a canal actually filled with water and not trash...

Wearing a white dishdasha and Arab headress, Sheikh Y., a tall, lean, gray-complexioned man with a white moustache and scraggly white beard, stands at the wooden gateway to his mosque.  Disembarking from the car, Layla instructs Ali to wait for her call to pick us up, then turns to greet her brother-in-law, motioning to me at the same time to quickly enter the gate.  As I pass, I nod to the Sheikh, who presses his hand to his chest and murmurs, "You are most well-come."

He leads us across the inner courtyard of the tranquil mosque, its roof brushed by the leaves of an enormous palm, and into his office, a narrow room lit by two high windows.  We sit on a sofa beside the Sheikh's desk, which is cluttered with books and papers; behind him, framed posters of Koranic scripture hang on the wall.

Layla introduces me--a sahafee Amriki, here to write about Basra--and after dispensing with some family business, gestures to me to begin the questions, which she will translate.  I start by asking the Sheikh how he feels being a Sunni cleric in a predominately Shia city.  "Oh no," he replies, fingering his wooden prayer beads, each about a quarter's width in diameter, "Basrah is nearly half Sunni.  Many Sunnis who fled from the city into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are now returning."

Y. has lived in Basra his entire 52 years, so I ask him to describe the city in the "old days."  His wan and watchful face breaks into a smile.  "It was wonderful. People felt a responsibility for Basra then.  They kept the streets clean, the canals clean, the municipal services were excellent.  Turkish engineers designed a sewage system that poured waste into the Shatt-al-Arab and not in the streets.  W e could never maintain that system," he adds, "because Saddam shot all the Iraqi engineers."

Basra's fortunes began to decline when General Qasem overthrew the Monarchy in 1958, Y. continues.  "The military tone of the Qasem regime introduced a sense of agressiveness and anger into Iraqis, who up until then were calm and tranquil people."  The Ba'athist were even worse.  "They brought us racism, sectariansm, they set Sunnis and Shias, divided families.  Basra itself was administered by people in Baghdad and Tikrit who knew and cared nothing for our needs.  Gradually, the condition of the city declined until it started looking like a cow pasture."

I venture questions about the Iran-Iraq War.  I expect him to tell me how Basra was rocketed, shelled and emptied of population as people fled from the Iranian armies which seemed certain to take the city, but the Sheikh wrenches the conversation in a different direction.  "By starting the Iran-Iraq War," Y. declares, "Saddam Hussan served the interests of America and Israel, and when they were through with him they discarded him just as they used and discarded the Shah."  Oh oh, I think, here we go...

And indeed, a kind of inner floogate opens, and the Sheikh, still speaking in a calm, seemingly rational manner, lets me know the truth about the country I call home.  Yes, Saddam was a U.S. agent; yes, the U.S. manipulated him into invading Iran--and Kuwait, too.  Moreover, today, the U.S. is providing aid to Iran to infiltrate southern Iraq and meddle in Basran affairs.

Within Iraq itself, the U.S. is exploiting tensions between Sunnis and Shias, further separating them into hostile camps.  "It is the old colonial trick, divided and conquer," Y. declares.  "Before 2003, Sunni and Shias lived together in peace.  We never discussed our differences.  During Ashura [the great Shia religious holiday], we all celebrated in harmony."  (Although the Sheikh here contradicts his earlier statement about Saddam dividing the sects, I have to give him some credit:  he did marry Layla's Shia sister.)

"The U.S. is turning Iraqis into angry, nasty people--America seeks to turn us into slaves," he goes on, adding that the nation's newly-elected government is a "failure," set in place by Washington.  "This is why whom you call the 'insurgents' are in truth patriots fighting to free their country."  When I observe that these "patriots" kill far more Iraqi civillians than foreign troops, the Sheikh gives me a placid look and responds, "Sometime in war innocent people must die."  When I press him further about the indiscriminate carnage in and around Baghdad, he admits that some "freedom fighters" might actually be terrorists who do not have Iraq's best interests in mind, but they are--yes, you guessed it--U.S. agents.

"Al-Zarqawi is a fiction, imaginary," asserts the Sheikh.  "A ghost created by America to justify its repressive actions against the Iraqi people."  Trying not to display my increasing irritation, I ask him what kind of goverment he would prefer in Iraq.  "The Monarchy," he answers, revealing something, I think, about the Sunni mindset.  "The Monarchy was best for our country, until America undermined it."

It's getting near the time for late afternoon prayers, and I'm running short of patience anyway.  But I can't resist one last question.  "You blame America for everything--Saddam, the wars, terrorism, even the aggressive attitudes of the Iraqi people.  Don't you think Iraqis must share some responsibility for these problems?"

"No, not at all," the Sheikh says blandly, prayer beads slipping between his thumb and forefinger.  "Everything is America's fault, Iraqis have no responsibility in the matters.  Before America, Iraqis were a quiet, peaceful people."

I close my notebook, Layla and I rise from the sofa.  As he escorts us across the courtyard, Sheikh Y. asks me to make sure I convey his words "to the American people"--oh, don't worry about that, my friend, I think..Bidding fimaanilla to Layla's relative, we step outside the mosque, only to find that Ali the driver is not present.  Layla can't raise him on her cell, either--yipes, we're stranded!  "We must take taxi," Layla concludes.  "Now remember, Steve, keep quiet, and pleae, for once keep your mouth shut."

We walk down a narrow path toward main thoroughfair, the dusky sunlight picking up the sand in the air to filter the entire scene through a kind of russet hue, as if I were walking into a faded 19th century photograph of aging chenoshile  facades, hejab'd women, crumbling stucco houses and tiny shops whose Arabic signs time and the elements have long rendered illegible.  The very inaccessibility of my surroundings adds to the allure--for me, this is something out of Arabian Nights; for Layla its a gauntlet we must pass before getting me to my hotel and safety--and my frustration is unbearable.  I want to wander the lanes of Basrah Qadima, to lose myself in its mysteries, the age-old dream of the Western traveler searching for some insights into the mind and culture of the East.  But there are too many ways to lose oneself in Basra these days, ways I do not want to contemplate--and so, when Layla hails a cab and motions for me to enter, I do not hesitate, keeping silent until we reach our destination.  Some day, some time, when all this "anger and aggression" is past, I will return to Old Basah as a most welcome guest, insha'allah.

May 12, 2005