A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

Read A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal Online

Authors: Asne Seierstad,Ingrid Christophersen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers, #History, #Military, #Iraq War (2003-2011), #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Journalism, #Social Science, #Customs & Traditions, #Sociology

Table of Contents
 
Also by Åsne Seierstad
 
 
The Bookseller of Kabul
 
Je suis profondément convaincu que le seul antidote qui puisse faire oublier au lecteur les éternels
Je
que l’auteur va écrire, c’est une parfaite sincérité.
 
Stendhal,
Souvenirs d’Egotisme
, 1832
Preface
 
This book is about a journey, a war and some of the people caught up in the war. For a hundred and one days, from January to April 2003, I tried to record what I experienced in Baghdad.
 
During such a journey the reporter is on duty at all times. Things can happen at any moment. Information is suddenly received or the idea for a new story comes to mind. The reader sees only the outcome; the articles say little of how they were first conceived or what has been left out.
 
In my ten years as a journalist reporting from war and conflict zones, I have never worked under more difficult conditions than I did in Iraq. Before the war the problem was elementary: no one said anything. Iraqis used empty phrases and banalities for fear of saying anything wrong or betraying their own thoughts.
 
What to do as a journalist when everyone says the same? Do they all mean it? Do none of them mean it?
 
I tried to move around in the landscape between deafening lies and virtually silent gasps of truth. The sophisticated apparatus of oppression affected journalists too; sometimes it had a direct bearing on what we wrote.
 
In time new challenges arrived - descending from the sky, rushing through the air, crashing around our ears. There was no power, no water, no security. All the same, every day we had to file our reports, watched over by our minders.
 
One day the minders were gone. Then I tried to discover what happens to people when the dam bursts. What do they choose to say when they can suddenly say what they want?
 
 
My reports from Baghdad are
my
reports. They come directly from my own - not always adequate - experiences.
 
The events might have been interpreted differently by other correspondents. An Egyptian journalist probably saw the war in Iraq from another angle; an American might have assessed the situation in a different way again; maybe an intellectual from
Le Monde
had his own emphasis.
 
The truth about the war in Iraq does not exist. Or rather, there are millions of true accounts and maybe just as many lies. My remit as a journalist in the chaos of war was not to judge, predict or analyse. It was to look, ask and report.
 
My greatest advantage was that I
was
there. My eyes were there, my ears were there.
 
When I left for Iraq I had an agreement with three newspapers.
Aftenposten
in Norway
, Dagens Nyheter
in Sweden, and
Politiken
in Denmark. In time my articles were also published by
Ilta-Sanomat
in Finland,
Der Tagesspiegel
in Germany,
Trouw
in the Netherlands,
Der Standard
in Austria, and
Tages Anzeiger
in Switzerland. In addition I was employed by several radio and TV channels.
 
The articles I sent home were snapshots, glimpses from the war. They belong to certain days and incidents. Some have been reproduced in their entirety, others have been integrated within a larger context. The war can never be entirely grasped or understood through instant reporting. Nor can political analysis impart the tragedy of seeing one’s own child killed by a missile.
 
No story contains the whole story. This is just one of many and it gives a fragment of the whole, not more. Read the reports of the Egyptian, the American, or the Frenchman. But above all, try to find the Iraqi version of the war, and the time before and after the war. Together they will give us a basis for understanding what is happening, now that the acts of war are over, but before peace has arrived.
 
 
Åsne Seierstad
Oslo, 2004
 
Before
 
First comes the light. It filters through eyelids, caresses its way into sleep, and slips into dreams. Not the way it usually does, white and cool, but golden.
 
Half-open eyes peer towards a window framed by long lace curtains, two patterned chairs, a rickety table, a mirror and a chest of drawers. A gaudy sketch hangs on the wall: a bazaar where shadows of women in long, black shawls slide through dark alleyways.
 
I’m in Baghdad!
 
So this is what the morning light is like here. Furtive.
 
The next revelation awaits behind the wispy curtains: the Tigris.
 
It is as though I have been here before, the view jumps out from my childhood Bible. The meandering river, the rushes, the little palm-clad islands, the trees towering nobly above their reflection in the water.
 
From far below the cacophony of car horns reaches me, dull roars and sharp high-pitched squeals, a snailing chaos. The road follows the river bank.
 
I arrived under cover of darkness, a journey of twelve hours from the Jordanian to the Iraqi capital. Night fell long before we reached Baghdad. A few scattered street lights shone palely. Without our being aware of it we crossed the river.
 
 
Euphrates and Tigris - the starting point of everything. Even the Flood had its origins here:
the land between the two rivers
- Mesopotamia. The Tigris is a treacherous river. Under layers of mud, on the river plain, archaeologists have uncovered towns. The cataclysms led to the accounts of God’s judgement, the Flood that covered the whole world. The waters of the Tigris made the Hanging Gardens bloom. The Garden of Eden was somewhere near; the Tower of Babel within easy reach. From this country Abraham and Sarah were exiled.
 
The thickets along the Tigris are paradise no longer. The river bank is dry and barren and the only green in sight is the palm leaves swaying lazily at the top of brown tree trunks. The city too melts into brown; the contours of the houses are erased by the mists hanging heavily from the sky. Baghdad disappears into the desert.
 
Like so many other world cities, Baghdad’s history begins with the river.
 
- This is the place where I want to build. Here everything can be transported on the Euphrates and the Tigris. Only a place like this can sustain my army and a large population, Emperor al-Mansour is alleged to have said in the middle of the 700s. It was summer and he was travelling around his empire. He set up camp near the village of Qasr al-Salam, said evening prayers and fell asleep. According to the legend, he was blessed with the ‘sweetest and kindest’ sleep in the world. When he awoke, all he looked upon he liked, and so he stayed. The Emperor himself drew up plans and allocated funds in order that the city might grow quickly. He laid the corner stone himself and said: - Build and may God be with you!
 
Baghdad developed on the strategic trade route between Iran in the east, the corn-growing countries in the north, and Syria and Egypt in the west. According to tradition the city was designed to express the Emperor’s elevated radiance and splendour, and to keep his distance from the population. The palaces were built on the west bank of the Tigris, while the markets and living quarters were assigned to the east bank.
 
 
Like al-Mansour I too have been blessed with the sweetest and kindest sleep this first night by the banks of the Tigris. I am standing up, enjoying the noise from the ramshackle cars below. A feeling of peace spreads over me. The time has come for me to start looking; in a country where catastrophe is gathering.
 
On the way down the stairs I hear screams from reception. Piercing howls and scratching noises cut through the air. A skinny monkey runs crazily around inside a cage, howling, a dove coos and yellow canaries add their warble. A feeding bottle is jammed between the bars of the cage.
 
- Poor little guy, is all I manage before two tortuous arms grab me from behind the bars and hang on. I scream and pull away. The monkey squeals and jumps back.
 
- Mino steals anything he can get hold of. He can reach right down into your pockets if you get too close, the receptionist says. I glare at Mino. He should be swinging from palm tree to palm tree, eating fresh shoots or scrounging bananas.
 
The receptionist stuffs a few dinar notes into his breast pocket and approaches the monkey, who grabs them. - Look, he certainly can steal, he laughs.
 
In the breakfast room my previous night’s travelling companions are gathered around the oriental spread of bread, tomatoes, olives, boiled eggs and sweet, strong tea.
 
- The Tigris. I turn my eyes heavenward.
 
- Wonderful, says Jorunn.
 
- Just don’t drink it, Bård grumbles. His job is to purify the water, Jorunn’s to organise him. Bård is a water engineer and works for the Norwegian Church Aid, Jorunn is the coordinator.
 
- We can provide clean water for hundreds of thousands of people, Bård says. The cup of tea disappears in his large hands. - All we need is our equipment. Much of the machinery has been held up at the border, he sighs.
 
- The Bible, I suggest. Can you lend me a Bible?
 
Jorunn, who has been a relief worker under the auspices of the church for many years, looks at me as though I have caught her in a crime.

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