Aliya and I return the shawls. Now I insist on accompanying her. A young girl opens the door. In the half light behind her we catch sight of an old stooped woman. Rukaya lives alone with her five children in a small house opposite the enormous mosque. Today her children are on their way to her brother’s funeral. - He died of shock last night, his heart stopped beating during one of the intensive attacks, Rukaya says. She doesn’t dare attend. She can’t get herself to leave the house. - He was younger than me, she sighs. - I feel that I am dying myself.
Her daughter tries to persuade her. - You are no more at risk from a bomb there than you are at home, she says.
The slender woman has not left her house since the bombs started falling over Baghdad two weeks earlier. - When we lost electricity last night I nearly fell out of bed I was shaking so much. I knew this was serious. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think. These bangs are destroying me.
Rukaya’s little house is filled with flowers. One entire wall is decorated with roses, tulips, sunflowers, vines of pleated lilies, in fibre, plastic, silk. On postcards, paintings, in vases. Pink, red, yellow, white, mauve, blue. Lace rugs are draped over the sofa and chair, every detail in the house polished and painstakingly looked after.
Rukaya lost her husband in the war between Iran and Iraq. - He arrived home in a coffin, completely burnt. Black as coal, those who saw him said. I myself couldn’t bear to look at him. I wanted to remember him the way he was when he was alive.
Three of her sisters also lost husbands in the war against Iran. One of them never found out what happened to her spouse; he is still listed as missing.
Five years after her husband burnt to death, her oldest son was sent to the war against Kuwait. He was killed before he had been there a week.
- My life could have been happy. We were happy! But the wars have ruined everything, robbed me of those I loved. I’m incapable of anything now; I can’t clean, I can’t tidy up, all I do is sit and read the Koran, Rukaya says softly.
She has no more space for the scars of war.
One morning Aliya appears nervous.
- Miss Hosna, you must be careful.
- What do you mean?
- They’re watching you.
- What do you mean, watching me?
- You must be careful when you send your reports. I’m sure you know what I mean. I thought I needed to say this to you now.
Aliya wants to end the conversation there and start the day’s work. But I corner her. Does she mean me in particular or everyone in general? What has actually been said, and about whom?
- You must promise not to tell anyone, but Kadim asked me what your views are. Of course I said that you always tell the truth. And that you hate war. He said that several of the journalists will have to leave Baghdad now; there are too many of you. He’s making out a list today. But if you’re thrown out you just need to go to Amman for a week, get a new visa and return - like last time.
- Aliya, the war will be over in a week. Go to Amman now? That’s absolutely crazy. The Americans control the roads out of Baghdad. Ever since Ali the martyr struck they shoot at all approaching cars.
- Oh, I see.
Aliya thinks for a while. - I’ll talk to him, she says.
That same afternoon a list appears. My name stands out. ‘Must depart immediately’, it says.
I march straight in to see Kadim.
- Are you throwing me out?
- Yes.
- Why?
- There are too many of you - we have no control.
- Is it something I’ve done? Or not done? Is it because I don’t show up for the bus tours? Because I don’t come to all the press conferences?
- You must leave.
- Can we come to an arrangement, like before?
Kadim shoos me out of his office. - You must leave tomorrow morning.
- Tomorrow morning? Please give me one more day so I can get hold of a driver and pay my bills.
- OK.
I have one day’s grace to wriggle out of this.
What is it all about? Is he just flexing his muscles now that we no longer need him; there are no interviews to apply for, no wish to travel anywhere. The Ministry of Information has had its day, so now it’s trying to cash in on us, I think. I ask Aliya for her opinion.
She says: - Whatever happens, hide behind my back. When the Americans come I will hide behind yours.
Unexpectedly, the situation changes to my advantage. The words ‘Expulsion postponed’ suddenly appear on a scrap of paper. Is this the first sign that the press centre is about to unravel? One bureaucrat has no idea what the other is doing. Is the Ministry on shaky ground?
To all intents and purposes the press centre continues to exercise control over us. We are obliged to ask permission for even the smallest detail, and it is increasingly difficult to go anywhere without a minder. Not that I want to go out alone; Aliya provides some kind of safety, after all. Every day we are hounded around on to the buses, out sightseeing. I play truant.
We listen for hours on end to the Information Minister’s talks about Iraqi strength and American cowardice. One day he speaks about pillaging by the British soldiers.
- In Basra they stole milk powder and infants’ milk from the shops, he says.
Concealed smiles all around the room.
As always, Aliya takes notes.
- Do you really think British soldiers robbed the shops of baby milk? I ask her afterwards.
- Of course.
- But what would they do with all that milk?
- For their tea.
As long as I have known Aliya she has trusted implicitly in the Information Minister. Studiously she writes down the number of enemy tanks and helicopters captured and destroyed by the heroic Iraqi forces, including the number of cowardly American soldiers killed.
She might be a loyal supporter of the regime but she is also one of the bravest interpreters. I am lucky to have her. When the bombing started most interpreters just evaporated. They quite simply did not turn up. Aliya chose to stay with me, in spite of the fact that it became increasingly difficult for her to negotiate her way through bombed-out Baghdad to see her family. She takes me to places no one dares visit, finds food when every shop is closed, accompanies me when most people stay at home.
As the invasion forces close in on Baghdad the city’s inhabitants entertain a frustrating mix of fear, anticipation and rumours. They try to get up-to-date news through a profusion of channels, but the reports are contradictory. Someone has heard something from a cousin en route from Damascus. Someone else has been informed by a relative in Mosul. A third has been listening to the BBC in Arabic. A fourth has been watching Iraqi television for hours on end. A fifth has been listening to Iranian radio, a sixth to the
Voice of America
. The seventh person mixes it all up in his head in one confusing porridge.
To gauge what is really going on is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces originate from different boxes and several are missing.
I have been nagging Aliya for some time to take me to visit a normal family.
- No one dares have anything to do with foreigners, she says.
- I would love to know what the ordinary Iraqi is thinking at the moment. Do they know that the Americans are about to take their city?
- But they’re not, Aliya objects.
- I’m interested in what the people of Baghdad think.
- You can ask me.
- Yes, Aliya, but I can’t write about you. We work together. We try to find stories together. Uncover things, OK?
The next day Aliya has found me a family, a family from her own neighbourhood. They live a short way from her own street - this way her neighbours will not talk. And if we are stopped by the police we have to say that we are just visiting her family.
Hanan sits with her children in the living room. It is light and modern. The interior is pastel coloured, the ornaments of glass. On the wall hangs a faded copy of the Mona Lisa. No one knows what to believe about the war.
- I cannot believe that they are only a few kilometres away from Baghdad. That’s just propaganda. They’re not even holding a single village. They’re just rushing around the desert and shooting from time to time, says teenager Isam, a car mechanic. He listens to national and international radio broadcasts but has taken his stand - trusting in the Iraqi media. This gives confidence to most Iraqis: a tiny assurance in everyday life; a feeling that the Americans won’t take Baghdad.
His sister Reem has not adopted the same viewpoint.
- I hear the Americans have surrounded Karbala. But I don’t know whether it’s true and I don’t think they have taken Basra, says the twenty-year-old, who is studying mathematics at Baghdad University.
- Iraqi forces confuse them and they are forced back through the desert, her older sister Huda says, an engineering student.
Hanan does not know what to believe.
- The last I heard from the BBC was that they had crossed the red line. But what is the red line? she asks.
- I think it’s thirty kilometres from Baghdad, her daughter answers. - Iraq has warned them not to cross this line and that if they do we’ll teach them a lesson. She mimics official propaganda-speak, like Iraqis do when they are unsure of what to say.
- Oh dear, I’m so confused, says Reem. - Everyone says something different all the time.
She sighs. Mona Lisa smiles her inscrutable smile from her plastic frame on the wall.
Reem and Hanan have both attended a university-sponsored defence course. They have learnt self-defence and how to use a Kalashnikov. But they have no plans to join the fighting should the ground forces invade Baghdad.
- We’ll just sit and wait, says Reem.
- We have nowhere to go; the war will pursue us wherever we are, so we might as well stay at home.
But in the bedrooms their bags are packed with personal items, some clothes, a small soap, a roll of paper and a few treasured items.
- Just in case, says the mother. - Just in case we have to leave.
The family belongs to Baghdad’s shrinking middle class and so far has not had problems procuring food, water and fuel. One room is stacked high with food, paraffin, oil, washing-powder and soap. - We can cope for many months yet.
It is not hunger the little family is fighting, but boredom. They dare not leave their district, school is closed, university is closed, shops are open for just a few hours every day.
- It’s as though life has stopped, Reem sighs. - We just sit here. Waiting. I have hardly any contact with my friends. I miss university. But I haven’t got the strength to look at my textbooks, they make me sad.
The telephone rings. In spite of the bombing, telephones still work in certain areas. Reem gets up, and returns sadder than ever. - It was Jenin. They’re going. Her father wants to take them to some relatives in the country. They have packed and are only waiting for their uncle to come and get them.
The mother and sister listen stiffly as Reem recounts the conversation. No one says anything when she has finished.
- The Gulf War was worse, the mother says in the end. Or rather, the bombing was worse. Then we lost water and electricity on the first day. Day to day life was more difficult.
She also thinks she knows why they have not bombed the water and electricity plants.