Thursday, August 21 2003

Suffering from a bout of insomnia last night, I found myself in front of the television, channel-surfing. I was looking for the usual - an interesting interview with one of the council, some fresh news, a miracle ... Promptly at 2am, the electricity went off and I was plunged into the pitch black hell better known as "an August night with no electricity in Iraq". So I sat there, in the dark, trying to remember where I had left the candle and matches. After five minutes of chagrined meditation, I decided I would "feel" my way up the stairs and out on to the roof. Step by hesitant step, I stumbled out into the corridor and up the stairs, stubbing a toe on the last step (which wasn't supposed to be there).

I stood there trying to determine whether it was only our area, or the whole city, that had sunk into darkness.

A few moments later, my younger brother (we'll call him E) joined me - dishevelled, disgruntled and half asleep. We stood leaning on the low wall enclosing the roof watching the street below. I could see the tip of Abu Maan's cigarette glowing in the yard next door. I pointed to it with the words, "Abu Maan can't sleep, either ..."

E grunted, "It's probably Maan." I stood staring at him like he was half-wild - or maybe talking in his sleep. Maan is only 13 ... how can he be smoking?

"He's only 13." I stated.

"Is anyone only 13 any more?" he asked.

I mulled this remark over. No, no one is 13 any more. No one is 24 any more ... everyone is 85 and I think I might be 105. I was too tired to speak and, in spite of his open eyes, I suspected E was asleep. The silence was shattered a few moments later by the sound of bullets in the distance. It was just loud enough to get your attention, but too far away to be the source of any real anxiety.

E: How far do you think that is?

Me: I don't know ... 'bout a kilometre?

E: Yeah, about.

Me: Not American bullets -

E: No, it's probably from a ...

Me: Klashnikov [Kalashnikov].

E (impressed): You're getting good at this.

No - I'm getting great at it. I can tell you if it's "them" or "us". I can tell you how far away it is. I can tell you if it's a pistol or machine gun, tank or armoured vehicle, Apache or Chinook ... I can determine the distance and maybe even the target. That's my new talent. It's something I've gotten so good at, I frighten myself. What's worse is that almost everyone seems to have acquired this new talent ... young and old. And it's not something that anyone will appreciate on a resumé ...

Saturday, August 23 2003

Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E and either a father, uncle, or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we've gone back 50 years since the beginning of the occupation. A woman, or girl, out alone, is at risk. An outing has to be arranged at least an hour beforehand. I state that I need to buy something or have to visit someone. Two males have to be procured (preferably large) and "safety arrangements" must be made in this total state of lawlessness. And always the question: "But do you have to go out and buy it? Can't I get it for you?" No you can't, because the kilo of eggplant I absolutely have to select with my own hands is just an excuse to see the light of day and walk down a street. The situation is incredibly frustrating to females who work or go to college.

Before the war, around 50% of the college students were females, and over 50% of the working force was composed of women. Not so any more. We are seeing an increase of fundamentalism in Iraq which is terrifying. For example, before the war, I would estimate (roughly) that about 55% of females in Baghdad wore a hijab - or headscarf. Hijabs do not signify fundamentalism. That is far from the case - although I myself don't wear one, I have family and friends who do. The point is that, before, it didn't really matter. It was "my" business whether I wore one or not - not the business of some fundamentalist on the street.

I am female and Muslim. Before the occupation, I more or less dressed the way I wanted to. I lived in jeans and cotton pants and comfortable shirts. Now, I don't dare leave the house in pants. A long skirt and loose shirt (preferably with long sleeves) has become necessary. A girl wearing jeans risks being attacked, abducted, or insulted by fundamentalists who have been ... liberated!

Fathers and mothers are keeping their daughters stashed safe at home. That's why you see so few females in the streets (especially after 4pm). Others are making their daughters, wives and sisters wear a hijab. Not to oppress them, but to protect them.

I lost my job for a similar reason. Girls are being made to quit college and school. My 14-year-old cousin (a straight-A student) is going to have to repeat the year because her parents decided to keep her home since the occupation. Why? Because the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq took over an office next to her school and opened up a special "bureau". Men in black turbans (MIBTs as opposed to MIBs) stand around the gates of the bureau in clusters, scanning the girls and teachers entering the secondary school. The dark, frowning figures stand ogling, leering and sometimes jeering at the ones not wearing a hijab or whose skirts aren't long enough. In some areas, girls risk being attacked with acid if their clothes aren't "proper".

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI - but I prefer "SCAREY") was established in 1982 in Tehran. Its main goal is to import the concept of the "Islamic Revolution" from Iran to Iraq. In other words, they believe that Iraq should be a theocracy led by Shia Mullahs.

The SCIRI would like to give the impression that they have the full support of all Shia Muslims in Iraq. The truth is that many Shia Muslims are terrified of them and of the consequences of having them as a ruling power. Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the deputy leader of SCIRI, was responsible for torturing and executing Iraqi PoWs in Iran all through the Iran-Iraq war and after. Should SCIRI govern Iraq, I imagine the first step would be to open the borders with Iran and unite the two countries. Bush can then stop referring to the two countries as a part of his infamous "Axis of Evil" and can just begin calling us the "Big Lump of Evil and Bad North Korea".

Don't blame it on Islam. Every religion has its extremists. In times of chaos and disorder, those extremists flourish. Iraq is full of moderate Muslims who simply believe in "live and let live". We get along with each other - Sunnis and Shia, Muslims and Christians, and Jews and Sabi'a. We intermarry, we mix and mingle, we live.

Someone asked me if, through elections, the Iraqi people might vote for an Islamic state. Six months ago, I would have firmly said, "No." Now, I'm not so sure.

Sunday, August 24 2003

A lot of you have been asking about my background and the reason why my English is good. I am Iraqi - born in Iraq to Iraqi parents, but was raised abroad for several years as a child. I came back in my early teens and continued studying English in Baghdad - reading any book I could get my hands on. Most of my friends are of different ethnicities, religions and nationalities. I am bilingual. There are thousands in Iraq like me - kids of diplomats, students, expatriates, etc.

I'm a computer science graduate. Before the war, I was working in an Iraqi database/software company located in Baghdad as a programmer/network administrator (yes, yes ... a geek). Every day, I would climb three flights of stairs, enter the little office I shared with one female colleague and two males, start up my PC and spend hours staring at little numbers and letters rolling across the screen. It was tedious, it was back-breaking, it was geeky and it was ... wonderful.

I came and went to work on my own. At 8am I'd walk in lugging a backpack filled with enough CDs, floppies, notebooks, chewed-on pens, paperclips and screwdrivers to make Bill Gates proud.

What I'm trying to say is that no matter what anyone heard, females in Iraq were a lot better off than females in other parts of the Arab world (and some parts of the western world - we had equal salaries!). We were doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, professors, architects, programmers, and more.

During the first week of June, I heard my company was back in business. It took several hours, seemingly thousands of family meetings, but I finally convinced everyone that it was necessary for my sanity to go back to work. They agreed that I would visit the company (with my two male bodyguards) and ask them if they had any work I could possibly take home and submit later on, or through the internet.

One fine day in mid-June, I packed my big bag of geeky wonders, put on my long skirt and shirt, tied back my hair and left the house with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension.

We had to park the car about 100m away from the door of the company because the major road in front of it was cracked and broken with the weight of the American tanks as they entered Baghdad. I half-ran, half-plodded up to the door, my heart throbbing at the thought of seeing friends, colleagues, secretaries . . . just generally something familiar again in the strange new nightmare we were living.

The moment I walked through the door, everything looked shabbier somehow - sadder. The lights were shattered, desks overturned, doors kicked in, and clocks torn from the walls.

I stood a moment, hesitantly, in the door. There were strange new faces. Everyone was standing around, looking at everyone else. And I was one of the only females. I weaved through the strange mess and made my way upstairs. My little room wasn't much better off than the rest of the building. The desks were gone, papers all over the place ... but A was there! I couldn't believe it - a familiar, welcoming face. He looked at me for a moment, without really seeing me, then his eyes opened wide and disbelief took over the initial vague expression. He congratulated me on being alive, asked about my family and told me that he wasn't coming back after today.

I stood staring at the mess for a few moments longer, trying to sort out the mess in my head, my heart being torn to pieces. My cousin and E were downstairs waiting for me - there was nothing more to do. A and I left the room and started making our way downstairs. We paused on the second floor and stopped to talk to one of the former department directors. I asked him when they thought things would be functioning, he wouldn't look at me. His eyes stayed glued to A's face as he told him that females weren't welcome right now - especially females who "couldn't be protected". He finally turned to me and told me, in so many words, to go home because "they" refused to be responsible for what might happen to me.

OK. Fine. Your loss. I turned my back, walked down the stairs and went to find E and my cousin. Suddenly, the faces didn't look strange - they were the same faces of before, mostly, but there was a hostility I couldn't believe. What was I doing here? E and the cousin were looking grim, I must have been looking broken, because they rushed me out of the first place I had ever worked and to the car. I cried bitterly all the way home - cried for my job, cried for my future and cried for the torn streets, damaged buildings and crumbling people.

Thursday, August 28 2003

Yesterday, I read how it was going to take up to $90bn to rebuild Iraq. Bremer [the former head of the US Occupation Authority] was shooting out numbers about how much it was going to cost to replace buildings and bridges and electricity, etc.

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad, well-known for building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who'll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the south-east end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn't too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward - $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labour, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let's pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let's pretend he hasn't been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let's pretend he didn't work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf war. Let's pretend he's wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated - let's pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let's just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to a US company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around - brace yourselves - $50,000,000!!

Something you should know about Iraq: we have over 130,000 engineers. More than half of these engineers are structural engineers and architects.

Saturday, August 30 2003

My brother, E, was out at 8am this morning getting gasoline for the car. He came home at 12pm in a particularly foul mood. He had waited in line of angry, hostile Iraqis for three hours. Gasoline lines drive people crazy because, prior to the war, the price of gasoline in Iraq was ridiculously low. A litre of gasoline (unleaded) cost around 20 Iraqi dinars when one US dollar equalled 2,000 Iraqi dinars. In other words, one litre of gasoline cost one cent! A litre of bottled water cost more than gasoline. Not only does it cost more now, but it isn't easy to get. I think they're importing gasoline from Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

We (a cousin, his wife, my mom and I) dragged E out of the house, at 12.30 to go visit my aunt on the other end of the city. We heard the usual instructions before we left - stop at checkpoints, return before dark, and if anyone wants the car, give them the keys - don't argue, don't fight it.

We climbed into a battered, old, white 1984 Volkswagen - people are avoiding using "nice" cars that might tempt hijackers ("nice" is anything made after 1990). I mentally debated putting on sunglasses but decided against it - no need to attract any undue attention. I said a little prayer to keep us safe as I rummaged around in my bag, checking for my "weapon". I can't stand carrying a pistol so I carry around a big, red, switchblade hunting knife - you don't want to mess with Riverbend ...

Being out in the streets is like being caught in a tornado. You have to be alert and ready for anything every moment. I sat in the backseat, squinting into the sun, trying to determine if a particular face was that of a looter, or abductor, or just another angry country-man. I craned my neck looking at the blue SUV, trying to remember if it had been behind us for the last kilometre or longer. I held my breath nervously every time the cousin slowed down the car because of traffic, willing the cars in front of us to get a move on.

The ride that took 20-minutes pre-war Iraq took 45 minutes today. There were major roads completely cut off by tanks. Angry troops stood cutting off access to the roads around the palaces (which were once Saddam's but are now America's palaces). The cousin and E debated alternative routes at every roadblock. I stayed silent because I don't even know the city any more. Now, areas are identified as "the one with the crater where the missile exploded", or "the street with the ravaged houses", or "the little house next to that one where that family was killed" .

The looting and killing of today has changed from the looting and killing in April. In April, it was quite random. Now they're more organised than the CPA and the troops combined. No one works alone anymore - they've created gangs and armed militias. They pull up to houses in minivans and SUVs, armed with machine guns and sometimes grenades. They barge into the house and demand money and gold. If they don't find enough, they abduct a child or female and ask for ransom. Sometimes the whole family is killed - sometimes only the male members of the family are killed.

Tuesday, October 21 2003

Ever since the occupation, employees of the Ministry of Oil are being searched by troops - and lately, dogs. The employees have been fed up ... the ministry itself is a virtual fortress now with concrete, barbed wire, and troops. The employees stand around for hours at a time, waiting to be checked and let inside.

Today, one of the women who works at the ministry, Amal, objected when the troops brought forward a dog to sniff her bag. She was carrying a Qur'an inside of it and, to even handle a Qur'an, a Muslim has to be "clean" or under "widhu". "Widhu" is the process of cleansing oneself for prayer or to read from the Qur'an. We simply wash the face, neck, arms up to the elbows and feet with clean water and say a few brief "prayers". Muslims carry around small Qur'ans for protection and we've been doing it more often since the war - it gives many people a sense of security. It doesn't mean the person is a "fundamentalist" or "extremist".

As soon as Amal protested about letting the dog sniff her bag because of the Qur'an inside, the soldier grabbed the Qur'an, threw it out of the bag, and proceeded to check it. The lady was horrified and the dozens of employees who were waiting to be checked moved forward in a rage. Amal was put in handcuffs and taken away and the raging mob was greeted with the butts of rifles.

The Iraqi police arrived to try to intervene, and found the mob had turned from a security check into a demonstration. One of the TV stations showed police officers tearing off their "IP" badge - a black arm badge to identify them as police and shouting at the camera, "We don't want the badge - we signed up to help the people, not see our Qur'an thrown to the ground ..."

Friday, December 12 2003

We heard the latest statement from Washington about Germany, France, Russia and Canada not being allowed to have anything to do with the reconstruction. Iraq no longer feels like a country - it feels like war spoils: the winning team gets the pickings.

Tuesday, January 20 2004

There have been huge demonstrations in the south these last few days and in Baghdad, demanding elections. I'm torn on the topic of elections. While I want elections because it's the "democratic" thing to do, I'm afraid of the outcome. All the signs lead one to believe that elections will lead to a theocracy (which I dread). The current GC is not representative of the Iraqi people - neither Sunnis nor Shia approve of them ... but will elections bring about a more representative group of would-be leaders? Furthermore, what if the Iraqi "majority" do want a theocracy like the one in Iran? If the choice boils down to a democracy styled like the one in America or a theocracy styled like the one in Iran, how do you think a Muslim country is going to choose?

Wednesday, April 14 2004

There has been a lot of criticism about the way Al-Arabia and Al-Jazeera were covering the riots and fighting in Falluja and the south this last week. Some American spokesman for the military was ranting about the "spread of anti-Americanism" through networks like the abovementioned.

Actually, both networks did a phenomenal job of covering the attacks on Falluja and the southern provinces. Al-Jazeera had their reporter literally embedded in the chaos. Ahmed Mansur, I believe his name was, was actually standing there, in the middle of the bombing, shouting to be heard over the F-16s and helicopters blasting away at houses.

I think western news networks are far too tame. They show the Hollywood version of war - strong troops in uniform, hostile Iraqis being captured and made to face "justice" and the White House turkey posing with the Thanksgiving turkey ... which is just fine. But what about the destruction that comes with war and occupation? What about the death? I don't mean just the images of dead Iraqis scattered all over, but dead Americans, too. People should have to see those images.

Still, when I hear talk about "anti-Americanism" it angers me. Why does America identify itself with its military and government? Why does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American? We watch American movies, listen to everything from Britney Spears to Nirvana and refer to every single brown, fizzy drink as "Pepsi".

I hate American foreign policy and its constant meddling in the region ... I hate American tanks in Baghdad and American soldiers on our streets and in our homes on occasion ... why does that mean that I hate America and Americans? Are tanks, troops and violence the only face of America? If the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Condi are "America," then, yes - I hate America.

Saturday, February 12 2005

The elections have come and gone. The day of elections was a day of eerie silence punctuated by a few strong explosions and the hum of helicopters above. We remained at home and watched the situation on TV. It was like a voting marathon for all of the news channels - CNN, Euronews, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, LBC ... everyone was talking elections. I literally had chills going up and down my spine as I watched Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim of Iranian-inclined SCIRI dropping his ballot into a box. Behind him, giving moral support and her vote, was what I can only guess to be his wife. She was shrouded from head to foot and only her eyes peeped out of the endless sea of black. She stuffed her ballot in the box with black-gloved hands and submissively followed a very confident Hakim. E turned to me with a smile and a wink, "That might be you in a couple of years ..." I promptly threw a sofa cushion at him. Most of our acquaintances (Sunni and Shia) didn't vote.

Wednesday, May 18 2005

We've been watching the protests about the Newsweek article with interest. I'm not surprised at the turnout at these protests - the thousands of Muslims angry at the desecration of the Qur'an. What did surprise me was the collective shock that seems to have struck the Islamic world like a slap in the face. After what happened in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons, how is this astonishing?

Now Newsweek have retracted the story - obviously under pressure from the White House. Is it true? Probably?

Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolise. It's not that all troops disrespect Islam - some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. But it does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy

© Riverbend, 2005 (riverbendblog.blogspot.com)

· This is an edited extract from Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq, by Riverbend, published on July 4 by Marion Boyars. To order a copy for £9.99 (inc p&p), call 0870 836 0875 (theguardian.com/bookshop).