Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 9, 2003, Thursday

Neville is 74 today. Six months ago today the US Marines arrived outside our hotel. I’ll never forget Neville standing on the Al Fanar balcony overlooking the troops with his sign: WAR=TERRORISM.

BBC news: in this morning’s rush hour a suicide bomber drove headlong toward a Baghdad police station. Police opened fire. The explosives in the car detonate, killing the driver, several police and several others � nine in all. Forty are wounded. The BBC commentator explains that the police are seen as collaborators with the CPA. These days police stations are heavily fortified.as
Also today: a Spanish diplomat is assassinated on a Baghdad street.

ZAID
Zaid ________ visits us this morning. He’s an electrical engineer on the board of EPIC (______). He lives in Reston, Virginia. Zaid left Baghdad in his late teens. This is his first trip home in 14 years. He and his parents arrived in Baghdad a couple days ago. Since shortly before the invasion the parents have been living in Amman, but the family has a house in Baghdad.

Since Zaid expresses a high regard for Voices’ work, we may see him often in the few weeks he’s here. With his wealth of perspectives, we should be able to learn a good deal from him.

Zaid mentions something which in retrospect might seem obvious, but which hadn’t dawned on me. Bush, Sr. didn’t topple Saddam back in ‘91 because he was in a real coalition and would have had to share the spoils; now it’s just the US and puny England that will be conniving to divvy up the oil.

Zaid likens Iraq to one climbing a ladder with many of the rungs missing or broken. The climber keeps falling back to the ground. Reminds me of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, was condemned by the gods to eternally roll a boulder up a hill � only to have it eternally roll back down again.

“COLLATERAL DAMAGE”
A man named Rabia Healaa comes to the house today. With Haythem translating, Neville and I talk with him. He is a former car mechanic with a disabled hand; to make a living he now uses his brother’s car as a taxi.

At 2:30pm on April 7 his house in Baghdad’s An Nidal district was hit by a missile. Altho the missile destroyed the house, no one was injured � the family was out having lunch at a relative’s.

As Rabia talks a large tear makes its way down his face. He shows us photos of his family standing in the rubble. In one photo he is holding a small section of the missile. Rabia has tried to get compensation from the CPA � but so far, five months later, no luck. He came to us hoping we might somehow help out.
We explain Voices isn’t a relief organization. He wonders if we can help him contact former neighbors now living in the US; they would surely help.

Unfortunately he has no address for them and doesn’t know where they live. The only lead we have is that the neighbors are part of an Iraqi Christian community. Neville, a Protestant pastor, will look into this.

We agree to survey the damage and report it to our networks back home. We then go to what was his home; An Nidal is nearby. From the street there’s nothing of the house to be seen; the rubble is invisible behind the wall that usually separates urban Iraqi houses from the street. Houses on either side don’t appear to be damaged.

Going inside, we are met by Rabia’s wife, Nejat, 36, and several of his children, girls ranging in age from 15 to 4: Dunia, Lena, Dina, and Zahara. A son, Adnun, 17, is away working. Rabia himself is 46. They are Muslims in a Christian neighborhood. He asks, “How did the missile choose us?”

As Neville takes photos, the family explains that they sleep in the open in spaces cleared from the rubble. Their heaters were destroyed and they are anxious because winter is coming. They get their water and electricity from neighbors. We see the jerry-rigged and risky electrical line. Out on the courtyard pavement, their improvised “kitchen” is smaller than my desk. In the one room left structurally intact, the far wall is pockmarked by shrapnel that must have entered thru an open doorway. Pieces of the missile are dug out of the rubble for us. They feel unnaturally heavy.

Shortly after we arrive, Rabia’s mother Hela and brother Ayed arrive. Hela is dressed entirely in black. She talks passionately and tearfully. She says, “All America has done is increase our poverty.” She says one of her other sons was executed by Saddam in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. He reported for duty a month late. The family had to pay 25 dinars (then worth US$75) to defray the cost of the bullets that killed him.

As we part I tell the family how ashamed I am for what the US government has done to them. Outside I tell Rabia how beautiful his children are. He says, “I was very happy, but now all happiness has disappeared.”