Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 14, 2003

PRESS CONFERENCE
Around 11am Ghareeb takes me and Neville to Nejaf., a two-hour drive. Once there it takes us an hour to find the press conference. The site has been moved from the announced location. We park at a traffic barrier in the old city and walk a carless block along an arcaded commercial street, past numerous men with guns, toward the main mosque.

Ghareeb seeks the office of Muktate Al-Sadur’s organization to get access and directions to the press conference. In an alley, Ghareeb is searched by a clot of armed men before being escorted to the office. Two men are detailed to accompany us as we drive to the site, maybe a couple miles away. When we arrive there are numerous men with guns keeping watch, some on neighboring rooftops. No uniformed authorities are present. We don’t have to show any ID or press pass. We are pattted down and wanded before being let through a narrow door into a dwelling. We head upstairs onto a roof packed with journos and cameramen.

I find a chair to stand on. Both Neville and Ghareeb take photos. Neither of our two visitors yesterday are there. Nor do we recognize any US media. In the center of the throng at a table sits Sayed Muktate, holding forth before a bank of microphones. I get only a few fragments of translation and so miss the substance of his remarks.

The Sayed is bearded, in his early thirties. He’s the son and nephew of renowned Shia clerics, executed by Saddam. Unlike our visitors yesterday, he doesn’t look “presidential” (or “papal”!). He seems edgy. He gets annoyed when a journo asks him if his new government will force women to wear the hijab. He responds that everyone–Jew, Christian and Muslim–should respect their own traditions. He keeps shaking his index finger. Maybe he’s riding a horse he can’t control. I wonder how long he’ll remain alive.

Later when I ask ______ , a non-Shia, what kind of man Muktade is, he says, “He’s a killer, a leader of assassins.”

KARBALA ROAD BLOCKS
Ghareeb wants to go to Karbala which is sort of on the way back to Baghdad. Not too far out of Karbala we run into a roadblock, about a dozen soldiers strung out across the highway. A hundred yards from the soldiers stopped cars are accumulating. As I’m the only gringo in the crowd, Ghareeb directs me to go palaver with the soldiers. Neville offers to join me but Ghareeb thinks it best I go alone.

I approach within a few yards. The soldiers are tense. With more cars coming every minute, they’ve got a situation on their hands and have no idea how it will play out. I ask questions, but they don’t want to provide answers. I tell them we just want to get thru to get to Baghdad. They say all the roads into Karbala are blocked, maybe for two or three hours. I ask what’s going on. They say they have no idea.

I realize that some of their terseness is that they barely speak English. I ask them who they are. One responds, pointing to one guy after another, “He’s a soldier; he’s a soldier; he’s a soldier.” When another soldier calls out to him, I realize these guys must be Polish.

What a helluva situation they’re in! If they know only a little English, they probably know far less Arabic. And yet they are stuck in Iraq among well-armed people who view them as intruders. It wasn’t too many years ago that the Poles themselves were occupied. They tell me that I must go back away from them; they fear that others, seeing me, will also approach them. I rejoin Nev and Ghareeb.

We head back down the highway a short way before turning off onto a dirt road. We join a dusty caravan of vehicles circumventing the roadblock. A truck has fallen into an irrigation ditch partially blocking our route. Ghareeb has us get out of the car before gunning the engine to pass the truck without slipping into the ditch ourselves. We go with the caravan a few hundred yards before getting back on pavement. Down the highway we can just make out the Polish soldiers, their backs turned to us. Soon we pass some Iraqi police; they wave us on.

In Karbala Ghareeb does his business and we head out of town–only to be blocked by a US roadblock. We head off in another direction. When we stop for some brake fluid, Ghareeb hears that earlier today Sistani’s Shia faction, joined by Hakim’s Shia faction, battled Al-Sadur’s Shia faction, mortaring each other’s Karbala headquarters.

We keep driving, but are stopped yet again by a bridge blocked up. Our detour around it takes us on the old road to Baghdad and past mile after mile of lush date groves on both sides of the road–an aspect of Iraq we would have missed if we had stayed with the main highway.

All the hours on the road today help me see Ghareeb in a new light..Neville lets me ride in the front seat coming and going. Ghareeb is dealing with a bout of “Baghdad flue” a symptom of which is burning eyes. He welcomes conversation to keep alert. I draw him out about his family. Ghareeb it turns out is a kind of nickname given him by his mother. His real name is Mohammed Ramadan. The Ramadans are a tribe, thousands of whom are dispersed throughout the Mideast.

Ghareeb says his father, 67, lives in Palestine, where he has real estate. The family has investments throughout the Mideast. Ghareeb’s father is the leader of the Ramadan tribe. Ghareeb’s older brother stands to succeed the father when he dies. Ghareeeb is next in line after his brother. Ghareeb says he has been educated to be the leader. That has made him different from his peers, not necessarily an easy fate for one so gregarious. Both he and his brothers are pilots; the brother is certified for fixed wing, Ghareeb for choppers. Another time he mentioned he was certified for racing cars.

I ask Ghareeb what it means to be educated as a leader. He says it means you must always help those in need. You must always sacrifice your resources for others. This ethic isn’t limited only to members of the tribe. He does seem like an unusually considerate person. Sometimes I almost feel adopted by him.

Ghareeb’s business in Karbala today was to check out the situation of the woman who has been coming to Voices seeking financial support supposedly for her baby’s operation. While that story doesn’t pan out (we checked with the hospital again today), Ghareeb explains that sometimes you have to penetrate a person’s web of lies to get at the desperation that drives them. Ghareeb is truly a prince.

But a prince without a country. He now has a visa for Ghana. Shall he go there or hold out and try to get into Canada? (He may be the only Ramadan in Iraq, but there are a few in Canada.) The ultimate destination is to get back to his family in Palestine. He has been out of Palestine for many years and is nostalgic. He speaks of Palestine with pride.

“In Palestine there is neither Shia nor Sunni. There is a sophistication among the people not to be found elsewhere in the Mideast.”