Christopher Allen-Docot

On the morning of Saturday January 17th Um Haider and Mostafa crossed the border of Jordan and entered into American military occupied Iraq. They were heading home, after 9 months in the US, to a “liberated” Iraq where people are afraid to be out after dark and American military helicopters buzz the skyline at low altitudes like giant mosquitoes carrying a venom (the weapons not the G.I.s) worse than malaria or the West Nile Virus. Um Haider would soon see that while much has changed in Iraq, too much remains the same and some of what has changed has done so for the worse.

Our journey back began on a difficult note as we missed our flight due to a combination of a snafu by the counter agents at the airport, being flagged for extra security screening, and then being sent to customs by a TSA officer concerned about the money we were carrying. The TSA officer was a courteous and young guy and he offered to escort us to Customs in an effort to expedite things so we wouldn’t miss the flight. While in Customs he told me he had recently returned from a tour of military duty in Iraq, in the same breath he noticed Mostafa’s hand and asked what had happened. I explained the story of the bombing of their Basra neighborhood in 1999 and how Mostafa lost part of his hand and his brother to the blast. The TSA officer didn’t respond immediately; but after a pause he related to mixed feelings of his participation in the war. His mind and gut were in conflict. He had pledged an oath to defend the American Constitution and to obey his chain of command but in so doing I suspect his gut was telling him he was doing something wrong. This young man now wrestles with the image of kids like Mostafa while those who made the decision to send him off protect themselves by distance and blindness.

On Friday the 18th the people at the Royal Jordanian counter at O’Hare were dealing with a crush of pilgrims on the Hajj vying for every last seat on the flights to Amman. We had arrived at the airport hours before the rush hoping to get on the flight. Thankfully the people at RJ recognized their error of the previous evening and found three seats for us on an otherwise completely booked flight with a long waiting list. The flight to Amman was unremarkable except for the wonderful behavior of Mostafa on a crowed 14-hour flight. (My kids often fuss over a 14-minute car ride to their grandmother’s house!)

Upon approaching the border with Iraq there are thousands of refugees living in tents set up by the UN High Commission on Human Rights. The refugees are Kurds, Iraqi’s and Palestinians. Some are seen as collaborators with the former regime, others belonged to families, groups or political parties that are now facing retribution for one reason or another in a society that transformed from a police state to a lawless one overnight. After the typical wrangling on the Jordanian side of the border we drove across the quarter mile of “no man’s land” with a fair amount of trepidation about whom we would encounter. It turns out we met nobody in particular. On the Iraqi side of the border we were met by a handful of young Iraqi’s. They looked at our passports but without computers or electricity they could not and did not check our identities. We traveled with several large duffel bags filled to the brim with clothing, school supplies and toys. We could have been carrying bodies, or gold or grenades for all the border agents knew; nonetheless the bags weren’t even glanced at. The only sign of the American military presence at this arrival side of the Iraqi border were 4 G.I.’S who couldn’t have been older than 25. We were through the Iraqi side of the border in 5 minutes. (Any folks who traveled to Iraq with us in the past can pick yourself up off the floor now. Gone are the 4+ hours at the V.I.P. lounge drinking tea flavored sugar water and breathing second hand smoke.) Welcome to liberated Iraq where anyone it seems can go with anything they want; no visas, no searches, no security, no wonder there are foreign fighters joining the resistance to the occupation.

From the border we headed East across a vast expanse of desert. This land is almost entirely uninhabited. Every hundred miles or so there will be a few shepherds and a herd of sheep and goats and a truck stop but otherwise the land is flat, treeless, and strewn with rocks as far as the eye can see in every direction. When the oil beneath this land runs out I can easily imagine massive wind and solar farms generating clean electricity for the people of Iraq and perhaps beyond. During this drive more evidence of the new Iraq surfaces. For dozens of miles at a stretch high intensity electrical towers have been toppled and the cables looted. We pass an occasional rusted and bombed out vehicle and rough spots in the road where there may have been fighting. At one point we have to detour off the road and across the hardpan surface of the desert to go around a bridge that was bombed during the war. The bridge is of simple construction. It spans a natural culvert in the desert. Workers have not managed to repair this bridge despite months of activity. A foreshadowing of what we will soon find in Baghdad and Basra.

On the outskirts of Baghdad we see more clear evidence of the “liberated” Iraq: new billboards along the highway median strip advertising all sorts of electronic devices and Italian furniture. (I am reminded that Um Haider had a home full of Italian furniture, which she sold of piece by piece during the sanctions era to buy food for her family.) The newness of the billboards is striking juxtaposed as they are between highway guardrails crushed by American tanks, which remain un-repaired. The home of Um Haider’s mother and 2 of her sisters (our first destination) is in the north end of Baghdad. During the war the women moved into this home because the home they were in was near the airport and the headquarters for the former Iraqi secret police and thus not a safe place to be.

We are traveling with a cell phone and a “Thuraya” satellite phone but we are unable to call the home for directions because the phone exchanges for Baghdad are still not operational. Nearly a year after the war people in Baghdad, who can afford to do so, are able to sit at an internet caf� and send emails via satellite around the world, but they are unable to call across the city. Shortly after the war a telecommunications company was awarded the contract to replace Iraq’s antiquated and largely destroyed phone system with a digital wireless system. All around Baghdad and Basra signs have appeared in the last two weeks advertising the latest cell phones in anticipation of the new system. Yet still the service is not available. A contact who does business with the telecommunications company reports that the system is ready to be operational but he reports that for an unknown reason the CPA is holding up it’s inauguration. What remains is a capital city whose residents are unable to telephonically communicate with one another. Most NGO in Iraq were given cell phones by the CPA; but these phones only work with each other. Similarly, businesspeople in Baghdad and some of the wealthy carry Thuraya satellite phones, but these too are able to only communicate with other Thuraya phones or with exchanges outside Iraq. Even when the new system comes on line it will be of little help to the vast majority of Iraqi’s who will remain too poor to access it. It remains to be seen if the promise of liberation will extend to the poor of society or if the “regime change” will have any impact on their lives beyond their freedom to protest the squalor and disrepair which their liberators are partially, if not largely, responsible for.

Driving through Baghdad today is a challenge and at times life risking experience. Due to wartime damage, looting, and sporadic electricity we did not encounter a single functional traffic signal. Few intersections ware manned with Iraqi police and those that were only a slightly more choreographed vehicular chaos. After asking for directions from folks on the street we finally found the street we were looking for though we were unsure of the house. Amazingly the first house Um Haider approached was her mother’ s home. The gate opened to a shriek of joy as this matriarchy was reunited. While Um Haider was busy hugging her mother, sisters and niece American tanks rambled by at the end of the street.

Inside the home, the TV was on. The home, like thousands of other homes in today’s Baghdad, has satellite television service. No longer does the television broadcast the state sanctioned “news” and the ridiculous music video praising Saddam; the B-grade American movies, though, are still broadcast only now they are probably not pirated versions. The B.B.C. was broadcasting live footage of Palestinians, themselves an occupied people, nonviolently protesting the continued construction of Israel’s apartheid wall through the West Bank and around Bethlehem. Before the power went out I thought the television had become a mirror into the future. After a wonderful meal of grilled fish and doma (stuffed vegetables) I left Um Haider and Mostafa to be with their family in Baghdad until she contacted me that it was time for her to head to Basra. Traveling to my hotel I was taken by how much more run down and littered the streets of Baghdad are now than they were as recently as March. I drove past several government buildings that had been completely destroyed by the bombings and by several private offices that had been looted. The hotel district along the river between Abu Nuwas street and Sadoun St. looks jarringly similar to parts of occupied Palestine. The Baghdad, Sheraton and Palestinian hotels are completely surrounded by 10 foot high concrete barriers and coils of razor wire. Abu Nuwas street, once one of the busiest in Baghdad, is now closed to vehicular traffic along this stretch. Inside the barriers are American soldiers and a Bradley fighting vehicle (a little tank). To enter this area and these hotels everyone and every bag is searched. This scene is repeated everywhere the Americans have set up a base including in the dormitories of a university they seized thereby displacing the students.

On Monday we departed to Basra before sunrise. Um Haider’s husband Salah had earlier traveled to Baghdad and joined us for the trip to Basra. During the ride to Basra Mostafa was happily and safely ensconced in the back seat of our GMC between his parents. They chatted the entire 6 hours we drove in Arabic. I hope that in so doing Mostafa did not take notice of the conditions we drove past. For hundreds of miles the galvanized steel guardrails of the highway have been looted and not yet replaced. We passed by the rusting hulks of dozens of Iraqi artillery pieces, tanks and trucks. We also passed a few such American remnants of war. The historic Tigris and Euphrates rivers define the geography of Iraq and thus land travel requires many bridges. It would seem that the Americans had a field day on bridges as we went over several temporary one-lane bridges during our journey. Several convoys of gasoline tankers with military escort passed us in the other direction. Iraq is not yet able to refine it’s own oil and is currently importing gas from Kuwait. This reality has created long lines and heated arguments at gas stations, which are also under armed protection, around the country. During our trip in from Jordan we also passed a good number of convoys bringing hundreds of new automobiles, consumer goods, grain, wire, pipes, and thousands of head of cattle into the country. During the ride Sattar, our driver and dear friend, explained to me a little bit of the meaning and history of the Hajj. It has much to do with honoring the example of Abraham who was willing to submit to God’s will under even the most trying of circumstances and who shunned the worship of idols, which had infected the people. In Arabic hajj literally means “a resolve” as in “to resolve to some magnificent duty”. Making the Hajj to Mecca is an obligation of all Moslems who are physically and financially able to do so. Um Haider was on a different sort of Hajj. She was a pilgrim returning to a dangerous and difficult existence “to resolve to the magnificent duty” of caring for her children who remained in Iraq while she was in the States.

The culture shock of traveling from the safety and abundance of the United States to the utter destitution of Basra is immense. Nobody goes out after dark in Basra beyond the small-lighted area down town. People are being kidnapped off the street and ransomed for as little as $2000. $2000 for a human life! Iraqi Shi’ia’s returning from a generation of living in Iran have shot at the Christian owners of the city’s few liquor stores. The Chaldean bishop reports that there are not significant worries about persecution of Christians yet there were three bullet holes in the steel gates to the church courtyard. Children as young as three and four can be found begging on the streets, on the sidewalks are the prostrate bodies of other children “liberating” themselves from the liberation by pickling their brains sniffing glue. Mounds of garbage left uncollected for months extend for blocks. The scent of festering rot hangs in the air. It will be a long time before freedom is something more than an abstract idea for the people of Basra; especially if the languid pace of reconstruction is not accelerated.

Arriving at Um Haider’s home was obviously a momentous occasion for the family. Cheers of joy greeted her. Her sister-in-law grabbed her and wept in an extended embrace. Meanwhile Mostafa said a quick hello to his brother and sister and ran out the door to play in the street with his friends as if he had never left. Um Haider next saw her other surviving son and her teenaged daughter and hugged them both. Um Haider’s daughter was not wearing the hijab. Her hair was dark and long and her cheeks full. Looking at her I imagined Um Haider as a younger woman, before her husband was traumatized fighting in 2 wars, before her nation was impoverished by sanctions, and before her son was killed by one of our bombs.

Before departing Iraq I watched an American movie on Iraqi TV. During a break a clip from the movie “Free Willy” was shown. In the clip the whale is leaping out of its pen, over a boy, and into the ocean and freedom. There is no dialogue during the spot but it ends with the message in block letters: “Welcome to Freedom”. I am doubtful that is a sentiment resonating with Um Haider today.

When I left Um Haider she was not despondent over her situation. Rather she expressed thanks to God for protecting her family during the war and thanks to all the people in the States who helped her and supported her during her stay. She has completed her special hajj; she is back with her family. Now it is our turn to make a hajj, to be pilgrims for an honest peace, true freedom, and an expeditious reconstruction of Iraq. We must travel to our Congressional offices to lobby for change, our houses of worship to pray for better understanding, and our weapons factories to demand disarmament. We must also journey inside ourselves to question what does freedom actually mean and how can we help bring about a free and nonviolent world.