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.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
October 8, 2003
Baghdad

HOME SWEET HOME

My clock says 6am when I get up this morning. I spend the next hour cleaning up the place � mostly the kitchen where dishes are piled high. Yesterday we had no water � broken pump. Now all’s well. We’ll be able to flush toilets, shower, do laundry, wash dishes and drink to our heart’s content. We’ve had such good luck with water since I arrived here…and we’re so incredibly dependent on that versatile, luscious, magical stuff.

My clock, as it turns out, was a couple hours fast. That explains why it was dark then and why it’s still dark now. But it is a relief to be up when the house is quiet and guest-free. Neville, of course, is up, but in these pre-dawn hours he’s as quiet as a church mouse.