Jeff Leys
Christian Peacemaker Team

Jeff Leys traveled to Iraq before the war with the Iraq Peace Team and is in Iraq now with the Christian Peacemaker Team.

Yesterday we met with the medical staff at a local teaching hospital. We also had the opportunity to visit briefly with children in the oncology ward of the hospital.  The doctors indicated that the supply of medicine has improved somewhat since the invasion.  They also said that they are now able to travel to other countries to attend conferences to update their skills.  For one conference, one doctor was able to get a visa to travel to Great Britain in just 24 hours–a process that would have been long drawn out in the days of the sanctions, with no assurance a visa would be granted. It is clear from talking with these medical doctors that Iraq is continuing to experience the impact of a massive brain drain from the country which occurred during the years of Saddam Hussein. It is also clear that even though some conditions may have improved for the medical community since the invasion, that these improvements come nowhere near being the type of substantive improvements necessary to rebuild the Iraqi health care system–which at one point was the best health care system in the Middle East region.

Neville Watson
Voices in the Wilderness
Baghdad October 9, 2003

The latter is probably the most accurate and much of what is here consists of direct quotes from the writing of Simone Weil’s essay “Human Personality”. (The Simone Weil Reader, David McKay Inc N.York 1977). I confess to understanding a fraction of that which she writes and I make no pretense that what follows accurately portrays her ideas. It is simply my interpretation of it - an interpretation prompted by the circumstances in which I write, the occupation of Iraq by the USA. For convenience, and because at 74 years of age the mind loses its edge, I write in the masculine. If you translate it into inclusive language that is all to the good and it is certainly my meaning. For my purpose I simply state what is found in many documents : ‘The term “his” is includes and means the word “her”.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
October 26, 2003

T.S. ELIOT & BAGHDAD U. Off to Baghdad University for an 8:30am class in one of the University’s three English departments. Cynthia and I were invited by Christian Peacemakers Team member Kathleen Namphy. Today she was to give a guest lecture on T. S. Eliot to a small MA seminar. Kathleen has been a Stanford U. English professor for many years. Cynthia tells me Kathleen was once married into the Namphy family in Haiti. There is a snafu. The professor, whose class it is and who had been out of town, didn’t know the department had made arrangements for Kathleen to come this morning. Sizing Kathleen up, she vigorously encourages her to give her lecture anyway. But Kathleen wants to have the students prepare for her by reading some Eliot in advance. As it turns out Kathleen gives a brief preparatory lecture and hands out some poems — in the hope that her CPT responsibilities will permit her to return next Sunday.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
October 27, 2003

EXPLOSIONS

At about 6:30 am yesterday the massively fortified CPA headquarters at the Hotel Rashid was hit by ten or twelve explosive devices. According to a soldier sentry (just out of high school) there who Cathy talked to yesterday, there were “missing arms and legs,” many casualties and some deaths. BBC this morning is reporting only one death and three injuries. Rumsfeld’s crony Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel but escaped injury and has since returned to the States.

At 8:30 this morning we hear an enormous explosion. The noise reminds me of last April’s aerial bombs. From our roof we see billows of black smoke drifting east. Later we hear that the International Red Cross in Karrada a couple miles from us was carbombed.

Salaam (Haythem) Al Jobourie
November 6, 2003, Baghdad

Written by Salaam (Haythem) Al Jobourie. He is a university student and journalist in his own right. During my recent stay in Baghdad, Haythem was an integral part of the Voices’ house, an invaluable resource to us as well as a frequent translator. I feel privileged to be his friend. We had the wonderful opportunity to visit his family in a farming area on the outskirts of Baghdad during Ramadan. I asked him to write something from the perspective of a student, and I am happy to pass his piece on to you. It is as follows.

Nobody could believe that Saddam would really go, especially the young people who saw Saddam with their own eyes more than two times a day on TV–in his military uniform during the Iraq-Iran war and during the two Iraqi-American wars. So when Baghdad fell and Saddam escaped from his throne, leaving his palaces to the Americans, people were shocked. Now they saw the American soldier–not on TV– but with their own eyes, but they couldn’t believe that Saddam was no longer the president of Iraq. Even now many people believe that Saddam will come back.