Mike Ferner
Voices in The Wilderness

BAGHDAD-Iraq’s largest Sunni mosque, dedicated to the revered Imam, Abu Hanifeh, has a new addition. It is not, however, a space to accommodate more worshipping faithful. It’s a space to lay the bodies of civilians killed in the U.S. invasion last April.

Several members of the Christian Peacemaker Team visited the mosque in Baghdad’s Al-AaDamiyha district recently and were met by Mohammed, who described himself as a “servant of the mosque.” He took them to five tidy rows of graves, some quite small. Speaking through a translator, he read some of the tombstones.

“Here this is the tomb of a woman, her name Aqadeth Naji. It says she was killed on 10th April 2003, with her son, a child. His name is Natha Ayab Natha. They were killed from bombing her house…This is the grave for the small girl. Her name is Ala Mohammed Hassan Hatumini. She was killed on 11th of April, 2003, playing in the streets…and this is another child killed …and this man’s name was Ma’mhoud Nasaid Sa’id…and…”

Oriental Palace Hotel, Baghdad
January 19, 2004
by Mike Ferner

On January 19, 2004, I interviewed singer, songwriter and musician, Bruce Cockburn, at the end of his weeklong visit to Iraq hosted by the American Friends Service Committee. As I write this introduction from a Baghdad hotel, a diesel generator roars on the sidewalk below, providing power for an electrical system savaged by a decade of sanctions and two wars. The generator is drowned out only when U.S. fighter planes and helicopters roar overhead.

Cockburn’s latest release, “You’ve Never Seen Everything,” is one of over two dozen discs the Montreal artist has released, including “Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu,” “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws,” and “Trouble with Normal.” Cockburn had a few choice comments on some of his favorite topics and then we got down to some questions.

On what he hears from people in Iraq:

Increasingly, people will tell you that they feel one dictatorship has been replaced by another; that they have more freedom of thought now than they had before but they don’t have freedom of movement.