FREEBIRD

[ergo sum]

On life in Iraq.

After Shock
Following a 20-year exile, her return to Iraq was a minefield
By Yasmine Bahrani
Sunday, October 5, 2003; Page W14


"If I had known you were unveiled, I would have brought you a scarf to cover your head with," Abou Amin told me as he got into the car that was to take us to Baghdad. Those were his first words to me. It was 2 a.m. in Amman, Jordan. Four of us were setting out for Iraq, and we faced a 12-hour ride east through the desert. We were all nervous.




I'd arrived in Amman a few hours earlier that day in May, en route to see my native Baghdad for the first time in about 20 years. An uncle long exiled in Jordan said he didn't want me to travel alone -- there were too many stories about desert bandits and other dangers -- so he arranged for me to make the trip with a young driver and two older men. His wife advised me that the older men were religious. She had prepared me to speak with them in a particular way, one virtually required by the culture. The first of the men, Abou Haider, was sweet. He asked me where I wished to sit. If I'd sat next to either of the men, I might have accidentally brushed against one of them during the long trip, ruining his ablutions and making him impure, because I'm a woman. I didn't really want to ride in the front seat, but I did. As we were about to pick up the second man, the driver worried if he'd be bringing much luggage.

"No," Abou Haider said. "The man has a wife in Baghdad and one in Amman, so he doesn't need a suitcase."

That was my introduction to Abou Amin, who had started lecturing me even before he was in the car. My family, he said, "is a good family; they don't deserve a girl who is unveiled. God willing, you will veil. I should have brought a scarf for you."

"I have a scarf here, see?" I pointed to one around my neck that I'd brought along in case I needed to cover my head.

"The hijab represents . . ." I didn't hear the rest of what he said. I had heard such lectures from Muslim men before. I gave him my canned response. "Yes," I said, "it is beautiful when a woman becomes convinced that it is the right time for her to be veiled." I'm no wimp, but in my culture, it would show disrespect to my own family were I to reply harshly to an older man like Abou Amin. I remained polite.

"My daughter began veiling at 14," Abou Amin said. "She is a good girl. Not like so many women these days disgracing the names of good families by going around uncovered."

"That's nice," I answered. "I hope she remains covered."

He looked surprised, so I told him of a family I know in the States that had forced their daughters to veil, only to find them with purple hair, tattoos and body piercings as soon as they went off to college.

The wiry driver, Ali, averaged 85 mph, while keeping a eye out for cars coming toward us -- in our lane -- at the same speed. To keep himself alert, Ali picked a radio station that played Arabic pop songs. Abou Amin immediately ordered him to "put on the Koran." Ali said he had no Koran tapes, so Abou Amin told him which station plays Koran recitations around the clock. Ali found the station.

Koran recitation is beautiful and rhythmic, but hearing it while speeding through the desert night can be rather lulling. Abou Haider was the first to begin dozing, and I felt my own eyes closing as well. Ali started lighting one cigarette after the other just to stay awake. Nobody could say anything about the recitation because that would appear disrespectful to the religion. None of us could say "change the channel" without sounding like we didn't want to hear the word of God.

Rousing himself, Abou Haider asked me politely what I thought would happen next in Iraq. I said I thought it had to go well, because the Americans could not allow the situation to slip through their fingers. Democracy was not far away.

"May God not grant the Americans success!" declared Abou Amin. "A thousand curses on the Americans and their lackeys!"

"Do you think Saddam might return?" Abou Haider asked.

"By God," announced Abou Amin, "Saddam is a million times better than the Americans!"

I laughed. "Of course! Killing, imprisoning and torture is good for Iraq!"

Dawn approached, and Abou Amin announced he had to pray. Ali asked him to wait until we got to the Jordan-Iraq border, where, for safety reasons, we would form a convoy with other cars, but Abou Amin said that would be too late because he would miss the exact time, sunrise, when he was supposed to pray. Islam permits travelers to delay prayer to help them reach their destinations promptly. Most travelers combine the five prayer times just before bed. But Abou Amin insisted we stop at a restaurant that had a room outfitted with prayer mats on the floor. As he stepped out of the car, he asked whether any of us wanted to join him. All three of us said no.

Back on the road, we were suddenly engulfed by a sandstorm. We could see almost nothing. Ali began driving very, very slowly, as did the other cars in the convoy we had joined at the border. The roads were narrow, most other cars were going fast, and we were all thinking of the bandits known to target nice cars like ours. Though it was daylight, it was as if we were driving through thick fog. Ali suddenly swerved because a small black car was stopped horizontally across the highway. It obviously had been hit by another car.

The convoy pulled over. Other drivers emerged, some wearing goggles, others with cloth tied over their faces. They were trying to determine if there were injured passengers in the car, but they were afraid to walk across the road. If a car was coming, you wouldn't see it in time. Had anyone seen any passengers in that car? No. We stood, a groggy group leaning forward in the sandstorm, while a man slowly recited Koranic verses on the radio. As we got back into the car, we were all repeating prayers under our breath. Sand had managed to get into everything, even inside a car with rolled up windows. I had to tie my scarf on my face so I could breathe. If Abou Amin was pleased to see me veiled, he said nothing. Along with everyone else, he was coughing.

When we arrived on the outskirts of Baghdad, Abou Haider pointed out the notorious Abu Gharib prison, where just about every Iraqi had had at least one relative imprisoned or executed. But I pointed to the elegant palms and bright bougainvillea that reminded me of my childhood in Baghdad. I was home again.

Many Iraqis are returning from exile, some briefly, some to stay and rebuild the country. They are coming to see family they haven't seen in decades and reestablish ties with siblings and cousins. Many are optimistic about a new Iraq. Businessmen are excited about what they see as "a virgin market." Many enter the way I did, surrounded by voices arguing over Iraq's future.

After living abroad for so many years, I had thought I would never see Iraq again. Although my childhood memories of Baghdad are happy ones, that is only because my parents shielded us from the city's dreadful realities. Thanks to my parents, I remember the city of my girlhood as if it were made up of gardens, like the one surrounding my family's house: filled with fragrant flowers, citrus trees and unworried children at play.

It was actually a city filled with fear and secret police, as I later came to understand. But even as I grew older, my family tried to give my sister, my brother and me a chance at a normal adolescence. They sent us to private schools with children whose parents had no ties to the Baath Party clique; we'd listen to foreign rock music and talk endlessly about our teenage ambitions and dreams. But eventually, the city's fear and its Baathist police penetrated our home.

My father got word that his colleagues from the import-

export company he worked for suddenly were arrested, imprisoned and in some cases executed. At the time, my father himself was out of the country on business, but he sent word for us to join him. Once out, Iraqi emigres rarely visited home during the reign of Saddam Hussein. They had reason to fear they would be unable to leave again; there was even the chance of arrest. I was 18 the last time I had seen Baghdad.

My family was certainly very pleased to see Hussein removed from power, but we were worried about the fate of our relatives in Baghdad. By the end of the major fighting, telephones were out and there was no way to reach my aunts, uncles and cousins. I decided to go see them, to make sure that everyone had survived. And of course to see the city once again.

Ali dropped me off at the house of a cousin. His wife, Rana, a young mother dressed in tight stretch trousers and a tight T-shirt, came out to greet me. "Welcome home," she said, her hair sparkling in the bright Baghdad sunlight.

Baghdad turned out to be a city of surprises. Press reports had led me to expect a substantially bombed-out place, and although there was plenty of visible damage to government buildings, most homes were intact. On the other hand, many houses had gouged walls, and it seemed as if every windowpane in Baghdad had been smashed.

As soon as I arrived, Rana gave me a tour of the war damage in her own house. Her family lives in Mansour, a neighborhood that became well known to Americans when the Saa restaurant there was targeted on April 7 in an effort to kill Hussein. Rana showed me a gaping hole in her garden wall -- a result, she said, of the enormous explosion that night. Shrapnel had burst into the house and spattered the dining room. There was shrapnel melted into the fabric of the downstairs curtains.

Workers were still replacing the upstairs windows; all the glass in the house had shattered. Fortunately, Rana's family had fled the country during that part of the war. Though some were injured, all our uncles, aunts and first cousins who remained in Iraq had survived. "It's okay," Rana assured me quietly. "This happened to everyone in Baghdad. At least the house is still standing." Some of Rana and her husband Yaser's neighbors were not so fortunate. A young woman and her children were among those killed in the Mansour bombing; her husband survived. At first, neighbors said, the husband just sat quietly in front of the house, refusing to move. Now, when people greeted him at the market he said, "The children are fine. Sana asks why you don't pass by anymore."

"Whatever bad thing you heard" about life under Hussein, Yaser told me soon after welcoming me, "multiply it by 10. Those of you who lived outside cannot possibly fathom what we went through living under his rule." Yaser, a lively and clever man of 35, had supported his family through his tourism agency. Hussein's Iraq as a tourist destination was another surprise to me, but travelers came, if not from the United States, then from Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere. Some came to see biblical Mesopotamia: Babylon, Nineveh and Ur. Others wanted to hunt wild boar and deer. Some wanted to camp in the desert. Whatever they wanted, Yaser arranged it. Now, with Hussein gone, Yaser was optimistic about Iraq's future.

"Do you think," he once asked me, "that Americans would be interested in visiting Iraq?"

"Of course," I answered.

"I will welcome them myself." He smiled. "What's a fair price to charge for a package tour?"

In a sense, I was Yaser's first American tourist; Baghdad was busy and energetic -- another surprise, given the lack of security and services, and the closed shops and offices. The streets were very congested, and in generally good shape despite the bombing. But some were pockmarked. That was the case in the Karrada district, where Hussein's main palace stood and where U.S. administrator Paul Bremer is now headquartered. When I was a child, my relatives would forbid me even to look at the palace when we passed it. They feared that a camera was taking photos of passersby, and they didn't want my face to be photographed by Baathist security police. Fear was endemic.

In any event, this day all the streets seemed packed with cars -- many of them Volkswagens made in Brazil. There was also the occasional scrawny donkey pulling a cart, bicycles and many, many Baghdadis on foot. Baghdad is a city on hold, and everyone was busy trying to find groceries for their families, or to figure out a way to earn money.

Because there had been so much attention given to the unleashing of religious passions in Iraq, I had expected to see virtually all of the women wearing scarves as a sign of political Islam. While there were many scarved women, there were almost as many who went into public with their heads uncovered.

Indeed, I watched one day from Yaser's car as three attractive young women, dressed in traditional gowns, walked slowly through an upscale residential neighborhood. They had long, silky black hair and modest makeup. Two looked like they were in their twenties, the third probably a teenager.

"Check out the prostitutes," my cousin said.

Prostitutes? I had thought nothing of three young women making their way down the street. We had just passed the homes of some ambassadors and the headquarters of opposition leaders. Surely prostitutes would not walk these streets.

In the past, prostitutes were most often found at bus stops. They used to dress like everybody else, in knee-length skirts or dresses. They hung out at bus stops so as to have a reason to be standing in the street. Long before the Baathists came to power, there was a whole neighborhood of brothels near the ministry of defense. And there were the foreign women who hung out at nightclubs and commanded a higher rate than the local girls.

I rolled down the window and looked back. I actually thought they looked lovely. The only hint of their work was in their walk: You could see their hips swaying as they went down the street.

"Look at how they're dressed!" I said, looking at my own jeans and white cotton shirt.

"Many prostitutes cover up like conservative girls," said Rana. The subtle communication is necessary, of course, in a conservative culture. Their walk, their glances at the men in passing cars, their shy smiles may all have been signs to those in the know, but I had my doubts.

Yaser laughed. "You are ridiculously naive," he said. "Just watch them." Soon, a car slowed at the curb, and the men inside stopped at the top of the street. The young women continued to saunter along. I began to wonder if Yaser wasn't fooling with me after all. When the women reached the car, however, one of them leaned into the passenger side window to talk, and soon after, all three of the women hopped in.

In the wake of the war, most Baghdadis have been thrown deeper into family life. Family life is dear to all Arabs, but now there's little else in Iraq. Each morning, Rana's brothers appeared at her house at about 8:30. Like many Iraqis, the young men suddenly had no jobs to go to. Rana, smiling and gracious, dutifully prepared breakfast for them. Afterward, they started smoking and talking. With no power, there was no TV, no radio, nothing to do and nowhere to go. Yaser joined them, as did other men from the neighborhood. Some of them said that they didn't care who ruled Iraq as long as that person could return their lives to normal. They wanted their work, and salaries, back.

Iraq, the men told one another, had become like "Texas of the movies." Everyone carries a gun. They said they

didn't like having guns but felt a need to keep them in their homes. The American occupation authorities specifically permit Iraqis to keep AK-47s and pistols for protection. Most people didn't go out after the sun set, because it was too dangerous. There was gunfire in the streets every night during curfew (11 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.), and we would sit around and try to guess from which neighborhood the sound was coming.

It was difficult for Baghdadis to follow events around them. When there was electricity, people would sometimes tune in to al-Jazeera TV, or the BBC, or another satellite news service. (American authorities had set up a "local" news station, but I never met anyone who watched it.) However, TV reports intended for an international audience contained little practical information. For that, Iraqis would turn to the burgeoning local newspaper scene. There were dozens of new papers, most of them small dailies, and many of them ideological rather than newsy. That is, they often interpreted events rather reporting on them, and much of their information was unreliable. The most respected of the new publications was Azzaman, edited by a prominent former Baathist named Saad Al-Bazzaz, who has long been pro-democracy. That was the paper Yaser read. I tried to follow the news through the Web sites of American and British papers, which I read at one of the newly opened Internet cafes in the city. A lot of Iraqis, though, seemed to get their news through gossip and rumor.

However people got their information, many of those I met who had initially welcomed the Americans with smiles now felt abandoned. When, they asked aloud, would the chaos end? A neighbor, Salwan, 35, a shy accountant and

father of a 7-year-old, hadn't worked in months because of the war. He often smiled quietly as we all discussed the troubled city.

Another neighbor, Mohamed, 33, hadn't opened his jewelry shop in months because he was afraid of looters. The quiet young man said he had buried his gold in the garden of a relative's house. His small shop in Mansour, with its pretty calligraphy above the door, had a metal gate in front to keep the thieves away.

The heat was terrible, and because there was no power, there was no air conditioning. Rana's 2-year-old daughter, Yasmine, was sometimes in tears because she was so hot. Yaser had somehow found a small, hand-held, battery-

operated fan, and Rana and Yaser took turns fanning the baby with the gadget.

Rana tried to deal with the hardship by laughing at it. When discussing the absence of water and electricity, she said: "That's okay, we're strong, we're going back to the era of the Jahiliya" -- the period of "ignorance" before the Koran.

Yaser's world revolved around his family. When a little nearby grocery sometimes opened, he would take Yasmine, put her on the counter, and tell her, "Go crazy!" The child would happily grab all kind of candies and smear herself with chocolates, and Yaser would laugh with delight.

One evening, Rana remained oddly quiet. If Yaser asked her anything, she'd answer in a word or two. He studied her behavior for a while, then suddenly changed expressions.

"What date is it?" he asked me. I told him. "Oh my God! It's our wedding anniversary!" He immediately walked over to Rana and gave her a kiss. She offered him a half-smile, then turned to me and asked, "Shouldn't he give me a gift that expresses his feelings?" I agreed: "Something that expresses his feelings on your earlobes, or on your wrist." Yaser looked at us as we laughed. Then he turned and left the house. "It's a war zone, Rana," I said. "He'll get you a belated gift when he can." Rana sighed. "I suppose," she said.

A little while later, Yaser walked in beaming and put a small gold ring on Rana's finger. "Happy anniversary!" he cried. Rana was pleased and gave her husband a real kiss. The ring was modest, but Yaser's love outshone it. I later asked him where in the world he got it. Mohamed the goldsmith; Mohamed, who had hidden his jewelry in the family garden. The war poisons every day, but on this one occasion it had rescued an evening.

It was 6 in the morning on June 3. I'd been awakened by gunfire. The temperature felt like it was already 90 degrees. Yaser and I went downstairs. A young neighbor, Sudad, was waiting at the front door with his elderly mother to see me, both of them in tears.

"They took Salwan," the old lady sobbed. Salwan is her eldest son, the shy accountant.

Every morning Salwan walked his little son to school, and because the war had left him unemployed, he waited until he could walk the boy home. Salwan dreamt that his son would be a musician, and would one day play the sad oud for him.

Who took such a man, and why?

"The Americans," they said. They had come to me so I could interpret for them. On my first visit to Baghdad after so many years, I realized I was

going to spend a fair amount of time talking to Americans.

Americans are a mystery to many Iraqis, and Baghdad was awash in stories that reflected Iraqi ambivalence toward their new overlords. In Mansour, almost everyone thought the Americans had dropped a tactical nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant in the effort to get Hussein. Why? Neighbors saw military trucks removing rubble from the huge crater near the restaurant, then watched other trucks refill the hole. To many Baghdadis, the real truth seemed obvious: The Americans weren't searching for Hussein's remains. The bomb had contained nuclear material, and the United States was removing the evidence.

That's not the only nuclear bomb that some Iraqis believed Americans dropped on Baghdad. The best-known one supposedly fell near the airport, and there are "eyewitness" accounts of it. One man described for me the mushroom cloud he saw rising over the Furat district. "It looked like the sun, even though it was night. The sky turned red," he said. The dead were frozen in place, he told me, with no visible injuries, or else were reduced to skeletons. The bodies of four dead firemen were still in a car in Furat, he added, but Americans wouldn't allow the Red Cross to remove them. For those who believe them, such rumors make it difficult to accept the Americans among them.

We found Salwan amid a group of U.S. soldiers with his hands cuffed behind his back. "There must be some mistake," I told a sergeant named Stevens. "This guy is such a gentle soul."

Salwan was charged with shooting at Americans. Sgt. Stevens told me that he didn't think Salwan did it; none of the evidence, such as the trajectory of the bullets, supported Salwan's confession. But he had admitted to it, apparently to protect some teenagers who had been shooting at looters. Because Salwan had confessed, Sgt. Stevens said he had no choice but to take him in. The soldiers all said they thought Salwan was innocent; they were telling him that once the teenagers were found, Salwan should give them swift kicks in the behind. When I explained to his mother that Salwan had confessed, she asked him, "Why would you do anything so stupid?" He shrugged. His only concern was whether his jailers would be Iraqis or Americans. When he heard Sgt. Stevens say Americans, he was relieved. Years of Baathist torture had left its mark.

His mother had brought along a pair of trousers. Salwan had been arrested wearing shorts, and to her that was shameful. Can my son put on his pants, she asked. "You're really in trouble now," the soldiers teased Salwan. "You made your mom mad!"

Salwan's family asked a torrent of worried questions. How long will he be held? (At least two days, at most two weeks, was the response.) Where? (That's a secret.) Will they feed him? (Three meals a day.) How will he get home? (They'll give him a ride.) And this: "Will you pull out my son's fingernails?"

Sgt. Stevens started to laugh, but I reminded him of the country's recent history.

"Negative, ma'am. I guarantee you your son's nails will not be removed."

In fact, Iraqis don't believe Americans torture their prisoners; they think Kuwaitis -- or even Baathist Iraqis -- do it for them. Many of them think that Kuwaitis burned Baghdad's buildings, too. "They have a phosphorus device that is the size of a compact disc," one man told me. "It has a pin that you pull like with a hand grenade."

Why would the Kuwaitis do such a thing I asked? "Revenge."

Americans, too, I was told, have amazing devices, including X-ray binoculars that let them see through women's clothes. That rumor is rife in conservative Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where such a story can be dangerous. I heard about one U.S. soldier who handed his binoculars to a suspicious youth. The Falluji peeked through them. "Did you see through anyone's clothes?" asked the soldier. "No," the youth replied. "So you believe me now?" No, the boy said. No women had walked by, so naturally the X-ray powers had not kicked in.

A few mornings later, Salwan's pregnant wife was at the door. He hadn't returned yet, and she'd been searching Baghdad in vain. She wanted me to ask the Americans about his case. We found a group of soldiers asleep on the pavement. "Poor dears," she said sweetly, "look how they have to sleep on the sidewalk." A bleary Sgt. Stevens suddenly appeared; he was surprised to hear Salwan was still in custody. Stevens said Salwan was being held at the airport, but even he wasn't allowed there. He repeated his surprise that he hadn't been released.

It's hard to tell what the truth is in Baghdad. Ironically, the new press freedom has made things more confusing, because papers are now printing rumors. One paper hostile to Americans, Saa, printed an account of two girls who had been raped by 18 Americans. There were lots of details, including a date, a location, the girls' ages and their subsequent deaths. That report swept the country. Americans said the story was baseless, but many people believed it anyway. These are the kinds of tales of evil power that people once told about Hussein and his sons. Americans have now inherited some of them.

Cases like Salwan's don't help. When he failed to return, I went to his parents' home to commiserate. We sat near a statue of the Virgin Mary, with angels and blue birds around her. It was very hot without the A/C. Sudad, the brother, hadn't slept in days, and was living off cigarettes. No one knew what to think. The parents hoped to have their priest intervene directly with Paul Bremer. Weeks later, as I was leaving Baghdad, I went once more to ask the nearby soldiers about Salwan's case. Sgt. Stevens was gone, but a lieutenant guessed that if Salwan wasn't home, it was because of his original confession. His family thought he was probably performing prison labor and didn't know when he'd be back.

"Poor girl," Salwan's mother said, "they made her out to look like a liar." She meant me.

Nearly six weeks after his arrest, a sad Salwan finally appeared at his family's door. He'd been sitting idle in a tent 350 miles to the south. The occupation authorities held a series of hearings and concluded he was innocent. Salwan didn't get his ride home (he had to take a bus), and he didn't eat well (he'd lost some 35 pounds), but he still had his fingernails. He was now afraid to go out, and he stopped walking his son to school.

At 2:30 in the morning on August 4, the front door of Yaser's house was blown open by explosives. I was back in the United States by then, but Rana told me what happened next. Every window in the house was again shattered, spewing glass in all directions. Because of the intense heat, the family -- Yaser, Rana, her brother Feisal and little Yasmine -- had been sleeping downstairs, but miraculously no one was injured.

Here is what Rana told me: American soldiers rushed into the house through the splintered door as well as from the roof. As they took Yaser and Feisal to the kitchen, Rana grabbed Yasmine and rushed to hide, choosing the bathroom. Intensely frightened, she listened for the voices of her husband and brother, but couldn't hear them. The minutes passed in silence: no voices, no movement. "The Americans have killed them," she thought. She began to tremble, and then to vomit. Yasmine was also trembling, and Rana realized that she needed to get herself under control for her daughter's sake. That's when she became aware of the first voice.

"She's shaking," a man said. It was a soldier watching her.

"Leave her alone," came a command from another soldier. The first soldier continued to watch her.

Rana began asking the soldier where her husband was. Where was her brother? No answer. She asked a second time, and a third. Finally one of the soldiers said, "They're safe."

The soldiers eventually took Rana and Yasmine into the kitchen. Yaser and Feisal were there, their hands tied behind their backs. Rana was at first relieved, then overcome with fatigue. She felt too weak to hold Yasmine, and tried to put her on the floor, but the baby was too frightened to let go of her mother. Yaser and Feisal looked on helplessly.

Meanwhile, Rana said, the soldiers were ransacking the house. They'd even brought a dog to sniff through their belongings. Rana still had no idea what was going on. Why were they destroying their house? Gradually, she became aware of what they were after.

"Where's Saddam?" Rana said they were demanding.

Saddam? Rana came to understand that they had gotten a tip that Hussein had had lunch at their house and might even have been hiding there. Baghdad was flooded with such false tips, some intentionally planted by Baathists intending to sow confusion and resentment. Rana might have laughed, had she been able.

Forty-five minutes after they had blown the front door off its hinges, the soldiers announced that they were sorry. Then, they left. The family was speechless. (American authorities would eventually give them $2,000 in restitution, but it would be inadequate.)

Immediately, though, the family started to straighten things up. There was a lot of work to do before dawn, when the intense heat would overtake the city once more.

Yasmine Bahrani is an editor at USA Today. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.


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