A Sadder Return from Iraq

A Sadder Return from Iraq
January 10, 2003

Hi everyone,

I arrived safely back in Jerusalem this afternoon, after a little stress at the border. Sadly, the anxiety paled in comparison to my emotions and feelings of trauma these past few days since the accident. The rest of this letter may seem a little disjointed and difficult as I try to work it all out.

As you probably read in the release I wrote (Claire sent it on to you), our delegation was returning from Basrah (in the Southern no-fly zone) to Baghdad a day before we were scheduled to leave. About an hour out of town, the rear driver’s-side tire of the car behind ours peeled apart, causing the car to fishtail. But the driver was skilled, and everybody in the car said they thought they would it was coming back under control. Unfortunately, even while slowed down and steering correctively, the front passenger tire
clipped a slight curb on the road and it was enough to flip the car diagonally and send it rolling into the ditch. It rolled at least three times and landed upside down. My teammate George Weber was thrown from the car and killed (he was sitting above the tire that blew), two of our delegates were hospitalized, and two more had cuts and back strain. Another CPTer, Jim Loney, was in the middle seat and best survived the accident. He helped everyone else from the car and is now staying in Baghdad with the two who still need medical care and will fly home with George’s body to Canada. He lives half an hour away from George’s house and knows his family. These past few days he has been an untiring and unseeking hero.

The Sanctions Committee does not allow for the export of any ‘cargo,’ including bodies of foreigners, to be taken out of Iraq. I believe it was the Canadian consular officials who were able to push the US (which heads the committee) into allowing a special exemption. We are glad, but feel the bitter irony. George should be home by Friday.

Images have been playing in my mind, and everyone’s minds in our group, since the accident. It feels like a movie, both in that it feels like others were playing the roles in front of me, including my own, and that it is still so unreal. A few of us gathered the last night in Baghdad to help each other piece together the missing scenes and unanswered questions about why things happened the way it did—slowly, slowly the reality is now sinking in.

I remember our driver and our guide suddenly looking up and screaming into the rear-view mirror, then I looked back just as the car began to flip into the air and come down in a cloud of dust. At first I didn't realize it was one of our caravan. Cliff and I sprinted to the wreck, and when I saw it was our car, I actually stopped, thinking somehow that if it was us, we must all be okay. People didn't seem too panicked. Only a few seconds later I realized it was because everyone was in a state of shock. The driver of their car, Razek, our driver Sittar (his brother), and our guide Zayed fell to their knees and beat their hands against their heads in the style of Arab grief, and I will never forget that high-pitched, anguished unrelenting wail that I never knew men to be capable of, that said they had done everything to keep us safe and well cared for these past two weeks, and somehow things had gone horribly wrong. Our group had the best drivers in the best cars on the best roads available. We were immediately aware that this was what saved the other six people in the car, a crash that no one should likely have walked away from, and we tried to console them. Sittar replied simply, “But somebody is dead.” It was a somber ride back to Basrah.

There were many more horrible realizations I had within just a few minutes, that I will not share here. I know many of my teammates in CPT receive my letters, who were also teammates with George. Because he had been so badly injured, I went to cover him before the others came to realize what had happened. I couldn’t believe it was really him, for a moment I thought the car must have hit a person trying to cross the road. Slowly I knew. I don't know if I can ever forget that image. That morning, I sat across from
George at breakfast and noticed all the little white hairs individually sticking up about an inch from his head. He was such a sweet old man. I wanted to reach across and rub his head, it was so cute I thought. But I behaved myself. I wish I hadn’t. No one will be able to do that again.

Immediately when I realized he was gone, I felt crushing guilt that I had not spent more time with him, often because I felt I had other things to do. At our memorial service for him the next day, as I remembered and shared each wonderful exchange of words we'd had while working together, I came to realize that really I had learned a lot in only a little time.

It has been a very long year. I have come into contact with seven bodies of people who have died violently in about as many months, and dozens more pictures of others still. Each has impacted me deeply. Somehow I know my teammate will likely not be the last. Not in Palestine, nor Iraq or Colombia if I find myself there; not in CPT, not in my line of work now or in the future, I imagine. I feel selfish in hoping then not that there will be no more, but that it will never again be somebody I know. And yet I would very much like that to be so.

We did a CPT workshop on trauma healing this past September, and I found some of the techniques we learned there helpful. In the hours after the crash, I had to respond to the urgent needs--accompanying delegates to the hospital, translating with hospital staff, writing the press release, attending to the emotional needs of the rest of the group. It seemed as though there was no time to cry, no time to respond emotionally to the
horrible images replaying themselves in my head. By the end of the day I had no idea why my legs and head hurt so much. I got in a taxi to the internet cafe, the first moment away from the group and constant activity, and suddenly found myself barely able to contain my tears. (I am sure the Iraqi taxi driver was unsure what to do with a sniffling American woman in the back seat). It wasn't until the next day when I was able to really
break away and find a quiet place to deal with the images, remember the parts that I'd forgotten--and remember the sprinting which caused my legs to be so sore. Soon the aches began to fade and the weight was a little easier to bear.

A few days earlier, I had been in the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. Our group visited a plantation of date palms and citrus, which Iraqis plant together. (They have known about sustainable and organic agriculture for thousands of years before it became trendy here.) The date palms shelter the oranges from the hard sun and occasional frosts, allowing a lengthy growing season. The grove was so thick that it silenced all outside sounds, and the air was remarkably pure. Even the light had an ethereal quality to it. It was so beautiful, to see the canopy of trees high above as well as the bright colors below, I felt like crying out of happiness and I never wanted to leave. I thought to myself, this is what Eden must have looked like. I thought to myself then I would have to etch this place in my mind to counter the next painful experiences I have to face in life. I tried hard
after the accident to remember that place and that feeling. Finally it is beginning to come back.

While I stood over George's body for what seemed like an eternity, the desert around us seemed truly a harsh and unforgiving, life-forsaking place. I felt guilty and grateful at the same time that he had died instantly, knowing we were too far away from anywhere to save him, let alone the lack of medical equipment necessary to keep him alive due to the sanctions.

Previously in my two trips I had found the deserts beautiful and contemplative. I was grateful later to leave Iraq at sunset, when the desert mists with pinks and periwinkles I have never seen elsewhere, under a bright red sun.

One of the things our delegation discussed before we parted was how to honor George's memory without forgetting our original mission: to witness to the horrors present and to come in Iraq. Several people are following up on the origin of the tire which disintegrated on the highway, if it is indeed one of the recalled tires that were a major US scandal last year, if they were indeed then sold unscrupulously and without recourse to unknowing Iraqis. Under the sanctions, many malfunctioning or unsafe materials have been sent into Iraq. Perhaps our accident can help call attention to this immoral
practice and get it stopped. I think George would approve.

Our delegation was well aware that if it were a carful of Iraqis, nobody would notice or care. I thought of this with every scrap of tread I saw alongside the highway as we traveled back to Jordan. How many in Iraq or other third world countries have died as a result of the junk we sell them, and what responsibility do we have in their deaths? When will their lives begin to have value in our eyes?

We also shared what had the deepest effect on George while he was with us in Iraq—the children suffering from malnutrition and radiation-related diseases in the hospitals. After our first tour of the wards, even though I wasn’t the delegation leader, he stopped me outside the second hospital and asked if he could sit in the garden a while instead. His heart had just been broken over them. He went everywhere else with us those two weeks, but could not bring himself to enter another hospital. I know when I do come home, I’ll be sharing a lot of those pictures and stories from the wards.

In the meantime, I am happy to be here still. I look forward to helping develop our new team in Jerusalem, looking forward also to the perk of perhaps seeing friends in Bethlehem and Ramallah more often than I have recently. For my own health, I am taking a few days off to rest now, and I’ve bought an hour of another friend’s time, probably payable in chocolate, to squeeze hands and remember.

I really don’t know when I am coming home next, due to the situation, but will let you know as soon as I do. I am really looking forward to speaking about my time in Iraq. If you know any journalists interested in doing interviews over email, I’d be happy to hear from them.

Talk to you all soon,

Le Anne