Via Dolorosa Kerbala

Via Dolorosa

We are driving to Kerbala again, this time to observe and be guests at the
celebration of the birthday of the Imam Mehdi, or the disappearing cleric
of the Shi’a tradition.

Now we are passing the Bagdad Hotel, the thick, tall concrete barriers
looming ominous over the street, hard to ignore as you zip by. Anne says,
the concrete is a bad idea, it will only serve as a target for
dispossessed Iraqis. [Two days later, she is proved right]. Our team
used to live in the hotel next door.

Evidence of Iraq’s wars are visible in the people on the street as we pass
them by…those who walk on stumps, without prosthesis. Those who sit on
the ground, the posture of disgrace in this country, with no legs at all.
This is the legacy left behind by landmines, and now by cluster bombing.

In Kerbala earlier we met the human rights organization who took it upon
themselves to clear all the landmines and cluster bombs laid in the city
by US forces this summer in advance of the next major pilgrimage. One
man, a former soldier in the Iraqi army who instructed the other local
volunteers in the process, removed over 5,000 of the explosives by
himself. Then he was killed when trying to disable a cluster bomblet in a
schoolyard. I know I’ve mentioned him before. I think of him often.

Now the US occupying power has announced two new policies: all press must
clear their stories about US soldiers or military actions through the CPA
before releasing them or risk being ejected from the country. We met
another European crew who reported on human rights abuses and were
censored in this way. They are the main channel in their country and well
respected. The second is that if anyone fires on US forces from a grove
or field, that agricultural area will be razed, even if the perpetrator of
the attack is not the owner of the field. Yes, you are right. It is just
like the policy of the Israeli military. Already we have been asked to
see one field that used to support 80 people’s existence. It comes in the
same week as the razing of Gaza. I heard my friend Laura on the BBC radio
explaining the damage there, and the UN estimating 1,500 Palestinians are
now homeless. I believe them. I have walked that neighborhood, I knew
those houses. Rachel and Tom bled on that sand.

Last week I took the testimony of a 16-year-old boy who was tortured while
being held in US custody for ten days. I have to prepare this report and
send it soon on our team’s mailing list. As I wrote down his words, in
the back of my mind I kept thinking, How can we do this? What are we
thinking? It is just like Israel. The names of the players are all that
has changed. My question now is, who was the teacher and who was the
pupil? Who is the father and who is the son? Everything I have reported
on about Israeli human rights abuses in Palestine has been duplicated ten
times over in Iraq by US soldiers. I am beginning to hear that US
newspapers are developing some courage and beginning to report on these
events. The next question is, how do we stop our neighbors and sons from
carrying on with these crimes? It is not just Iraqis who will suffer from
their behavior. Eventually all soldiers return home.

I am watching in Aadhumiya as workers lovingly rebuild the dome of their
mosque destroyed by shelling in the war. They are lining up the turquoise
tiles, and replacing the wood and stained-glass windows of this
Turkish-style holy place. Across the street is the largest Sunni shrine
in Baghdad. It too was rocketed, after the war was over, by US forces.
Its minaret clock tower barely stands, and is held up now by scaffolding.
All the glass in the ornate windows was blown out. The top corner of the
main gate was knocked off by the rocket after it passed through the tower.
It is grotesque. Like in Viet Nam, when young men with fighter planes
picked the largest temples to destroy, ignorant of the culture and history
they were wiping out, so now even a too-short cycle of history repeats
itself.

I am learning lessons in coping with outrage. I have more lessons to
learn in coping with guilt for my nation. Others on the team are newer
and their emotions flow freely.

Why, I ask, were 10,000 spare troops sitting in the yard of the Ministry
of Oil after Baghdad fell to our control? Why did we fail to protect
Iraq’s cultural institutions from looting when every war with this level
of damage, at least in this century, has been immediately followed by
looting? That of Iraq’s culture which we did not destroy ourselves we
allowed to be pillaged by others while we sat by in our brand new,
state-of-the-art tanks and ate sandwiches made with white bread. After
all, those who are our soldiers now were the children we set in front of
our television sets with a bowl of popcorn to watch the war that took
place then.

Perhaps I seem a little redundant in driving this point home: This is our
next Viet Nam, and it will come back to haunt us. The most useful class
of my college education for this fall was the course on Viet Nam. A young
kid in a helicopter rockets a thousand-year-old temple. And kills the
people. And comes home and the invincibility finally wears off. And the
nightmares set in, both for himself and his family. How much of our
homeless population and our mentally-ill population now are none other
than returned Viet Nam veterans?

There are rumblings here, both among the soldiers and among Iraqis in the
street. I hear them both, and don’t always know what to think. These two
groups have more in common, it seems, than one would think. The rumble on
both sides is that suicide rates among soldiers are at an all-time high.
That 600 soldiers have been declared no longer physically or
psychologically fit for duty and sent back to the US and dispersed among
hospitals around the country. That deaths of “green-card” soldiers are
not being reported to the media and the bodies are being disposed of
quietly here.

I am glad Camp Cropper at the airport has been closed down. I saw a
reprint of an AP article citing increasing pressure to close the camp due
to human rights abuses taking place there. As I read, I learned the
person in charge of that camp is an officer at the CPA whom I meet with
weekly. He seemed like such a nice man. When I talk with the soldiers,
they all seem like such nice people. They are fathers and brothers and
sisters and wives, and then they all share this very dark side. What
shall we do? What will they be like when they come back?

I see here that tempers soar with the temperatures. Soldiers in the
streets tell us, “We’re not trained for this.” Our translator gave one
guard a few Arabic phrases such as, “Please move over here. Stand right
there. Wait one minute.” He was grateful, and wrote them down. There
was no translator with him, and he was responsible for controlling a crowd
of several hundred people. We have seen what happens to soldiers when
they work in these conditions. They begin screaming, cursing, shoving,
and finally shooting because they simply can’t communicate. I wouldn’t
want to be a soldier here. Not just for moral reasons but for their own
well-being. They don’t know when they’re going home. “If we only had a
date to live for, we could go on, it would be bearable,” one told us while
we waited in line at an office a few weeks ago. I wonder how he’s doing
now.

I heard on the radio some US commentator saying with all the money Bush is
requesting for the Occupation, “We are in an economic crisis here at home.
Americans don’t want to pay for new Iraqi post offices, and the Iraqis
don’t want foreign corporations building them for their own private gain.”
Then I heard a member of the resistance here say, “We are only sabotaging
the oil lines that lead out of Iraq, pumping our wealth away from our
country where it is needed most now.”

We are sitting in traffic again. It has taken an hour to crawl halfway
across town. There are Iraqi traffic cops back on the streets. “Seeing
traffic police makes you feel your wait is a little less in vain,” says
Anne.

A sobbing man came to our apartment last week looking for help. His
brother had been detained by the US. “My brother doesn’t do anything,” he
cried. “In fact, all he does is drink.” We were able to help the brother
and negotiate with the military, and he was released within 48 hours—which
is rare—and the overjoyed brothers invited our team to his farm for a
dinner in gratitude. As we drove there, we passed the ancient Persian
city of Ctesiphon, and saw the curiously-shaped arch and fortress which
still stand there. We also saw the sun set in brilliant red over the date
palms and the Tigris. It was a date and citrus farm, dairy, and fish
hatchery. Irrigation streams ran through the farm. The man was quite
wealthy but lived alone except for his servants, and the house was quite
simple. Children would have loved this place. As it was, we were most
excited by the puppies. That night, we ate the samech bil’ tannour, fish
roasted in a traditional Arab oven which looks like a large clay vessel
surrounded by bricks, and it was the softest, best fish I had ever tasted.
This was after being stuffed with fruit and nuts all evening. We barely
made a dent in the platters on the table in front of us.
Across the river from the man’s house, two barges lay rusted in the water.
They were gasoline carriers, he explained, but they were rocketed during
the war and burned there.

It was a Thursday night when we were there, the night for weddings in
Iraq. Car after car after bus filled with wedding-goers passed by the
front gates with a drum and trumpet band in each bus. Here again, the
festive collided with the realities of war.

I see the central bus station and train station here in the center of
town. I hear that rail lines have been resumed to Turkey and Syria. I
hope I can travel the whole of the Middle East someday by rail. As long
as there’s air conditioning in the cars, that is. In our car right now,
there’s not.

Eventually we unravel our traffic knot and make our way to Kerbala. Soon
we move from our side of the four-lane highway over to make a two-lane
road, because so many pilgrims are walking, bare-footed, on the asphalt in
the late Iraqi summer sun, to reach Kerbala by nightfall. To help them on
their way, the farmers and villagers along the road set up tents with tea,
bean stew and rice, and plenty of water. As with the pilgrimage to Kadhum
last month, groups of young men pack together bearing the brightly-colored
flags of their tribe and chant and dance their way southward.

Inside the city pilgrims packed every street in ways you or I have not
experienced, even in Jerusalem for Good Friday. For the evening, we
joined our friend Sayyid Ali in his family’s hostel and I held a two
year-old on my lap most of the evening until the men began dancing in the
hall below and I filmed our male teammates taking part. The birth of Imam
Mehdi—the Cleric who Disappeared, rather than be martyred along with all
other forefathers of Shi’a, and who will return with Prophet Jesus on the
Judgement Day according to their tradition, is celebrated much like
Christmas. This included ornate creche scenes with angel dolls in Arab
clothes hovering over the baby Imam in a manger, and brightly colored
candles in tree-like arrangements, and lots of sweets, with which everyone
filled our hands and pockets. We were then led up to an unfinished
building so we could observe the millions of pilgrims processing between
the shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, martyred in the same battle.
From above, the movement of the pilgrims seemed choreographed and
peaceful. From below, it was a peaceable chaos! Yet the millions of
pilgrims still could sleep on their mats in the streets, men and women,
including small babies, gathered by tribe and village together to camp on
the pavement, thousands more still walking by within an inch of their
heads as they dozed. The last of the pilgrims had arrived in the city and
were well fed—physically and spiritually—and rested for their efforts.
The evening was a joyous moment before the troubles—noted only by the
single file men in black chanting their praises for a man named Muqtadar
Sadr—would erupt in the streets of Kerbala and the people there would fill
the streets again only for funerals and sorrow.

A Visit to Sayyid Ali

Sayyid Ali, on my second visit to his home with our team, presented me
with a soft gray hijab—the kind that pulls over your head like a stocking
and falls to your elbows. No pins are required to hold it in place. It
is a little heavy, but I kind of like the weight on my head. It also
holds the slippery black abaya in place a little better. The Sayyid has
really shown his appreciation for my understanding of Muslim people and
willingness to learn about the Shi’a, even though he knows I am starting
seminary next year. I told him that one of my life’s goals was to teach
Christians about Muslims so that they would befriend them rather than wage
wars against them. He chuckles and says, little by little, I will convert
to Islam and then I will never want to leave Iraq. He is joking though,
and we are becoming good friends.

That day we also had our first lunch at his home. He brought out large
platters of chicken and rice, salad and pickled vegetables. First he
insisted that we try to clean our plates. Impossible, of course. Then,
after tidily pulling the meat away from the bones with the flatbread and
bringing it to my mouth, a polite Beit Sahour table lesson I learned in
Palestine, he laughed. “Eat with your hands,” he said. “It is the
natural way.” I felt a little funny about it while in a suit, but he had
no trouble eating this way in all his clerical robes. Iraqis have a
pronounced earthy practicality about basic life matters that also makes
them seem more eloquent and spiritual.

Our translator is a former staffer at the Ministry of Tourism. He lost
his job when Baghdad fell, then had his office looted in the aftermath.
He’s enthusiastic about our work, always suggesting and occasionally
overwhelming us with suggestions of leads to follow, but really more than
translating you can see he lives for the moments when we’re just traveling
place to place and he can point out the sights. Then his eyes really
light up. Curiously, this is a trait true to some extent of most Iraqis
I’ve met, particularly now that they are more free to associate with
foreigners. They know their history down to the smallest detail, and they
know their religion, whichever it may be. In this second part I am
feeling more and more ashamed of myself for beginning to forget just how
exactly certain Bible stories happened or who said just what. It doesn’t
sound so difficult, but just try reciting scene by scene, word by word the
story of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, or the story of Abraham
entertaining angels in the desert. Fortunately, my embarrassment is
driving me to some serious review sessions.

In other news, it seems I’ve been getting kissed a lot lately, and
fortunately not by the local young men. I’ve made lots of friends among
affectionate older Iraqi women, and they grab me and smooch four, five
times. I think this is mainly because I speak a little Arabic and use it
to compliment their cooking heavily. Two women now, including our
translators’ old auntie, have offered cooking lessons, which might have
useful dividends for my teammies.

Every other person we meet seems to have an engineering degree, and they
are impressive builders. I have no doubt that Iraqis have no need of
Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild their country at inflated US costs paid
in oil; these are the people who can take simple mud and stone and create
buildings that have lasted since the dawn of civilization. Not to mention
the beautiful architecture lining the streets of the modern cities. Still
they are working from mud brick and stone as well. Over a decade of
sanctions has made our friends able repairmen as well. I had the
misfortune my second day here of buying an iron without its original
packaging. I should have realized then it was broken, but somehow missed
the crack in the water reservoir and discovered the electrical short when
I got home. Still, our friends brought it back the next day as functional
as new. I have no idea how. Probably very few of us in the US would know
what to do. Somewhere between money-back guarantees and our disposable
culture, we’ve un-learned quite a bit.

There is all sorts of looting still going on. I notice that four of the
five famed luxury hotels of Baghdad have been turned into US military
barracks. Little flags and the occasional pair of boxers hang out the
windows of the Palestine tower. The ballroom must be getting put to good
use as a lounge. I wonder about the pool. The same is true of the
Sheraton Ishtar, the Mansour, the Rasheed, and the Baghdad. I notice
mainly white soldiers in the air-conditioned Baghdad conference center
turned US ‘Iraqi Assistance Center,’ as well as in the air-conditioned CPA
Palace compound, formerly Saddam’s central palace, and very few white
soldiers in the humvees and tanks patrolling the streets of Baghdad, or on
foot. It’s something I just want to sit with and continue to observe
before saying anything more.

There is also looting which seems quite appropriate, if only as poetic
justice. We met several human rights organizations which have set up shop
in former villas of the Republican Guard and Baath party elites. I
especially admire the Free Prisoners Association, which after looting its
office space took advantage of the day the security services went into
hiding to loot their office of the millions of files of political
detainees and executions throughout the Saddam era and hustle them off to
undisclosed locations around the country. Now hundreds of relatives pour
into their offices every day with renewed hope of finding their loved
ones. If only it were so easy for them, they say, to get the lists from
our military about its detainees.

Part of our work is supposed to be encouraging the local human rights and
peace groups which are springing up all over. Their task is so immense
and heartbreaking I’m not sure just how to do that. Maybe I could bring
them jellybeans. I’m feeling otherwise a bit ill-equipped for the job.
Still they plug on in ways I cannot imagine. The Human Rights
Organization in Karbala had little special training or equipment but knew
a major pilgrimage was soon to begin late in the war, so they took it upon
themselves to remove 20,000 [internationally-outlawed yet popularly used
by our forces] cluster bombs from their streets and yards in about one
week. One man who did have some training, a former Iraqi military
officer, removed 5,200 in that time with his own hands until one he was
trying to disarm blew up and killed him. It was planted in an elementary
schoolyard. The group didn’t have to do it—under international law it is
the US’ responsibility to clear their own unexploded ordnance—but they saw
the US was in no mood to do so and the need was urgent. The industrious
mine-sapper was given a high martyr’s funeral in Kerbala, he who truly fit
such a description.

I have now learned how to enter and exit the smallest and most awkward of
taxis while wearing long skirts and heels with true grace. I wish I could
explain my magic formula to you all. I think though it is mostly
practice. Or wishing peace upon the driver. Our drivers, many of whom
hold advanced degrees, frequently wax political. One more profound
statement I heard recently was, “Our country is lost. That which is Iraq
is no more.”

I’ve been several times now to the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University
of Baghdad and always feel right at home. The walls surrounding the
building are covered in colorful and free-thinking murals. Inside, a
large mural of Guernica puts things in perspective quickly. There is also
a sculpture garden created by students, and the most striking is a female
form wrapped and dangling as if a butterfly’s cocoon, about to open. It’s
just a meter away from a stoic Sumerian warrior posed for the fight.
Hmmm..

I think most of the uncovering work about the truths of the old regime is
probably happening quite well by Iraqis’ own selves. When I think about
the mass graves panic back home on US television, that families are not
waiting for a proper DNA testing, but Iraqis are talking to each other and
working things out and figuring out their past in many ways and that’s all
that’s really needed. What our country learns or doesn’t learn, curious
though we may be, is really just an afterthought. We need to focus on
learning from our own actions, anyway. I think about how true it is that
history repeats itself if you choose not to learn from it. Like that
dictators often follow foreign military occupations. Or that looting
follows almost all wars. Or that foreign-appointed governments are often
viewed as just that, puppet regimes, and never gain local credibility.
Several Iraqis here have said that they are certain the atrocities of the
old regime will be taught in schools, similar to Germany’s Holocaust
education program, so that this may never happen again. Wow, so soon. Do
you suppose our country will ever start teaching our Viet Nam war
atrocities in high schools? Or our Gulf War atrocities? Or anything
after our WWII victory, A-bombs de-emphasized, where most high school
history courses end?