Come together
Excerpt from Night of a Thousand Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq (Nazraeli Press: 2006)
They kill you with kindness. It will not always be this way, but for now it’s its own weapon, its own devastation. A Kurdish taxi driver hauls me from the Ameriya Bomb Shelter—where the aquarelle ghosts of 408 Iraqi civilians were burned into the concrete walls Feb. 13, 1991 during a U.S. bombing attack—to the Al Fanar, a 45-minute drive in heavy traffic, and refuses to take my money. “You are American,” he says, “you are my friend.”
I leave one of my cameras—a Nikon with a new 300-mm lens—sitting under a chair in a hamburger stand 150 yards or so from the Ministry of Information foreign media center. I’m halfway back, headed for an afternoon press conference on a U.N. raid on a chicken farm suspected of harboring weapons of mass destruction, when I see a man in his early 30’s sprinting toward me. It’s one of the waiters. Did I forget to pay? I’m humiliated. It’s like I’ve robbed them.
He runs up, panting, smiles and hands me my camera.
The Nikon costs more than the waiter will likely earn in the next 10 years. The average income here, according the U.N., is $3 to $6 U.S. dollars. A month. The Iraqi government supplements this with an average of $28 in staple foods, otherwise hunger would drive the nation to civil war. If the waiter had kept the camera, he could have sold it for enough cash to get his family out of the country, for enough food for a city block for a year, easily. I offer a reward, but of course he won’t take it.
I stay out all day and half the night, wandering alleys, fruit markets, smoke shops, restaurants, construction sites, photographing men brazing tea kettles, grilling fish and headless doves, men wiring houses, pouring concrete, visiting the barbershop. I flag down rides from shocked Arabs until 2 a.m. On the streets, they accost me five and 10 at a time. What do I think of Britney Spears? Is she not the most beautiful woman in the world? Why does Michael Jackson want to be white? What does snow look like? We have heard of it. Does it hurt to touch it? Are you married? How many children do you have? What are their names? How old are they? My brother/sister/mother/cousin/next-door-neighbor is here somewhere, will you take our picture? I will find him/her/them. Please do not leave.
I spend half my time pissing, they pour so much tea down me. Cliff Kindy—a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams—is not so lucky. Kindy is walking back to the Al Fanar around 11 p.m. in mid-February when he’s stopped by three young Iraqi men. He’d been at the Palestine Meridian, which has the only rental computers around, e-mailing his objections to the threatened war.
“Give us your money!” the robbers say. Kindy pulls out a thick wad of Iraqi dinars. A stack of bills roughly four inches thick, 250 dinar per bill, is the equivalent of about $10 U.S. dollars.
“This is all I have,” Kindy says. “I have to live on this for I don’t know how long.”
“Well, how about half of it?”
He gives them half.
They say, “We would like your camera.”
“This is the only camera I have,” Kindy argues. “I need this camera.”
“O.K., then.”
Kindy keeps the camera. Each man, in turn, kisses him—twice, one buss for each cheek, as is the custom when greeting or parting with friends—and go their way. Kindy tells his fellow Americans this story the next morning, adding that he’s now going to do his e-mail by daylight.
I feel I’m going insane, and I wish I could say slowly. I have never been to a place where muggers treat you with more hospitality than some of your closest relatives. Women literally squeal at the sight of an American. Jaws drop. Men and women leap off buses, or pull me aboard, run their cars onto the curb at the sight of bleached skin, rush up, wanting to touch me, wanting to ask my opinions, my name, what I think of Iraq and its people. Children gasp – although sometimes they cry, at the oddity and strangeness of the experience, I tell myself. I pray it’s not because they have some visceral understanding of what may happen to them in the coming days, and associate these fears with the color of my skin and eyes.
It doesn’t matter how much your parents lie to you—believing you’re better off not knowing—how many bird markets they take you to, or trinkets they buy you, telling you nothing is out of place. Everything is fine. It’s just been so long since we spent a day together and I just thought it was time. Things are not fine. Things are badly out of place, and children who are barely old enough to speak know this. The truth seeps in, then seeps out through their eyes. It’s true that the people are kind to me in these fitful, waking hours, but I wonder how many of their dreams
I’ve visited, drawing their blood. This might be why the parents are kind, but the children sometimes cry.
Nothing good lasts forever. Finally it happens. Kathy Kelly tells me, “You know you’re being followed, don’t you? They know everywhere you’re going. They’re photographing you.”
I’m caught. I’m shooting store fronts—nothing sensitive, just window reflections and paste-up advertisements over the glass door of a beauty-parlor—off Saadoun Street at dusk, in an alley where Iraqis have painted a cartoon mural of John, Paul, George and Ringo. A young man runs up from behind and grabs me by the arm. He’s inches from my face, gesturing wildly.
“What do you want!” he demands loudly, clutching my wrist.
“Nothing,” I say, trying to back away. He follows, still clinging to my shirtsleeve.
“I just want to photograph.” I wave my free arm in a gesture that encompasses the innocuous storefronts, the nearly empty street. “That’s all. Just photograph. It’s only the fronts of buildings. Nothing important.”
“Come with me!” he demands.
I don’t have any choice. A few men stop to stare at us, frowning. There are eyes everywhere, I know. He drags me inside a shop half a block down the alley, points to a chair facing a storage closet. “Stay here,” he orders, then runs out the door.
I sit and sweat, looking around the office, trying to figure out what his job is, if he’s some government official, or connected with the secret police. The room is bare, save for a few computer-repair parts stacked on metal shelves, a few gutted PCs, a screwdriver and a pair of electrician’s pliers on a desk, which seems to double as a workbench. In one corner of the desk sits a telephone trailing a coil of bare copper wires. He’s gone to find a telephone. He will call the police. I’ll be out of the country within 24 hours.
I consider running, but decide against it. I wouldn’t be hard to find. He comes back five minutes later, flying through the doorway, wiping something on his shirttail. A pistol. Before I see the barrel, I can imagine the outline of a revolver in his palm. He draws the object from the folds of the cloth and waves it proudly in my face.
“I could get Pepsi if you like Pepsi more,” he beams.
It’s a bottle of 7Up.
I want to die. For the next half hour – while I try to think up a confession that will not embarrass us both, because I’m relieved, because I want forgiveness I don’t deserve, because this kindness is a knife in my heart – he tells how much he wants to be a pharmacist, how he’s in love with a beautiful woman but cannot afford to marry her. “It costs very much for a wedding,” he laments. “The women want a beautiful dress. They wear this dress in America, yes?”
He says father wants him to be a doctor, but that’s seven years of study and he can’t wait that long to have a decent, well-paying job if he wants to start a family, which he does – now, but is stuck in this boring, menial job, wiring broken computers. He says he is so happy I have come to visit. He is so happy to finally have an American friend, would I please come back tomorrow? He says if I don’t like 7Up he would be happy to make tea.
09/26/11 | 0 Comments | Come together