Stories from Baghdad Irene Vandas 17 December 2002 (Irene Vandas, a Vancouver, BC nurse and member of CANESI, is
working with The Iraq Peace Team a project of Voices In the Wilderness. She
is currently in Iraq.)
Currently, the events concerning Iraq are the most prevalent and talked about in
the world. They are being highlighted in the media in terms of Iraq possessing
weapons of mass destruction which need to be disarmed, and that Saddam Hussein
is a ruthless dictator, that regime change must take place for the sake of
democracy. Or the focus has been on how unjust the US has been over the last 12
years by their enforcement of the economic sanctions and what terrible effects
the bombing campaigns have had on the civilian population.
What needs to be continually highlighted are the real life stories of the Iraqi
people who continue to live under the devastating effects of the economic
sanctions and who live daily with the threat of yet another war.
I have been in Baghdad for 6 days and already have a sense of how the Iraqi
people live and how they feel concerning these realities.
Ali Hassan, is an 8 year old boy who was willing to share some of his story with
me (with the help of a translator). I met him in front of the Al Fanar Hotel
where he comes daily to shine shoes which he does to help provide for his
family. What I noticed in Ali’s appearance were his well worn and ripped shoes
and how little he was wearing on that particularly cold day. He is the youngest
of seven children the oldest of whom lives on the outskirts of Baghdad in a
village called Diyala. Ali lives with his large family in a small flat of a
building which they help maintain. His father works as a servant in various
houses and his mother works at home. Ali goes to school every day between 8am
and 1pm. In the afternoon he makes his way to the hotel where he works until
sundown. He is a keen worker and eager to meet new people. As much as he enjoys
working and going to school he especially enjoys being at home playing with his
toys, some of which he says were given to him by rich people
In asking young Ali if he remembers the bombing, he said he did. He called it
“war Bush”. Ali expressed how afraid he is of another bombing. He said that
should another war come he and his family will leave the city and go live with
his brother in Diyala.
Next to my hotel lives a wonderful family of five who welcomed me warmly into
their home. The father, Saff’e, is a gentle man with a mischievous sense of
humour. His wife, Amal, is a beautiful and intellectual woman. Amal is an artist
who paints beautiful pictures of Baghdad. They have three children, Abeer who is
11 years old, Omar who is 6 and Ali who is 4. Both parents speak English well
and Abeer, their daughter, understands a little. Amal is the most fluent in
English, she also speaks some Russian, French and German. Abeer seems eager to
speak English but she is shy, yet seems curious to know more about me upon my
first visit. Later, as I got caught up in adult conversation I noticed Abeer
grab paper and pencil crayons. She drew a picture of a beautiful young girl
which she later offered as a gift to be given to a child back in Canada.
As the visit progressed Saff’e began to share some of his story of the last 20
years. He was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war fighting directly on the front
lines. He remembered the Gulf War in 1991 and the bombings that occurred in
1998. He recalled the bombing of Baghdad and how in his mind it seemed that
every fifth house was being bombed. The ground of their own house rumbled from
the impact of the bombings causing the ceiling to collapse. Thankfully none of
them were home at the time. He reflected on when his neighbor’s house was
bombed how he ran to help and found the mother bleeding from a severe wound in
her neck. She told him she was alright but to go help her children. Saff’e
pulled her children out from under the rubble but they were already dead. The
mother later died on the way to the hospital. His feelings now are that if
another war happens it will be more devastating then the one’s before. He
warns me not to stay if war becomes imminent because of how dangerous it will
be, that millions of people will die as a result. In asking why the next war
would be worse he says, “It is because of the new bomb that the US possesses
and will use”, the one known as the “microwave bomb”. He says, “It will
be like another Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this war must not happen!” Saff’e
plans to take his family out of Baghdad to some place safe if signs of war grow
close.
Unfortunately these two stories reflect what the majority of Iraqi’s have
lived through and continue to live under. Not only have they tried to piece
their lives back together from the devastating effects of the economic sanctions
and the bombing campaigns of 1991 and 1998, they now live with the psychological
trauma caused by the looming threat of another war. It is important to remember
that the ones who will be most effected by another war will be the innocent
people of Iraq who yearn for peace. We must not forget the human face of the
Iraqi people in these crucial times.