Came back to Iraq to film my story with the 'pianist' at a
historic moment - the hand over of power to the new Iraqi
government. Journalists still take the expensive plane route
into Iraq from Jordan as the road remains dangerous and
kidnapping is still rife. After the familiar corkscrew
landing into Baghdad International Airport, avoiding any
surface to air missile attack, I headed into Baghdad. There
was a much greater presence of Iraqi police, one standing
proud with a shining new machine gun next to a police car
riddled with bullet holes. An ominous sign. “It is quiet at
the moment” my driver said, then looking at me out of the
corner of his eye, “it is the calm before the storm”. The
next round of attacks are never far away. Having lived in my
secured hotel compound for 5 months on and off since January
2004 we had been on high alert for an attack. It never
happened but as I arrived back after 6 weeks in England I
realised it had and I had narrowly escaped it.
I was just settling in my hotel when the Iraqis around me
noticed the handover of power taking place in front of our
eyes on the television. We broke from conversation
momentarily acknowledging it and then continued talking about
a suicide bomber who had tried to enter the heavily secured
hotel compound where I stay a week after I'd returned to England.
The bomber was prevented from entering and blew himself up on the street
wrecking the front of another hotel building and killing
many bystanders, including a 13 year old boy, who Samir (the
subject of my film) used to buy his cigarettes from everyday.
We went to buy bread, the bakery windows were smashed and the
bakery boys were in bandages. The bomb blast had thrown them from
one side of the bakery to the other. Then on our way back to
the hotel we met the father of the 13 year old cigarette seller.
His father, a man of my age, held the arm of his younger son
tightly. I shook his hand, I didn't know what to say. Some
things are so desperate, so sad, that you cannot say
anything. But then a few hours pass and I find myself not
even thinking of the boy or the plight of his father, I am
sat poolside at the hotel drinking a long cool beer with
other journalists. enjoying the luxuries that the air
conditioned hotel provides in a country that still struggles
to get electricity for half the day, where the temperatures
rage to 55c.
I notice the absence of the heavily armed mercenaries (ex
army/sas soldiers employed on mass here to protect everyone
from contractors to journalists, to the US army convoys) the
pool looks more beautiful without them I note. The most
notorious company were at our hotel, the 'blackwater' guys,
famous after some of them were lynched and set on fire when caught in
Fallujah. They all left, I am told, after another 4 were
killed in an ambush in Baghdad. Around the same time another
mercenary had killed himself in his room over-dosing while
injecting drugs into his arm. We finish the beer and order
more.
“Welcome back to newly liberated Iraq” my friends tell
me.
sean
posted by mcallister at
11:23 AM
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