tenfoot films

Freedom

I was filming the road at night, surprised that it was so
busy when we missed our turn off to Samir’s home, something
you don’t do on Iraq’s most dangerous road... the road to
the airport. It’s a one-way road so we crept nervously along until
we arrived at 4 narrow aisles heading to the airport
checkpoint. We took the second aisle and drove down and
found ourselves facing the bright headlights of a U.S
tank. I was waving my BBC card frantically.. ‘BBC… don’t
kill… don’t kill…’ I know how these tanks had squashed
numerous civilian cars in the past year, but luckily these kind
soldiers let us pass. We made a U-turn and were on the road
back. Samir said a prayer. We held our breath, and hoped for
the best, and drove the same dangerous road back. Difficult
to know danger on an empty road at night. Samir was scared,
I knew that because he wasn’t speaking. He spoke only to
shut me up. "The danger is out there, it is around us always
Sean. You just don’t realise it." I couldn’t see anything.
On each side of the road were the remains of houses and palm
trees that had been hacked down by the American’s after the
resistance had hidden and fired from there.

We get home safely to Samir’s and hit the whiskey. He was
panicking. "Do you realise what could have happened there? We
could have been killed by both sides." Samir worries a lot
in this dangerous troubled land. We relax and he opens up to
me about his past. He tells me horror stories of his time on the
front line in the war with Iran. He still has nightmares,
waking up screaming in the night. He cannot forget the face
of the young Iranian man he killed. The young mans eyes are
still vivid in Samir’s mind, as he sliced open his
throat. "Imagine a pianist doing such things. I want to make
the world more beautiful with my music not kill people." On
the news we hear that a Bulgarian man has been beheaded by
his captures. Another beheading is planned tomorrow.

Saga, Samir’s daughter enters the room looking distraught.
Her lovely aunty, Samir’s ex-wife’s sister, has breast
cancer. It starts Samir ruminating over his own possible
cancer, but he is too afraid to have it checked out. He
lights a fag from his 3rd packet of the day. We smoke, eat, and
drink whiskey. Saha is flicking through the satellite
channels, surfing the 200 readily available stations. I try
to imagine the Saddam times when there was only two state
channels. "It must be so much better now?" I ask. Saha
shakes her head, "No, there are 200 channels but there is
nothing to watch, only some music and a food
channel." Samir sits up, "This morning I turned the
television on, it was the erotica channel, I couldn’t
believe it, there were two men having sex! What is
this?" "Freedom?" I suggest. Saha sits up, "No .. this is
not freedom, this is dangerous, it is going to devalue our
society... Saddam protected it."

"But surely the Saddam channels were just propaganda?" Saha
agrees. "Yes of course they were, they were there to protect
him, but they also protected our culture, and the values of
our society. Who will protect that now?" Saha flicks through
the channels shaking her head. "I will never allow my
children to watch this. That is why my sister Rita, will not
send her children to school in America. She says it is like
a jungle there. Is that freedom?"

"But surely it is better than before?" Saha shakes her
head. "Not for me it isn’t. Before I had a job. Now I don’t.
Before I had security, could go visit my friends, wander the
streets whenever I liked, now I can’t." Saha sits down
opposite me. "Saddam was a dictator but we knew the rules.
If you obeyed the rules you could do almost anything you
liked. I never needed to have a gun in those days either. In
a way that was freedom to me."

Suddenly the electricity goes out, we continue the
conversation in the dark. "Look, they’ve been here for more
then a year now and we still don’t have electricity for more
then 6 hours a day." The bedroom is hot and sticky without
any power for the air conditioning, the temperature was 50c+
in the shade. Over breakfast we hear a big bomb blast,
later we find out it was a suicide bomber, aiming for the
Americans, but killing more innocent Iraqi’s. Saha looks at
me. "So this is freedom is it?" "No it isn’t freedom.
Freedom takes time." I reply. Saha looks at me
smiling, "Freedom takes time.. Look how long the Americans
been waiting.."

posted by mcallister at 6:07 PM