[Translated from Le Monde (Paris)]

Horizons

Narration

AN IRAQI WOMAN'S JOURNAL
By Nadia Ahmed

** In order to tell about a Baghdad sapped by violence, Le Monde asked for a written account from a 49-year-old French-speaking woman of middle-class origins and no marked political commitments. She describes her fear of attacks, of fundamentalism, and of Americans. **

Le Monde (Paris)
February 4, 2005

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3230,36-396901,0.html

Fear. That's the word that came to mind when I sat down to write this text. What else could I have chosen, except perhaps "anguish," "trembling," or "disgust"! These words are my daily lot since the accursed night of March 20, 2003, and the beginning of the Americans' war against my country. As an Iraqi woman, the mother of two children, Samer, 16, and Ahmed, 10, I can say that today fear accompanies me everywhere, even in my bed, which has become a collective one, shared with my sons, for fear of dying apart, in our own rooms, if a rocket or missile should ever by mistake crash in upon us during the night. Fear, again, of waking up in the morning to find them dead and far from me . . . Fear, too, of seeing Americans break in the door to search our house, as they do so often elsewhere.

I don't know why but the situation got markedly worse beginning in the spring of 2004, a few weeks after the Karbala attacks -- a hundred dead. Before that, the situation was certainly chaotic, but women could more or less move about. For myself, I went about without too much fear, doing what I had to do for my work, in Baghdad and elsewhere. In May, that changed. Every foreigner became a potential target. I saw a lot of them, I started to be afraid for them. I decided to look for a job that would keep me in the capital.

That didn't end my fears, though. Even at home. The din of low-flying aircraft rends the silence and violates our personal space. Not to mention the constant muttering of the electric generators. We have a subscription to a line that gives us about five hours a day. The cuts punctuate our lives. On Friday, a day of rest, I get busy as soon as the current comes on, and sometimes I even get up at six in the morning to do the wash and vacuum . . . Sometimes, I've only accomplished half the cleaning when the current is interrupted. If I have the strength, I continue the wash by hand, otherwise I wait for the current to come back on, five hours later. All that leaves little room for intellectual activities. Reading has become an out-of-place luxury!

Every morning, when I wake up, I think of the morning explosions. They often occur between 7 and 9 o'clock. So as I eat my breakfast, around 7:30, I'm listening. That doesn't stop me from starting at each explosion, or even every time a door slams unexpectedly. Selfishly, I say to myself: "Thank goodness we're not the victims and that the children haven't left yet for school." But soon I feel ridiculous. What about the others? And who are they, these "others"? How many orphans, widows, and widowers has this explosion been able to make? Kissing my boys and my husband later, I feel my heart constrict: will I be with them again at the end of the day?

When elections got closer, schools designated as polling places were threatened. Ahmed's school was not spared. That, of course, only intensified my fear. Especially the day when I called home to make sure, as usual, that the boys had got home safely. "Mom!" exclaimed Ahmed, "they sent us home because there was a bomb at school!" Immediately I imagined him terrified, looking desperately for me. I trembled, but I tried to control myself so as not to make him even more afraid. Back home, I called his teacher. She told me that 200 people were at a meeting of parents and students when the National Guard ordered the evacuation. Several time bombs were discovered around the school later.

Two weeks later, around 11 p.m., an explosion shook the neighborhood and made our house shake. It was right nearby, apparently. To be safe we didn't go out. The next day, at school, I first saw the stricken face of the director of the school, then the shards of glass on the ground, the orderlies sweeping them up, and the assistant director taking an inventory of the damage. The bomb had been placed in front of the gate. Ahmed could have been killed if it had exploded during classes.

From the first day of the conflict, in March 2003, Ahmed and his friends started playing war, asking for little soldiers, machine guns, tanks, and planes. Ahmed often imitates the Americans. Weapon in hand, he kicks open the doors shouting "Go! Go! Go!" He always chooses the GIs' side, their technology fascinates him. He's glad when Iraqis are killed. His cousins talk the same way, and use the same logic: that of whoever's stronger. It doesn't matter how much I explain to them that they're occupiers and that it's necessary to defend one's country against occupiers, or point out how much damage the war is doing, it doesn't matter, they're so traumatized that it seems impossible for me to cure them of it in such a short time. Violence is turning them into agitated, perturbed, anxious children, obsessed by the fear of being killed or kidnapped, which happens often enough to others. Three classmates of my older son were kidnapped before being freed for $30,000.

Despite all these fears, which sometimes become obsessive, I still drive my car to work. The number of women at the wheel is way down, though. For one simple reason: I'm the only one on the road that leads to my office! Now and then, I see one or two others. They seem frozen, staring fixedly straight ahead. When our looks cross, it's for support and encouragement, knowing that we're helpless against any aggressor who may appear at any moment.

I'm just as afraid of the American convoys. Every morning, as I leave the house, my obsession is to avoid them so as not to end up like all the people who've been killed by their firing or their Humvees. Woe to whoever gets too close to them! It's marked on the back of the Humvees: "Warning, danger of death: keep 100 meters away or you risk being killed!" A few weeks ago, their tanks crushed a family in their car. Yet it was parked as it was supposed to be, alongside the curb.

Every day, a convoy goes by as I leave work. One afternoon, while I was getting ready to cross the street, the shouts of an American soldier at a motorcyclist about fifteen years old terrorized me. The soldier was ready to shoot this adolescent who was headed toward him. I almost threw myself on him to protect him, but in the end I shouted and waved at him to stop. Distracted, he was looking in another direction. Seeing the Americans, he braked in time, but he could have died stupidly, a victim of his own carelessness. He no doubt has parents, dreams, a life of his own. May God curse the Americans and those who support them!

Sure, other people are contributing to the present bloodbath. Arabs from neighboring countries come to avenge themselves on the Americans. Criminals take advantage of the chaos to commit their crimes. Former Baathists are trying to recover from their complete loss of status. But there is also the true resistance. Where is it coming from? You can't forget that the image of America is linked, in the minds of many Iraqis and Arabs, to violence, to Vietnam, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the embargo imposed on our country for thirteen years, to the tortures committed by the U.S. soldiers, to their "raids" on houses. Given all that, how can it be surprising to see resistants spring up among the victims? I'm not trying to justify the violence -- every act committed against Iraqis and the infrastructures is a crime --, but as long as the Americans behave like occupiers and stay in Iraq, the violence will no doubt continue.

Today, I feel like a foreigner in my own country. All the atrocities that my dear city has endured, the blood that it's seen spilled, the darkness in which it is plunged shed no glory upon this atrocious war. Baghdad is sad, Baghdad is suffering. Everywhere, there are high protective walls, that take up half the roadway, and cause exasperating traffic jams. Everywhere, you have to wait, for hours sometimes, for gasoline, kerosene, or butane gas. The shortages are so great that at home we have to all stay in one room to conserve kerosene. If he wants some solitude to study, my oldest son has to endure the cold of the living room.

My neighbor, Ahlam, recently spent seven hours in line to get some kerosene. At the same time, her husband waited two days (sleeping in his car) for seven gallons of gasoline, which is the most they allow. Their children, at home, were on their own. Coming home, Ahlam surprised one of her sons with a knife in his hand, as if he wanted to cut his younger brother's throat. Grabbing the knife, my neighbor asked him why he was behaving like that. "I'm doing like on TV!" he answered. In the Iraq of 2005, children have only that: television. With the family, we've stopped going out to the restaurant or for walks. We haven't been out since the war: it's better to stay home and avoid the worst.

In addition to all the violence we've lived through, there's the violence staring out at us from the newspapers. The most painful news is the piece three weeks ago announcing the assassination of a friend, Huda Thia Hassan, and her brother Ali. An amateur painter, ceramicist, refined and cultivated, Huda was killed by criminals who wanted her car! What a waste, my God, what a waste! That night, I wept for Huda till dawn, and her image will never leave me. Women are rarer and rare in the street. Kidnappings, hostile men's looks, and insecurity are the main reasons for this. The most courageous women go out and shop as quickly as they can, hurrying home before it gets dark. Gripped with fear, I sometimes go shopping with another neighbor, May, a 50-year-old woman. Each of us is as tense as can be! Once we get back, we can breathe again and praise God that we're safe and sound! Women are kidnapped in broad daylight, others have been killed because they were wearing tight jeans.

A month ago, a car full of masked men was stopped in front of the institute where my husband works. The guards who were supposed to protect the place ran away. One of the masked men got out of the car. Addressing himself to the institute's receptionist, he made threats: "Tell all your women students and workers to wear the veil! Beginning tomorrow, if we se a single one without a veil, she'll be dragged by the hair in the mud in front of you!"

The news spread quickly. Some girls decided to abandon their studies and stay home. Others, already veiled, only showed indifference. And those who wanted to continue studying decided to start wearing the veil against their will. The next day, only a few were still bare-headed. As for me, I'm not veiled and I'm against the wearing of the veil, and this incident was frightening, and fed my fear. What would I do if Iraqi women were forced to wear the veil? I couldn't stand such a requirement, such an annihilation!

The elections? You've probably guessed: I didn't participate. For security reasons above all, and then, out of principle. Many political tendencies and cities were, in my opinion, excluded; which makes this a lame election whose results were predetermined!

A friend who's a doctor, who lives near a polling place, told me she was on in her doorway, watching the voters, when she saw a young man hugging the wall across the street. His behavior was strange. My friend had hardly gone back inside, when she heard an explosion: it was a suicide attack. Heading toward the four policemen who wanted to search him, the young man with the suspicious behavior had blown up a belt packed with explosives. His head landed on the terrace of a house next door, and an arm in my friend's room. The policemen and five other people were killed. My friend saw a neighbor come up begging: "Carry me, I can't walk." A shard had pierced his back and was still in him. She screamed for a car to take him to the hospital. But no vehicles were allowed on the road. Twenty minutes later, he died of his wounds on her doorstep. One more victim of this war that has made so many orphans, so many widows and widowers, so many poor people, so many people with lost limbs, so many innocent prisoners, so many criminals at large, and so many women cloistered in their homes, condemned to wonder what the future of their country will be.

--(For obvious security reasons, the name "Nadia Ahmed" is a pseudonym.) --
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu