A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal Read online

  Back in room 707, according to the receptionist the best he has, I unpack my hoard of books and lay them out on the ochre bedspread. Like a serene island between the bathroom, where the cockroaches scurry over the broken tiles, and the evening rush-hour outside, my bed occupies the major part of the room. The noise is even shriller than in the morning. But I don’t close the door to the balcony. I want the curtains to flap in the desert wind.

  My eyes alight upon Arabian Diary and I am sent whirling into Gertrude Bell’s fantastic world. Early in the last century she travelled alone with smugglers and bandits in the desert right outside my window. She was called the mightiest woman in the British Empire and was the adviser to kings and prime ministers. Gertrude Bell was the only woman Winston Churchill invited to the Cairo Conference in 1921 - the conference that was to decide the future of Mesopotamia. She was also one of the few among Middle Eastern travellers who described the life of women.

  There they were, those women - wrapped in Indian brocades, hung with jewels, served by slaves, and there was not one single thing about them which betrayed the base of existence of Europe or Europeans - except me! I was the blot. Some of the women of the shaikhly house were very beautiful. They pass from hand to hand - the victor takes them, with her power and the glory, and think of it, his hands are red with blood of their husbands and children, she writes from the Hayyil Harem on 6 March 1914. The eunuch Said has just informed her that she is a prisoner and cannot leave. She is allocated a tiny house in the harem where she waits before being released. I sat in a garden house on carpets - like all the drawings in Persian picture books. Slaves and eunuchs served us with tea and coffee and fruits. Then we walked about the garden, the boys carefully telling me the names of all the trees. And then we sat again and drank more tea and coffee. It gets on your nerves when you sit day after day between high mud walls and thank heaven that my nerves are not very responsive. They have kept me awake only one night out of seven.

  After a long wait she is at last set free, by order of the emir. My camels came in, and after dark Said with a bag of gold and full permission to go where I liked and when I liked. Why they have now given way, or why they did not give way before, I cannot guess. But anyhow, I am free and my heart is at rest - it is widened.

  Someone knocks on the door. Said, the eunuch with tea and exotic fruits?

  A man stands outside with a yellow towel in his hand. He says something in Arabic and passes me the towel. Then he walks past me into the room. I follow. He shows me where the soap is, what the toothbrush mug is for, how the drawers are pulled out, the curtains closed and the door to the terrace shut. I smile and thank him. The man remains on the spot. I find some newly changed notes. He thanks me and leaves. A few minutes later there is another knock on the door. This time he is carrying a loo roll. I give him a few more notes. He smiles and nods and disappears down the corridor. Thus evolves our way of socialising. As soon as I return to my room I know what will happen. ‘Said’ will turn up with something or other - a towel, a piece of soap, an extra blanket. Nothing is replenished while I’m out, but on my return there is a knock on the door.

  What did I tell you as to the quality most needed for travel among the Arabs? Gertrude Bell writes. Patience, if you remember, that is what one needs.

  Darkness descends on Baghdad. The sun disappears behind the Presidential palace on the opposite side of the river, Saddam Hussein’s most splendid palace, built to celebrate what the Iraqi’s call ‘The Victory in the Gulf’. The floodlit building gleams and shines among palms and gardens. It will stand peacefully for another few months.

  - Why did you not come yesterday? What did you do yesterday? The man behind the desk thunders. - Who do you think you are?

  I try to explain that it was Friday and all public offices were closed.

  - We are never closed, our business hours are from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, and even outside those hours we still track you. If you want to stay you’ll have to toe the line. There’s a plane departing every day.

  The man introduces himself as Mohsen. Later I am told that he is number three at the press centre.

  Mohsen is so short that his legs dangle in the air behind the desk. Like many other middle-aged men in Baghdad his hair and eyebrows are tinted jet-black. In spite of his words, his face is friendly and he has beautiful brown eyes. He appears to be laughing behind the serious facade, as though he were giggling his way through the compulsory interrogation.

  I tell him how I spent the previous day and fill in endless forms, so painstakingly thorough that the stout bureaucrat softens somewhat and seems to forgive my stolen day of freedom. He summons Engineer Walid, a stick of a man, who opens my satellite telephone. It had been sealed at the border. - Anyone seen taking a phone out of this building will be arrested for espionage, Mohsen grumbles.

  - What are you really doing here?

  - I . . . eh . . .

  - Make a list of what you want to do, then I’ll consider whether you can stay or not, Mohsen says. - In any case, I’ll give you a maximum of ten days.

  With a gesture he tells me to stay seated on the sofa. It is so soft that I am knee-high to him. Mohsen despatches an assistant to find me an interpreter. No foreigner can function without someone to monitor what we do, where we travel, to whom we speak. The assistant returns with an older, thin-haired gentleman.

  - This is Takhlef, our most experienced. I am giving you the best as you are so young, Mohsen smiles.

  Takhlef tiptoes around under Mohsen’s gaze. He is small, skinny and dapper, dressed in a dark-blue suit, freshly ironed shirt and polished shoes. The suit is too big, as though he might recently have lost a lot of weight. The sparse hair is brushed back in a futile attempt to conceal the shiny crown. He stands beside Mohsen in a manner which shows that he works for Mohsen, not for me. - Just don’t try anything, his look tells me. - We are in charge.

  In order to work together we will both have to fawn, lie, conceal. Maybe that is why I dislike him from the beginning. Later I wonder whether I never really gave him a chance. Maybe he was actually quite a nice chap, squashed by the Baath Party’s vice like everyone else. But at the time I thought my luck had run out, being given him.

  - What interests you? is his first question, as though all I have to do is to choose. An interview with Saddam Hussein, perhaps? There is no time to think of ideas before he continues:

  - Are you interested in culture?

  - Hm.

  - Then let’s request Babylon. Let’s go to Babylon. Are you interested in art? Then we’ll request the Saddam Art Centre, the National Gallery, the History Museum, the Museum of Antiquity, the Monument of the Revolution. Shall we begin with Babylon? Tomorrow?

  I am in no mood to go sightseeing; I want to talk to people, find out how they live. It becomes apparent that an application is needed for even the smallest thing. To visit a school, a hospital, an institution. Even to visit a family one has to apply before a name and an address will be supplied. I give that one a miss. There is no mileage in visiting a model family, hand-picked and approved by the Ministry of Information.

  A special permit is required to leave Baghdad; the further away, the more difficult it is to obtain. To travel to the Shia Muslim areas of the south is virtually impossible - very few journalists are allowed to visit Basra. But the most difficult is to get to Tikrit, Saddam’s home town. It is almost hermetically sealed to foreigners. The permit to Babylon takes five minutes; the town can’t be of much interest.

  The next morning Takhlef is waiting for me in reception, at a safe distance from Mino.

  - Are you ready? he asks and glances casually at his watch. I take this as an indication that I am five minutes late.

  Takhlef sits in the front seat of the car, I am in the back. I try to initiate a conversation, but every question receives a noncommittal answer, so I give up. Our newly established cooperation is based on very different objectives. I probe, he conceals. After an hour’s drive on sand-blown roads th
e car stops in front of a high blue gate, painted with animals in yellow and white. Ishtar Gate is written in large letters - gateway to the legendary city. Can this be Babylon? It looks like the Disney version - all is new, shining, sleek.

  We are welcomed by Hamid, the archaeologist whose job it is to show us around in what was the centre of the globe five thousand years ago. Here culture and science, literature, mathematics and astronomy flourished. Here the world’s first law codes were collated. The Sumerians and Babylonians were the first to divide the circle into 360 degrees, the day into 24 hours, the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds. Five thousand years ago they impressed signs on wet clay-tablets and invented cuneiform writing. One of these tablets reveals that the Babylonians were aware of what later came to be known as ‘the Pythagorean doctrine of right-angled triangles’ a thousand years before Pythagoras.

  The legendary Babylon appears in many classic tales. Most famous are the writings of the man one might call the world’s first reporter, the Greek historian Herodotus. He visited the city around 400 BC. He wrote, Babylon’s splendour exceeds that of every other city in the known world.

  Ishtar, the gate with the holy, snakelike bulls’ heads, led into a temple with walls of gold. At the far end was a room enclosing a seat of pure gold. The astrologers relate, although I doubt it, Herodotus wrote, that the gods themselves visited the sacred room and rested on the seat.

  Gods and gold have long gone. One hundred years ago German archaeologists removed anything of value to Berlin. In the Pergamon Museum thousand-year-old statues and sculptures are preserved. A few years ago Saddam Hussein decided that the ruins should be rebuilt. Everything was to resemble the world’s first metropolis in its heyday. Thus Babylon got a new emperor. Many of the stones of the Ishtar gate are engraved with his signature. Not even King Nebuchadnezzar had thought of that.

  Babylon is a tourist attraction without tourists. In fact Takhlef and I are the only ones there this morning. Everything in the showcases is a copy.

  - The complete Ishtar gate is in Berlin. Other stolen items are in the Louvre or the British Museum, our guide sighs resentfully. - The originals still in Iraq are stored in vaults. You know, the war might start at any moment. It’s best to hide things away. The whole of Babylon might be blown to smithereens.

  The archaeologist lives alone in Babylon with his young wife and a small son. He is the guide by day and watchman by night. - The Americans want to ruin our country. First they’ll get the Presidential palace, then Babylon, he snorts. - They want to destroy our culture and lord it over us, take our oil, our resources.

  He halts by the model of the Hanging Gardens. Cascading down the rock face the Sumerians planted the most glorious flowerbeds. - Well, this is what we think it looked like, he says.

  He is on firmer ground when talking about the Tower of Babel. The square ruins have been left standing in Babylon; the copy is in miniature. The story is told in Genesis.

  And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

  And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar.

  And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

  And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

  And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

  Hamid shows us out and we walk along the temple walls. They stretch ahead, straight as an arrow; there is no sign of exposure to wind and weather. A man appears amongst the rebuilt ruins. Hunchbacked and dressed in a long tunic he sweeps a large square with slow, rhythmic movements. The broom is a palm leaf twice his size. He might have been sweeping all his life. Had this been Disneyland one might have thought he was put there to represent a worker from the past. But the hunchback is real, and his task is to keep the desert sand away from the historical copies. The man and the palm leaf seem to be the only genuine articles in all of Babylon.

  I tell Takhlef I want to talk to the sweep.

  - Why to him? Takhlef exclaims.

  - He might tell me something about Babylon.

  - That one. Takhlef points and laughs scornfully. - He doesn’t even know where he is, he’s probably illiterate. You shouldn’t interview illiterates; they don’t know what’s right or wrong and won’t give you a correct picture of Iraq.

  - But I want to, I say, and regret it immediately. I mustn’t rub my guide up the wrong way so soon. Takhlef approaches the sweep after all. He towers above the skinny man, who looks up at him, terrified, and gives monosyllabic answers.

  - His name is Ali. He lives close by and has worked here for many years. Was there anything else you wanted to know? Takhlef asks tersely.

  - No, thank you, thank you very much, that was exactly what I wanted to know.

  On a hilltop overlooking the compound is a large building. It is square, like the foundations of the Tower of Babel, but brand new. Two dark-coloured jeeps are parked outside.

  - Can we go up and have a look? I ask. The sweep has returned to his customary movements and is working his way around the copy of one of Babylon’s famous statues: the lion overpowering a man.

  - No, says Takhlef. - That’s impossible.

  - Why?

  - That’s one of Saddam’s palaces.

  That’s what I thought. That’s why I asked. If only we could walk up the few hundred yards to the villa. We might meet one of his sons, the dreaded Uday? Or the ice-cold Qusay? Curiosity gets hold of me and almost impels me towards the building, but then I look at Takhlef and common sense takes over. I see before me the president’s sons as little boys, on nocturnal wanderings around Babylon. Perhaps they climbed the lion, tamed it, fought imaginary barbarians.

  Back in the dust of the present I tag along behind Takhlef to the exit. Hamid opens up the souvenir kiosk. I buy two Babylon T-shirts, a slab of ceramic depicting the holy ox, a picture book of the excavations, a bunch of postcards and stamps with images of the ruins, unaware that this little kiosk in a few months will burst into flames and become a gaping black hole. The display cases in the museum will be emptied, the ceramics smashed, the miniatures of the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens broken to pieces. The light bulbs will be unscrewed from the lamps, the sockets torn out of the walls, the cords cut up and sold as scrap at the markets. Every age has its own catastrophe. But it is still some time away. In the meantime, Hamid, like most other Iraqis, lives in fear of the storm that is brewing. Will the wrath of God strike Babylon again?

  Takhlef is more talkative. - Show me America’s Babylon, he guffaws. - They were nothing at the time we ruled the world. They are historical upstarts. They don’t build, they just tear down. It’s important that you write about Babylon, show the world who we are!

  Takhlef drops me off outside the hotel. Do I want him to fetch me for dinner?

  I pluck up enough courage to say no.

  - Saddam’s Art Centre? he asks. He is planning the following day’s programme.

  I am here to find dissidents, a secret uprising, gagged intellectuals, Saddam’s opponents. I am here to point out human rights violations, expose oppression. And I’m reduced to being a tourist.

  - You ha
ve to follow the rules, Takhlef says. - That’s very important; otherwise you’ll have to leave. You can’t wander around alone, talk to anyone or write bad things about Iraq. Believe me, trust me, do as I say.

  My head is spinning.

  - OK, I say. - I look forward to seeing Saddam’s Art Centre. I’m very interested in art and culture.

  Back in my room I throw myself on the bed. There is a knock on the door. Said and the toiletries. I thank him and pay. He straightens the bedcover, nods and leaves. I tear the cover off.

  Patience. That is what Gertrude Bell recommended. Patience.

  Saddam’s Art Centre is a huge concrete structure in the middle of Baghdad. It consists of a few floors of Iraqi paintings from the last centuries and two floors of Saddam Hussein. We proceed quickly through the first centuries and stop at the 1970s. From there on it is all about the big leader: painted, photographed, woven, appliquéd, reproduced in graphic art and woodcut, in mosaics, in silk and cotton. With sunglasses, in a white suit, presenting arms, in an armchair, genial, or upright, mounted on a horse.