Table of Contents
Also by sne Seierstad
The Bookseller of Kabul
Je suis profondment convaincu que le seul antidote qui puisse faire oublier au lecteur les ternels Je que lauteur va crire, cest une parfaite sincrit.
Stendhal, Souvenirs dEgotisme, 1832
Preface
This book is about a journey, a war and some of the people caught up in the war. For a hundred and one days, from January to April 2003, I tried to record what I experienced in Baghdad.
During such a journey the reporter is on duty at all times. Things can happen at any moment. Information is suddenly received or the idea for a new story comes to mind. The reader sees only the outcome; the articles say little of how they were first conceived or what has been left out.
In my ten years as a journalist reporting from war and conflict zones, I have never worked under more difficult conditions than I did in Iraq. Before the war the problem was elementary: no one said anything. Iraqis used empty phrases and banalities for fear of saying anything wrong or betraying their own thoughts.
What to do as a journalist when everyone says the same? Do they all mean it? Do none of them mean it?
I tried to move around in the landscape between deafening lies and virtually silent gasps of truth. The sophisticated apparatus of oppression affected journalists too; sometimes it had a direct bearing on what we wrote.
In time new challenges arrived - descending from the sky, rushing through the air, crashing around our ears. There was no power, no water, no security. All the same, every day we had to file our reports, watched over by our minders.
One day the minders were gone. Then I tried to discover what happens to people when the dam bursts. What do they choose to say when they can suddenly say what they want?
My reports from Baghdad are my reports. They come directly from my own - not always adequate - experiences.
The events might have been interpreted differently by other correspondents. An Egyptian journalist probably saw the war in Iraq from another angle; an American might have assessed the situation in a different way again; maybe an intellectual from Le Monde had his own emphasis.
The truth about the war in Iraq does not exist. Or rather, there are millions of true accounts and maybe just as many lies. My remit as a journalist in the chaos of war was not to judge, predict or analyse. It was to look, ask and report.
My greatest advantage was that I was there. My eyes were there, my ears were there.
When I left for Iraq I had an agreement with three newspapers. Aftenposten in Norway, Dagens Nyheter in Sweden, and Politiken in Denmark. In time my articles were also published by Ilta-Sanomat in Finland, Der Tagesspiegel in Germany, Trouw in the Netherlands, Der Standard in Austria, and Tages Anzeiger in Switzerland. In addition I was employed by several radio and TV channels.
The articles I sent home were snapshots, glimpses from the war. They belong to certain days and incidents. Some have been reproduced in their entirety, others have been integrated within a larger context. The war can never be entirely grasped or understood through instant reporting. Nor can political analysis impart the tragedy of seeing ones own child killed by a missile.
No story contains the whole story. This is just one of many and it gives a fragment of the whole, not more. Read the reports of the Egyptian, the American, or the Frenchman. But above all, try to find the Iraqi version of the war, and the time before and after the war. Together they will give us a basis for understanding what is happening, now that the acts of war are over, but before peace has arrived.
sne Seierstad
Oslo, 2004
Before
First comes the light. It filters through eyelids, caresses its way into sleep, and slips into dreams. Not the way it usually does, white and cool, but golden.
Half-open eyes peer towards a window framed by long lace curtains, two patterned chairs, a rickety table, a mirror and a chest of drawers. A gaudy sketch hangs on the wall: a bazaar where shadows of women in long, black shawls slide through dark alleyways.
Im in Baghdad!
So this is what the morning light is like here. Furtive.
The next revelation awaits behind the wispy curtains: the Tigris.
It is as though I have been here before, the view jumps out from my childhood Bible. The meandering river, the rushes, the little palm-clad islands, the trees towering nobly above their reflection in the water.
From far below the cacophony of car horns reaches me, dull roars and sharp high-pitched squeals, a snailing chaos. The road follows the river bank.
I arrived under cover of darkness, a journey of twelve hours from the Jordanian to the Iraqi capital. Night fell long before we reached Baghdad. A few scattered street lights shone palely. Without our being aware of it we crossed the river.
Euphrates and Tigris - the starting point of everything. Even the Flood had its origins here: the land between the two rivers - Mesopotamia. The Tigris is a treacherous river. Under layers of mud, on the river plain, archaeologists have uncovered towns. The cataclysms led to the accounts of Gods judgement, the Flood that covered the whole world. The waters of the Tigris made the Hanging Gardens bloom. The Garden of Eden was somewhere near; the Tower of Babel within easy reach. From this country Abraham and Sarah were exiled.
The thickets along the Tigris are paradise no longer. The river bank is dry and barren and the only green in sight is the palm leaves swaying lazily at the top of brown tree trunks. The city too melts into brown; the contours of the houses are erased by the mists hanging heavily from the sky. Baghdad disappears into the desert.
Like so many other world cities, Baghdads history begins with the river.
- This is the place where I want to build. Here everything can be transported on the Euphrates and the Tigris. Only a place like this can sustain my army and a large population, Emperor al-Mansour is alleged to have said in the middle of the 700s. It was summer and he was travelling around his empire. He set up camp near the village of Qasr al-Salam, said evening prayers and fell asleep. According to the legend, he was blessed with the sweetest and kindest sleep in the world. When he awoke, all he looked upon he liked, and so he stayed. The Emperor himself drew up plans and allocated funds in order that the city might grow quickly. He laid the corner stone himself and said: - Build and may God be with you!
Baghdad developed on the strategic trade route between Iran in the east, the corn-growing countries in the north, and Syria and Egypt in the west. According to tradition the city was designed to express the Emperors elevated radiance and splendour, and to keep his distance from the population. The palaces were built on the west bank of the Tigris, while the markets and living quarters were assigned to the east bank.
