Life in Baghdad

Hello Again,

A very interesting program was broadcasted on Thursday June 24, 2004 on BBC Radio Channel 4 called “Letters from Iraq”. Excerpts from letters sent from Iraq by Iraqis (including me), American soldiers, and others are read ‘by actors’. It is directed in a very touching manner and it helps a lot in getting an idea about the feelings about different people in Iraq.
The program will remain on the BBC website till next Wednesday (I guess) and you can find it on this page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml?focuswin

If you are in a hurry and you cannot listen to the whole 30 minutes, listen only to the last 15 because that’s were excerpts from my blog are read ;-). No seriously, I don’t think its good because of that, but because it really is, and you have to listen to the whole 30 minutes.

A few days ago, I got emails from two Iraqis living abroad who have their own very interesting blogs. They have added a link to my blog and since then I’ve been getting much more comments from abroad. This only means that their blogs are quite popular and are really worth reading.
The blogs are :

Live from Dallas: http://fayrouz.blogspot.com/
The Baghdad Dweller: http://iraq-free.blogspot.com/

If you want another perspective of some other aspects of life in Iraq and for a city other than Baghdad, you can look at this interesting blog by a 16 years old girl from Mousil (North of Iraq). The blog is at http://astarfrommosul.blogspot.com/

You know, I really should spend some time enhancing the design of my blog and to add some usefull links to it, specially that I am a computer programmer, but….
We have a saying in Arabic “The door of the carpenter is broken”, and it definitely applies to my blog L

For those living in Iraq – Stay safe,
Others – Take care

“All generalizations are false, including this one. “ (Blaise Pascal)

Dear friends,

My last letter was not long time ago, but I had a lot to talk about so here is another letter which again turned out to be a long one.

What to believe?

I have heard many stories about the behavior of American solders that I did not believe. I did not believe them because many people are continuously spreading all kinds of rumors just to increase hatred against the Americans. I did not believe them not because I thought that American solders are saints but because I thought that they were strongly prohibited from committing any act that may jeopardize the US army’s reputation in front of the world and Iraqis specially.

I’ve heard of American solders stealing gold and money from the houses they search,

I’ve heard of American solders mutilating bodies in Falloojah as an act of revenge,

I’ve heard of American solders killing Iraqis on the streets for the silliest reasons or because of the smallest doubt that they may cause any threat,

I’ve heard of American solders arresting Iraqis for no reason at all, and finally

I’ve heard of American solders abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib.

Not only did I refused to believe these stories, but I used to mock the people who told them arguing that the Americans would not do that because they don’t need to, and because they cannot risk destroying the image they are trying to build for their army. The army whose sole purpose in life is to help people in all the world to gain freedom and democracy and to help people to enjoy their HUMAN RIGHTS. I don’t see why they did not believe me then!!

But now…
The story I refused to believe about prisoners abuse was not only true, but it turned out to be a cut down version of the ugly truth. The real version was much worse.

This forced me to review all the stories I’ve heard and refused to believe. Are they all true or only some of them? Are they exaggerated, or are they only part of the truth? How am I supposed to know what to believe now? I definitely will not rely on my –proved to be illogical- logic any more.

I will gather all my courage and say with extreme frankness that for a moment I felt relieved because the news of the prisoners abuse have shown the Americans, who after the falloojah mutilation event mistakenly thought that all Iraqis are inhuman, it showed them that IT IS NOT RIGHT to judge a nation by the acts of a minority. If this generalization is applied on Iraqis, then should we apply it on the Americans?

It is strange how fate have put the American people in the same position Iraqis were put in after the Falloojah mutilation event. God does work in mysterious ways.

I wrote the first draft of this letter few days ago, and before I send it, came the horrible news of the brutal killing of Nicholas Berg in Iraq. I just want to say to those who did this “Don’t do it in my name. Not as an Iraqi, not as an Arab, and definitely not as a Muslim”.

Remember
“All generalizations are false, including this one. “ (again Blaise Pascal)

Another subject

For the past few days, each day I got used to wake up at about 7:00am due to the sound of an explosion. I look at the clock, discover that I have yet few more minutes before I have to actually wake up for work, then return to sleep instantaneously. Yesterday, It took me few minutes to return back to sleep (which is quite unusual) and it crossed my mind that just at this moment, few more HUMANS (Iraqis and/or Americans) had just died….. It may seem rude of me to say that I did return to sleep after that but that is what actually happened. Please forgive me because I cannot allow myself to keep thinking in such a dramatic way in a country were one usually hears a minimum of three to four explosions a day. It is a thought that crossed my mind for a moment and which I wanted to share.

Today I woke up on the sound of machine guns. No explosion today, just machine guns. I wonder if this is considered an improvement in the security situation or not?

Today on my way back home from work, I was forced to change my way because the road leading to where I live was blocked by Iraqi police saying that there is a land mine planted in the street at about 300meters from where I live. In the end, it turned out to be a false alarm. I told this story just to give you a glimpse of how we are living our everyday life.

Roads

Back in the old days (pay attention that I did not say ‘the good old days’) the road to where I work was about 15Km and it used to take me about 20 minutes to get there. I used to cross the river driving over the “Hanging Bridge” which passes through what is now called “The Green Zone”, then drive through “Abu No’as” street which extends along the river bank looking over the Green Zone from the other side of the river.

After the war, the Americans blocked the Hanging bridge and many other roads which caused very heavy traffic over the alternative Jadriah bridge, making the road to work about 17Km and taking about 45-90 minutes.

After the car explosion about a week ago near the Hanging bridge, the Americans blocked “Abu No’as” road too and again increasing even further the distance and time required to reach my company.

I wonder what more roads will be blocked in the future and whether I will be able to reach my working place or not. Please don’t block any more roads. I just want to reach my company. Is that too much to ask?

Hospitals

I’ve been asked by many people about the situations of hospitals in Iraq. We keep hearing speeches from American officials on how all hospitals are fully functional now and how they are being rehabilitated and some more wonderful talk.

I’ll mention two stories and leave the judgment to you.

The first story is about one of the main children hospitals in Baghdad where my sister works as a pharmacist. She has been working there since before the war, so my first question to her was whether we can say that the situation in the hospital now is better than it was in Saddam’s days. Her answer to my surprise was “NO, the situation is pretty much the same. The only mentionable difference is the salaries of the people working there.” I will mention few more notes about the current situation of the hospital (but excuse my translation of some medical terms. I only hope that you will understand what I mean in general)

- The amounts of the drugs are almost the same without any noticeable increase in the supply of drugs.

- The supply of other medical devices like syringes and canulas (a device inserted into the patient’s hand for injecting medicine and liquids) is also the same with periods of shortage in many items till the hospital receives some donations.

- The alleged rehabilitation is nothing more than repainting some walls specially outer ones leaving most of the elevators, the sewage system, and the leaking roofs as they are.

- Many Ambulances are not functional and those functional are not equipped with any medical equipment.

- In the ‘blood disorders’ section, there are times when two children are forced to share the same bed.

- In many cases children leave the hospitals with more illnesses than they entered because of the very weak sterilization.

- Some of the “Intensive care” units were closed after the war because of the lack of maintenance and specially to the sewage system.

- No air conditioning!

- An important observation that lacks a proof, and which my sister had heard from other hospitals too is that the rates of deaths and specially among children have increased after the war!

And the list goes on and on.

The other story is from the eyes of a patient or to be more accurate the family of a patient.

The father in-law of a friend of mine had a heart attack and was taken to one of the main public hospitals that contains some equipments not available in other hospitals. His words describing the hospital were “This is not a hospital, it is more like a trash can! Blood is on the walls and all over the place. We were unable to use the main medical instrument that we needed because at that moment there was no national supply of electrical power and the hospital was supplied from its standby power generator which cannot be used to operate that instrument”.

After less than 24 hours, the patient’s wife insisted that he should be taken to a private hospital even though such a hospital may not contain all the required equipment. “At least private hospitals are cleaner”, she said.

Despite all that, we should not forget the fact that “All generalizations are false, including this one”. Do I like this quote or what?

For those of you who want to argue, I know that many of the above problems in hospitals are caused by, and can be solved by Iraqis, and the Americans have nothing to do with them. I was asked about the current situation of the hospitals and I am replying to this question. It is up to you to decide who should get the blame. Iraqis got used to carelessness in public organizations, they were almost trained for it. I hoped that they will be taught to act more responsible. I hoped that they will be supervised more closely. I hoped for many other things none of which came true. Now I only hope that I never need to go into a hospital, a much less noble goal, yet as difficult to achieve.

Finally, some of you have asked me about my previous letters. They can all be found either on my blog on www.thoughts04.blogspot.com or on the great site www.frombaghdadtonewyork.com then “Letters from Baghdad”.

Yours sincerely,
Ahmed Kharrufa
17May04

Dear friends,



Warning: Long letter ahead of you….I have been writing this long letter for some time, so it contains all kinds of news and my moral state had changed several times during writing the letter. Starting with high spirit and ending with the lowest spirit possible.

Some time ago, I was planning to write about some of the good things happening lately and are positively affecting our everyday life, but unfortunately some bad events on a larger scale keep happening and more frequently than ever, making writing about the little things, in the good things category, seems inconvenient.

Not wanting to ignore those good things. I’ll mention them anyway even if its not the right time for them, fearing that the right time will not come any time soon and these poor minor improvements will pass away unnoticed. Bad news are all over the media and no one misses them, all what you have to do is multiply the size of the problem by %50 if reported by Arabic media and %200 if reported by western media and you’ll have something close to the truth.

Few weeks ago, electricity got much better and we were getting an average of 18 hours of electricity a day instead of the long persistent 12 hours a day rate. I cannot not mention the miracle happened about two weeks ago when we got 36 consecutive hours of electricity – can you believe that? I personally didn’t! Nowadays we are getting 12 hours again, but that’s because it’s the maintenance season and many stations are getting prepared for the hot summer awaiting us (though we are definitely not awaiting it, and this is a special case where Einstein relativity theory does not apply). We were promised a 16 hours average in summer, but I will be very happy if we get 12 during July and August.

To sum up, electricity is better now. Though frankly don’t know whether electricity got better, or better had redefined itself to be used to describe the electricity we are having (Now that’s Einstein’s theory)

Fuel is no longer a big problem. Its not perfectly normal, but there has been no real crises in fuel for the past few weeks. We completely forgot about the quality of fuel, what matters now is quantity. Those seeking good fuel must buy it from the black market. I cannot stop myself from saying: I don’t know whether fuel is better, or whether “crises” had redefined…OK don’t worry I’ll stop here. Don’t laugh at that, our dictionary IS being redefined without us noticing specially such words as good, bad, safe, late, stable, crises, patriot, traitor,..

Iraq, finally had mobile service, still very lousy, but its there and its bound to get better with time.

Except for the last couple of days, shops used to stay open till about 9:30 pm instead of about 8pm. One can still notice life in the streets up to 10:00pm. An exception is the last couple of days because of the unstable situation we’re having. I’ll return to that later with the bad news section.

Now this is a matter that’s very debatable, I considered our new Basic Law as good enough and definitely better than nothing, while MANY others don’t. Some people are gathering signatures against it and I have had long debates with such people. Neither of us is the least convinced in the opinion of the other, and will never do – Typical us, Iraqis that is.

End of good news.


The main advantage we Iraqis gained after this war and that made us bear what we are going through is… freedom. Unfortunately, we are loosing that too. We returned to the state of fearing to talk against certain people because they have lots of followers and militias all over. Such people being extremists and close minded are expected to do anything against those opposing them. Such things did happen and will continue to happen for some time to come. Again we are being careful on what to say in public with the presence of strange people. The media and even people from the governing council fear to talk against such people. If we loose the freedom we gained then we’ll have nothing left.

An unavoidable subject, Falloojah events. Its very common for people to feel ashamed of actions taken by their government, but its not that common to be ashamed of actions done by the people. Unfortunately that’s what all Iraqis felt about what happened in Falloojah more than a week ago. I only wished that our rejection to this act was shown in a stronger way to make it clear to everyone that such an act was not only rejected by Iraqis but we also had a feeling of strong anger towards those who did this. It’s very unfortunate that a small ignorant group of people can destroy the image of a country and its religion.

As for the US reaction…… should the punishment be killing more than 400 Iraqis (so far) and wounding about a thousand (again, so far)? Do you imagine the hate that is growing against the CPA now. Iraqis are very emotional people; now they forgot about the cause of this reaction and all that they can think of, is that the CPA is killing innocent people in Falloojah.

Up to this minute, we keep hearing about truce, end of truce, truce, end of truce and so on. Now I don’t know in which state we are now. Truce, I hope.

A common phenomena that was reduced a little, but returned to increase lately, is kidnapping for a ransom. Sometimes gangs don’t even bother to kidnap, they’ll simply threaten someone to give them money or have him or any member of his family get killed. Sometimes people are even threatened for incidents happened years ago. The police is more occupied with national level security and not personal level crimes!

A story:

News about cars getting blown up in the streets because of mines put for the US troops are always heard in the news.

A week ago, while we were going to visit some very close relatives living on the other side of the city, and when we were almost there, and while I was feeling surprised and happy that the road took much less time than expected (a normally 20 minutes road now takes usually about 45 minutes because of the blocked roads, and other miscellaneous problems), we discovered that a main road was blocked and we noticed large amounts of US army, Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, and Civil Defense forces. We had to drive on the wrong side of the road for a while (very common now in Iraq), then through many side roads between the houses (something I usually avoid because most of the armed car thefts occur in such places). We finally reached the destination after loosing my feeling of happiness because at that moment we spent more time on the trip than the usual extended version.

We knew then that some mines were discovered on that road and after that we heard 3 loud explosion (Controlled ones, if you are wondering). All the time we were there I was somehow worried thinking of alternative roads to go back home. Well, there aren’t many. Alternatives are either blocked, or are through some deserted areas that I strongly avoid specially at night.

Luckily at the time we left, the road was open, but all the time I was driving I was paying great attention to the sides of the road keeping away from any object fearing that it might be a bomb, what if they have overlooked one. Even a Soda can on the side of the road is dangerous. I don’t believe that any of you have drove with his eyes on the roads watching for mines, but take my word, its nothing that you want to experience. If I’ve heard a similar story from someone, I’ll say its exaggerated. Well, in normal cases it might be, but driving into a road that you know had mines in it few hour ago, you can’t stop thinking that there might be more. Trust me.

Now is a very unstable time for the country. The morals of the people are so low, and we are beginning to wonder if things will ever get better. Each day I wake up and wonder if it is wise to go to work in such circumstances. Few days ago, we woke up at about 5:30am at the sound of a small battle (heavy gun fire with some loud explosions) similar to the ones we used to hear a year ago when the Americans entered Baghdad. The sound was loud enough, it sounded like it was not more than 2 to 3 Km away (We’ve became experts on such stuff). I assumed that the situation got out of hand, and of course decided not to go to work. About an hour later the shooting stopped (my 3 years old daughter returned to sleep saying that the good guys (whoever they are) took the bad guys back to their moms!!!). It turned out that it was a trap set for an army patrol on the Highway near us. I made few phone calls later in the morning, and it seemed safe to go to work. This is an example of how we are living nowadays.

The strange thing is that we didn’t hear about this incidents in the news, while sometimes we hear about battles in the news that turn out to be few shots between police and few thieves. A one hour battle with loud explosions and all kinds of fire power gets ignored, while few gun shots may be described as a battle, like what happened in Al-Adhamya few days ago.

I personally (and many share with me this feeling) had completely lost trust in the Arabic news channels. They exaggerate bad news, and never mention the good ones. They describe those blowing up places and killing Iraqis and Iraqi police as resistance.

Killing Iraqis is resistance. Resistance against whom? Us!

I am sure that if it was without those Arabic channels, things would have been much better here in Iraq. All what they do is add wood to the fire to make interesting news.

Today, there was some kind of a strike. Almost 95% of the stores were closed. Baghdad had never looked as depressing as today. I wait for the news hoping for some good news but instead we keep hearing more bad news. The only good news I heard today was the agreement of releasing the three Japanese hostages. If taking hostages continues, then we can say good bye to rebuilding the country.

A year have passed since the falling of the ex-regime. A year ago we were drawing very bright pictures of where we will be a year later, unfortunately what we have now is far from what we had in mind. We must learn to accept less, and hope for less. I wonder where will we be a year from now; I will not learn from my lesson and will still hope for much.

Ragards,

Ahmed Kharrufa

Baghdad-Iraq

10 April ‏2004‏‏

9Mar04

Unlike what I expected, I made a blog but I am not adding short comments everynow and then as planned.
So I am adding this paragraph just to convince myself that It was a good idea to make a blog
A very short update about the current situation:

First of all, you all heard that the constitution was finally signed. I read it all, and it sounds good. IF IT IS FOLLOWED. Because as far as I know, the constitution that we used to have was good enough, but nobody followed it.

Electricity got much better ranging from 12-16 hours a day. Lets hope it will not get worse.

Finally we got a mobile service, but it cannot be any worse. So far the quality of service, makes it almost useless, plus very the high rates.

For those who had read my last message, Let me update your information: We now have a new type (color) of fuel, it is dark brown and its very good...very rare...and very expensive. But it is good.

Since I plan for this to be a short update, let me keep it to good news for a change.

So thats it and take care