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Iraq Reports by Kelly
Hayes-Raitt
War Hits Home for an Iraqi
Family
(09/26/03, Baghdad)
"I told my children, if we are
going to die, we should die together in the house," said Isam
Hindi, a 28-year-old computer professor at Baghdad University, who
huddled with his wife and children in their living room during a
pre-dawn aerial assault. His daughter and a neighbor peek through their
front gate pockmarked by bullets. (Photo by Kelly Hayes-Raitt) |
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"I
told my children, if we are going to die, we should die together in
the house," the solemn man said through an interpreter, describing
early morning bombing in his neighborhood during the recent US
"shock and awe" assault in Iraq.
When I first visited Baghdad in February, just five weeks before the
bombings and invasion, I saw Iraqis preparing for imminent war by
taping their windows and stockpiling food and water. Urgent
women stopped me on the street, imploring me to "please go home
and tell Mr. Bush not to bomb us."
These were women who knew war. Even adults barely old enough
to serve in any army had already lived through two devastating wars,
twelve years of isolating sanctions and two decades of a political
regime more brutal than my imagination allows.
In 1991, US forces dropped 90,000 tons of explosives on Iraq during
42 days of relentless bombing. On just the first day of
bombing Baghdad this March, US forces dropped ten times that amount.
We shocked; we awed.
Every morning during my return trip in July, I got into a car with a
new driver and translator and asked to visit a neighborhood that had
been bombed.
Every morning, without hesitation, I was driven to a new
neighborhood pockmarked by bullet holes and engraved with terrifying
memories. |
"It was a kind of destruction I cannot describe," said Isam
Hindi, gesturing to the decimated statues in the park across the
street from his home in Baghdad. "There were many dead
bodies in front of us. They were shooting fire randomly from a
helicopter. I was frightened and saw many dead bodies - and
body parts, hands, legs. Helicopters were dropping rockets.
These were the hours of death."
(The attack, like so many others described to me, came at 5:00 am,
while people prepared for morning prayers.)
Isam Hindi is a soft-spoken, 28-year-old computer professor at Al-Mansour
University. As he cowered with his wife and two children in their
living room, an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) pierced his wall and
set the room on fire. "They shot my picture of Mohammed, our
prophet." Shrapnel tore into the middle finger of his right
hand, leaving a gash black with infection. He cannot get
antibiotics.
Since the war, Isam has been out of work. His 9-year-old
daughter, Sahar, and 6-year-old son, Ibrahim, still cry through
sleepless nights. The foot-wide hole where the RPG intruded
into his family's life is covered with a temporary cloth. A
painting perched against a wall.
Isam turned to me; I watched warmth melt his wistful sadness.
"I would like to show you the dignity and hospitality and honesty
of the Iraqi people and give you this painting to remember us by,"
he said proudly.
Through tears, I gazed at the darkly moody painting of a solitary
man walking through an empty souk. Isam's outstretched gesture
of friendship provided a connection through this desolate painting.
Perhaps we are all connected through our desolation. I shook
Isam's injured hand and humbly accepted his gift.
"Old paint on canvas as it ages sometimes becomes transparent,"
Lillian Hellman wrote in Pentimento. "When that happens it
is possible in some pictures to see the original lines: a tree
will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a
large boat is no longer on an open sea. Perhaps it would be as
well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is
a way of seeing and then seeing again."
Isam's true gift to me was this opportunity to see - and then see
again.
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