IRAQIS I SAW FOR MYSELF

Fatah was a graduate student at the University and her professor invited me to interview her so it was a rare opportunity to spend an hour alone with a very articulate Iraqi woman. She worked hard to be polite to me, but her fury kept rising to the surface."Iraqis," she said, "are very proud of their country. ..We have a right to have our country. To be safe. To live in peace.... We had to rebuild everything and now they want to destroy it all again...."   

This girl's photo was posted along with many other memorials to adults and children who had rushed to a Baghdad shelter, where U.S. missiles killed 400 noncombatants. It is now a kind of museum of horror.

Here I am with children outside their school

On our one trip to the market, I often fell behind the others so I could take pictures, and this charming girl took it upon herself to see that I caught up with the rest of the group. She is probably about nineteen years old, and I often think of her, wondering whether she's still alive.

The hotel lobby manager, Abida, and I struck up a friendly relationship. One day the elevators didn't work and she locked the door to the stairs because the children played in the stairwell inappropriately. I worried about a U.S. bomb hitting the hotel and no one being able to get out. We laughed when we saw the irony of that.  

We saw an number of children in the hospital, who nearly all looked as bewildered or frightened as this girl. We were told that they were likely casualties of depleted uranium and the problems were exacerbated by the twelve years of sanctions that often applied to crucial medicines.

This is one of the lucky mothers whose baby was born normal, not deformed as were many of the others

We are told not to worry. There will be “no boots on the ground.” We are told there is no contradiction between that promise and the assertion that “all options are on the table.” Yet the drums of war beat louder and louder and I hold my breath. 
Wondering who will be next, I think about the Iraqis I met in 2002, six months before American boots landed on their ground. “What are the chances,” I wonder, “that the locals who treated me with generosity and warmth are still alive. Were they wiped out by an i.e.d., while buying mangos at a market? Maybe a suspicious “pattern” of gathering with friends got them targeted and assassinated by a U.S. missile or drone? With the war on Iraqis and Afghanistan not over yet, haven’t we seen enough carnage?

As I write this, the news tells me my government is supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. (Apparently, that means more weapons, because the administration has already been sending some weapons there.) I long to see the people of Syria for myself. I worry especially about the men “of military age.” I imagine they look a lot like the guys I talked and laughed with at the Afghan guest house and on the streets of Baghdad.

            Here are photos of some of the men, and women and children I met on those trips and wrote about in Seeing for Myself.

IRAQ 

"Military age" men playing board game on the street

The rest of my group had gone to an Internet Cafe, and I took the rare opportunity to go out on the streets alone. "A couple of boys noticed my video camera...and started mugging for it. They giggled excitedly. Older boys joined us, then a few grown men. Soon we were all laughing at our inability to speak each other's language.
SfM page 204 

School boys chanting "Down With Bush!"

Our group was surprised when we visited a school and found the entire student body greeting us with signs and chants of "Down With Bush; Down With Bush! These children must now be of a "military age" - if they are still alive.