Basra, Iraq–We’ll call him Ali. He’s a pudgy, dark-skinned Iraqi, a stringer for various international news organization who speaks in a Sidney Greenstreet cadence and radiates a confidential air, as if he possess some secret and indispensable knowledge of Basra. He spends his days in a sparsely furnished house near the British consulate where, accompanied by a crew of other stringers, he waits for his cell phone to ring with news of breaking events–whereupon he rushes, microphone in hand and cameraman in tow, toward the day’s particular disaster scene or photo-op. In between moments of frenzied activity, he sits in front of an overworked fan, drinking tea and watching Arabic music videos beamed from Lebanon and Turkey.
”We live on an ocean of oil, sir, and yet what have we done with it? Nothing” he mused after lunch one hot and quiet afternoon, his fellow journalists sprawled upon the furniture, dozing. “When the nations of the West sent ships out to conquer the world, and what did we Arabs do? Nothing, sir. Your nations went on to build airplanes, computers, mobile phones, Internet, and we? We did nothing. More coffee, perhaps?”
Before I can answer, he shouts for Mustafa, the house go-fer boy, to prepare another round of Turkish coffee, served in thumbnail-sized cups.
“Then the British and Americans came to liberate us,” Ali continues, brushing a fly from the remains of our mid-day repast–chicken, rice, yogurt. “They held up a mirror to Iraqis, and what did we see? We saw ourselves as never before, sir–a nation of engineers, architects, mechanics, designers, with no practical sense. People living in abstractions, in rhetoric and dreams.”
I think how a Lithuanian soldier I met recently described Iraqis: crocodiles, possessing big mouths to speak, but little hands and feet to do actual work. But I keep quiet.
Ali is a minority in this land of humiliated pride, grandiose fantasies, and conspiracy theories: An Iraqi who exhibits a realistic sense of cultural self-criticism. Unlike the most people I’ve met in this country, he does not believe that Iraqis are congenital sad sacks, doomed by genes or maktoob to failure–or, conversely, a people possessed with such brilliance that lesser nations of the earth must expend vast resources to suppress, undermine and exploit them. Rather, he grasps the debilitating effect of the Arabs’ centuries-long slumber in the bejeweled cavern of tribal Islam–and, more specifically, the sensory-deprivation torture inflicted by Saddam Hussein.
“He gave us nothing. Believe me: nothing but war. When the British and Americans came to our country, they found people frozen in time, living in 1960. Look around you, sir–beyond the cell phones and satellite television, do you know what you see? 1960.”
Like many educated Shia in southern Iraq, Ali is pro-American, although he doesn’t advertise that sentiment. (He’s not alone: “Believe me, many people will tell you they hate America,” he once told me, “but they are usually lying.”) And like many Shia, Ali’s gratitude for liberation is a deeply personal matter.
“Twenty five years ago,” he begins, checking his mobile, as if in the last five minutes he’d somehow missed someone calling in a news flash, “my brother Samir was playing football in a field here in Basra. On the highway nearby passed a convoy of Baath-party officials. Someone shot at the Baathi–or perhaps simply fired a weapon in the air, who knows? Unsure who was responsible or why, the Baathists arrested everyone playing football and took them to prison.”
Months went by, and the government refused to say what happened to Samir. With his family growing increasingly distraught, Ali took the hazardous step of visiting the party’s Basra headquarters to ask about his brother’s whereabouts. In response to his query, the Baathists arrested Ali, accusing him of belong to the Shia opposition group, Dawa Islamiyya–as had, so they claimed, Samir. (Accusing someone of membership in Dawa was an all-purpose charge the regime used to “disappear” its citizens.) “I was sent to prison for trying to find out if my brother was alive or dead,” Ali says.
At one point in his imprisonment, the Baathists took Ali to a “special” interrogation room, and ordered him to strip off his clothing. The interrogator then offered Ali a choice–either he allowed torturers to shove a large bottle up his rectum, or hammer a nail into his back. “I chose the nail,” Ali recounts in a flat tone. Twisting in his chair, he lifts up his t-shirt to exhibit a quarter-sized lump in his shoulder blade. “Believe me, sir, you have not felt such pain.”
Nine months later, the Baathists released Ali from prison–without, however, disclosing Samir’s whereabouts. Not until the collapse of Saddam nearly a quarter century later did information about missing Iraqis began to filter out to the public. “I met a man who was imprisoned with Samir,” Ali relates. “He said that my brother had gone crazy and began shouting–excuse my language, sir–’F**k, Saddam! F**k him! Why is he f**king us like this?’ Because of that, the regime sentenced him to death in a ’slicing machine.’”
“Do you know what that is, sir? It is machine with five sharp blades. They stood Samir in front of the blades, pressed a button and in an instant my brother was in five pieces. Believe me, sir. This happened under Saddam.”
I believe it. As has anyone who travels in Iraq, I’ve heard many stories and seen much evidence of Baathist tortures; some of the people closest to me here suffered at the hands of the regime. To a sheltered American like me, these accounts are frightening reminders of human brutality and vulnerability. More importantly, they underscore a point about this war that seems obvious, yet is continually overlooked: No one–neither supporter nor critic of U.S. policy–can understand the full dimensions of this conflict without peering into the moral abyss that is Saddam Hussein.
Just as no one who does not comprehend the trauma inflicted by that man upon an entire nation can grasp the relief, joy, and gratitude that many Iraqis–especially here in Basra–express toward Coalition armies. True, the thanks is often qualified–most Iraqis contend that had their nation not possessed vast oil resources, Saddam would still be enthroned in Baghdad–but the feelings are sometime astonishingly powerful. “I consider every American and British soldier who died freeing us from Saddam is a martyr in heaven,” a woman recently told me, bringing tears to my eyes.
“But do not think we Iraqis did not participate in our own liberation,” cautions Ali, as Musfafa enters the room with the coffee. “Do you know what our soldiers were doing when Coalition troops came to Basra? Playing checkers in tea-houses, sir. They chose not to fight, and so helped defeat Saddam. Look at the problems the Americans have with the terrorists in Baghdad,” he continues. “Can you imagine if the south had fought like that? Believe me, the Coalition would have not have lasted a day in our country.”
The sentiment is so typically Iraqi that I have to laugh: transforming soldiers’ passivity into martial virtue, deriving pride from the Sunni “Resistance,” which most Shias–including Ali–find hateful and inexplicable. But this is Iraq, and I take my friends as they come. As they take me.
“You must leave so soon? Ah, you Americans,” Ali sighs, shaking his head. “I could never live in such a place.” Pressing a fist to an ear, he mimics phone conversation. “‘Hi Steve, this is Ali–can I come for a visit?’ ‘No, Ali, I am busy–perhaps we can make appointment for tomorrow?’ No, sir, that is not for me. In Iraq, we are always open for our friends.”
Late for my next meeting, I finish my coffee and escorted by Ali, step past the slumbering journalists and into the blast furnace of the June afternoon. “It is hot,” Ali says, opening a metal gate to the street. “Too hot to work.” He waves to my driver waiting at the curb then shakes my hand. “A pleasure, sir, please come again. You are always welcome.” Then, glancing at his cell phone for the call that will finally arouse him to action, Ali yawns, and shuts the gate.
–Steven Vincent is a freelance investigative journalist and art critic living in New York City. He is blogging about Iraq at www.redzoneblog.com.