| IN
THE AUTUMN of 2001, I received a phone call
from a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in
Washington D.C. asking me to describe my eye-witness
experience of the terror. I relayed the following
narrative.
* * *
My
narrative takes me back to a place in the north
of Iraq, where my eyewitness experience began.
I am in the place where the old city of Mosul
is home to the ancient city of Nineveh and to
the ancient histories of the diverse peoples
of the North. I am with my family in Mosul.
In the morning, I am accompanying my aunt at
her office where she practices medicine. My
uncle is running errands in the marketplace,
and my aunt is seeing her patients. By the time
my aunt and I reach her clinic, the office manager
has several patients gathered in the waiting
room across the courtyard. She prepares some
Mosul coffee for us and places a kerosene lantern
in the waiting room to take the cold out of
the morning air.
That
morning, the waiting room was filled with Bedouin
women and children who knew from the newness
of my clothes that they were foreign garments.
By then, the U.S.-led embargo on the peoples
of Iraq had long taken its toll, and fine fabrics
that used to be woven locally were now rare.
Iraq had changed. The section of the marketplace
in which jewelry was designed, created, and
sold was now barren. What was once a unique
place where gold artisans showed original wares
of the highest quality was now virtually empty,
with the exception of a few strands of seashells
in one or two of the glass cases that lined
the abandoned gold mar¬ket. The only apparent
activity was the sad business of middle-class
women selling their cherished wedding jewels
and family heirlooms. These precious articles
of sentiment would have been intended as gifts
for her children or for presentation upon the
marriage announcement of a next generation.
These items would now leave the family, leave
the city, and even leave the country as one
family and then another desperately
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to shore up any remaining hope they
might have to make ends meet and make a future
for their children. The brass market where traditional
samovars, coffee pots, and serving trays were
crafted and sold was similarly empty. These
items of both art and necessity were also being
sold out of desperation and were quickly vanishing
as artifacts of daily life in Iraq. Even the
Persian carpets that had warmed the floors of
Iraqi homes in the winter months since ancient
times were van ishing at an alarming rate. This
was when the looting of Iraqi artiifacts and
treasures had actually begun. Rich customs and
the very fabric of Iraqi culture were attached
to these articles, and with each vanishing artifact
there was a new representation of a rotting
infrastructure, a vanishing culture, and an
unraveling of civil society. The most damaging
manifestation of looting was not an act of taking
but rather was in the perpetual act of being
forced to give up and sell those personal artifacts
that mattered in the daily lives and collective
histories of so many people. Although these
women were free to leave Iraq during the U.S.
led embargo, the likelihood that another western
nation would allow them to enter was becoming
less and less likely. And so it was that the
foreignness of my garments was readily ascertained.
Despite their forced materi¬al and physical
isolation from the rest of the world, I found
that these women were quite well-educated about
contemporary world events. Our conversation
led one of them to ask the office manag¬er
about me, and she explained that I was visiting
from the U.S. They were quite interested to
know my perspective on their recent years of
plight and wanted to know what the American
people were thinking and saying about their
horrendous situation.
As
I began to assemble a reasonable response, we
were starrtled by the distinct presence of supersonic
sounds from the sky. We all rushed out to the
alley. It was filled with people who had also
been alarmed by this sound and searched the
blue sky for an answer. Nothing was visible,
yet the loud sound persisted just above us.
Then it was gone. Confusion and fear filled
the streets. |
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