http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk
 http://www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com
April 8th
A Year Later

I expect everyone knows by now about the kidnapping of
three Japanese civilians and the threat to burn them
alive unless the Japanese government withdraws its
troops from Iraq. Anxious, everyone huddled round the
satellite TV in one of the apartments. The tape from
the kidnappers showed them crouched, blindfolded,
knives to their throats.

“It’s them!”

Nayoko used to bring food for the street kids and wash
their clothes for them, the boys who later stayed in
the shelter in Bab a Sherji and now live in the
Kurdish House. She wasn’t with an NGO at all, just an
individual who raised some money to come over and help
the kids and did it, learnt some Arabic, quietly got
on with it. As a result no one, no embassy, no
organisation, knows anything about her. The Japanese
embassy thought all three of them had just arrived.

And it makes no difference, of course it makes no
difference, that I know them; it makes no difference
to the terror on her face, the young woman who used to
help the street kids on Abu Nawas, the man who was
investigating depleted uranium contamination. It makes
no difference that their faces are familiar, that I
used to see them at the internet on Karrada Dakhil and
wander down the street with them. But it feels
horrible.

Because you know that the Japanese government won’t
accede to the demand and you know that the kidnappers
won’t go back on their ultimatum and you know there’s
not much chance of them escaping and it’s no different
from all the other violent deaths that people have
suffered out here, a lot of them pre-planned in one
way or another, contemplated by the pilot who fired
the missile into the civilian area or the commander
who sent the pilot, but to see them alive and to know
what is coming is almost unbearable.

Karrada on Thursday evening was the usual pile of
traffic, hooting at inanimate objects as if that might
ease the gridlock, the smells of popcorn and petrol
mingling around the weekend shoppers.

Most of the day’s plans were thwarted by closures. The
schools in Sadr city and lots of other bits of town
are closed. Those that are open are mostly empty
because parents are keeping the kids at home where
they can try to keep them safe. The colleges and
universities are deserted, more or less. The Magreb
youth centre was closed because it’s near to Adamiya
where there have been battles.

Instead I went to look for Akael, the man I met in the
hospital last year after the bombing of Palestine
Street outside the Omar Al-Faroukh Mosque. He was 20
then, a piece of shrapnel embedded in his forehead,
the doctors unsure, because the scanning equipment
didn’t work any more, whether it had pierced his
brain. I was kicked out of the country a couple of
days later and never managed to find out what
happened, but I did have their address.

We drove for ages looking for street 9, house 12
which, in theory, had to be close to a mosque. “The
streets are all in a mess,” the lad by the side of the
road explained, not referring to heaps of festering
rubbish that you find on a lot of streets or even to
the craterous holes in the road but to their order.

The streets have numbers rather than names, which
ought to make it easier to find the one you want:
street 9 might be expected to sit somewhere between 8
and 10. But no. “This one is Street 3 and that one is
Street 43.” He gave us an apologetic look. What could
you do when the world around you made no sense?

No one we asked knew where street 9 was. They could
tell us what this one was and the one next to it. This
is fourteen and that one is twenty six, they would
say, with an apologetic gesture. The streets are all
in a mess. Someone suggested we ask the responsible
for the district, the Mukhtar. There’s one in each
area, the senior gentleman of the district, a source
of information and social authority. He came out from
his siesta, pulled up the metal shutter of what looked
like a garage next to his house to reveal a tiny shop
but he, too, was unable to tell us where street nine
was and didn’t know the family.

Since it was the mosque that was closest to the
bombing, we went there and Dhafur went in to ask. Yes,
they knew the attack we meant and the street where the
houses had been damaged. A man who was leaving offered
to lead us there in is car, but the way was blocked by
tanks and armoured personnel carriers, a group of
young men close by. The soldiers waved guns and Dhafur
remarked that there was only one God but also only one
death and with that he reversed up the street and we
decided to find Akael’s family another day.

Raed ran up the stairs breathless. On the streets of
Sadr city, Sadr’s people are telling everyone that if
they get the chance they should kidnap a westerner and
they’ll offer prisoner exchanges for their own people
who have been seized by the americans. After we’d
promised not to go anywhere for a couple of days, his
eyes lit up. “This Boomchucka Bus, I think it is the
best idea I’ve ever heard. The children need this.”

He can sort out the bus for us and a driver, will
equip it with a microphone, music and speakers. “Music
is my job.” He’s been dreaming of the bus tour, what
size of bus we need, where the circus flag will look
best, the sound of all the kids yelling Boomchucka
again. He says he’ll go and spread the word in the
places before the bus arrives that it’s coming and
it’s on their side, so people won’t be nervous or
suspicious. Raed misses the circus.

Then he nipped up to the roof to check on the security
arrangements, pronounced himself satisfied with the
three men with Kalashnikovs on the roof and the three
more outside, shouted Boomchucka and darted next door
to cook some pastry parcels.

We’re constantly reassessing. You ask yourself whether
what you’re doing is worth what appears to be the
level of risk on any given day. If there are a few
days when it looks a bit dodgy then you sit it out in
the apartment and see what happens. If things improve
then you get on with it. If not then you try and work
out a safe way to leave.

The last few months things have been intense at times
but not too dangerous and I think what I and we have
been doing has been worth the risks. If that changes,
if I can’t do the stuff I’m trying to do, if it’s too
dangerous to run the Boomchucka Bus Tour, if the
schools and youth centres and universities don’t
reopen so we can do the twinning and solidarity
projects, then I’ll leave. I’m lucky enough to have
that option.

My good friend Nada has been getting kidnap threats by
telephone for about the last three weeks. They tell
her they will kidnap her and beat her and kill her, or
perhaps her kids, for five million dinars in ransom,
about $3500. They, whoever they are, object to her
being friends with foreigners and she refuses to give
in to them, although it was only today that she told
us and made us promise we wouldn’t give in to them
either.

Al-Sadr is now in control of Najaf, Samawa and Kut, or
parts of them. The good thing about travelling is that
you get to meet loads of interesting people but, on
the down side, then you have to worry about them when
you hear their city is being fought over. I can’t get
hold of any of the people I met in Samawa to find out
if they’re ok.

The Italian NGO Un Ponte Per managed to get a
truckload of relief supplies into Falluja today and a
huge demonstration stormed through the US military
checkpoint that was meant to keep people out of the
city, bringing aid for the people there. They were
Shia and Sunni, chanting their common interest in
fighting the Americans.

A child was brought into the Red Cross hospital in
Baghdad after his parents took him to his grandad in a
safe area. His grandad took him out for a walk and an
F-16 fired a missile into the people, killing 9,
including his grandad. He’s lost both legs and one of
his arms.

The bombers are roaring overhead tonight: even the
moon is on fire, rising enormous and orange beyond
Karrada Kharitj.

 http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk
 http://www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com