Waiting to exhale
Two very different Iraqi families share with Judith Neurink their lives under Saddam and their hopes for the future
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Former Iraqi officers protest to demand their three-months backpay, while an Iraqi marsh dweller makes his way through the canals of the southern Iraqi village of Abu Sholan
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"My husband lost both his legs in the war with Iran," Aicha says. "He's inside, his life is over, yet he's only 43 years old. He was a general in the Iraqi army during the war with Iran. But the army is not doing anything for him, and his pension is far too small. The artificial legs he had made no longer fit. But because of the sanctions we have not been able to get any new ones for him."
Her relatives, gathered in the family garden in Basra nod affirmatively to Aicha's story. They enjoy the cool evening air outside, after a hot day in this south Iraqi town. In the small garden at the front of their house only grass will grow. A chicken escapes time and again from the pen in the corner of the garden, and noisily runs around the chairs that have been brought out. Children hold on to their mothers' skirts, one of Aicha's sisters proudly and fondly keeps stroking her three months pregnant belly. Five families, 16 persons in total, live in this house. With Umm Ali at centre stage, often taking it upon herself to answer questions, or to add to answers.
Umm Ali is not her real name. Like the rest of the family, she doesn't want to mention it. Fear of Saddam Hussein still runs deep.
"The coalition forces say they have picked up a lot of the [Baathist] leaders. But have you seen any on TV? Why don't they show them to us? If they respect us, and want our trust, they have to convince us those leaders have indeed been imprisoned. We want to be really sure," says a very fierce Mona. Two of the husbands, who have placed themselves strategically in the middle of the circle, agree. Until they see with their own eyes that Saddam Hussein is gone, they will never believe it.
The family has kept itself out of harms way, Umm Ali says. "We are a quiet family," she adds, but others know about neighbours with missing relatives and whole families that were picked up, "to make sure there would be no talk about the arrests". They are happy to be able to talk about all this so openly now, they say. "Before we would whisper," Mona says, motioning towards the wooden fence with the road behind it. They never knew whom to trust, so they ordered their children never to talk outside about what was said at home.
For the children the changes are difficult to understand, the women say. They started their days at school with songs about Saddam Hussein. They were taught that Baba (father) Saddam was a good person, a father to them. "The older ones understand that he is really a dictator, but for the little ones he still is Baba Saddam," Mona smiles, nodding towards the four and five years olds clinging to their mothers, listening with big eyes to what is being said.
The bad times really set in for the family after Saddam lost his war in Kuwait, they say, and after he was punished by the international community with sanctions. "The sanctions were a war," says Umm Ali. "We have had to sell everything we had to get some food, and we do not have the money to buy it back again." The air conditioning went, to their sorrow, because it gets very hot in Basra. The television stayed, mostly for the sake of the immobilised ex-general. But they have been eating hummous and beans for weeks now, and have had to cut trees for wood to cook them on. The monthly food rations, which were supposed to help Iraqi families to survive under the oil-for-food programme, were not enough for the 16 family members, especially as they were forced to sell off part of it to buy other necessities.
But they would never join in the looting that kept Iraq in its grip for weeks. "Haram," says Umm Ali about it, almost spitting the word out. "We were so shocked," says Aicha, joined by her husband Hasan. "How could the British soldiers let them? We are poor too, but we would never do it, because it is against our religion. Perhaps the looters are people released from prison, or from outside the city. But no one in our neighbourhood joined in."
The neighbourhood is typical of the impoverished Iraqi middle class. Two storied buildings with a little garden in front, built next to each other, carefully fenced off from the mud roads, and filled with years of rubbish. A stinking drain runs in front of the gates.
"We don't want our children to suffer as we do," says Aicha. The family has its hopes pinned on a new government, under American protection for the time being. "We need a government that brings back order," they say. They have run out of money, as their salaries have not been paid for a few months now. The Technological Institute in Basra, where Ali works, has been badly damaged in the war and looted afterwards. Mona works for a bank, but it has been looted too, so she doubts whether she will ever be able to return to work.
Poverty in a country that has one of the largest oil supplies in the world -- they just cannot believe it is happening. "Where is our country's wealth?" Hasan asks. Ali adds, "Saddam promised us so much, time and again. He promised us work and houses, but we have not seen any of it."
Bitterness runs deep too in quite a different middle class house, in Baghdad, where the Mahsin family lives. "We were living in a big prison," says Iman, a teacher who complains she was refused a passport. She has not seen her sister who lives in Syria for years. "No civil servant was allowed a passport. I don't know why. Perhaps they were afraid we would not come back. And those who were allowed a passport could not afford it: it cost 400,000 dinars, about a year's salary."
Iman and her husband Ismael Mahsin were members of the Ba'ath Party -- compulsory for anyone employed by the government. Ismael worked as a veterinarian for Saddam Hussein's cows and horses. During the first five minutes he shows his loyalty to his boss, whom he occasionally used to meet. He calls him "good and strong". But after his wife has spoken her heart, he joins in to criticise the lack of freedom and the discrimination in Iraq under Saddam -- a man "only for those who got something out of it".
Ismael and Iman sit together on the couch in their living room in Baghdad, with their little daughter Mona, two sons and Iman's brother. One of the little boys is sleeping on the couch, quietly snoring. He has pneumonia, says Iman, and needs medication. Every injection costs about 4000 dinars -- only a few dollars, but to them a lot of money. Their bare sitting room, lit by only one bare light bulb, illustrates that not all Ba'ath Party members had been allowed a share in the wealth.
They complain about the impossibility to travel outside the country, but also about the cost of living, which has skyrocketed since the war started. They do not complain about a lack of food, because everyone -- even the very rich -- received the monthly food rations. And they were ample, Iman says. "If people say they are out of food, it means they sold their ration."
The complaints here concern the range of their salaries, and the fact that in Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace, people were paid far more. "Would a teacher normally earn 40,000 dinars a month?" Iman asks bitterly, "just enough for four days". In Tikrit the same job would be rewarded with 120,000 dinars a month. To get more money, teachers would be as corrupt as any other civil servant, according to Iman. They would only teach part of their programme, to ensure parents would pay for private classes.
To be able to complain so openly is new, they say. "It was forbidden to complain for instance about the problems with electricity or water. You could be charged and sent to jail. A month ago we would not have talked like this," Iman says.
She and her colleagues knew that amongst them would be at least one informer. "We only complained amongst friends that we were not earning enough, and we were wondering what had happened to the oil wealth of this country." Her brother adds: "There are places in Iraq where there is no clean water. You cannot compare the palaces and mosques in this country to the mud houses many people still have to live in."
The brother is 32 years old and has finished his studies to become an accountant. He blames the bad economic situation for the fact that he has not yet married. "Our president has been busy giving support to Palestinians, Syrians and other foreigners, whilst his own people have become poorer and poorer."
They realise that it is the first time they are able to talk freely to foreigners. Before, people would always remind visiting outsiders of the Moukhabarat (secret service). "We are glad the Americans came to our rescue," the brother says. But Iman points out one big problem: they are out of work now. "And Ismael was in for a promotion by the end of the year," she adds rather bitterly. They live in a neighbourhood with a lot of the lower members of the Ba'ath Party, and members of the Moukhabarat. The streets are neat and the gardens green and full of flowers. People say one neighbour earlier today has piled his furniture into an open truck and has left to Jordan by the back roads, because the border is closed. Inside the Mahsin family home voices drop repeatedly to an almost whisper, for fear of eavesdropping neighbours. "We are afraid they will regain power," Iman says.
Nonetheless, her husband a little bit later answers a question about a future role for the Ba'ath Party with a "yes". He wants Ba'athists to be part of a future government, which in his opinion, has to include all different groups in Iraq. "But the others will not agree" to such a role, he is sure, "the party has hurt too many people. My brother-in-law, for instance, has left to Australia, and was not allowed to return." The vet obviously still has trouble asserting his loyalties. He hardly speaks up, and when he does he leaves a lot unsaid.
He's clear about one thing though: he wants elections soon, despite the fact that he has no clue about the new parties which have come abroad. During Saddam's times, elections were easy: "We only knew one, and we all voted for him.''
Ismael does not want a transitional government, because it would take its orders from the Americans, and he doesn't want his country to be an American colony. He wants the Americans to leave soon, and tomorrow would be even better. "We will not bear them much longer," he is sure, "and then we will become like the Palestinians: a people in resistance against the occupation."
