I refer to Palestine as that region otherwise known as the West Bank and Gaza and at least nominally under Palestinian political control. I refer separately to Israel as that region on the other side of the 1948 Armistice Line, the pre-1967 borders. I am fully aware that in the complex and convoluted geopolitics of this region this definition is unsatisfactory, inaccurate and highly controversial. However as a preliminary default position it will have to do.

I made three separate trips into this region in 2010 being based for extended periods in Hebron and Nablus and also travelling extensively including into the Gaza strip. I write semi-incognito as I plan to continue travelling into the region in the near future and do not want to prejudice my chances to be able to continue to do so. However I have so much ground to cover that I am giving this to you in two instalments covering in this chapter, Hebron and Nablus and a later instalment covering Gaza.

The first thing that strikes you is why this pocket handkerchief sized slice of land should have been and still remains so hugely influential on human life, politics, history and international security. That the three great religious myth systems of the world should have a basis in this region is one obvious reason. The more I see of the impact of so-called religions on the world the less am I inclined to dignify these mythologies with the credibility they crave and demand, and the more I agree with the likes of Christopher Hitchens; religion, particularly in the Middle East does poison everything.

The tortuous history of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the aftermath of the Great Crime of the Holocaust and the founding of a safe haven for one persecuted people at the expense of another people who themselves became persecuted in turn, is one of the great challenges and tragedies of our age and has been a core problem in the history of humanity for the last 63 years.

Travel around this country, though, and you are struck with the absolute smallness of distance in Palestine. Is this really the same country referred to in Biblical epics where the Hebraic peoples moved around in desert fastnesses, where great battles were fought, where cities rose and fell? I mean, it’s all so tiny. If you are used to the great distances of Africa or Asia, Palestine comes as a shock. You have reached your destination before you realised you had left your starting point. Take the drive down from Jerusalem to Hebron. Almost as soon as the walls of the Old City have fallen behind you, you are passing by Bethlehem. ‘Wait a minute’, you think ‘what about the hagiographic images of donkey rides across deserts to reach the ancient city and the cold search for a room at the Inn?’ Bethlehem seems more like a Jerusalem suburb than a separate destination. Getting through Israeli security checkpoints (more on that later) does slow down journey times, but it’s hardly the Great Trek. About 30 minutes drive down a 4 lane highway and there you are in Hebron, hotbed of Palestinian radicalism, the centre of the fear factor for Israelis.

I spent seven weeks living in Hebron and three weeks in Nablus and in a long and varied career in many of the hot spots of the world, I have rarely felt so relaxed and unthreatened as I have in Hebron and Nablus, both attractive and fascinating cities with a long and colourful history.

My main concern in Hebron was where I could get hold of a beer, being one of the more conservative cities in Palestine. It was bone dry, and only by mounting rescue missions to Bethlehem and Jericho was I able to restock my fridge with suitable refreshment, the light and tasty Palestinian Taybeh beer, albeit a beer with some quality control issues; it broke my heart to have to tip an undrinkable bottle or two down the sink. In Nablus I had to make excursions to the Samaritan settlement of Kiryat Luza on top of Mount Gerizim, where booze was available in the shops; if you could make it past the Israeli checkpoints separating the village from Nablus city.

Figure 1: Modern Hebron city

In Hebron the main issue for the Palestinians is the absolute stinking behaviour of the Israeli settlers both in the old city and in the adjacent (illegal) settlement of Kiryat Arbah. These are the worst of the Zionist fundies and express their contempt for their Palestinian neighbours by actually tipping their garbage down on their heads. In the old souk the Palestinians are forced to protect their streets with a covering of chicken wire to stop the garbage from the Israeli flats above landing on their heads. Anyone following the news and the US sponsored Peace talks knows that the Israeli settlements are the big sticking point in achieving any sort of peace.

Figure 2: The Old City Hebron

I was able to wander at will in the old souk of Hebron and into the Israeli quarters, a luxury not available to the Palestinians. Passing through the Israeli Defence Force checkpoint in the old souk that allowed entrance to the Machpelah Caves, otherwise known to the Palestinians as Al Haram al Ibrahimi and to the rest of us as the tomb of the Biblical Prophets, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives, I was warned in a hushed tone by the Israeli soldier to ‘be careful of the Palestinians, they’re all thieves’. I fumed quietly ‘cheeky bugger’ but thought better of voicing this openly. I never felt threatened in seven weeks in Hebron and realised this was part of the defence mechanism the Israelis use to stigmatise the Palestinians. If they couldn’t think of them all as thieves or terrorists they might start thinking of them as human beings with the same hopes, dreams, worries and expectations as themselves and even start treating them humanly instead of as sub-humans.

I lived in uptown Hebron close to the football stadium where the local team, Hebron Al Shabaab (Hebron Youth) played every weekend. It brought home to me again the relative normality of it all. They loved football here and especially loved Spanish football, Real Madrid and Barcelona having fanatical followings in Palestine. I was in Nablus when Spain won the World Cup. I thought the outpouring of celebrations nationally was a new ‘intifada’ so loud and long did they celebrate. The truth is all the Palestinians want, like all people is a normal life in their own country, but for the moment this remains a frustrated dream.

My work took me into the Hebron hills in the region south of Hebron known as Musaffer Yatta. This was more uncertain territory, being officially under Israeli military control despite being within the West Bank. Mostly populated by Bedouin shepherds Arab settlements are forbidden here and any attempt at construction is quickly ripped down by Israeli military patrols. Not so of course the new Israeli settlements on the hilltops, replete with water and greenery using the aquifers under Arab land to fill their pools and water their gardens, while the ancient water catchments used by the Bedu are frequently demolished by the Israelis to deter use of these lands and drive them away to their new Bantustans.

We were stopped time after time by Israeli patrols, demanding my passport while I stared up the barrel of a machine gun mounted on the front of a Humvee controlled by some spotty nervous teenager in uniform. Apache and Blackhawk choppers buzzed us in the desert, just in case we were AQ making a prohibited foray into the holy land of Judea. I visited Bedouin living in caves in the hillsides within sight of the Israeli settlements (mind you these cave dwellers did have solar power with satellite TV in their caves!) They’re not allowed to build houses or any shelters taller than knee height so caves are the next best bet. The juxtaposition of 21st Century villages on the hilltops overlooking cave dwellers is just one of many absurdities of Palestine.

Figure 3: Bedouin encampment in the foreground and the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmel in the background

Nablus too is another Palestinian city made notorious by Israeli mythology as a hotbed of terrorism and militancy. While it is true most of the Palestinians are pretty angry and hence militant…who the hell wouldn’t be under the circumstances….again what hits you on the surface is the normality of everyday people going about their everyday life. Only when travelling south to Ramallah and Jerusalem and east to the Jordan valley, do you see the restrictive nature of that normality; the endless checkpoints, the suspicion, the change in control of the countryside every few kilometres as you move in and out of Palestinian and Israeli control. Some roads are under Palestinian control while the verges are Israeli; it’s a confusing and surreal land in so many ways.

Figure 4: Nablus city from Mt Gerizim

Figure 5: Souk in Nablus old city

This pocket sized country is beautiful though in a rugged kind of way. The central spine is mostly hills and mountains merging south into the Negev desert and east into some of the lowest land on the planet in the Jordan valley. It’s also becoming incredibly overcrowded with all available half decent land becoming built up, either by Palestinian villages or Israeli settlements. The whole demographic issue is another political hot potato as the Palestinians try to fill their land up to achieve demographic superiority over the Israelis and strengthen their political position. The Israelis in turn pour in their settlers to fill up the land and use the argument of rule by conquest as the basis to justify their continued and perhaps permanent presence in Palestinian lands.

I entered Palestine a bit naive and not really understanding the context. I left feeling a bit confused, rather angry, but also certain that here was a story that is too infrequently told in the west. We get fed the Israeli narrative all too frequently and it gets (intentionally) mixed up in the rhetoric of the War on Terror to justify repression and injustice. There is a tale of two sides here and one that it is essential to understand if we are to at all comprehend some of the complexities and hazards of this dangerous modern world.

Author – “Wild In Africa”

The long-awaited fourth and final part in Chris Afir’s account of being incarcerated in an Iraqi prison cell: Following 17 days in an Iraqi prison in 2005, Chris Afir and companion, Zim, finally get a military escort out of the country.

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Before long we arrived in a guarded compound which I was surprised to see was residential, not military. The house we were taken to was just that, a house, where we were left in the care of an old Kurdish man who balked when he saw us. It wasn’t just the unsanitary conditions of the jail but the weeks prior to coming to Iraq during which we had been less than hygienic. It had been at least six weeks since either of us had bathed or shaved and for the three weeks in jail we hadn’t even been allowed to clean our teeth. To add to the veritable Petri dish that our bodies had become our clothes were completely riddled with lice and I didn’t know it at the time but I had also managed to contract scabies. How Zim escaped this most excruciating of afflictions is still a mystery to me I can only presume that his cell was luxurious.
We wanted to burn our clothes but the Kurdish housekeeper forbade it so they were thrown in the trash.

I then had the best shower of my entire life. A grey-faced stranger peered back at me from the mirror as I set to work in shaving off what can only loosely be described as a beard. The wiry brown pubic hairs that had sprouted from my hollow face were alarmingly long but sufficiently sparse to be identified as individual hairs. The same could not be said for the thick tuft of yellow fuzz that had appeared on my top lip, which in many ways I was just as proud of as I was ashamed. Still, it had to go along with the magnitude of filth that I had accumulated.

Sitting on a huge soft sofa, fresh from the shower in clean clothes, it was impossible to even comprehend that only a few hours ago I was in tears hiding under a T shirt having almost given up hope of ever being rescued. For the next few hours Zim and I talked non-stop recounting stories from our respective cells, and friends that we had made inside. This talking didn’t stop when we were taken to be debriefed by the two uniformed soldiers that came to the jail. In fact it was less of a debriefing and more an evening with Zim and Chris. They just sat back and listened as we rattled on and on. I think that they manage to sieve out the information that they needed from our stories because they didn’t ask many questions.

When Ed finally came in to see us all he told us that he was working on a plan to get us safely out of the country. The obvious option of going back to Turkey was out of the question as he was certain that we would be arrested there as spies. The same was said for Syria. His initial plan was to fly us to Baghdad in a helicopter from where we would catch a commercial jet to Amman just over the border in Jordan. I loved this idea. I would never have gone to Baghdad by myself, but the thought of flying there in a helicopter with an army/CIA escort sounded exciting and rather appealing.

We spent most of our first evening making phone calls to friends and parents back home all at the American taxpayers’ expense. Before we went to bed that night we still had one more thing to do before we were completely out of danger. The small piece of hash that had been hidden in the lining of my bag while it was with the police in the jail. I had had repeated nightmares about this being found and it was the first thing that I checked when we had got our bags back a few hours before. Now we were alone, the rest of the house was asleep and Ed was back out saving the world we had the perfect opportunity to destroy the evidence. We burned it in two very rushed but satisfying controlled fires in the small garden in front of our new home.

Over the next few days we did nothing but watch DVDs. This was all we were allowed to do. Scared that we might wander off in to more trouble they had forbidden us from leaving the compound. Walking round the compound was not even interesting. Lots of houses behind high metal doors with various Iraqi guards outside slouching on their rifles or drinking tea in the shade. Our house was mostly empty during the day. Ed would leave in the morning sporting wrap around shades and brandishing an assortment of weaponry no doubt on a top secret mission so we didn’t see him much. Every now and again a soldier or government employee would pop in looking for Ed or someone else and we would tax them for their DVDs, which they would lend us willingly. I was pleased to see that they all had Team America in their collections.

After a few days, or twenty or so movies, we were told the new plan. The Baghdad idea had been cancelled as it was deemed too dangerous so we were to be escorted by road down to Kirkuk where we would catch a military transport plane to Kuwait.
We were pleased to find out that they were not making a special trip just for us and we would be hitching a ride with some government official who was going there anyway.

Kirkuk was in the middle of the war. There was street fighting on a daily basis and a steadily increasing number of American troops were losing their lives there so the situation was understandably tense. In preparation for this trip an Australian mercenary wearing hot pants (yes, hot pants) came and asked us for our blood types. “In case it goes tits up,” he said. Neither Zim nor I knew our blood types and neither did our parents so we were of no help there at all.
On the morning of the trip everyone was especially tense as the previous day a US convoy had been ambushed on the road to the airport and suffered heavy casualties. The very same road we were about to travel down. Zim, I and the government official donned our bullet-proof vests and helmets and clambered into one of three armoured Chevy Suburban cars. The two other cars were stuffed full of mercenaries from various English-speaking countries. All armed to the teeth and wearing wrap around shades. The driver of our car and the other passenger, the hotpants-wearing Aussie from the day before, were equally decked out. The road to Kirkuk is long and straight and it passes numerous abandoned jails, each of which seemed easily capable of holding thousands of men. Hundreds of little windows in these otherwise featureless buildings whizzing past the car each of them once housed some poor bastard who wouldn’t have been as fortunate as Zim or me. Apart from the prisons and the gas flares of the oil fields burning in the distance the whole area was pretty unpopulated and unexciting. Every now and again we would pass a ridge or a bend in the road and the soldiers would become tense and there would be lots of walkie-talkie banter then cars would speed up until the threat was gone.

As we approached Kirkuk someone pointed out the house of Ali Hassan Al Majid, better known as Chemical Ali. His house was a palace perched atop a small hill. He wasn’t in as we drove past as at that time he was living in less spacious conditions at one of Uncle Sam’s infamous ‘guesthouses’. Say what you will about the man, he may well have been an evil murderous bastard who gassed thousands of Iranians and Kurds but he had great taste in houses.

Once in Kirkuk we were driven straight to the joint US UK embassy compound for another debrief. This compound was completely surrounded by three walls of 15ft concrete blast walls and sandbags. The security was intense but once inside it was much more relaxed. There were a number of buildings stretching off in all directions as well as lots of less permanent structures. Beneath the fluttering twin flags of Britain and America was a basketball court where two sweaty teams of Special Forces and private contractors battled in the sun.

We were ushered in to a meeting room where we got to see firsthand the different working styles of two of the world’s great powers. Two men walked in, one British, one American. The American was a bald giant in his 30s in a tight white T-shirt with a gun on his hip. He strode in to the room with purpose, announced himself as a federal agent and started to lay down the Law.
“You guys are in big trouble.” He started “You have broken the law in two sovereign nations. Iraq and Turkey”
It turned out that the Kurds were now saying that they had caught us crossing in to Iraq illegally and therefore suspected us of running drugs or weapons. Thankfully I had insisted on the border that they stamp my passport and so we easily proved our illegal entry. The agent looked a little deflated although the ease with which we convinced him of our innocence shows how little trust there still was between the Americans and their Iraqi counterparts.

The British man then started to speak. He was at least in his fifties with greying hair on his head and white stubble on his unshaved face. His dishevelled jacket had leather elbow patches and he had bad teeth and bad breath. He was the stereotypical geography teacher. He sat down next to me and asked me if there was anything I needed, a doctor or any provisions? That was it! I thanked him and declined but Zim took him up on his offer of a doctor. When they had all left I sat there wondering how these two so very different men could be working for the same team.

A short while later another group of antipodean mercenaries escorted us to the airbase. For this we again had to put on our bullet-proof vests and helmets and were then taken in two separate cars for the short journey across the city. For the duration of the trip I was forced to crouch in the foot well which meant all I really saw of Kirkuk was a pair of Special Forces boots.

Kirkuk airbase is like a small city, it even has its own bus service as well as a Pizza Hut and a Burger King not to mention literally thousands of planes, helicopters, tanks, and other vehicles. On the base we were handed off to another CIA friend of Ed’s, who was to be our chaperone as far as Kuwait. We were in a large semi permanent tent that served as an air terminal for passengers on the large C130 transport planes. There were a handful of soldiers and others waiting with us all watching war movies on a big screen TV. It seemed somewhat odd to me to be in the middle of a war zone with people dying literally less than a mile away, and watching war movies which all tell stories of the futility of war.

We spent hours here in this terminal tent as we were constantly getting told that our plane was still on the ground in Baghdad so what should have been an hour stretched out in to the whole afternoon and longer. We tried to find ways of amusing ourselves but you cant just wander around airbases like they are your back yard so we mainly hung around outside smoking with a group of soldiers from Idaho. Having seen Napoleon Dynamite only a few days before I sympathised with these poor people and understood quite well why they had joined the army. None were too pleased with having been sent out here to fight and die and more than a few of them had some choice words for Donald Rumsfeld. Of course they thought we were idiots for coming to Iraq and thought it even funnier when we got in to trouble again for taking photos. We had been told by our CIA chaperone that taking photos was fine. There were others there with cameras. Only aircraft were off limits so we were being snap happy trying to document as much of the experience as we could taking pictures of pretty much anything, until Zim took a photo of a particularly angry military policeman who marched right over and demanded to know who we were.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the answers to many of his questions so we took him to our chaperone, who was less than amused. They had a private conversation, IDs were shown and then most of the photos were deleted off the camera. They left some of them but that was the end of our picture taking for Iraq. We spent the rest of the time in front of the TV under the watchful glare of our chaperone while the other soldiers laughed. Shortly before sunset we were told that there was yet more delay and so the three of us decided to get some dinner. We hopped on the bus, which did a huge tour of the base picking up and dropping off various people along the way before it arrived at the Burger King. It was not how I’d imagined it at all; it was a white caravan with the BK insignia on the side and a picnic bench out the front. Next to it was Pizza Hut, which didn’t even have its own bench. The food however was exactly as it is in every BK in the world. It even came in a bag that said Burger King Kirkuk in English on one side and Arabic on the other. I sat and ate my Whopper Meal and chatted with some GI who was about to go out on patrol. He was a big tough looking guy but he was genuinely scared. I didn’t envy him, it was his job to simply walk the streets bearing the stars and stripes on his shoulder. No easy task in a city like Kirkuk. I left him to his thoughts and felt thankful that I was on my way home.

By the time we got back to the terminal tent it was dark but our plane was apparently in the air at last. There was a real buzz around the place. All around us men and women were double-checking their weapons and packs. We were all given luggage tags indicating what plane we were going on and before long we were being ushered out on to the tarmac. The young soldiers that I had seen lounging around earlier and making teas were now dressed in full combat fatigues with helmets and night vision goggles marshalling people around with authority. They spent most or their time shouting at us or into their radios trying to be heard over the din of the arriving aircraft. The area outside the terminal was completely dark the only light was coming from the small flashlights the young marshals had strapped to their Kevlar and the red and green blinking from the wing tips of the two huge cargo planes that were taxiing a short distance in front of us.

With the deafening noise it was very disorientating. We were walking in a line holding on to loops in a rope rather like school children crossing the road being led out over the tarmac. Every now and again I would see one of the planes silhouetted against the clouds as it manoeuvred in the darkness. Everybody seemed to know exactly what was going on and it all seemed very organised. The cargo doors opened and within a matter of minutes one load had come off and another had been prepared for the return trip. People were running this way and that barking orders over the noise and I really began to feel the power of the American war machine at work. Running out towards the plane I was acutely award of the giant propellers that were whizzing over my head but the marshals aided by their goggles steered us around any danger zones and safely on to the plane. Inside there was dim lighting enabling us to scramble over the cargo and to some seating. The seats on cargo planes are in fact long canvas benches that run the length of the plane and they are big enough to hold a GI and his backpack so they aren’t that comfortable but as there were only about fifteen of us there was plenty of space. When the last of the cargo had been packed in behind us the lights went red and the pilot came on the radio.

“People like to shoot at the planes here so we will be taking off lights out.” It was a little disconcerting being told by the pilot that we might not even make it to the end of the runway but I didn’t have much time to think about it as we began to move. There was no stopping and waiting every five minutes like at Heathrow, the lights went out and from the moment we started taxiing we increased speed hurtling round corners until the pilot piled on the power and we shot down an invisible runway. If anyone was shooting at us when we took to the sky they must have missed as we tore up in to the sky at alarming speed made all the more dramatic by the sound of the four massive engines powering us that even with earplugs in were deafening.

Our plane was scheduled to stop in Basra before making the short trip on to Kuwait but the monotonous drone of the engines and the darkness of the inside of the plane sent me in to a deep sleep within minutes so when I awoke we were safely out of Iraqi airspace and on our final approach to Ali Al Saleem airbase outside Kuwait City.
Our trip wasn’t quite finished there. We still had one more task to fulfil before we would be free. As we had landed at a military airport we hadn’t had our passports stamped so were not yet legal in Kuwait.

We were handed off by our chaperone to someone from the British embassy who took us the short drive to the commercial airport where he ran in with out passports and shortly returned with a beautiful fresh stamp in each. Now for the first time in over a month we were actually free from custody – masters of our own destiny again. Although we had to return home and face the music we were free to enjoy the next few days in Kuwait without any worries. The British embassy driver, who was a kind man from Goa, drove us to a suitable hotel where we crashed out exhausted from our long, difficult and often terrifying but ultimately rewarding misadventure into Iraq.

Author – Chris Afir.

Even before becoming the focus of world headlines in August 2008 after being subject to Russian military attacks and subsequent occupation in the wake of the conflict in nearby S. Ossetia, the Georgian town of Gori was well-known to some abroad due to the fact that it was birthplace and hometown of the former leader of the USSR, Joseph Stalin (real name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili).

Though most visitors to Georgia put Gori on their itinerary due to its Stalin-related attractions, it is actually a town with quite a few worthwhile sights.

Gori can trace its history back at least 1300 years when the fortress of Gori (Goris-Tikhe) is assumed to have been built.

This ancient citadel on top of a hill overlooking the town, has over the centuries been the subject of attacks and occupation from Armenian, Persian, Ottoman and Russian invaders (not to mention a severe earthquake in 1920), but still looms proudly. The town’s defiant spirit in emphasized in the artwork dotting various points around town.

Though the country of Georgia is renowned for its tea and tobacco, the Gori market is a boon for those in search of fresh homemade cheese and vegetables.

A short walk from the bazaar leads to city hall (the same location where a Dutch journalist was killed on August 11, 2008 during a Russian air raid). Beforehand the area had the somewhat less onerous distinction of having one of the very few standing statues of Stalin anywhere in the world, as the thousands of others were brought down all throughout the USSR and the Soviet block in the years following “Uncle Joe’s” passing in 1953.

A left turn at city hall leads to a walk down Stalin Avenue and Stalin Park.

Off to the side of the park is the very interesting museum of the Great Patriotic War, commemorating, of course, the war led by Stalin between 1941-45 against his erstwhile and ersatz ally, Hitler.

At the end of Stalin Avenue stands a compound with various treats for history buffs and fans of Uncle Joe, first being the preserved hovel where he was born in 1878.

Next to it is the Stalin museum containing dozens of pictures of his life, gifts given to him while leading the USSR, examples of Soviet agit-prop and even a bronze death mask left from March, 1953.

Stalin’s personal train which he used to travel in relative comfort throughout the USSR while the country usually suffered through war, famine and other hardships is also a part of the museum’s collection.

Insert pics 117, 118, 116 and 115

Ergo, keep Gori in mind as a travel destination once peace returns to this charming and historic town in the Caucuses.

Author and Photographer – Arya Kazemi.

Welcome to Iraq… At last! Part 3 in Chris Afir’s gripping tale of life in a squalid Iraqi prison cell and the eventual, long-awaited taste of sweet freedom

The next day was a terrible day for me but a great day for Iraq and especially Kurdistan. It was the first day that I had no real hope of leaving anytime soon. The Red Cross hadn’t seemed to do anything and I had given up on the prison letting me go. I will never forget that day, but neither will many of my cellmates as it was the day that Jalal Talibani, a Kurd, was sworn in to office as the new president of Iraq. We all listened to it on Naif’s radio and it was an incredibly emotional time. There was complete silence in the cell save the crackly voice from Baghdad and the tears from many of the older Kurdish people in the room.

During the time of Saddam it was a tradition on important days such as this to open the prisons and release all inmates held without charge. In Kurdish this pardon is called afoo. We were all up most of the night discussing the possibilities of afoo for us. Innocents held without charge in a Kurdish police station, surely we would be some of the first to be released. I remained sceptical as it just all seemed a little too good to be true that they would just open the doors and let us all out. After all there were one or two bona fide terrorists in there with us. Surely they wouldn’t just let us all go.
Being neither Kurdish nor Iraqi meant that I found it hard to get really excited about a new president so I excused myself from the heights of festivities and put a towel over my head in an effort to sleep.

After not too long I woke to find Mohammed Fil poking me and taking the piss while many others were laughing. Mohammed Fil was the boss’s best friend and a real joker. He was also a complete Nazi. I tried to ignore him hoping that he would soon get bored but he continued, drunk on the idea of a new Kurdish Iraq, until he started to touch my dick to rapturous applause. I am not a violent person so the first time I let it slide, but when he did it for a second time I sat bold upright and punched him square on the chin. I have never punched anyone in my life before or since so it came as much as a shock to me as it did to him. Needless to say he stopped what he was doing and looked over to Naif for support. Thankfully Naif had been watching what was going on and found the whole thing rather funny so I didn’t get in any trouble and returned to my towel unmolested scowling at everyone. Let that be a warning to the rest of you!

This little episode marked the end of my “honeymoon” period in the cell. The novelty of having a stupid tourist in the cell had worn off and I was treated more and more like the others. With 50 people in the cell now there was no room for moving any more so I had to remain in the same place all day and night surrounded by the same people. I was no longer free to clamber over to the other side of the cell to chat with this person or that. Life became even more stagnant than it already was. Tempers began to fray, the heat and the smells, the B.O. and the bad breath, the stink of our clothes and the lice that infested them, the constant scratching of your scabies-riddled neighbour at all hours of the night, the lack of drinking water, the constant fucking praying and above all the lack of space to even sit down in. There were arguments everyday and I had grown to really hate some of the people sitting near me, not because they were bad people just that I couldn’t stand the sight of them and their filthy habits. But as I hated them so they hated me as we were all as filthy as each other.

There was no one I hated more than Ahmed from Mosul, who I was sharing with by this time. He was a scheming little cunt, undoubtedly a criminal, who would always wake me up early and demand we swap places then refuse to swap back when it was my turn, he would eat most of our food and leave me with none and, as he was new to the cell and the novelty of seeing a white boy in the space next to him hadn’t had a chance to wear off, he would constantly be trying to joke with me wanting to be my friend. It drove me to despair. So much so in fact that after about five days of his incessant selfishness and thievery I demanded that Naif move me, and so it was that I came to be sharing with Nebhan, perhaps the nicest person in the whole cell.

I remember Nebhan from my very first day. As I stepped in to that room for the first time and they all looked up at me it was Nebhan that I saw first. He had a long Taliban style beard looked to me just like the kind of person that would chop off my head and post the video on YouTube. He had a very inquisitive stare that scared the shit out of me and I was properly afraid of him for my first few days in the cell. I could not have been more wrong. Nebhan was a sweet and gentle man about 26 years old, who lived and worked as a shepherd in the countryside outside of Mosul. He didn’t speak any English but he knew hundreds of seemingly random English words as if he had memorised pages from a dictionary and was crazy about football. His general knowledge was incredible and we would talk for hours naming world leaders, capital cities, and of course football facts, managers and world cup winners. He also seemed to be a wealth of knowledge on Iraqi history, but this is where his lexicon ran a little dry and so much of his teaching was lost on me. Despite looking like something out of the CIA ‘How to spot a terrorist’ handbook, he was an amazing person and it was my privilege to share with him.

Nothing is ever all good though. Sitting next to me and taking up half of my space was a huge brute of a man named Naza. A gentle giant, but a giant nonetheless, Naza claimed to be a trucker by profession but I had my suspicions that he was in fact a tramp, not least because of his habit of always picking people’s used cigarettes out of the ashtray and smoking them right down to the butts. He was crawling with all manner of creepy crawlies and was always scratching himself until he started bleeding and would then move on to another part of his body. At least a third of my body was in constant contact with this man 24 hours a day. The first night I slept next to him he had is back to me and he kept hitting me with his elbow. After a while I presumed that he must be masturbating, but this seemed a little too much even for a filthy bastard like him, so I peered around to see that he was in fact just vigorously scratching his groin. Relieved, I returned to my sleep but the scratching continued for at least another ten minutes.

During my time next to Nebhan and the giant tramp there was an influx of young Kurdish boys, caught without passports in Greece and Turkey trying to escape to Europe. Two of them had been arrested in a nightclub in Istanbul and so they were sitting over in the corner still with their leather jackets and skin tight flares on.

On Day fourteen the Red Cross came again and this time they wanted to formally interview me. I was taken out and into another empty room, where I met Johan a Swiss guy, who I later found out was the Red Cross team leader. He wrote down everything I said and spoke to me about possible repatriation. He seemed to know what he was talking about and gave me hope again. He was much more serious than Miriam, who I had spoken to the last time, and I really believed that he would do something to help. I wrote another letter home and he began to ask me questions about life in the jail.
“Did we get the books that they sent?”
“No.”
“Did they take people out of the cells to ease overcrowding before every Red Cross visit?”
“Yes.”
It was such a pleasure to talk to someone in English and I was understandably disappointed when they eventually sent me back to the cell.

Before I go any further I would like to talk about a few of the other people in the cell as we all had become quite friendly. First of all, of course is Naif, the boss, He ran an internet café on the outside but he was singer and even had a few CDs out. Sometimes one of his songs would be played on the radio. As he was the boss he was allowed little perks such as a radio. He was a very kind man and looked after me well. He had been in that cell for ten months.

Haji: A man in his 70s, being held hostage until the police caught his son in law. Ma Talat: The most interesting person in the cell. He was a political prisoner and had spent seven years in jail in Baghdad under Saddam, and the last fourteen months in our cell. During which time he had learned about two thirds of the Koran by heart and would recite surahs every now and again. He was a stern man who you wouldn’t want to cross, but we had interesting chats. He taught me some Kurdish and I taught him some English. He was very generous with his cigarettes and looked out for me too. I was screamed at more than once by him for pissing standing up, which is apparently very un-Islamic. One time, I ended up screaming at him “I am not a Muslim; your fucking rules don’t apply to me so you can all just fuck off!” Unfortunately this didn’t go down too well and I sat in silence for the remainder of the day.

Rewar, Dervish and Farhad: A friendly trio of smiley Kurdish mustachioed men, who sat in the corner and were also very generous with their cigarettes. Samian: Nice guy, terrible teeth; the guy who would shout at us to hurry up in the toilets every day. He was a village postman and a boxing coach back in his real life. One day he and Naif tried to instigate an aerobics program so that we wouldn’t all waste away in that cell. It was a dismal failure. Mahmoud from Syria had been caught in Greece where he had told the Greek police that he was Iraqi so that they might feel sorry for him and not send him to a war zone. They deported him back to Iraq. Khaled Sudani lived in Mosul for eight years. One day he went out to see a friend and was stopped in the street and arrested for being foreign. Yousef Iran was very quiet but when he did speak he could do it in English and French. Another Yousef from Iran was mental. He would have long, loud and very vocal conversations on an imaginary phone with his mother on a weekly basis. He was also the heaviest sleeper I have ever met. Even in our inhuman conditions it would require two people simultaneously kicking and shouting at him to wake. Amaar had studied a psychology degree at Baghdad University so his English was pretty good and he often acted as a translator for me. Mohammed Libya was a proper terrorist, no doubt about it. Everyone in the room agreed. He had been caught in the desert near the Jordanian border without any papers and refused to tell anyone why he was in Iraq. He was fundamental in his beliefs; he returned the towel and the toothbrush given to him by the Red Cross as he didn’t want to accept gifts from Christians. He spent most of the day in silent prayer or reading the Koran. I made an effort to talk to him after a few weeks and he was a genuinely nice guy, I was almost disappointed. Had we met under different circumstance things may well have been different. He had a very soft voice and spoke with a slight stammer. I still think of him sometimes and wonder what became of him.

During my last few days the whole atmosphere of the place became much more serious. Days went by without really talking to anyone and more people came in to the cell further cramping the conditions. One of the new guys came limping in one evening nursing a broken ankle and broken elbow. Neither of these breaks had been set nor put into a cast so he was always in a great deal of pain. His first night in our cell was his 150th in police custody and he had obviously been tortured quite a bit during that time. His inability to bend his leg and arm meant that he took up more room than normal so some people were understandably a little pissed off with him so it fell to me to help him hobble to the toilet as nobody else seemed willing to risk the beating from the guards. One night he showed us his legs which were striped from top to bottom with thick black bruises where he had been hit repeatedly with a metal bar of some kind. He was by no means the most injured person I met.

As the door closed for the night after our final toilet break of the day, and people began to perform evening namaz, the door was reopened and a badly burnt guy who I will not easily forget was forced inside, and for the first time we were all warned not to speak with him. Every new arrival in to the cell had to go through a sort of ritual as they stood up there by the door. After the salaams Naif would ask them if they were Kurdish or Arab. This being Kurdistan, their answer to this question would determine their social standing in the cell for the duration of their stay. Once their ethnicity had been established Naif would decide where they would sit and who they would share with. This newest member of the room was an Arab so he was given a shitty little space near me which gave me an opportunity to see him up close. Sporting a mullet to rival that of a certain Geordie footballer and a red and yellow shell suit that made him look like he had just been plucked from any Liverpool pub, he was the most unusual character I met in my whole stay in that jail. The most disturbing thing about him was his burns. Both hands were badly scarred as if he was wearing a pair of gloves. The line around his wrist, where healthy skin met burnt skin was perfect. Beneath his fantastic tracksuit I could see that his chest was also burnt. His ears, one of which was almost completely missing, were burnt beyond recognition, as was much of the side of his face, but again there was a near perfect line where burn met normal skin. At first I though that perhaps he had been making a bomb which had prematurely exploded, burning him. Everyone in the cell was whispering arharbi, terrorist, so, along with the threats from the guards, I just assumed that they were right. But the precision of his burns suggested something much more sinister. It looked like he’d had his face held down on a hot plate and his hands forced in to a chip fryer, maybe as a means of extracting information from him or just as a punishment. Whatever had happened there is no doubt that his injuries were no accident.

We exchanged a long look, him probably as curious about me as I was of him, and I offered him a stale piece of bread from a little stash that I had hidden away. His eyes betrayed a broken man. I saw a lot of very scared people in Iraq but none more so than him. He was only with us for about ten hours after which he was taken away to face whatever awful fate awaited him.

On Monday 11th April 2005 I felt like I had entered the eighteenth layer of hell. The pain in my un-stretched joints, the constant itching and scratching and the intense lack of sleep were all making me a little delirious. I had given up wearing my glasses a few days previously as I slowly retreated into myself and I had been having these fitted dreams where I would be at home only to wake up back in the same cell. I had only been in Iraq for 19 days, in this cell for 17 of them, but it felt like half a lifetime. With the lights always on and no window it was only the prayer routine that gave me any real sense of the passing of time. So this morning the situation got the better of me and for the first time since my arrest I broke down and cried. I hid my head under my t-shirt and sobbed uncontrollably. I felt so foolish and helpless. The Red Cross was never coming back and the embassy had done nothing despite knowing for nearly two weeks. There was a strong possibility that I would remain in this hellhole for months if not longer. I remained under the t-shirt until lunch after which I was summoned to the office.

Inside I saw that Zim was also there. Neither of us were having a good day and we barely said more than a few words to each other. It turned out that the policemen simply wanted to know our full names which really pissed me off. You have our fucking passports you cunt. I muttered as I methodically spelt out my name on the page in front of me. Nearly three weeks and they didn’t even know our names, this was doing nothing to make me feel any better. The spark of hope had been snuffed out.

A few tedious hours later we were both yanked out again and found ourselves in the same office. Go get your stuff. These four beautiful words were enough for me to crack a smile and I ran back to the cell. No matter where they were sending me it would get me out of here. Salaam Aleikum, I’m leaving. I hastily grabbed my stuff and started to say goodbye. Suddenly there were so many people to speak to that for the first time I found myself wanting to have just a little more time in there. I did my best to say goodbye to my closest friends and Naif and Ma Talat. Then the door was bolted with me on the other side and that was the last I ever saw of them.

A few minutes later Zim found me searching through the mountain of sodden, odd shoes for a pair that might fit me. He was carrying my shoes.
“I hid them after our first day so that they wouldn’t get stolen”, he said.
“Good man.”

We were walked, without an armed escort for the first time, through the police station, on to the second floor and into a huge office. Behind the desk, which seemed miles away, flanked on either side by the Iraqi and Kurdish flags, was an important looking man with a big moustache. I looked around the room and sitting on a sofa on the opposite side of the room was a young looking man sitting next to a similarly aged woman. They were both in combat uniforms and sitting proudly on each of their shoulders were thirteen red bars and fifty white stars. It pains me to say it but…God bless America.

I knew then that we had been rescued but I was still acutely aware that we might not be free. A man from the CIA in plain clothes, called Ed, let us know that we were free and in his custody but he kept emphasising that we were free to go if we wished. We told him that we would stay with him. While the Americans and the Kurds got to work signing papers, the guards left to retrieve our baggage leaving me and Zim to catch up for a few minutes. We were both understandably in high spirits. Our nightmare had just turned in to an incredible adventure. This morning I had despaired and now I was about to go on a jolly with the army in the middle of a war zone.

Our bags were returned to us along with my axe that I had been using for camping in turkey. I was incredibly surprised they hadn’t confiscated it and we all had a bit of a chuckle as they handed it back to me.

And so we got up to leave. Thanking the governor of the prison and apologising to him left a bitter taste in my mouth but it was worth it to walk out of the door. As we had been brought in the back entrance we had never seen the front and were quite surprised to see the levels of security for the building. We couldn’t decide if it was to stop people getting in or to stop us getting out. In the car park we were taken to an armoured Chevy Suburban and issued bullet proof vests and helmets and I struggled to clamber into the car with the extra kilos of steel I was now wearing. The driver was a stereotypical uniformed soldier from Texas with his weapon resting in the foot well for easy access.

A few words on the walkie-talkie later and we were in a street filled with traffic and people. Ed was in the front assessing the potential threat of nearly every vehicle or person that we passed and passing that information to the other car. It was strange to see them working and seeing everything as a threat, planning escape routes and evasion tactics. Even something as mundane as driving through the city was a military operation. Zim and I took the opportunity to have a look at the city that we had spent so long in. The windows were tinted and two inches thick so it was hard to see clearly but it was all we were going to get so we made the most of it.

Author – Chris Afir.

Chris Afir languishes in an Iraqi prison, simply for having the temerity to enter the country. Part 2 of this gripping tale of gross injustice.

Mostly the days were filled with sleeping or trying to sleep. As there were only actually a few hours in the early morning when I would be exhausted enough to sleep through the discomfort, I spent much of the time in a bit of a daze, too tired to really be fully functional and too uncomfortable to sleep.
For the first few days I kept on expecting to be released that day and every time a guard came to the door I expected him to call my name. But they never did. I found out from one of the nicer guards that the Chief of the police station, where we were being held, finished work at 4pm everyday and I knew that he was the only person with the authority to release me, so as 4 o’clock approached and passed I would resign myself to the fact that I would have to endure another sleepless night; maybe tomorrow.

After a few days I was moved to a better space next to Caca Mouserie, The Egyptian man who spoke English. My sleeping partner was a young Kurdish man called Ricard. I was quite happy in this spot as I could talk to Caca Mouserie which helped me get through the days and at night Ricard would let me lie on him so that we could both sleep at the same time and during the day he would go to the other side of the cell to chat with some other of his friends leaving me twice the space to stretch out in. Ricard was a strange character. An ex soldier he used to tell me stories about swimming across the Euphrates and driving tanks in the desert. Every Sunday he would remain in silence for the whole day in remembrance of his daughter who had died on a Sunday some years earlier.

After a few days, I can’t remember exactly how many but I do know that it was a Wednesday; our cell had a wash day. A nice Turkomen man from Kirkuk, whom I later became friends with, lent me a small hand towel so that I could wash, and I was given a bucket and a bar of soap to take in to the toilet. Like the daily toilet breaks this was rushed taking less than a few minutes so I had little time to actually wash but I did come out slightly cleaner that I went in. Had I known that this was the only time I was going to be allowed to wash I would have perhaps scrubbed a little harder. Naif ordered someone to wash my t-shirt and give me a pair of tracksuit bottoms to wear instead of my jeans. By changing my clothes I felt that I had begun to accept my fate. I was no longer under the illusion that I was going to be released the following day and as I was no longer dressed in the clothes I’d arrived in, I looked like any of the other prisoners, dirty and disheveled. I looked as though I belonged.

This was the best day that I would have in the prison as we were allowed to stand outside for about forty five minutes while people did their washing. It was a beautiful day and although all we could see of the outside world was a rectangle of blue sky through a wire mesh above us, I got a real sense of being on an adventure in Iraq and even felt quite happy for a while. While we were standing outside one of the guards called me over. He was dressed in the traditional Kurdish dress which is essentially a boiler suit tied round the middle with a big scarf – kind of 80’s workman chic – complete with turban and moustache. He was a tall, young man called Yaseen, with striking green eyes. He, along with everyone else in the jail, wanted to know how I had ended up in this place and what I thought of Kurdistan. His English was ok so I chatted to him while he gave me cigarettes. He was someone who I had avoided up to this point as I thought that he might have been a bit of a psycho but I was wrong and he turned out to be very nice to me. Being nice to me, however, did not qualify someone as a nice person. None of the guards were at all brutal to me. They looked on me as a fool and a nuisance but no more. As I was an outsider I was somehow separate from their anger. This did not apply for the others in the jail as I witnessed one evening.

Our cell was out for our evening toilet break and I was squatting beside the door talking with Naif, waiting to go and join the toilet queue, when we started to hear screaming coming from the cell next to ours. As the screaming got worse I could hear the people around me all muttering under their breath, “Shut up…shut up”. The atmosphere changed suddenly and everyone became quite tense. The two guards on duty went over to the door of the cell and began shouting at him to shut up but this only seemed to make things worse so they opened the door. At this point another guard came and began to usher us back in to our cell. I hung back by the door to see them drag the wailing man from his cell. I couldn’t understand exactly what he was yelling about but got the general idea. I don’t belong here…let me out…I have done no wrong…Allah forgive me. There is something quite upsetting about seeing a grown man cry like a baby but this paled in comparison to seeing that same man being beaten across the face time and time again. We all sat in the cell in silence listening to the screaming and the beating from the other side of the door that continued for some time until eventually the man either fell unconscious or decided that he’d had enough. Even though this wasn’t an unusual occurrence it shook everybody up a little. No one more than me. One of the guards doing the beating was Yaseen who had given me the cigarettes a few days before.

The next day a friend of mine was released, which was a great relief as I had begun to wonder if anyone ever got out of this prison, but the release of Nebil made me feel like perhaps I would be freed too. We had shared food for the first few days and he spoke some English. He was a portly little man from Baghdad who had been trying to escape to Europe but had been caught in Greece without a passport and sent back to Iraq. He was wearing a woolly jumper with a tweed shirt and had a well kept beard. He reminded me of an old geography teacher I had in school. Looking at him I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised to discover he was a Christian. As such he was a bit of an outsider and so we bonded in the first few days as neither of us really fitted in. For the most part though, he kept to himself. He was a very paranoid man as had been badly beaten on his first day, a few days before I arrived. He said that they had confiscated his bible and was convinced that the room was full of spies. He was released because he was a Christian and therefore not a threat to the new Iraq, so I assumed that I would also be released forthwith.

Some time later on in the week I was called out of the cell. I put on the first two shoes that I could grab from the pile, two sodden left shoes of different sizes, and shuffled after the guard my feet squelching with every step. I was taken by a short little grumpy soldier out of the compound and in to a building opposite. As I looked around me on every corner there were bored looking guards nursing their Kalashnikovs. “No chance of escape then”, I thought to myself.

Once inside the other building I removed my ill fitting shoes and was pushed into a corner while my hands were cuffed behind me. I caught a glimpse of a few men sitting cross-legged on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs and blindfolds tied over their eyes. Shortly afterwards I too was blindfolded and led into a room and put in a chair. Being blindfolded is a seriously frightening experience, the room began to spin as if I was drunk and I was bracing myself for a punch in the head or a bucket of cold water to be thrown on me. I managed to wriggle my head enough to move the blindfold slightly so that I could see a small piece of floor out of one eye which made my head stop spinning and sat in silence not knowing who was in the room with me or even how many. After about five minutes a man started talking to me in English. He asked me if I spoke Kurdish or Arabic, I apologized. Then he asked me about my religion. He was very calm and precise, even though his English wasn’t that good. He obviously had my passport with him as he was asking me lots of questions about where I had recently been. In fact I had two passports, which made me look even more like a criminal as my old passport had become full up so I had got another one from the embassy in Ankara but my Turkish visa was still in the old, now invalid, passport meaning I’d had to present both at the border where they were confiscated. Many of the visas in my old passport were from countries that the authorities have deemed as ‘rogue’.

My interrogator was under the impression that I had converted to Islam and had been trained by someone in Afghanistan and had come to Iraq to fight a holy war against America and the Iraqi people. He simply refused to believe that I had been on holiday. I had recently spent a month in Pakistan, the same in Afghanistan. I had visas from Jordan, Russia and Iran not to mention that my new passport had an unused Syrian visa which led him to believe that that was my intended route out of the country. There was nothing that I could say to make him understand why I had come to Iraq. To him my reasons seemed too absurd to be true.

We went on like this for a while and then suddenly without warning I could hear him walking towards me. He stood behind me for a moment, untied my blindfold and then returned to his seat behind a desk. We were the only two people in a room that was a very normal looking office. The walls were a pale yellow and there were lots of filing cabinets. On the wall was a picture of Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and now the President of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region; and a Kurdish flag. There was another smaller flag on his desk. I was on a chair right in the middle of the room facing a young man behind a desk. I had pictured a much older person wearing a uniform. This guy was wearing a suit and seemed about the same age as me, in fact when I asked him he said that we were born within a few weeks of each other.

The questions continued and he began to ask me about Zim. Zim is American but his family is Yemenite Jew. He looks like he is from Yemen, he looks like a Muslim.
“…but your friend is Muslim.”
“He is not a Muslim.”
“What is his religion?”
“I don’t know. He is probably a Christian. But he is definitely not a Muslim.”
“We found Koran in bag. He is Muslim.”
“No. He is not.”

And so it went on. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If I say nothing then ‘he is a Muslim and therefore a terrorist.’ If I say he is Jewish then…I am not sure what might happen. Eventually he called for the guard to take me away. The last thing he said to me was that he would see me again at one o’clock, but that turned out to be a lie. Many days later I found out to my great disappointment that everything that this man said was a lie.

I had really been looking forward to speaking to someone in authority as I thought that they would instantly see that a mistake had been made and set me free. On the way back to my cell I began to feel even worse than I had before as I realized that they really believed all of the shite that they were saying about me. It would have almost been funny had the situation not been so dire. Since being detained at the border I had also been accused of being a spy and a drug smuggler both of which I thought were much more plausible and easier to disprove. The problem with being accused of being a terrorist is that the burden of proof lies with the accused. Once accused it is very hard to convince people otherwise especially if you don’t speak the language and spend all of your time away from your accusers in a cell.

I remained in a depressed state for much of the day and well into the next. The following evening, however, there was some excitement. At the insistence of the ICRC (Red Cross) some of the prisoners were being transferred to another prison to relieve over crowding. Despite being told by many of the people in my cell that the other prison was luxurious in comparison to ours, with only eight to a cell and access to a TV and books, I was very scared that they would choose me too. I had just got used to this place and, more importantly, it had got used to me. I was no longer a freak from the west; I had become just another prisoner. As well as this I was frightened that Zim and I would be split up. I never saw him, but I did get some comfort in knowing that he was not far away. Better the devil you know. My worrying proved to be pointless as I was not chosen for the transfer but unfortunately many of my friends were. Most of the English speakers, including Caca Mouserie, as well as an Iranian called Yousef, who spoke French, and whom I had befriended, were scheduled to leave later that evening. In my paranoid state I was convinced that this was because of me. I had already been told that there were spies in the cell reporting to the guards, and now I thought this was their attempt to alienate me from the others.

I was sad to have lost so many friends but on a positive note twelve less people in the cell meant more room for the rest of us. We were now down to thirty seven people which was much more bearable. Naif moved me to Caca Mouserie’s space, which meant that I didn’t have to share with anyone so I could sleep all night and sit up against the wall during the day, I still had the same amount of space – or lack of space – but I no longer had to move every three hours.

One Sunday, sometime after lunch, there was a knock on the door and a woman’s voice came through the peephole. I was half asleep but someone beside me woke me up as something important was obviously happening.
“Salaam Aleikum”, she shouted in to the cell.
“Wa’aleikum a salaam Miriam”, everybody replied in unison. Hang on I thought. Who the fuck is Miriam? How does everybody know her name and what on earth is she doing here, in prison?

Miriam, it turned out, was from the Red Cross, who visit the prison every few weeks to make sure everything is ok and to register all new prisoners to make sure that people aren’t simply disappearing. Their main role as far as the prisoners are concerned is to act as a messaging service between those inside and those on the outside. As we had been denied all contact with the outside world this was an invaluable service. Most of the people in my cell had been ‘abducted’ from work or the street or even the mosque and simply never heard of again. I am sure that there were many families who were mourning the loss of people who were in fact alive but incarcerated with no way of contacting home.

The Red Cross had visited the day before I arrived in the cell and had given out toothbrushes and towels, although brushing teeth was forbidden, so I knew that they visited from time to time and had pinned all of my hopes on them coming soon and contacting my embassy to arrange my immediate release.

“Jadid, Jadid?” came her voice again through the hole. “Are there any new prisoners?” I stood up and said my name. She was shocked.
“Where are you from?”
“The UK”, I replied
“You don’t have a Muslim name?”
“No, I am a Christian”. I had temporarily adopted Christianity in an effort to seem less like a Mujahid.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked
“I was hoping that you could tell me.”
She disappeared for a while and then came back and asked me to step out of the cell.

She took my details assuring me that she would be in immediate contact with my embassy in Baghdad and instructed me to write a letter home. Quietly confident of my imminent release I couldn’t understand why I had to write a letter. Surely I would be out of this hell hole in a matter of hours, a day at the most now that the Red Cross and my embassy were involved. I wrote the letter anyway and after an agonisingly short time talking with her I was sent back to the cell. This time however I passed through the door and greeted everyone with a huge smile on my face. I had no longer disappeared, my whereabouts was now known and wheels had been set in motion. My release was assured – at least that is what was going through my head at the time.

Later that night we had a new arrival in the cell, which meant that I had to move to share a space with one of the many Mohammeds. At 17 Mohammed had the dubious honour of being the youngest member of our not-so-happy family. Not only that, he was also incarcerated with his two older brothers and his father, who were all in separate cells, in order to flush the fourth brother, the only one they actually wanted, out of hiding. My time next to Mohammed was the most comfortable of the whole ordeal as he was the cell bitch so would spend much of the day giving the bosses massages and sleeping near them, leaving me space to stretch out. Unfortunately he only spoke Arabic and so we couldn’t really converse much but despite this, or perhaps because of this, we got on really well. He was an incredibly pious boy and took his daily prayers very seriously. Watching his lips move as he muttered prayers under his breath, palms out in front of him, his eyes closed I couldn’t help but wonder how someone who had experienced so much injustice could possibly believe in a god.

The following day, as I was taken to the interrogation block, I had high hopes that this would be a good day. The routine was the same as before except this time they left the cuffs and the blindfold off. Almost as soon as I sat down in the chair I went into a rather aggressive tirade about the appalling job that the police were doing. We argued for quite some time about the innocence of my fellow cellmates but despite never having even spoken to most of them he was utterly convinced that they were all terrorists hell-bent on destruction and therefore in need of incarceration.

He did however say that he no longer thought that I was a threat and so I would be released in 2 days time. This set me off again. If I was innocent then surely I should be released immediately. You have just told me that there are no innocent people in your jail and here you are sending an innocent person back there. “Does this not seem somewhat wrong to you?” – Apparently not, and so shortly thereafter I was squatting on the floor with my knees tight up under my chin surrounded by the all too familiar lice infested bodies of my cellmates.

As I shuffled over to one of my friends to enjoy an after dinner smoke the door was opened again and four more people were pushed through one of them cradling a broken nose in his hands and bleeding all over everyone. This bought the number back up to 50 which meant less than a square foot per person. One of the new arrivals looked like a younger, more muscular Ben Kingsley. His name was Saddam and he was a mean looking bastard. He was covered in small scars and his shaved head revealed even more. He did speak some English though and so we chatted. He thought that I was just as crazy as I thought he was but he was quite friendly. I have no doubt that he was one of the more guilty people in the cell. He didn’t seem like the innocent type and would constantly ask me what I thought of his namesake the ex president. Saddam the prisoner thought that the other Saddam was a great and strong leader with a great military record having gone to war with Kuwait, Iran and the United States. When I pointed out that he had lost all of those wars my remarks fell on deaf ears.

That evening I was woken by the sound of sobbing. It was Yaseen, the youngest of the new people who was crying out that there had been some terrible mistake and he wasn’t supposed to be here. His cries fell on unsympathetic ears and before long people were telling him to shut up. He was only a few feet from me so I started to chat with him in my broken Arabic and sign language during which I learned that his new bride was expecting their first born in a few months. It was awful to look into this boy’s eyes and lie to him so blatantly saying that it will all be ok when I knew full well that he would be in this cell for the birth of his son and who knows how much longer after that.

Two days after my last visit to the interrogation block, the day I had been promised I would be released; I was again called out and escorted back there. I would like to say that I was happy and excited to be going back over there where I thought I was to be released, but I had come to distrust everything that anyone in authority told me so I shuffled along with the usual ambivalence.
On arriving in the policeman’s office I was greeted by Zim who was already sitting down. This was the first time that we had seen each other since we had arrived so we each had so much to say. He seemed well although he had been beaten by the guards. We compared notes on the conditions of our cells and the various parasites that were living in our skin and clothing.

The policemen then laid out various pieces of paper on the desk all covered in Kurdish writing telling us that once we had signed these we would be free. We refused, naturally, but after some time it seemed like it didn’t even really matter. We were already in jail with no real prospects of release and if we were about to sign a confession for being terrorists then hopefully we would have been sent to a proper jail with beds and space and all manner of luxuries that we had been without, so eventually we did sign the papers. Who knows what we had just agreed to but he seemed very happy and assured us that today was the day. We would have to go back to our cells while he took these papers to be approved by the chief of the police station – I should have smelled a rat – and then we would be set free to travel Kurdistan. He even apologised to us for the inconvenience and hoped that we would enjoy traveling in his beautiful country.

Back in the cell I told everyone that I had been released and it was only a matter of hours before left so started saying goodbye to people. I gave away some of my bracelets and the face towel that I had inherited. For about an hour there was like a little party atmosphere in our cramped little box.

Two hours passed, then three…four…five. That fucking liar! I have never been so disappointed in all of my life. I had grown used to them lying to me but this time I really had believed. How could I have been so stupid as to trust that cunt? I never saw that man again but if there is any justice in the world he is now lying in an unmarked grave somewhere with a bullet in the head.

To be continued…

Author – Chris Afir

We crossed the border in search of cheaper accommodation. We never realised it would be free. The first in three parts of this compelling first-hand account of life in an Iraqi Prison.

The bus to the border town of Silopi took about an hour, maybe more; the most intriguing thing about the journey was the queue of oil tankers waiting to get in to Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of them parked in a long line that stretched for many miles along the road. Next to them were little tent communities of people sitting round camp fires or relaxing in hammocks suspended between the axles of their vehicles. This was one of the most incredible things that I have ever seen and we kept on wondering how long those men spent waiting to get to the front of the line. Later I was to meet a truck driver who had spent time in this line and assured me that it did not take that long at all.

It was dusk by the time we had arrived so we quickly set about looking for somewhere to stay. Even the filthiest place was not as cheap as we were used to paying so we asked a friendly taxi driver where we could find adequately priced lodgings. Zakho, he said pointing in the direction of the mountain. Zakho is the equivalent border town on the Iraqi side of the border. After a bit of negotiation he offered to take us there for a reasonable price and so off we went. After all, it was only a few miles away, how dangerous could it be?

Before crossing the border we decided to leave our bags on the Turkish side to avoid looking too much like tourists in a country that routinely beheads outsiders. As we were only intending to stay for a few days, we weren’t going to need much in the way of luggage anyway so we befriended someone at the bus station who took our bags for us.

It was nearly midnight by the time we had cleared Turkish customs and got to passport control. We were both nervous and excited as everyone we had met had assured us that Kurdistan would be safe. On the Iraqi side of the border we were taken to the passport office where we sat under the inquisitive gaze of a handful of truckers and soldiers who were watching images of the war that was happening less than 100 miles away on the TV. Once we had received our entry permits we were briefly searched and then taken to a security building where we were searched properly.

Foolishly I had forgotten about a small lump of hash that I had hidden in my wallet along with a number of Rizlas, but the people searching us didn’t seem at all concerned. They just made a small joke to themselves and then carefully returned both items to their hiding places and gave them back to me. We were then interviewed, first together and then individually by someone who had studied English literature at Baghdad University and yearned to go to Cambridge and Stratford-upon-Avon. I was sorry to disappoint by telling him that I had visited neither. He was a very friendly man and spent a great deal of time telling us where was and wasn’t safe and how hospitable the people of Kurdistan were going to be to us. It wasn’t all friendly banter though. They did have real concerns about us and our intentions in Iraq. We were both travelling under brand new passports issued less than two months before in Turkey which understandably raised alarm bells in their heads, so we showed them our old passports.

Once they’d had a chance to thoroughly examine all of my old visas they began taking a particular interest in me. Many of the foreign fighters in Iraq came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Russia which was unfortunate for me as I had stamps from all of those countries in my old passport. What had I been doing there and who had I met? Was I perhaps a spy? Or a journalist? Or just a Mujahid on a mission from god?

Despite their questions I was very happy there with them and even complimented them on doing such a thorough job in keeping this part of Iraq free from fighting. After a number of hours we were told that the interview process was over and that we were free to go, but it being so late we should stay with them in the security building where we would be safe. I thought this a very kind gesture when they showed us to a room with a TV and some sofas where we were to spend the night. On the way we bumped into a British Iraqi family who were returning to the UK, who also told us of the hospitality of the people of the region, and how our safety was almost guaranteed. They even recommended us a few places to visit. We were both so excited to be in Iraq and after weeks of worrying in Turkey we felt sure that we had made the right decision in coming. We spent the night watching American movies on cable and even smoked a few sneaky joints out of the window.

The following morning, as we sat in an office drinking tea and eating bread we were told that we would be driven the 50 miles to the next town of Dohuk, where they would make sure that we got into a legitimate taxi. So we said goodbye to our interviewer, who by now we had become quite friendly with, and although the evil bastard knew exactly what was in store for us, he made us promise to call in on him on the way back in a few days.

We were driven the half hour journey to Dohuk by a former member of Saddam’s national guard accompanied by a very large man with an AK who we presumed was for our protection, but later came to realise was for other people’s protection from us!

When we arrived in Dohuk we were driven straight to the police station where we were separated, strip searched, checked for a foreskin and then had all of our belongings confiscated. We were kept separated and locked up for a number of hours before we were eventually reunited and taken to a large holding cell where we were locked in with about twelve other people. In hindsight it was a luxurious cell, this being due to the police station having once been a hotel, but at the time we thought it was awful. There was loads of space to walk around and one wall was all windows that afforded us amazing views of the mountains and the surrounding countryside that we would never get to visit. We could piss in the corner of the room and squeegee it out under the door to the outside. There was a bucket of water that we could drink from and even blankets.

The people that we were sharing the cell with were very friendly. They didn’t speak English but we managed to communicate just fine with them. They were mostly Iraqi, both Kurds and Arabs, but there were also a few Syrians there. From what we could work out, they, like us, were being held without charge and none of them had been there more than a couple of weeks although a few of them had been quite badly tortured and showed us their injuries and scars. Another one of them was on hunger strike. They were very kind to us and even saw us as a source of amusement as we were such a novelty. To us, however, they were a source of tragedy as their stories all seemed so terrible. Most of them had families at home who had no idea what had happened to them. They had all essentially been kidnapped by the authorities.

They had run out of cigarettes long before we arrived, and so when I brought out my packet I was pounced upon and a few short yet highly satisfying minutes later we were without again. Instead of tobacco they had been smoking tea, which was in abundance in large sacks at the far end of the room rolled up with the pages from books on human rights thousands of which were stacked up next to the tea. The irony was lost on all but me and Zim. Despite being held under lock and key, we were still in quite high spirits. We were having a crazy and, thus far, harmless adventure and we were still under the (misguided) impression that we were to be released the next day and were simply being held while we were being processed, something that was quite understandable in a time of war.

We spent much of that night laughing around with these guys. After dinner, which was surprisingly good, a few of them began playing chess with used cigarette butts while others went to the other side of the room to have an after dinner smoke. I declined to join them as tea is not my smoke of choice, neither is glossy paper. I retired to my blanket and tried, in vain, to fall asleep, something I finally managed a number of hours later.

The following day was spent pacing in a figure of eight around the two pillars in the room. I was not alone in this pursuit, but I was the only one that had opted for the figure of eight route. After a few hours I had grown very bored of this cell and was beginning to wonder what was going on with our cases, at which point I saw through the glass door that there was a man holding both mine and Zim’s bags. This did concern me a little as they had gone in to Turkey to get them which seemed like a huge amount of effort just for us. Thankfully I didn’t have too long to wonder the whys and what ifs because someone came to the cell to get me. I was taken out and led to the left, which worried me even more as I had been told by my cell mates the night before that the left side was where you were taken to be tortured. The right side was apparently the side you were taken to be released. To my great relief I wasn’t taken to be tortured, but simply to have my mug shot taken.

Shortly after this we were taken to the right side, the “release” side, given our bags and told that we were going to be set free that afternoon. We were both very excited about the prospect of being free, at last, to travel to all of the places that everyone had been telling us such good things about, the sun was shining and we were in Iraq with a great story to tell people when we got home; it was going to be a good day after all. Then we were handcuffed and locked in a small metal box on the back of a pickup.

All that we could work out from the soldiers and the three other Iraqis that were in the truck with us was that we were being driven to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This was not exactly what I’d had in mind when they said we would be set free, but none the less we tried to make the most of the journey by talking to the other prisoners in the truck and taking it in turns to sneak a peek out of the matchbox sized window near the roof which gave us an idea of the landscape that we were driving through, lush green Mesopotamian fields that were some of the first farms in the world. My greatest concern at the time was the driver who insisted on racing all the way there at break-neck speed overtaking anything and everything that got in his way with us being thrown around our tin box every time he misjudged the oncoming traffic. I did not relish the idea of being in a high speed collision whilst handcuffed and padlocked in a cage.

We arrived in Erbil flustered but unscathed where we found ourselves in yet another police station, but this one had a large wall around it and many more soldiers milling around, some of whom escorted us through the building and in to a small office surrounded by a well-tended lawn and some trees. Inside, our handcuffs were removed and we were given cigarette each and allowed to watch TV while two men sat behind a desk and spoke in soft whispers. After some time the nicer of the two men, the one who had given us the cigarettes, asked us what we were doing in Iraq. We explained ourselves while the other man eyed us both intently with a scowl on his face. Suddenly the angry looking one said something to us in Arabic. The nice man repeated his colleague’s question in English.

Do you speak Arabic? To which we answered no. I think you understand Arabic very well said the angry man in slightly accented English. As I sat there nervously smoking my cigarette while someone who had never met me decided my fate I could feel his eyes boring into me as if he was trying to read my thoughts. As I returned the stare I became acutely aware that this man was utterly convinced that we were lying to him and had come to Iraq with the sole purpose of joining the jihad. Although this scared me I took refuge in the fact that it was not he who held my passport in his hand.

For the last few hours I had been wondering why they had even let us into the country at all. Surely it would have been in everyone’s best interests for them to have denied us entry. Isn’t that why countries have borders in the first place – to keep unsavoury people out? Not in this case though, they had not only let us in, but they had driven us further into the country. As if Iraq didn’t have enough problems of its own without importing more criminals. Had we known what was about to happen to us we would never have gone near the border, but such is the beauty of hindsight. As I sat mulling this over the nicer man wrote something in his ledger, locked our passports in the drawer in his desk and motioned the guard to take us away. I had no idea what was going on but I began to entertain the thought that perhaps the nice man was not so nice after all.

We were taken back into the main building and into a small office, where a moustached man in traditional Kurdish dress slept on a camp bed behind a desk as a TV played silently next to us. As I looked around the small cramped room I began to wonder exactly what they were going to do with us.

There were four of us in the room waiting to be processed by this man, who did not look at all happy to have been woken from his nap. I was third in the line behind two of the Iraqis that we had shared the trip from Dohuk with. The first person in the line, a nice guy about 22 years old, who had had his hands bound so tight in the truck that they were now blue, was searched again and had his name logged in the book. All of his belongings apart from the money in his pockets were taken from him then he was shown to a small metal door in the corner of the room. One of the guards banged on the door and a few seconds later I heard the sound of a bolt being pulled back. The door opened and behind it stood a huge brute of a man with a big moustache wearing a blue boiler suit. He grabbed the young guy, pulled him through the door and punched him hard in the face before dragging him off. At this point the gravity of the situation hit me hard. This was not just some crazy travelling adventure anymore, this was serious and this was happening to me.

Zim did you see that? I said. He hadn’t, as his back had been turned while frantically trying to write his name on his bag, but he saw what happened to the next guy. I had to give the guard my name twice as he had no idea how to spell Christopher and then it was my turn to go through the metal door. I turned to look at Zim and forced a smile. I didn’t know it at the time but this would the last time we were to see each other for two weeks.

I stepped through the door and braced for impact but mercifully I was only punched in the back and not the face. I was standing in a small courtyard about ten metres by ten metres that had some doors leading off it. It was open to the sky but there was a wire fence acting as a ceiling that had an assortment of clothes hanging from it. There was a tap in the middle around which a few weeds were poking out through the concrete floor. The whole place was a dull shade of grey. I was pushed towards one of the doors and instructed to take of my shoes and socks. The door was a large metal thing with two large bolts, each with an equally large padlock and there was a smaller, little door like a letterbox at eye level for keeping an eye on the inmates. I kicked my shoes into a pile of what must have been at least a hundred shoes of odd sorts, and as he drew back the bolts and opened the door it suddenly dawned on me that Zim and I would not be put in the same cell. I really did not want to be by myself and began wondering how I was going to deal with being alone in a room full of suspected terrorists. I didn’t have time to think about it though, as the door had opened and I was being pushed through, and before I knew it, I could hear the sound of the bolts being slid across behind me.

The first thing to cross my mind was that there were far too many people in the room. In retrospect this was the mother of all understatements, I felt like I was in an Amnesty International brochure. All of my worst fears in one and yet for some strange reason I was too shocked to be scared just yet. Forty nine pairs of eyes turned to look at me from what I would have considered a single cell. I stood there frozen with my back against the door, barely even enough room for me to stand; and glanced around. In that brief moment everyone in the room looked like a terrorist, long beards and angry eyes, exactly the people that I was trying to avoid, and now here I was locked up in a very small space with loads of them. Surely the fact that they were in jail meant that they were all hardened criminals and were willing to chop heads for the cause or even just for fun?

“Salaam”… I mumbled in a weak gesture of peace.
“Sit down, sit down”, a voice came from somewhere near my right knee. There was some shuffling and a small space appeared, just about large enough for me to squat in. “Where are you from?” The inevitable question. I winced as I answered them knowing that British citizens have few friends in Iraq, but also silently grateful that there weren’t any British soldiers in this part of the country.

Before I could even stop and think what had happened to me I was summoned to meet the boss. It took me a minute or two to negotiate the five metres to the other end of the room, carefully stepping over the sprawling mass of people that lay in my way. Despite the intense lack of space and the boss and his sidekick being the two fattest people in the room, they were sitting in relative comfort and there was easily enough space for me to sit down next to them. For a moment I sat there in silence, their stares fixed upon me and I began to contemplate my fate. The very fact that there was a boss at all scared me as it played to one of the many stereotypes that I had about life in prison. Fortunately my first impressions were wrong and he extended his fat sweaty hand and introduced himself.

“You are English? Welcome to my room, my name is Naif. You know like the English word knife”. With which he slowly drew his finger across his throat. “Ha ha, do not worry I am joking”. I tried to crack a smile but forgive me if I didn’t think it was the funniest of gags

“I like English. What is your name?” And with that we were friends. There was, of course, an ulterior motive for his ‘charming’ manner; he wanted someone to help him improve his English.

He called over an older Egyptian man called Ahmed, one of many, so we called him “Caca Mouserie” (Egyptian Uncle). Caca Mouserie was one of the nicest people that I was to meet in prison. He had travelled the world as a ship’s engineer, had lived for many years in Greece and Spain and spoke almost fluent English. Being able to speak to someone who could actually understand me made such a difference and he really helped me get through the first few hours. I was still visibly shaking and there was a tremble to my voice so he got out a small chess set carved from pieces of candle and we began to play to take my mind off things but somehow it made things worse as if I was putting off the inevitable. I have never tried so hard to lose a game of chess in my life, so after a few short minutes he carefully packed the game away and introduced me to some of the people that we were lying on.

“This is Karzan, he is the Kurdish taekwondo champion but he has been in here for the last seven months”. Karzan was missing all of the toes on one foot and delighted in telling me that he had killed five people. He then proceeded to point people out and give me each person’s body count, simulating the method in which each victim was dispatched in gruesome detail. Of course he hadn’t killed anyone, neither had anyone else, but I was in such a state of shock that if he had told me Saddam was in the adjacent cell I would have probably believed him. My feet were resting on this young boy, about nineteen, called Ahmed Ali from Jordan. He had been fighting in Mosul when he was caught and proudly showed me the burn on his shoulder from a rocket launcher. Looking at him I found it hard to believe that he had been fighting but boys will be boys and had I been in his position I would have probably been the same.

I suppose that I should have been scared, which of course I was, I was petrified, but everything was just washing over me. I was still under the impression that there had been a terrible mistake and I would wake up any minute safe and sound back in Turkey. All I could think of for ages was that today is my ex girlfriend’s birthday. For the last few days I had been looking forward to e-mailing her as her birthday is the only real time that I feel welcome to communicate with her. Now as the reality of the situation dawned on me I came to realise that I wouldn’t be able to wish her a happy birthday after all. Not only that, it might be some time before I ever would.

After a few hours the door was opened and food was handed out. This cut down on space even more as we all crouched with our knees under our chins and tucked in to the food which was a chicken drumstick and bread which we ate with our hands as there was only about ten plastic spoons to go around. There were four two-litre plastic coke bottles of water that we were allowed do drink from but we had to be sparing as that is not very much between fifty people. Everything was shared by two in the cell and eating was no exception. Luckily for me on that first night I shared with Naif, who obviously normally ate alone, which meant that I was well fed as he could pretty much eat as much as he liked.

Shortly after we had finished our food we were allowed out to the toilet in small groups. Prisoners assigned to the task would walk up and down shouting
De de hasara de, yalla de yalla de yalla yalla yalla, which loosely translates as Hurry the fuck up. Toilet breaks were always very rushed; we were given about ten seconds after which someone would give the door a sharp kick sending it crashing in to our heads so it was important to get the job done quickly as it would be another six or seven hours until we would be allowed out for another few precious seconds of toilet time. For some people this was a serious problem. Caca Mouserie, for example had diabetes and a bladder infection, neither of which benefited from this kind of treatment.

While I was washing my hands I was called over to talk with the guard who was supervising us. I was a little nervous but I was to become very accustomed to being the object of attention. It turned out that he was the least psychotic guard in the whole prison and quite a nice guy as well. His name was Ahmed and even thought the real motive for him calling me over was to practice his English he gave me a cigarette and assured me that there had been some sort of mistake and that I obviously wasn’t a terrorist and he was quite sure that I would be released the following morning.

“Do not worry you will not stay here long. You are only here because you arrived after the director had gone home and no one can be released without his approval”. He said “I am sure that you will be out of here in the morning”.
He even went to another cell, where they were still eating and got me another chicken drumstick and a piece of bread. I felt quite bad as I was feeling so scared that I didn’t really have an appetite and I knew that there were those in my cell, who were watching me that would have loved to be eating it and were also more deserving of it. I sat there eating with him hoping that they wouldn’t resent me too much for the preferential treatment I was getting.

All too quickly it was time to lock the door again and so I reluctantly went back in. As soon as the door was locked behind us people started doing “namaz”. As our days were filled with nothing, prayer seemed to provide a real focus. There were people in the cell that certainly weren’t as religious on the outside and yet inside they were as pious as could be. The only two books that we were allowed were both Korans and they were treated with the utmost respect. So much so in fact that I, as a non believer, wasn’t even allowed to touch either of them, even if that meant waking someone else up to pass it along the cell.

As we felt the night draw in (it was hard to tell as there were no windows in the cell), we arranged ourselves for bed. Naif and his three friends, Mohammed Fil, Cac Najat and Karzan, all had enough space to lie down comfortably. They took up about four metres squared between them, leaving fourteen square metres for the remaining forty six of us, which works out as almost exactly one square foot of space each. We were all in pairs and took it in turns to lean against the wall and half lie down. We slept in three hour shifts. I say slept but being nearly six foot I am taller then the average Iraqi and so had even less space to play with. The space was the worst thing to deal with but there were other factors too such as the harsh white light coming from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling that were on twenty four hours a day which took some getting used to. Then there was the heat. Fifty men in one very small cell with no windows, you can imagine that it got pretty hot. Thankfully it was only spring; and of course the smell.

For my first few nights I was paired up with this kind but very annoying man called Kawa, who slept against the door. This was kind of a mixed blessing as the strip under the door was our only supply of fresh air, so I was relatively cool, but everyone else in the room became very concerned that I might block it up so I was constantly being told off in either Arabic of Kurdish, neither of which I could understand. I hardly even closed my eyes that night and after three hours Kawa and I changed places, but three hours after that he refused to change back so I spent the night sitting up trying to get whatever sleep I could until dawn when I had to get up to make room for prayer.
Morning namaz started before sunrise which was most inconvenient as this was the only time that I would ever really be asleep. We would all have to stand up with our backs pressed against the wall to make room as the faithful, which was everyone apart from me and two others, took turns to pray. Islamic prayer takes very little time, but as it had to be done in shifts it would be at least half an hour until everyone was finished and I could return to my space on the floor. This was something that I had to endure five times every day, but the other four times were almost enjoyable as it gave me the opportunity to stand up and stretch out my legs. Standing at any other time was forbidden.

Shortly after Morning Prayer we were allowed out to the toilet. The temperature out of the cells in the morning was freezing and as we had no blankets it took a while to warm back up enough to feel comfortable by which time they would come to give us our first meal of the day. Breakfast generally consisted of bread and curdled milk, occasionally we would get boiled eggs instead, or a watery tahini-like substance called Rashi. Lunch was always rice, bread and baked beans or a watery vegetable stew. Dinner was often the same but sometimes with meat. The food was ok; it tasted good and never made me sick but as with everything in this cell it was shared between two. The portions were pretty meagre to begin with so we never ended up with much food at all.

The unwritten rule was that you would keep half of your bread to snack on later, but as this was forbidden it had to be hidden under people, the result being that later in the day we would end up snacking on stale pieces of bread that tasted of cigarette ash and sweat. As for water, we had four big soft-drink bottles that we could fill up from the tap when we went to the toilet, so water was available but in short supply and therefore had to be rationed. The biggest problem while eating was space. If you imagine that under normal circumstances we each had about one square foot of space. This is just about manageable when you are just sitting or sleeping and can lean on someone else, but not when you are eating. We would all have to squat facing each other, our heads almost touching with the plate in between us taking it in turns to use the spoons that were in very short supply.

To be Continued…

The Author.

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www.chrisafir.com

The first set of gates slammed shut, controlled by anonymous operators watching us on CCTV. There was an ominous silence. We were in no man’s land, caught between two countries.

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Forty-foot high concrete walls surrounded us, imposing and menacing. Eventually the next row of metallic doors clanged open and we dragged our gear into Gaza. The Erez crossing is the main crossing point between Israel and Palestinian-controlled Gaza. It’s a heavily fortified tunnel with Israeli troops at one end and Palestinian security forces at the other. The kilometre that lies in between is empty except for Security cameras and a couple of porters who lay propped against the security barrier smoking cigarettes and trying to sleep.

We were carrying a lot of gear: Video camera, lighting, and laptop computers. Having spoken with colleagues before, I knew the going rate for a porter was 50 Shekels (about eight pounds), but the guys on the Palestinian side were keen to negotiate for more. “200 Shekels sir . . . You speak Arabic sir? . . . 200 Shekels”. I ignored him and we kept walking, he snapped at me in Arabic, rubbing his stomach and looking sad. After about a 500 metre walk, him moaning at me, and my colleagues trying to ignore him, we reached Palestinian passport control. It was everything I’d pictured – a green painted shed and a rickety desk. A handful of soldiers relaxing, Ak47’s dangling by their sides, hand-rolled smokes hanging limply off bottom lips. “Asalam aleikum”, they smiled, the atmosphere relaxed almost jovial. There was no sense that these guys were the first line of defence in a nation coming under daily attack from Israeli artillery and tank incursions.

Trouble had flared in Gaza days earlier when an Israeli soldier had been captured by Palestinian militants who were now trying to use him as leverage for an exchange of prisoners. After months of relative calm the whole area was once again in the grip of violence. I, and the rest of my team, had been covering the story from the Office in Jerusalem but we decided we needed to be in Gaza, even if just for a short time, so that we could accurately reflect both sides of the conflict in our reports for BBC world.

Our fixer and driver were waiting for us after passport control. They were both local guys who knew the strip well and could organise anything at a moment’s notice. Loading my kit into the back of the yellow mini bus I turned round to catch the tail end of an exchange between our fixer and the porter. I didn’t need to be an Arabic speaker to understand the body language. Finally, defeated, our porter skulked away with his fifty shekels, grumbling to his colleagues and throwing me dirty looks.

Gaza is a place I’ve wondered about for a long time. As a journalist it’s one of those crazy places that you feel you just have to see with your own eyes. To experience and maybe attempt to comprehend what life is like for Palestinians. It was the smell that I noticed first, a powerful, pungent aroma of donkey manure. It hits you hard and takes a while to get used to. It doesn’t take long to realise why, donkeys with carts are the mainstay of the transport system, with whole families clinging to the back, possessions piled high. We passed through the Jabelya refugee camp; half-built buildings seemingly positioned on a whim, cracking and dirty. In between, the battered roads were lined with children playing, barefoot, in the dirt. Small stores selling clothes and grain were peppered amongst the buildings, projecting some form of normality. We had to negotiate our way around the chest high sand barricades, built as a pointless gesture of defiance, clearly incapable of even temporarily slowing Israel’s mighty armoured fleet.

Our first stop was the Al Shifa Hospital, the Gaza strip’s biggest. We were guided to the Neo natal unit to meet Dr Thabit al-Masri, a kindly looking physician with a pepperbox beard and glasses. He showed us around, the unit, which was built with foreign aid and has thirty incubators. For now they were running on backup power but with only intermittent electricity he was unsure how long these babies could be kept alive. As he spoke I concentrated on the viewfinder of my camera, zooming into the small, blue body of the nearest baby, a baby so ill he doubted it would survive much longer. It’s a strange sensation when you film something so heart rending, somehow your brain blocks it out and concentrates on the technicalities of composition, lighting and sound. It’s only afterwards when you have done your job and are on the way home that you realise the scale and sadness of what you have seen. I guess this is the best way, as I’m not a Doctor, not an aid worker. All I can do is endeavour to frame shots so powerfully that people sit up and take notice and ask “why?” That’s the only practical way I can help.

Knowing we had some powerful images in the can we left for the Beach. Gaza beach is a pretty place – sun loungers and deck chairs line the shores, resting peacefully on the incredibly yellow sand. There’s a lifeguard station and fishing boats. It can also be a dangerous spot: Days before, six members of one family had been killed when an Israeli naval vessel opened fire. Today it was quiet except for a group of lively Palestinian teenagers. They were swimming and wrestling in the sea, splashing each other and laughing. With the midday sun hammering down we filmed a walking interview with a Child Psychologist who explained the effect that the current situation was having on the local children. There were many cases of bed-wetting, nail biting and fear of being alone. As we finished, the local teenagers surrounded us, excited, smiling, and keen to shake my hand. They were speaking to me in rapid Arabic, laughing and patting my back. I smiled and shook their hands, warily keeping an eye on all my equipment. They were good kids but Gaza is probably the toughest place in the world to grow up, it wasn’t inconceivable that they were after a memento that they could sell for a few shekels.

As the sun began its descent we left for the Ramatan TV studios in central Gaza. They have a live broadcasting position on the roof with an impressive view over Gaza City. After a live interview with Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian legislative council, we headed back to the Jabelya refugee camp for our last piece of filming.

Ahmed Abdullah is the headmaster of the local school. He’s a friendly, aged man with a fair complexion and a round, welcoming face. When we arrived he was sitting with a group of friends underneath his apartment. They were drinking tea, clicking prayer beads, discussing life and trying to ignore the regular crump of artillery shells landing nearby. They soon welcomed us into the group and Ahmed told his story: He was sad; life had been hard on him. At sixty years of age he had never known peace, he’d seen his family destroyed and his land taken. Now he was preparing to survive another onslaught. We filmed him introducing his neighbourhood, storing dried foods and stockpiling water. He told us how he dreamed of peace, how he doesn’t care if his neighbours are Muslim or Jew; he just wanted his family to be safe and to be happy. I liked the guy and would have loved to sit with him longer, smoking a shisha and debating the world.

With the onset of dusk we waved goodbye and left once again for the Israeli border. I would have liked to stay but with programme commitments for that night we had to reach Jerusalem. As we reached the Erez crossing my heart sank. The porter that came to meet our vehicle was the same one that we’d had earlier in the day. I had visions of having to carry all my own gear along the tunnel, destroying my back and delaying our journey by hours. Our eyes met and I laughed, so did he and without a pause he began piling my equipment onto his trolley.

Crossing back into Israel is incredibly difficult and time consuming. Upon reaching the first set of gates you have to wait patiently until the eighteen-year old conscript, watching you on CCTV, can be bothered to open them. You then have to decipher the instructions barked at you over loud speakers in heavily accented English. “Go through the gates” . . . “Stop” . . . “Wait”…“Go through the next set of gates.” Eventually you reach the X-ray machines, but here the journey becomes even more complicated. I had to empty every item from my kit bags and place them individually on the conveyor, still this wasn’t good enough and they kept being spewed back at me. “Put them further to the left” . . . “No, move them back to the right” . . . “Actually put them in the middle.” The whole procedure is surreal as at no point do you see or have the opportunity to speak with anybody, it is conducted purely by CCTV and loudspeakers drilled into the walls. Although I understand the necessity of the security arrangements, I was still struggling to stay calm and relaxed. Finally after over an hour and a half we passed into Israel.

It had been a sad but fascinating day; a day that reminded me why I do this job. As we drove back to Jerusalem the tiredness began to kick in and I thought of what we’d seen and heard. The story of Ahmed Abdullah, the teenagers playing on the beach, the hopelessly inadequate barricades built across the street and the babies sick and dying in the al Shifa hospital. It’s a day I’ll never forget and one I don’t want to.

The author at Ramatan TV Studios in Gaza City

Author – Christian Parkinson

The “Hamilton route”, named after the New Zealand engineer who designed it, links both Iraq and Iran through astonishing mountain landscapes, deep in the heart of Kurdistan.

…At least that’s what my friends in Dohuk have assured me. Even if it were not like that, I’d much rather take this journey than head back to cross again at the nasty Turkish border at Silopi, on my way to Iran.

The mini-bus to Akra leaves Dohuk bus station, fully packed, at 9 am. It’s a relatively safe trip, as I won’t have to leave the Kurdish region. But east of Akra, public transportation will be scarce, so I’ll need to hire a driver or try hitching.

Dohuk, also called “The Kurdish Manhattan” for the great profit it makes from petrol smuggling, is already busy with traffic at this time, but once outside the city everything quietens down, as we take the straight road east across the Sheikhan region. The familiar image of people crouching down under the sun, alongside the road, gives way to one of massive queues of cars, waiting for their fuel tanks to be filled at a rusty gas pump; this in a country that owns some of the largest oil reserves in the world.

We leave the conical Yezidi shrines of the Sheikhan region behind and continue east, eventually reaching the dusty village of Akra. I’m impressed by the huge fortress built by Saddam Hussein. Strategically placed to dominate and control the area, this solid, architectural monster needs no reconstruction work, which is more than can be said for the sorry village. The bus terminates here, and I’m informed by a local guy that I’ll need to wait for at least three hours for the next minibus bound for Rawanduz. Whether this is true or not I never find out, as he immediately phones his cousin, Abdullah, who arrives 5 minutes later in a handsome pick up. I negotiate a price of 30Euros. Not a bad deal, considering that it’ll take him more than 7 hours to get to the border and back. Besides, and what is more important for me, I’ll hopefully get to Piranshar on the Iranian side during daylight, and from there to continue to Mahabad.

Abdullah, smartly dressed with his Shalwar (the traditional, Kurdish, baggy trousers) tells me that he made the same journey on foot during his peshmerga days: 10 days it took, to reach the border with Iran, during Saddam’s time. It’s obvious that he wants his rematch now, as he is driving fast as hell, except on the occasions when we see the number of smashed cars on both sides of the road, probably driven by other “vengeful” drivers. He still has time to point somewhere in the mountains from where the PKK presumably runs their operations deep into the Hakkari area. I thought I was well travelled, accustomed therefore to this kind of suicidal driving, but I simply couldn’t help yelling when we overtook a rusty truck at the brow of a hill; there was no human way to know the road ahead was clear. “Inshallah” says Abdullah humorously, just Allah’s will. – So that was the secret.

To counter the speedy driving, we have to endure numerous Peshmerga checkpoints. At the entrance and exit of every single village, or just in the middle of nowhere, our Toyota is stopped. As we drive east traffic gets scarcer, so these Kurdish soldiers have two ways to kill the boredom: sleeping under a shady tree, or making me unpack the full contents of my backpack. Occasionally, I’m asked for money to get my passport back, but luckily enough, I still have with me a card from one top dog that I interviewed in Dohuk two days ago. I had deliberately borrowed it for these occasions. It works as follows: when they ask for money, I tell them I don’t understand what they’re saying, but that I have this friend at the Governorate of Dohuk who could help translating. I would get my passport back immediately. No need to pay for it. “A very good card this one,” says Abdullah laughing, once back in the car. “Very good indeed”.

After watching the Zagros range getting ever closer as we drive east, we finally reach its base. We cross a remarkable iron bridge and the road instantly takes us to a gorgeous place, crowned by a fantastic waterfall named Beijal. This is a local tourist spot; not only for Kurds, but Arabs too, as such water opulence is a rare spectacle in this dry and barren part of the world. A cafe with a big covered terrace hosts dozens of families, drinking Pepsi or tea under the shade. Nearby, boys in their swimming trunks and girls wearing a scarf swim and laugh next to each other, while some couples queue to get a “honeymoon picture” at a particular spot just by the waterfall. The place really is full of charm, thanks to its glorious waterfall, which brings so much life to the area, as well as joy for the people in a country that’s suffering so much.

Leaving Beijal behind us, the road winds across the narrow canyon of Ali Beg – 20kms, flanked by 500m cliffs; another dramatic sight that I’ll never forget. “Hosha” (wonderful) I say to Abdullah, grateful for bringing me here. He nods.

After Beijal, we take a wrong turning and head north instead of east for several kilometres along a dust road, but Abdullah realises the error before we get hopelessly lost. I don’t care that much because wherever I look the mountain scenery is overwhelming. We stop at one of the marvellous springs in the area before we face the last stage of our journey.

The steep road and the high peaks surrounding us indicate that we are close to the border, but it’s the international landmine warning signs that give confirmation. The Iran-Iraq war, the first and second Gulf wars, two decades of unrest, and even WWII, have turned this landscape into one of the world’s most heavily mined areas. It’s not by chance that shepherds here, or in Afghanistan, always walk behind their flocks. Actually, we’ve seen plenty of humble black tents that identify their owners as Kurdish nomads, and it’s they who prove best how arbitrary borders tend to be, especially in this part of the world: Two countries, Iraq and Iran, but the same ethnic group of people on both sides; exactly what I thought three weeks ago when I crossed the Turkish-Iraqi border at Silopi, or what I’ll feel on the way back from Iran to Turkey. But now, at this border post, controlled by the Peshmerga, I get to hate these stupid man-made lines more than ever – I cannot cross.

A middle aged Kurdish soldier explains to me in Italian that I need some kind of “safe-conduct” document, that I was supposed to have acquired in Dohuk, to allow me cross the border. I have to go back to Dohuk, he says, and get the paper.

“Are you telling me that I have to go all the way back after a 7 hour drive and come again tomorrow?” I ask him, totally crossed.
“Mi dispiace” (I’m sorry) he answers.
Plan B: I try a bribe.
Nope.
Plan C: I try again with my “magic” card.
“Right!” he says, “that’s the man who’ll issue you the letter”
Jomeini frowns at me from a massive mural on the other side of the border, and I pointlessly do the same at the mustachioed, Italian-speaking Peshmerga.

Ataturk also looks irate, back in Silopi the following day, but not as irate as me. It will finally take me three more days to get to Mahabad on the Iranian side – three border posts, and just to reach the same people. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I took the trip across the Hamilton Route, even if I did have to do it twice.

Author – Karlos Zurutuza

Sabotaged oil pipelines have been burning for a few days, so there’s a brownish-grey haze over the horizon. South of Baghdad, on the way to Kufa, cars are stopped on one side of the highway. My cab driver, following many other cars, crosses the median and drives on the other side, against oncoming traffic. This slows down both sides, so he turns into the town of Mohomedia, to bypass the highway.

We drive through small city streets, past a donkey cart with three-foot long blocks of ice gleaming in the scorching sun. Two young men kick what looks like a propane tank down the road. We then drive through a huge field of smoldering trash, breathing in fumes from burning plastic all the way, and finally turn back onto the highway and speed off down the road.

Twisted, lifeless Iraqi tanks line the side of the road. Between the two lanes there is an oil truck, which has flipped upside down and burnt. There is a hole blown in the side of it, probably from a roadside bomb.

When we reach Kufa, posters of Muqtada al-Sadr are plastered on walls, trees and road signs. This is his territory.

I want to take some photos of the city and it’s people, so I get out of the car, tell my cab driver to wait a few minutes, and start walking. Across the street from a market is a big blue and green mosque. I walk near the entrance and take off my lens cap. Almost immediately, a young man of about twenty is at my side asking my name. Two more men walk up and stand close to me. The one who spoke holds my arm and, with the other two, firmly leads me into the entrance. There are many men, of all ages, around me now and though they do not act aggressively, it is clear that I have no choice whether to stay or not. I am calmly told what to do.

They lead me to a small dark room, where all my belongings are taken and closely scrutinized, and I am questioned in detail. It is clear that I am thought to be a possible CIA agent, and all electronic devices are opened, down to my watch and a small flashlight.

They then move me to another room, this one a little bigger. I sit on the rug with six men while they continue to search and question me. I am made to pull the film out of my camera and empty a roll full of photos, ruining everything in the process. Several people look at all of the two hundred or so pictures I have stored in a small digital camera that was in my pocket.

Photos of people outside Abu Ghraib prison and of wounded Iraqis in the Kirkuk hospital seem to work in my favor, but when they get to pictures of the US Army patrol, I am treated with skepticism. Pictures of buildings and destroyed military vehicles have the same effect. I am not allowed to let my taxi driver know where I am and, in any case, the men around me say that they told him to leave.

They ask me what I think of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. I tell them that I have come to learn, and am looking for information about both. It’s obvious to me now that they’ve caught me about to take pictures of a mosque that is a Mahdi Army base or office.

After about forty-five minutes, a man walks into the room and whispers something in Arabic to the man sitting across from me, then leaves. I am told, “You are now going to the office of Muqtada al-Sadr.”

Three men surround me. One of them wearing a beard and a baseball cap says, “Don’t be scared.” They walk with me to the street and there is my taxi driver, still waiting. He looks concerned, and when the three men tell him that we are all getting in the car, he co-operates.

The men in the back seat point the way, and we drive out of Kufa. With a nod from my new friends in the back seat, we don’t have to stop at police checkpoints on the way into the next city, Najef.

Once inside the main security gate, it is clear that Najef is an ancient city, and has not been modernized. Brittle looking sun-bleached buildings stand at odd angles over people in flowing robes.

I am ordered to sit down with my back facing an entrance to a cavernous alley. After about ten minutes, a man with a white Shia turban comes out and motions to those with me. I am brought around to meet Muqtada al-Sadr. I follow him and several other men into the alley, up some winding stairs, and into a small, carpeted room with a single table and computer. We sit down on the floor, Muqtada to my right.

He is a soft-spoken, gentle seeming man, and his eyes are piercing. We exchange pleasantries, and he asks to see my pictures in the digital camera. I go through them yet again, and he comments on them as I click through. He asks me if I’m from the CIA, and when I reply that I’m not, he says, “Good.” and laughs.

Since this resembles an interview, I begin to ask questions, almost all of which he decides not to answer. He tells me that, although the American government and military are his enemies until they leave Iraq, he wants to extend peace to the American people. He also warns me to be careful in Iraq. The more questions I ask, the fewer answers I get, until I am asked to stop asking them, at which point we talk about the American people being his friends and my being careful again.

Since he is one of the biggest figures in world news at this time, I hope for a news story of some kind, but not only do I get no new information, I’m also not allowed to take any pictures, nor record anything. Instead, what I have is a pleasant social visit with Muqtada al-Sadr; nice, to be sure, but rather surreal.

I ask for some of the al-Sadr posters that I’ve seen people holding at demonstrations, and that are hung up around the country. He seems flattered and sends one of the men to retrieve some. After asking for the digital camera again, he takes a photo of the front page of a pamphlet in the office. Even if I didn’t get a new photo of Muqtada al-Sadr, I do have the only photo I am aware of by Muqtada al-Sadr.

The man returns with the posters and Muqtada rolls them up, ties them together, and writes a small dedication to me in Arabic. He tells me that he considers me a friend; I shake hands with everybody, and am led out to my relieved taxi driver.

On the way back to Baghdad, there is a machine-gun firefight between bandits and the police in the city of Al-Haswa. Suddenly, loud cracks ring out from all directions, and there is a mad scramble for all of us on the road to get out of the line of fire. We do, and continue on.

July 7th 2004

Today, there were several attacks between insurgents of some kind or another and either US or Iraqi forces. It’s a confusing time in a confusing country.

I’ve checked into a smaller and cheaper hotel, and I sit, enjoying a cold Diet Coke, while young soldiers in US helicopters fire missiles into two buildings in downtown Baghdad. I overhear an American businessman telling an Italian photojournalist that he just found out that caviar is on the list of foods to request for an employee of Kellogg, Brown, and Root. I imagine Abdula Ghalib Ali still lies on his hospital bed in Kirkuk, a lesser employee of KBR.

If and when Patrick the National Guardsman returns home, he’ll have a hard time trying to figure out how to function in civilian life, and may have to take the antidepressants that are so kindly handed out.

Who knows what will become of millions of Iraqi youth when all the soldiers, businessmen, journalists and others have gone home, or to some other unfortunate country?

Another day in Kirkuk. I go out in the morning to speak to people about their reactions to Saddam’s first television appearance since his dental exam. While watching the broadcast, there was no sense of celebration, but a silence that was hard to interpret. Saddam-era television was rife with controlled propaganda, using his image repeated ad infinitum. One man with a particularly good command of English tells me that, with the sound edited, it’s very much like that now, only from a different source. It’s better than Baathist propaganda, but most mention that the United States is, of course, pulling the strings.

Most of the people I speak to are Kurdish, and there is absolute unity on the issue of his guilt. Everybody says he should be either killed or thrown in prison for life. The gassing of Halabja is not forgotten, and Saddam’s response to this charge with, “I read about it in the newspaper.” brings unanimous bitterness. Five thousand Kurds died in eight minutes and many want him to suffer, for this and countless other things. Adnan, the owner of a restaurant, says that the trial is too good for him.

I plan to go to Baghdad today, but by the time I am ready to go, I realize that I don’t have time. It will be dark before I get there, and traveling at night is not a good idea on the outskirts of the nation’s capital, or anywhere in the country for that matter. Though it takes four hours to get to Baghdad by car, at least another hour must be allowed to get to the part of Baghdad I am staying in. One business that can be safely said to have boomed since the war, is the car industry. The number of vehicles on Baghdad’s streets has multiplied several times in the past year, and traffic can be excruciatingly slow. It would merely be a little inconvenient, except for the fact that one can’t speed away from gunmen or kidnappers in a traffic jam. This could end up being extremely inconvenient.
I find a driver to meet me early the next morning, and hope I can get him to accept the fare.

July 3rd 2004
En route to Baghdad, some cities are safer to drive through than others. While the driver seems carefree for much of the drive, at times he seems to be constantly looking around, and encourages me to wear my hat, so as not to be too obviously a foreigner. The violence these days isn’t directed only towards foreigners though; it is now often inflicted upon those who help them.

The scenery alternates from brown rock and dirt, to lush green palm trees and houses, and then back to brown rock and dirt. As we approach Baghdad, there is a more modern, yet unmistakably Middle-Eastern feel to everything. Minarets of Iraqi-style mosques shoot higher out of the ground and are more numerous than before. Roads are better made and have more lanes, but there are large holes to be swerved around from time to time. This is recent damage from mortars or roadside bombs.

Once in the city, traffic is slow, and routes circuitous, with so many streets closed or inaccessible. Though this is for security reasons, having to zigzag around blocks to get from point A to point B hardly feels secure. The only discernable rule of the road is ‘whoever gets there first, has the right of way’, except for when armed traffic guards yell and point.

I have trouble recognizing a hotel that I stayed at last time I was in the city, and after a while, I realize why: There are huge, grey cement barriers lined up in front of it and so the entire first floor isn’t visible from the street any more. After I get out of the cab (and actually pay for the ride) and enter, I find it’s different on the inside too. One year ago, the Hotel Burj Al-Hyaat was bustling with UN workers and folks working for Bremmer, but now they’re all gone. I don’t see another guest during my brief time there. However, there are many armed teenage guards to speak to every time I enter or leave the hotel, while I’m stepping through barriers, around razor wire, and over tire spikes. These are the new jobs for Iraqi youths, and they want me to take pictures of them posing with their guns whenever I pass; that’s one way I can say that Iraq is different from a year ago; security is higher than ever, yet it’s more chaotic.

I walk around the city for a few hours, down block after block, where cars are repaired and parts for them sold. Even in the shade, the temperature is almost unbearable. If there’s a breeze, it’s hot. Stacks of tires block the sidewalk and parts of the street, and everywhere are pools of oil and the smell of gasoline. Little girls, wearing rags, approach cars, which spew black exhaust into the air, and they beg for money. I speak to several men who are working, and they all say the same thing: Life in Baghdad is hard’ very, very hard.

July 4th 2004

In the late morning, I walk in a different direction. It’s so hot outside that my eyes hurt and I have to avoid rolls of rusty razor wire, which always seem to be underfoot. The constant, deafening roar of massive oily generators, attached to almost every building, sounds like helicopters, and then I see the real thing flying low overhead. When a convoy of US troops drives by, all traffic has to stop, and the huge gun barrels are often, insistently, pointed at them. Tension, fear and fatigue seem to be on both sides of the gun.

Though opinions about current events were somewhat predictable in most areas of northern Iraq, this is not true of Baghdad, and people don’t mince words. They question me, too.

“What do you think of Muqtada Al-Sadr?” asks Ahmed, a twenty-two year old Pharmacology student at Baghdad University. He is a bright, personable young man, who is immediately friendly toward me and has many hints for keeping myself safe.

He speaks of the fiery Shia cleric with pride. The first time most Americans heard Muqtada Al-Sadr’s name was this April, after the death of four American contractors, and the later uprising in Falluja, where pictures of Al-Sadr were held up by the crowds.
“He is our leader,” says Ahmed. “He was not chosen by the US to do what they want; he is for the people.”

Ahmed lives in Sadr City, which was known as Saddam City until after the war, when it was renamed after Muqtada’s father. It is a sprawling collection of slums; the worst in Baghdad.

“We don’t like the US Army in our city, and we make it difficult for them.”

This is true. Whenever US troops or foreign contractors go to Sadr City, they are almost invariably shot at by locals, and now seldom enter at all.

Ahmed is working outside a government office at a little desk, to which people bring papers for him to staple and notate. He stops often to make time to talk to me, and occasionally gets yelled at by his bosses.

“The Mahdi Army are good people and want peace. The Americans have killed many Iraqis and that is why they fight them.”

Though he is a Shia, he says that his allegiance to Al-Sadr is not for religious reasons. It is because Sadr has stood up against “the foreign occupiers”. He sees Saddam as a tyrant, and the US as the main force that put that tyrant into power. Then they turned against him, when he wouldn’t do as they told him to do. It’s a historic account, which is difficult to argue with.

“The United States didn’t care about all the people dying for years when they were friends with Saddam. Now they care so much that they want to liberate us. It is only so they can put someone in power, who they like”

“Do you want to go to Sadr City? He suddenly asks. I tell him that I do, and that I was there a year ago, but wonder if I’d survive it now. He talks with some friends about the possibility of me going there with him, but they conclude that I would be mistaken for an intelligence agent, and be killed. I ask him if bringing me in would be bad for him, as well.

“Yes, problems for me. I think maybe I would be killed, too.”

When I ask about the situation in Iraq now, as opposed to before the invasion, he laughs and gestures around us, implying that I simply look at my surroundings for the answer.

A middle-aged man who has been silently listening chimes in, “Saddam was bad for the people’s rights, but good for security; the United States is bad for the people’s rights, and bad for security.”

July 5th 2004

I am in a small section of Baghdad where most foreigners stay, and security is much higher than in the rest of the city. I’m feeling comfortable now. It’s hot and dangerous out on the street, but at least the taxi drivers can be trusted not to make me feel uncomfortable.

The majority of those staying at the Palestine Hotel, where I’ve just checked into, appear to be journalists and businessmen. I meet many of the latter, who are openly ecstatic about the amount of money to be made in Iraq. Some of the less talkative of these are employees of the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog, Brown, and Root, or “KBR” as it is commonly referred to.

I immediately think of Mr. Abdula Ghalib Ali, who I met in the Kirkuk hospital. I decide to try to talk to someone here at the company’s Iraq headquarters to inquire into his well-being. After all, he was an employee of theirs, wounded on duty.

It is easy to find the floors reserved for KBR, because they have extra private guards blocking the hallway. When the elevator door opens on a KBR floor, it is their job to make sure that nobody, who isn’t an employee, gets off.

I ask to speak to someone who may be able to give me information about wounded employees, and compensation offered to them. The guard doesn’t seem to like me. He tells me there’s nobody to speak to, and to get back in the elevator. I ask if I could speak to someone concerning KBR’s policy, concerning medical treatment of wounded employees. For example, would a wounded American employee be sent to an Iraqi hospital for substandard treatment, or is that just for Iraqi employees? No answer.

I take a taxi to an infamous prison outside a town one hour west of Baghdad called Abu Ghraib. It used to be infamous as Saddam’s torture prison, but its reputation has been redefined recently.

By the side of the highway there are two entrances; one paved road that leads to heavily guarded gates, and one dirt road that leads to a makeshift earthen parking lot, for those who wish to visit their loved ones inside. The immense facility itself isn’t visible from the road; only barricades, sandbagged sniper towers, and walls of more razor wire. A US sergeant tells me that I can walk freely around the outside of the perimeter.

It is dry and windy, and dirt blows into my eyes. The temperature is 120 degrees, and since there are no structures outside the wire, there is no shade from the unrelenting sun. About forty people wait, crouching or standing. I’m told that family visitors have a minimum of a five-hour wait to get inside, if they get in at all. There are several children that are just simply hanging around, waiting for the guards to give them candy.

Two women with covered heads approach me, holding snapshots of their teenage sons. They want me to take photographs of the snapshots, and tell the government that their sons are innocent.

Four men, wearing white robes, then want me to look at notarized documents, written by the National Alliance of Iraqi Clans and Tribes, and addressed to ‘the American General in Abu Ghraib’. They state that the research by American forces about certain inmates is flawed, and that those inmates should be set free.

As I get closer to the visitor entry point, a tall, quiet, slightly disheveled man in his twenties, named Saddam Hussein (“Not that Saddam Hussein.”, he laughs) tells me he is there to visit his brother.

“Many Iraqis in Abu Ghraib are innocent, and shouldn’t be here. They were captured by Americans who can’t tell the difference between one Iraqi and another. A large percentage of them were just in the wrong place. I personally know examples of this.”

“What is your brother accused of?”, I ask, trying to be sensitive about the way I word the question.

He laughs again, “Oh him? He’s guilty. He was selling more guns than he was allowed to sell. When he gets out, I will make sure he won’t do it again.”

American soldiers permit me to get close to the building, as long as I’m accompanied by one of them. It is surprisingly calm on the inside of the wire. My escort tells me about how sad it is when masses of poor Iraqis show up every day to fight over garbage, when trucks bring it from inside the prison, and dump it on the ground outside.

After returning to the secured hotel area, a young national guardsman on duty strikes up a conversation with me. His name is Patrick, and he sits atop an armored vehicle behind a mounted gun. He’s bored, so as a joke, he has tree leaves attached to his helmet as extra camouflage. Most of the US soldiers I’ve met are understated, if not stoic, but Patrick is immediately talkative and somewhat manic.

“I joined up for the college money. I didn’t think I was going to see kids getting blown up!”

Patrick got married two days before he shipped out to Afghanistan for nine months. He’s been in Iraq for longer than that.

“When my mom calls and asks me how I’m doing, what the fuck am I going to say? You can’t tell your mom that you just saw women and children’s body parts scattered on the street; that you just found a hand still holding something in it. I say, ‘I’m fine, mom.’ My dad’s deployed too, and my sister just went to college, so she’s alone now. She’s been a stay-at-home mom for twenty years, and now she’s alone and has to work at a fuckin’ department store.”

He speaks about the difficulty many US solders have, re-acclimatizing to civilian life.

“They’re giving us antidepressants now, when we go on leave, so we don’t go into a deep depression. My brother-in-law is home for a while, but he calls me every day. It’s like he’s still here. He’s my wingman. On patrol, it’s his job to protect me. He has to call all the time to make sure I’m okay.”

He looks down, puts his hand on his wrist, and says,”Shit, my arm’s shaking again.” “When one of our guys, my friend, died, the chaplain put it to us in a really good way. He said, “you know, you’ll never be able to talk to anyone about this, when you get home. They just won’t understand.” That made a lot of sense. Now I know why my uncle never told me one single story about ‘Nam. He’ll probably be one of the only ones I can talk to, when I get back.”