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Mazika, arabic music source

Friday, March 7, 2003--Day 15

I went with Rumzy, Julia, and Muhammad this afternoon to a town just outside of Baghdad called Ctesaphon, once the capital of the Persian Empire.  Although Ctesaphon was arguably the most important city in the world at one time, what's left now are only the remains of one palace, a façade, several walls - reconstructed in places, and a supremely well-built arched roof that has withstood centuries of gravity. 

    
Standing in the ashes of a once powerful Empire, I sometimes find myself between heaven and hell (to borrow a phrase from Kathy Kelly), which in Iraq are often side by side.  When we left Ctesaphon, for example,

we visited an ancient mosque (Salmon al Farsi) that was ornate and breathtaking.  I was allowed to enter and take pictures (which seemed sacrilegious) while Julia - an independent filmmaker - was barred for not having proper attire (abaya). 

Upon returning to our hotel, the contrasts continued.  I met with my affinity group, some of the best people on the planet, to discuss war-preparedness, and someone suggested using curtains as makeshift body-bags if the need arises.  The meeting was adjourned when Cynthia (our money exchanger) handed out banded wads of one hundred - $250 dinar notes (worth a total of $12) to those in need.  Everyone laughed when I said this seemed surreal.

I then walked from the Al Fanar, our hotel, to the Palestine hotel next door, an early evening stroll in 70 degree temperature, passing a row of newly blossomed daisies and marigolds beneath date-palm trees.  Yet traffic alongside me was heavy, dark fumes from car exhaust spewed from several older cars, and a chorus of courtesy honks from aggressive Iraqi drivers nixed any possibility of hearing the Tigris just beyond the parkway.

Inside the Palestine, I paid 2,000 dinar to log onto the internet, was blocked from accessing information from a free website about the history of the Persian Empire, so I sent an e-mail to my support group in Louisville instead.  I then moved to a different computer that handles incoming e-mails, and I read wonderful communiqués from Archana, Sam, and David.  For this I paid an additional $3,500 dinar.

I returned to my hotel, where Achmed, a teenager, greeted me outside and gladly shined my shoes for 1,000 dinar.  I took the elevator up to the Voices' office and huddled with a dozen others on the balcony to listen to Hans Blix's report by short-wave radio.  My heart sank when I heard him say that despite immense improvement, "Iraq could have done more to comply."  Here goes another war, I thought. 

We then hopped in cabs and headed to the Iraqi museum where we listened to Iraq folk music in a packed auditorium.  Five musicians, playing a violin, a gamaje (some version of a xylophone from what I could tell), a tambourine, a nye (wooden flute), and a zamar (a tube-like bongo) accompanied a rotation of singers.  They produced a sound that was both dissonant and spiritual, a mournful cry to God that seemed to resonate deeply and evoke cries of joy.  It was a sound that both attracted and repelled me, a sound somewhere between heaven and hell.          

Asparginase

Saturday, March 8, 2003--Day 16

The IPT and CPT delegations went together to a water-treatment facility today, where the CPT’ers planted a date-palm tree across the road.  The tree represents life, hope, and regeneration, which are desperately needed for Iraq’s crumbling infrastructure. 

     During the Gulf war, some water and sewage treatment plants and electrical generating plants were bombed, and after 12 years of sanctions, most other facilities have become severely degraded.  The oil-for-food program doesn’t generate enough to upgrade them.  One of the consequences is that children in Iraq are dying of treatable diseases, like diarrhea and typhoid.  I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating:  According to the UN, over 500,000 children have died in Iraq as a direct result of US imposed sanctions.  That’s genocide.  To blame Iraq’s government for this is ludicrous.  Before the sanctions, typhoid was unheard of here, and Iraq had one of the best healthcare systems in the world.  The sanctions have only hurt Iraqi civilians and strengthened Iraq’s government.

     I just came from the Children’s hospital.  I went with Bettyjo, Kathy Breen, Elaine, and Jerry, and I had the privilege of meeting and spending time with four little children who have leukemia.  I met Brahim (4), Hassem (6), Leena (7), and Machmood (4), and we read them stories in English – which they didn’t understand but appreciated anyway.  We gave them coloring books, crayons, and beads with string to make necklaces.  These were projects that my cohorts devised; I was just a tag-along.

     I got more than I bargained for.  As soon as we entered, the children’s mothers must have thought I was a doctor.  They held up empty medicine bottles and began pleading with me in Arabic to find a way to get more.  They were scared and angry, and some were crying.  I didn’t know what to do.  I tried not to cry myself, for fear of frightening them more.  I wrote down the name of the medicine, “asparginase,” and discussed it with the others.  Many things are banned by the sanctions because of “dual use” potential, including some cancer medications.  Even pencils for school children, I later learned, have been banned because the carbon supposedly could be used to coat airplanes and make them invisible!  (Iraq Under Siege, p. 188).  Asparginase, I’m told, is not banned, but all requests for imports need to go through the sanctions committee in New York, a process that can sometimes take months.  The delay is killing children. 

     Kathy Kelly has called the embargo a “weapon of mass destruction” that targets the most vulnerable of society, children especially.  That the embargo was imposed to rid Iraq of WMD capability is a joke.  The US is the leading producer and possessor of WMD, the only country that’s used atomic bombs, and is the only country that I know that threatens to use nuclear weapons preemptively.  For the US to use WMD’s to rid other countries of WMD cannot work.  It will only encourage more production and use of WMD’s, and continue to slaughter innocent children, like the ones I met today.