In The Red Zone

May 2, 2005

[Note: I'm adapting e-mails sent to my wife for these blogging ventures. For security purposes, I have changed the names of people and some destinations. I also beg the readers' patience on any factual errors I may make, and literary lapses and shortcomings they may detect--this is being written on the fly, where impressions and instant analysis comes first, fact checking and editing second. (Corrections are encouraged, of course.)]

Dear Lisa,

Greetings from the ____ Hotel in downtown Basra. It's about 10 pm Mesopotamian time, I'm sitting in bed, banging this out on the laptop, watching some silly Jim Belushi direct-to-video on Dubai's [?] Channel 2, while just across the courtyard outside my window chugs the funduk (hotel) generator, compensating for the city's power grid, which seems to go down about every three hours of so. As for getting here: may your enemies be stuck in visa hell. I'd been warned that it was a sticky wicket attempting to enter Iraq via Kuwait, but I figured given the short distance to Basra, it was worth a try. Well, well. To make a long story short, to my decidedly unpleasant surprise, I discovered on April 28th that my transit visa--so easily obtained at the Kuwaiti airport--did not allow me to "transit" the country into Iraq. Panic, visions of an ignominious flight back to New York, of embarrassed explanations to magazine editors...

Fortunately, my purest chance in Kuwait I fell under the efficacious wing of Zainab Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, who led me to an wonderful Kuwaiti organization called the "Humanitarian Operations Center." The HOC, as it's called, is a government-financed organization that coordinates Iraqi relief efforts originating from Kuwait. Here, a genial, relaxed, slightly roguish McHale's Navy-like crew--among them Colonel Kazem M. Mahassain, his son Mohammad, Subhi Alhadhoud, Mohammad al-Saffar and several others whose names I never got--showed immense patience dealing helping a confused sahafee (journalist) exit their tiny country, a process that required me to fly to Bahrain, cool my heels for a day or two, then return to Kuwait under a "multi-entrance" visa and yes, yes, all very tedious, but a word to wise who want to follow in my footsteps. I repeat, may your enemies be trapped in the snares of the improper forms, the missing signature, the mis-printed date, the bureaucratic stamp that never falls...

Happy ending. At 8:15 a.m. today, Mr. Farrid--the driver from the Al Baghli Transportation Company--picks me up at the Oasis Hotel. A portly, genial guy, he makes short work of the Kuwait City traffic and soon we're roaring across the desert floor in an SUV, Egyptian music blasting from the cassette player, the day hot, dry and cloudless, whooshing past signs reading "DISCOVER ISLAM, THE WORLD'S FASTEST GROWING RELIGION WWW.SULTAN.COM" and "MUTA'ALA RANCH GOD BLESS U.S. TROOPS" and animal flocks grazing in the scrubby fields bordering the highway--sheep, goats, and camels--while in the distance towers of brilliant orange oil fires swirl and leap like mystic apparitions on the desert floor, even as they spew torrents of thick black smoke. At Abdaly, we turn left toward Basra, the intersection supervised by US troops, one giant soldier standing in front of a humvee like a khaki-colored terminator. Within moments, we're in the town of Safwan, basically a border area where the streams of traffic heading into and out of Iraq converge, forming long lines of cars and lorries waiting for baggage and cargo checks, passport and visa control points, the constant bang-bang of stamps smacking documents. The paperwork goes without a hitch--however, I'm told, to my surprise, that I must have an HIV test within four days of arriving in Iraq, a pro forma requirement for all visitors. But still, with all that, the document nightmare is over.

Mr. Farrid lacks the proper paperwork to enter Iraq, so he hands me off to Ali, acting evidently as my unarmed "bodyguard," since he came accompanied by Hussan, the actual sayyiq (driver). Whereas Farrid was a round and slightly epicene Egyptian, Ali and Hussan are pure Iraqi in their way--dark, edgy, dressed in soiled disdashas, Ali with startling icy-gray eyes, jittery, talkative. After the polite lethargy of Kuwait and Bahrain, this comes as kind of a shock, its like Iraqis exist on nerves and adrenaline and can we not understand why?

Iraqi border

We pile into a 1980 Chevy Caprice, and within minutes we've crossed into the Land Between the Rivers, bouncing along at 80 mph listening to the inevitable Arab music, flashing past palms and goats and idle construction equipment, talking in broken English-Arabic about Iraq, Shi'ism, Sistani, Khomeini--one of those conversations that university professors and think tank analysts would give anything to hear--me sweating uncomfortably because, of course, the back windows will not roll down and the car has no a-c.

A statue of a smiling dolphin arched in an acrobatic leap--the once-charming monument shattered, however, by age, warfare and neglect, a mangy dog circling within the ambit of its shadow--tells me I'm on the edge of my destination. We pass the police check point where, just a few days ago, a car bomb detonated, killing a policeman and several passersby. Soon, it's half-decomposed mud and brick structures, spindly wood support slats sticking out of the side and tops, streets filled with garbage and standing pools of sewage, small shops and greenish brown palm trees. Al-Basrah, port of call of Sindbad the Sailor and my home for however my money, stamina and personal safety holds out...

Soon after Ali and Hassan dropped me off at my hotel, the desk clerk tells me I have a telephone call. "A Madam Layla is on the phone." [Note: readers of In the Red Zone will know who this is; for security and personal issues, I have promised to disguise her identity even further.] Hearing her voice was nice after the previous week of visa snafus, pointless air flights and aimless wandering in hotel lobbies waiting for e-mails. We made arrangements to meet when she got off work at 4, and I went up to my small, spartan room that overlooks the hotel courtyard, and went to sleep.

Later that afternoon, Ali and Hassan returned, and for two hours they toured me around Basra. My idea is to get to get as clear an idea of the physical condition of the city, which, I must say, hadn't changed as much since I was here in the winter of 2004. One delight, however: the Shatt-al-Arab, flowing Arabian Gulf-wards, trawlers, tourist boats, tugs and a decrepit navy ship berthed along its shore, palms lining the eastern bank, egrets skimming the surface of its bottle-green waters.

Shatt-al-Arab

One change is significant, and needs mentioning: when I was here last, Shia religious imagery was everywhere--pictures of Imam's Ali and Hussain, along with the ubiquitous posters of Moqtada al-Sadr cradling his father, slain by Saddam Hussain, in addition to black Shia banners exhorting people to observe the faith, pray to Allah and make sure their women wore hejab. Now, that sort of Shia proselytizing is conspicuously absent--even Moqtada's posters are largely gone. Instead, one sees colorful billboards advertising the happy future of the new Iraqi state. What this change of imagery means, how significant it is, I will explore in the coming days and weeks.

Ali and Hassan dropped me off at the funduk, and I just had time enough to clean up before Layla arrived. She looked just as charming as I remembered--buknuk, scarf and all--which relieved me, for I feared the nearly inconceivable stresses of her life had affected her physical health. But no, she was the same--coquettish, whip-smart, angry, cynical, melancholy, hopeful--yet feeling increasingly trapped in the social madhouse of Iraqi social, tribal and religious norms. We settled in the hotel restaurant to catch up.  Much of our conversation was personal matters about her life--I wish multiculturalist apologists for misogynistic, patriarchal social customs could hear Layla talk about the intolerable conditions she must endure, many aspects of which I have written about, and will allude to again.  We also discussed Iraqi politics and the current situation in Basra.

"In Basra, conditions are different than up north," she told me. "In Baghdad, it is all explosions, insurgents, terrorists. Here, life is in flux, the very fabric of our existence is changing. We see it happening all around us, but we don't know what direction it will take. Everything is so amorphous, uncertain and unpredictable."

Which is why I'm here, I told her. And hopefully can stay to report on some of these issues. More--insha'allah-- to come.