Let's talk about ... Iraq

January 14, 2004                                                                                 

A bomb on the doorstep

From James Twyman:

As you know, about a month ago, the Beloved Community was responsible for funding a center for homeless children effected by the war in Iraq. Our friend Donna Muhearn rented a house in Baghdad and has already served dozens of children who would otherwise be living on the street. This has been one of the major ongoing problems since the war "ended" and because so much work at the Beloved Community is about children, we feel this is an important calling.

I also wanted to give you an idea of what Donna has to endure to do this work. I have included a recent email where she describes a bomb that was detonated right outside the children's home. Each one of us feel that we have been called to be Spiritual Peacemakers in the world today and though the REAL solution cannot be found through our leaders and governments, it is important that we do not live with our heads in the sand. We need to embrace every aspect of peace, especially where  it seems to be most lacking. I hope you will read this letter in that light. Donna and the others who are working with her have risked everything to be Emissaries of Light, and we are each called to do the same wherever we live.

From Donna:

Dear friends

About 8 o'clock this morning I was trying to do decide what to do: 'should I have a shower now or go down the street and fetch some milk first?' I quickly jumped in the shower - I usually can't function in the morning without one. That decision may have saved my life.

A few minutes later, as I stood with wet hair in the kitchen of our apartment, the force of a bomb blast knocked me off my feet. The sound of the bomb and then of a thousand plates of glass shattering, hit my ears like a cricket bat across the head. I screamed as I hit the floor.

Down on the street near our apartment, a roadside bomb had detonated as a US military convoy passed. It blew the head off an Iraqi man and maimed the bodies of two others. We quickly ran down to the street as a large crowd of locals gathered. I saw the body of  the man killed as it lie on the road, it was still but for the fingers twitching every now and then. A sheet was quickly thrown over him but a thick trail of dark red blood flowed from under the sheet. It slithered like a fat snake through the mud and settled in a puddle of rainwater. I also heard the groans of the man whose right arm was blown off and I saw the flesh of his left arm as it hung off his body.

Mayhem settled in

People were yelling and screaming. Questions. Confusion. Journalists and cameras arrived. The American soldiers, scared and nervous, barked out orders that didn't seem to make any sense. I stood there with my hands shaking so much I couldn't hold my camera still. As a westerner, a journalist, perhaps I should have been stronger, but as people ran around me here and there, I just stood back and watched the scene.

I started to cry. I put my head down so nobody would see me. No one else was crying, foreigners anyway. They were busy taking pictures, hearing the story, talking. I kept crying. I couldn't talk. The sight of the body, the blood, the tanks, the soldiers, the guns, the yelling, the broken glass strewn across the street, the chaos that had taken over my otherwise safe Kerrada neighborhood - it all struck me speechless. I watched the children as they watched the chaos unfold and I cursed it all under my breathe.

The soldiers got angrier. They aimed their guns at the crowd, then the tops of buildings, then back at the crowd. More journalists arrived. More cameras. I wondered if this would make it onto the news at home, but with no American soldiers killed, I figured it was unlikely to rate a mention. "There's no story here," one soldier yelled at me when I approached him to ask what happened.

The people disagreed. The man killed was a well-known local who was on his way to the bank. He stopped at a cigarette stall and was hit by flying shrapnel as he bought a packet of smokes. He had a wife and family. The people also disagreed on who was to blame."They are terrorists, those who planted this bomb," one told a journalist.
"The Americans are the terrorists," a man next to him said. "They've brought with them nothing but death. They are responsible for this." Most of the crowd agreed and a group started chanting anti-American slogans up and down the street.

I tried to talk to the soldiers, to ask them how they felt, but they didn't want to chat with me. They responded angrily prompting one bystander (who looked and sounded remarkably like me) to challenge their presence here ... One soldier responded in no uncertain terms:  "We don't want to be here! I have a wife and daughter at home, do you think I want to be here?"

So the soldiers don't want to be here. The Iraqis don't want them here. It seems one point on which both sides here agree! It's just a few politicians sitting behind desks on the other side of the world who want these young kids to risk their lives for a mission they admit they don't understand. I asked a fresh-faced soldier, only 22 years old, why he was here in Iraq and not back at college studying to be an accountant? "For the excitement," he said. "Like today, this is exciting!" As the crowd gently lifted the body of the Kerrada father of two into a wooden coffin and into a nearby mosque the mood was far from 'exciting'.

The shopkeepers of Kerrada Street started to sweep up the glass of their smashed shopfronts from the footpaths. It's a busy street, with colourful fruit shops, falafel stores, vegetable carts, bakeries, gift stores, furniture shops. It's bustling and cosmopolitan - reminds me of King Street, Newton. Today dozens of shops with smashed windows and extensive damage were forced to close. Who knows when they'll be back in business? I looked up to the shop-top apartment buildings that line the road - every second window smashed. Tonight the fresh winter air will be an uninvited guest into many family homes, all the more bitter  with no electricity to power heaters. But there'll be no insurance claims or compensation payouts for these hard-working business people and the residents of Kerrada Street. All this is just part of life in 'liberated' Iraq.

But remarkably, as the cameras started to leave, the fruit vendors unpacked their bananas and the furniture shop swept up its glass and then put its lamps and lounges out onto the footpath as usual. Kerrada Street, in inner city Baghdad - today it saw tanks, blood, guns, angry crowds and grief. It also saw Iraqi people determined to get on with life with a resilient spirit.

Today I was going to write home about Christmas. About the kids. About other aspects of life here in Baghdad. I'm sorry that I've had to write about bombs and death. But I guess it's an aspect of life here in Baghdad. Life under occupation .But so is resilience and hope.

Donna

For further information about J. Twyman & the Beloved Community:  www.emissaryoflight.com