Baghdad Journal

Three Days of Images

I.
A man who works downstairs tells me he rushed two Iraqis to the hospital yesterday after the humvee exploded in front of our apartment. He witnessed the whole scene--he tells me about it today over a breakfast of sweet tea and bread. He has images in his mind. He tells me he saw two American soldiers who had their legs severed from the blast. This image stays with him. Other people in Baghdad had their images too. Yesterday produced lots of images, real and imagined. An AP photographer I spoke to said a soldier had his knee cap blown off in the same incident. A San Francisco journalist still had the image of the severed head of a little girl from the Jordanian Embassy car-bomb a few hours before, as he drank his tonic water and laughed uncomfortably in the Al Hamra Hotel cafe later that night.

Graham, the Getty Photographer, and his wife, "She's a shooter too, man," had their images, but they weren't talking about them. He was lounging poolside. His wife was swimming. He was waiting to order beer. "He's fuckin' lyin' man," when I ask him about the little girl's head. "I didn't see anything like that." But other reporters saw the same scene, the detail about the little girl was written into Reuters and AP stories. The war photographer doesn't believe the image. He sent his images back to London. They were already in circulation on the web, would be in tomorrow's newspapers. "This is what we come here for man," he said.

II.
Two days ago we were in Al Waiya children's hospital, talking to a man whose son stopped eating just after the U.S. bombed Baghdad during the first Gulf War. The son, Shwakat, was 6 months old at the time. Now 13, he is totally wasted. His skin is a powdery white, his eyes roll into the back of his head, his bony hands are like dead crabs on his chest. His father spoons him milk from a small glass, then squeezes his nose to get him to swallow. The father has a haggard face. He wears a wool, grey glove on one hand, the hand holding the milk. He's angry at the U.S. for bombing, he's angry at Saddam, at his sons, who starved the people of Iraq. The boy wheezes when he breathes. Like a weak, boy Christ he bleeds from his ankles. He wears diapers. There's a generic cartoon character on his t-shirt which reads CIRCUS. He's epileptic the doctor informs us. He has permanent brain damage. I could post the photographs, but their affect is numbing, too real, or not real enough. In life, he looks like the worst suffering boy, a horror. In the photographs, he looks like a puppet created in a Hollywood studio.

III.
Last night I dreamt Brandon and I interviewed Saddam Hussein. Then I dreamt I was in Oakland, in a bad part of town, when a fight broke out and some men began to beat the hell out of each other. The image of a man taking a pipe to another man's head, and the blood, and the glass on the street, like the shop glass everywhere in front our building.

IV.
The nervous face of the soldier from Virginia a few days ago in the shop next door to the Alrabiya. His skinny face, his beady eyes alert, wary. He kept shifting under the weight of his 40 pound vest and gear. The image of his captain haggling over the price of DVD players they were buying there. The Virginia soldier watching the door, blocking the back half of the store. He holds his gun across his chest, with his finger near the trigger. I see his face, when I imagine the injured soldiers.

V.
Mohammed, an Iraqi driver working for businessmen in the apartment , told us last night he pulled one of the injured soldiers into the lobby of the Alrabiya. The soldiers leg was broken. The man who translated for the driver said, "Then he caressed the soldier. He was crying from fear. Mohammed wiped his tears. He caressed him and wiped the blood from his face, from his arms."

VI.
The Basqe Argentinian's 9mm Berreta, the clip out on the table downstairs in the living room last night. Bullets next to a brass fish, next to an ashtray. He bought the gun from the U.S. military. Also on the table, a No Escort badge with his passport image. He has all access to Saddam's palaces, to CPA headquarters. He works for the Saudi businessman, who has a work contract with the U.S. government. Ezekequial Garat, the Argentinian, the son of an ambassador, tells us a story of a soldier finding five of Saddam Hussein's Mercedes. The soldier drives over them in a tank, destroying them completely. The image of the flattened cars sticks with him. He thinks it's a story, a good story, one for the newspapers.

VII.
This morning there is a charred hole in the ground where the humvee was parked. There are people sweeping the sidewalk across the street, sweeping the glass and rubble. The building edifice is burnt and full of holes. I photograph the scene. I want the images, the story in them. The glass blown out of every window. The young man dumping a wheel-barrow full of trash in the charred hole in the middle of the street. The satellites still standing on the sidewalk. The sun rising above the buildings, the hot dust in the air above the street.

Posted by Adam Shemper at August 8, 2003 06:34 AM | TrackBack