Especially for The New Times, the French reporter Ann Niva visited where you can hardly meet a European or American, on the eastern shore of the Tiger
To survive in today's Baghdad, one must be invisible. Especially for The New Times, the French reporter Ann Niva visited where you can hardly meet a European or American, on the eastern shore of the Tiger.
Ann Niva Translation - Valeria Novodvorskaya
- Ali and Saddam -
Having wrapped himself in a black abbre (a long and wide tunic with long sleeves), putting on sandals and hiding my hair under a scarf, unnoticed through the streets of Baghdad. Obvisibility is the right guarantee of my security and the only way to make a report from this city. In order not to arouse suspicions, I am most often silent in public. Only my interlocutors know that they are dealing with a foreigner, but I’m never telling anyone where I live, who I stop from, whether I came for a long time. My local contact of Ali is lucky in his gray Peugeot 306, bought immediately after the sale of the previous BMW: this BMW really striking. This is the first sign of difficult times: the inhabitants of Baghdad are sophisticated in modesty and invisibility to survive, in the hope of at least some changes.
But what should happen? No one knows. One thing can probably be said: people do not trust anyone else. "We buried ourselves in our own houses, hid in the cracks - is this not the limit?" -32-year-old Ali, who remained in Baghdad, is cursing, while most of his friends and members of his family are today in the position of refugees in Syria, Jordan or Sweden.
“I am a shis, my uncles and cousins were killed at Saddam, I got this regime, but today, if Saddam’s legs suddenly appeared in front of me, I would rush to kiss them!” - He says in his hearts.
The heat reaches 50 degrees, but there is no electricity in the capital. New key characters appeared in the city quarters. They own private generators who supply precious electricity 8 hours a day per “quarter”, corresponding to the amount of amperes. In Mustarsia, on the eastern shore of the Tiger, where I lived for 15 days, the only hour of state electricity - from 6 to 7 in the morning. And of course, the whole house wakes up from this blissful short -term wave of freshness, because all home electrical appliances are immediately in synchronously: air conditioners, fans, TVs, refrigerators. Yes, for those who have funds for this, a small generator is able to plug all holes. The device consumes 20 liters of gasoline per day, which is a lot for a poor country: if at Saddam Hussein 40 liters could be bought for 50 euro -centers, today for the same amount of fuel on the black market you need to pay 50 euros or take state -owned car stations where you can pay only 20 euros, but to stand in line for four or five days. And still, they pump you no more than 40 liters. “All the time it goes to the extraction of gasoline or electricity ... and add here another problem of violence. My sisters can be kidnapped or killed with a bomb. Even I risk driving by car only when it is really necessary, ”Ali continues.
- Ali and his six sisters -
From morning to evening, the inhabitants of Baghdad live in oppressive expectation of trouble. This reminded me of the worst clock spent in Grozny in the fatal winter of the 1999-2000 years. Everyone tries to hide in the family circle. They move only on foot and only within their quarter or watch TV. Of the six sisters Ali, only two got married, four are waiting in line. But even in these troubled times, Ali's father continues to accept grooms, he still will not give up: while the Americans occupy the country, and the Iraqi military are engaged in internecine showdowns, he will not marry his daughters simply from the instinct of self -preservation. He himself can somehow ensure their safety. It will be worse if they leave for families living in other places and, perhaps, in more dangerous quarters.
Mustarsia is a mixed quarter, which is now actively “shiitizing” because Sunni families are moving to the other side, where the Sunni majority lives, in pursuit of all the same safety. In the afternoon we meet with one such candidate for departure. “I am changing houses with the Shiite family from Adhamia (this is in a way the capital of the Sunni rebels around which American forces build a“ security wall ”, which causes a lot of protests. - A.N.),” she says. “I leave my furniture here, and they leave their own there, and then we'll see.” She is a widow and, despite the fact that she is only 30 years old, already a mother of seven children. She did not tell me how much this “transfer” cost her, but I know from other sources that this type of real estate transactions is more and more common. Real estate agents of a new type even carry lists of households “to choose from and for exchange”, and interested parties sign a “contract”, according to which they undertake to live in a house belonging to another family, “until the situation improves.” But when this can happen, even the Americans do not risk answering.
Ann Niva is a French reporter, daughter of Slavist Georges Niva. A long -term correspondent in Moscow of a number of French publications. The author of several reports of reports, including from Chechnya.
