Leaving Baghdad

As we crossed the Syrian border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began. How can such a small distance separate life from death?

Editor's note: Baghdad Burning, the blog written by a young Iraqi woman named "Riverbend," has given readers around the world an intimate, and devastating, look at the situation in Iraq. Salon occasionally runs postings from her blog.

By Riverbend

Read more: Military, Middle East, Iraq, Arab, Opinion, Jordan

Sept. 21, 2007 | Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items that it took me, E. and our 6-year-old neighbor to zip it closed.

Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I've had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you've accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia -- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.

I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I'd eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more "stuff" than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn't be tempted to update its contents constantly.

The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased -- one for each member of the family -- and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we'd collectively need: graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.

We waited ... and waited ... and waited. It was decided we would leave mid- to late June -- examinations would be over and as we were planning to leave with my aunt and her two children, that was the time considered most convenient for all involved. The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip -- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed.

There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving?

It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car -- like gazelles in the jungle, it's safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my mom's who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left. (We can't leave the house empty because someone might take it.)

It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I'd been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won't cry, I kept saying, because you're coming back. You won't cry because it's just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basra before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.

We didn't sleep the night before we had to leave because there seemed to be so many little things to do. It helped that there was no electricity at all -- the area generator wasn't working and "national electricity" was hopeless. There just wasn't time to sleep.

The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk -- the one I'd used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we'd gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls; the pictures had long since been taken down and stored away, but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over -- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.

I knew then as I know now that these were all just items -- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.

Six a.m. finally came. The GMC waited outside while we gathered the necessities -- a thermos of hot tea, biscuits, juice, olives (olives?!) that my dad insisted we take with us in the car. My aunt and uncle watched us sorrowfully. There's no other word to describe it. It was the same look I got in my eyes when I watched other relatives and friends prepare to leave. It was a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, tinged with anger. Why did the good people have to go?

Next page: How can crossing a border no one can see or touch bring peace and safety?