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?
I cried as we left — in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried, the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic, but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to “keep it on until you get to the border.” The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition — it’s to wish the travelers a safe return … eventually.
The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying, but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.
Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.
We waited for hours, in spite of the fact that the driver we were with had “connections,” which meant he’d been to Syria and back so many times, he knew all the right people to bribe for a safe passage through the border. I sat nervously at the border. The tears had stopped about an hour after we’d left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, the ruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon — all helped me realize how fortunate I was to have a chance for something safer.
By the time we were out of Baghdad, my heart was no longer aching as it had been while we were still leaving it. The cars around us on the border were making me nervous. I hated being in the middle of so many possibly explosive vehicles. A part of me wanted to study the faces of the people around me, mostly families, and the other part of me, the one that’s been trained to stay out of trouble the last four years, told me to keep my eyes to myself — it was almost over.
It was finally our turn. I sat stiffly in the car and waited as money passed hands; our passports were looked over and finally stamped. We were ushered along, and the driver smiled with satisfaction. “It’s been an easy trip, Alhamdulillah,” he said cheerfully.
As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver, who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.
The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Kurds — we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.
We were all refugees — rich or poor. And refugees all look the same. There’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces: relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.
The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness. How is it that a stretch of only several kilometers and maybe 20 minutes so firmly segregates life from death?
How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and … peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe — even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.
I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of roadblocks, Hummers and pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr and the rest …
How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?
The Great Wall of Segregation is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It’s a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest ‘Sunni’ area in Baghdad — let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will ‘protect’ A’adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn’t empty of Sunnis.
The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, “Oh look — we’re just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here — it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!” And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn’t enough, apparently — Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It’s time for America to physically divide and conquer — like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of “Shia areas” and Shia out of “Sunni areas.”
I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq’s history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven’t been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.
I remember Baghdad before the war — one could live anywhere. We didn’t know what our neighbors were — we didn’t care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it — depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
On a personal note, we’ve finally decided to leave. I guess I’ve known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively, because it was just a preposterous idea — leaving one’s home and extended family — leaving one’s country — and to what? To where?
Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion — a last-case scenario — soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?
After Jordan or Syria — where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren’t being let into Syria or Jordan — and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.
An airplane isn’t necessarily safer, as the trip to Baghdad International Airport is in itself risky and travelers are just as likely to be refused permission to enter the country (Syria and Jordan) if they arrive by airplane. And if you’re wondering why Syria or Jordan, because they are the only two countries that will let Iraqis in without a visa. Following up visa issues with the few functioning embassies or consulates in Baghdad is next to impossible.
So we’ve been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees — the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare — stay and wait and try to survive.
On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else — as yet unknown — is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I’ve had since the age of four? Is there room for E.’s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don’t even know if we’ll ever see this stuff again. We don’t know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends … And to what?
It’s difficult to decide which is more frightening — car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
This has been the longest time I have been away from blogging. There were several reasons for my disappearance, the major one being the fact that every time I felt the urge to write about Iraq, about the situation, I’d be filled with a certain hopelessness that can’t be put into words and that I suspect other Iraqis feel also.
It’s very difficult at this point to connect to the Internet and try to read the articles written by so-called specialists and analysts and politicians. They write about and discuss Iraq as I might write about the Ivory Coast or Cambodia — with a detachment and lack of sentiment that, I suppose, is meant to be impartial. Hearing American politicians is even worse. They fall between idiots like Bush — constantly and totally in denial — and opportunists who want to use the war and ensuing chaos to promote themselves.
The latest horror is the study published in the Lancet journal concluding that over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war. Reading about it left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it sounded like a reasonable figure. It wasn’t at all surprising. On the other hand, I so wanted it to be wrong. But, who to believe? Who to believe? American politicians … or highly reputable scientists using a reliable scientific survey technique?
The responses were typical — war supporters said the number was nonsense because, of course, who would want to admit that an action they so heartily supported led to the deaths of 600,000 people (even if they were just crazy Iraqis)? Admitting a number like that would be the equivalent of admitting they had endorsed, say, a tsunami, or an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, or the occupation of a developing country by a ruthless superpower … Oh wait, that one actually happened. Is the number really that preposterous? Thousands of Iraqis are dying every month — that is undeniable. And yes, they are dying as a direct result of the war and occupation (very few of them are actually dying of bliss, as war supporters and puppets would have you believe).
For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc. seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that’s about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush — especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers. So far, the only Iraqis I know pretending [the Lancet] number is outrageous are either out-of-touch Iraqis abroad who supported the war or Iraqis inside of the country who are directly benefiting from the occupation money and likely living in the Green Zone.
The chaos and lack of proper facilities are resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?
We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first- or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons — with so many different ways to die, is the number so far-fetched?
There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.
Let’s pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam had killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in the Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al.
Everyone knows the “official numbers” about Iraqi deaths as a direct result of the war and occupation are far less than reality. (Yes, even you war hawks know this, in your minuscule heart of hearts.) This latest report is probably closer to the truth than anything that’s been published yet. And what about American military deaths? When will someone do a study on the actual number of those? If the Bush administration is lying so vehemently about the number of dead Iraqis, one can only imagine the extent of lying about dead Americans.
I sat late last night switching between Iraqi channels (the half dozen or so I sometimes try to watch). It’s a late-night tradition for me when there’s electricity, to see what the Iraqi channels are showing. Generally speaking, there still isn’t a truly “neutral” Iraqi channel. The most popular ones are backed and funded by the different political parties currently vying for power. This became particularly apparent during the period directly before the elections.
I was trying to decide between a report on bird flu on one channel, a montage of bits and pieces from various latmiyas [Shiite processions in which the faithful flog themselves] on another channel and an Egyptian soap opera on a third channel. I paused on the Sharqiya channel, which many Iraqis consider to be a reasonably toned channel (and which during the elections showed its support for Allawi in particular). I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the page. The usual — mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an American soldier killed here, another one wounded there, 12 Iraqi corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read it correctly.
E. was sitting at the other end of the living room, taking apart a radio he later wouldn’t be able to put back together. I called him over with the words, “Come here and read this — I’m sure I misunderstood” He stood in front of the television and watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was feeling.
The line said:
وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات التحاالعاملة في تلك المنطقة
The translation: “The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”
That’s how messed up the country is at this point.
We switched to another channel, the “Baghdad” channel (allied with Muhsin Abdul Hameed and his group), and they had the same news item, but instead of the general “coalition forces” they had “American coalition forces.” We checked two other channels. Iraqiya (pro-Dawa) didn’t mention it and Forat (pro-SCIRI) also didn’t have it on its news ticker.
We discussed it today as it was repeated on another channel.
“So what does it mean?” my cousin’s wife asked as we sat gathered at lunch.
“It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don’t have to let them in,” I answered.
“They’re not exactly asking your permission,” E. pointed out. “They break the door down and take people away — or have you forgotten?”
“Well, according to the Ministry of Defense, we can shoot at them, right? It’s trespassing — they can be considered burglars or abductors,” I replied.
The cousin shook his head, “If your family is inside the house, you’re not going to shoot at them. They come in groups, remember? They come armed and in large groups — shooting at them or resisting them would endanger people inside of the house.”
“Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they don’t have Americans with them?” E. asked.
We sat drinking tea, mulling over the possibilities. It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning — the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.
But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can’t even trust its own personnel, unless they are “accompanied by American coalition forces.”
It really is difficult to understand what is happening lately. We hear about talks between Americans and Iran over security in Iraq, and then the American ambassador in Iraq accuses Iran of funding militias inside of the country. Today there are claims that Americans killed between 20 and 30 men from Sadr’s militia in an attack on a husseiniya [Shiite religious centers named after the imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed] yesterday. The Americans are claiming that responsibility for the attack should be placed on Iraqi security forces (the same security forces they are constantly commending).
All of this directly contradicts claims by Bush and other American politicians that Iraqi troops and security forces are in control of the situation. Or maybe they are in control — just not in a good way.
They’ve been finding corpses all over Baghdad for weeks now — and it’s always the same: holes drilled in the head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hanged. Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their homes by security forces — police or special army brigades. Some of them were rounded up from mosques.
A few days ago we went to pick up one of my female cousins from college. Her college happens to be quite close to the local morgue. E., our cousin L., and I all sat in the car, which, due to traffic, we parked slightly farther away from the college to wait for our other cousin. I looked over at the commotion near the morgue.
There were dozens of people — mostly men — standing around in a bleak group. Some of them smoked cigarettes, others leaned on cars or pickup trucks. Their expressions varied — grief, horror, resignation. On some faces, there was an anxious look of combined dread and anticipation. It’s a very specific look, one you will find only outside the Baghdad morgue. The eyes are wide and bloodshot, as if searching for something, the brow is furrowed, the jaw is set and the mouth is a thin frown. It’s a look that tells you they are walking into the morgue, where the bodies lay in rows, and that they pray they do not find what they are looking for.
The cousin sighed heavily and told us to open a couple of windows and lock the doors — he was going to check the morgue. A month before, his wife’s uncle had been taken away from a mosque during prayer — they’ve yet to find him. Every two days, someone from the family goes to the morgue to see if his body was brought in. “Pray I don’t find him … or rather … I just — we hate the uncertainty.” My cousin sighed heavily and got out of the car. I said a silent prayer as he crossed the street and disappeared into the crowd.
E. and I waited patiently for H., who was still inside the college, and for L., who was in the morgue. The minutes stretched and E. and I sat silently — small talk seeming almost blasphemous under the circumstances. L. came out first. I watched him tensely and found myself chewing away at my lower lip, “Did he find him? Inshalla he didn’t find him” I said to no one in particular. As he got closer to the car, he shook his head. His face was immobile and grim, but behind the grim expression, we could see relief. “He’s not there. Hamdulilah [Thank God].”
“Hamdulilah.” E. and I repeated the words in unison.
We all looked back at the morgue. Most of the cars had simple, narrow wooden coffins on top of them, in anticipation of the son or daughter or brother. One frenzied woman in a black abaya was struggling to make her way inside, two relatives holding her back. A third man was reaching up to untie the coffin tied to the top of their car.
“See that woman — they found her son. I saw them identifying him. A bullet to the head.” The woman continued to struggle, her legs suddenly buckling under her, her wails filling the afternoon, and although it was surprisingly warm that day, I pulled at my sleeves, trying to cover my suddenly cold fingers.
We continued to watch the various scenes of grief, anger, frustration and, every once in a while, an almost tangible relief as someone left the morgue having not found what they dreaded most to find — eyes watery from the smell, the step slightly lighter than when they went in, having been given a temporary reprieve from the worry of claiming a loved one from the morgue.
When I first heard about the abduction of Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll a week ago, I remember feeling regret. It was the same heavy feeling I get every time I hear of another journalist killed or abducted. The same heavy feeling that settles upon most Iraqis, I imagine, when they hear of acquaintances suffering under the current situation.
I read the news as a subtitle on TV. We haven’t had an Internet connection for several days, so I couldn’t really read about the details. All I knew was that a journalist had been abducted and that her Iraqi interpreter had been killed. He was shot in cold blood in Al-Adil district earlier this month, when they took Jill Carroll … They say he didn’t die immediately. It is said he lived long enough to talk to police and then he died.
I found out very recently that the interpreter killed was a good friend — Alan, of Alan’s Melody, and I’ve spent the last two days crying.
Everyone knew him as simply “Alan,” or “Elin” as it is pronounced in Iraqi Arabic. Prior to the war, he owned a music shop in the best area in Baghdad, Al-Arasat. He sold some Arabic music and instrumental music, but he had his regular customers — those Westernized Iraqis who craved foreign music. For those of us who listened to rock, adult alternative, jazz, etc., he had very few rivals.
He sold bootleg CDs, tapes and DVDs. His shop wasn’t just a music shop — it was a haven. Some of my happiest moments were while I was walking out of that shop carrying CDs and tapes, full of anticipation for the escape the music provided. He had just about everything, from Abba to Marilyn Manson. He could provide anything. All you had to do was go to him with the words, “Alan — I heard a great song on the radio … you have to find it!” And he’d sit there, patiently, asking, “Who sang it? You don’t know? OK, was it a man or a woman? Fine. Do you remember any of the words?” Chances were that he’d already heard it and even knew some of the lyrics.
During the sanctions, Iraq was virtually cut off from the outside world. We had maybe four or five local TV stations, and it was only during the later years that the Internet became more popular. Alan was one of those links with the outside world. Walking into Alan’s shop was like walking into a sort of transitional other world. Whenever you walked into the store, great music would be blaring from his speakers and he and Mohammed, the guy who worked in his shop, would be arguing over who was better, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai.
He would have the latest Billboard hits posted on a sheet of paper near the door, and he’d have compiled a few of his own favorites on a “collection” CD. He also went out of his way to get recordings of the latest award shows — Grammys, AMAs, Oscars, etc. You could visit him twice and know that by the third time, he’d have memorized your favorites and found music you might be interested in.
He was an electrical engineer, but his passion was music. His dream was to be a music producer. He was always full of scorn for the usual boy bands — N’ Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc. — but he was always trying to promote an Iraqi boy band he claimed he’d discovered, Unknown to No One. “They’re great — wallah [I swear to God] they have potential,” he’d say. E. would answer, “Alan, they’re terrible.” And Alan, with his usual Iraqi pride, would lecture about how they were great simply because they were Iraqi.
He was a Christian from Basra and he had a lovely wife who adored him — F. We would tease him about how once he was married and had a family, he’d lose interest in music. It didn’t happen. Conversations with Alan continued to revolve around Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, but they began to include F., his wife; M., his daughter; and his little boy. My heart aches for his family — his wife and children …
You could walk into the shop and find no one behind the counter — everyone was in the other room, playing one version or another of “FIFA Soccer” on the PlayStation. He collected old records, or “vinyls.” The older they were, the better. While he promoted new musical technology, he always said that nothing could beat the sound of a vintage vinyl.
We went to Alan not just to buy music. It always turned into a social visit. He’d make you sit down, listen to his latest favorite CD and drink something. Then he’d tell you the latest gossip — he knew it all. He knew where all the parties were, who the best DJs were and who was getting married or divorced. He knew the local gossip and the international gossip, but it was never malicious with Alan. It was always the funny sort.
The most important thing about Alan was that he never let you down. Never. Whatever it was that you wanted, he’d try his hardest to get it. If you became his friend, that didn’t just include music — he was ready to lend a helping hand to those in need whether it was just to give advice, or to listen after a complicated, difficult week.
After the war started, the area he had his shop in deteriorated. There were car bombs and shootings, and the Badr people took over some of the houses there. People went to Al-Arasat less and less because it was too dangerous. His shop was closed more than it was open. He shut it up permanently after getting death threats and a hand grenade through his shop window. His car was carjacked at some point and he was shot at, so he started driving around in his father’s beaten-up old Toyota Cressida with a picture of [Ayatollah Ali al-] Sistani on his back window. “To ward off the fanatics,” he winked and grinned.
E. and I would stop by his shop sometimes after the war, before he shut it down. We went in once and found that there was no electricity and no generator. The shop was dimly lit with some sort of fuel lamp, and Alan was sitting behind the counter, sorting through CDs. He was ecstatic to see us. There was no way we could listen to music, so he and E. sang through some of their favorite songs, stumbling upon the lyrics and making things up along the way. Then we started listening to various ring tones and swapping the latest jokes of the day. Before we knew it, two hours had slipped by and the world outside was forgotten, an occasional explosion bringing us back to reality.
It hit me then that it wasn’t the music that made Alan’s shop a haven — somewhere to forget problems and worries — it was Alan himself.
He loved Pink Floyd:
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we
Had to run for shelter when the
Promise of a brave, new world
Unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye. Goodbye.
(“Goodbye Blue Sky,” Pink Floyd)
Goodbye Alan …
This piece was originally posted on Riverbend’s blog, Baghdad Burning, on Jan. 12.
