The day before receiving me, the ayatollah had declared – in this country where attacks are increasing every day – that it is a mistake to kill US soldiers, and that whatever objectives the Iraqis seek to achieve by assassination can be reached by peaceful means, through dialogue. I thought that he would repeat to me the same diplomatic declaration, but I was wrong. Speaking slowly, and gesturing gently to illustrate his words, he delivered a severe diatribe against the ‘coalition forces’. He never speaks about the Americans or the British, just about the ‘coalition’, but we both know very well who he is talking about.
‘The liberation was a mere pretext. The coalition troops have become occupation forces. Bush and Blair made many promises that they have been incapable of fulfilling. There is no security at all in the country, and our sovereignty has been snatched away from us. As a pretext for the war, they argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but they have not been able to find them. Nor have they been able to capture the former dictator and his followers, despite the fact that they are people who eat and move around and leave tracks. If they had let us act, we would have found them by now.’
He speaks without raising his voice and without looking at me, his blue eyes are staring into the distance, with the quiet determination of one who knows that he is in possession of the truth. His halfdozen assistants listen to him with wrapt attention, indifferent to the horrendous heat that has turned this small, bare room, with a large bunch of plastic flowers as its one adornment, into a frying pan. Ayatollah Al Hakim is a man who rarely smiles and who pontificates and proclaims rather than speaks, like the prophets and the gods on Olympus. Crouching behind him is a man who never takes his eyes off me, ready to leap on me if I make any suspicious movement. Being so close to Ayatollah Al Hakim makes me feel deeply uneasy. Although, like all agnostics, I recognise that I secretly envy believers, when these believers are as absolute and categorical as the Iraqi imam in front of me, it makes me shiver.
‘The war has not ended,’ Ayatollah Al Hakim continues. ‘Discontent among the people is increasing every day, as are the acts of resistance against the occupying forces, which is very serious for the future of Iraq. There are different reasons for this resistance: promises made to us are not kept and our dignity is humiliated. I’m referring to the behaviour of the occupation forces. They kill innocent people and they are incapable of finding the real culprits for the crimes committed by the dictatorship. They steal quite brazenly from the private houses that they search, taking the family’s money. They take advantage of the fact that since there are no banks, people have to keep their money in their houses. As well as stealing they offend our women, they touch them and that hurts and upsets our people. Here, in Najaf, we have already organised five demonstrations to protest against these abuses. It is true that surviving groups attached to Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party also commit terrorist attacks and sabotage. But this, to a great extent, is the fault of the coalition troops, because, instead of hunting down the Ba’athists and the followers of Saddam, they disarm us, the popular forces. But that just increases the anger of the Iraqis against the occupiers.’
Indeed, adorning the earthen walls in the drab, run-down, poverty-stricken streets of Najaf, a two-hour drive to the south of Baghdad, where the dust from the surrounding desert swirls around, staining everything the colour of yellow ochre, alongside the death notices for the many people who are brought to this holy city to be buried, there are many anti-coalition inscriptions and graffiti praising the ‘Soldiers of Islam’ who are fighting against the infidels and Satan. But none of them mention the Americans by name; they all rail against ‘foreign hegemony’ as well as proclaiming ‘Death to Saddam and the Ba’athists’.
The hostility towards the coalition troops, and the anti-American feeling, is very tangible among the crowd of believers heading towards the mosque in a great procession, the women dressed in severe abayas, tunics and black veils, that cover them from head to foot. Many of them, in addition, wear black woollen stockings and some even gloves, in temperatures of forty-five degrees in the shade. The mass of the faithful grows even denser around and inside the imposing mosque that contains the tomb of Emir Ali. My translator, Professor Bassam Y. Rashid, who is the director of the Department of Spanish at the University of Baghdad, is constantly explaining to all and sundry that we are not ‘Americans’, but we are stared at and gestured at in a hostile manner as we make our way to the mosque. The people are even more belligerent inside the mosque.
This is very different to what happened to me in the main Shia mosque in Baghdad, the mosque of the Khadim Brothers (the grandsons of Emir Ali), where I was greeted most cordially by the people who ran the place. They even joked that they had to make a good impression on foreigners to dispel the rumours put about by their enemies, that Shia are fundamentalist. This accusation is doubtless quite unjust. Along with the Kurds, the Shia were the ones that suffered the worst excesses of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni and surrounded himself with Muslims of the same religious tendency. There are doubtless many moderate Shia just as there are fundamentalist Sunnis. In broad terms the division between the two main currents of Islam is that the Shia religion is rooted in the more primitive sectors, the rural and marginal groups, while the Sunnis come in the main from the urban sectors, are better educated and better connected socially. The Shia have always been excluded from power, which has been a Sunni monopoly.
The worst poverty and neglect I have seen is here in Najaf and in the other sacred Shia city near by, Kerbala. Realising that the crowd was hostile to us – we are the only ‘Westerners’ in sight – the two people in charge of the Emir Ali mosque decide to put us in an office and then ask us to take our shoes off. There the man in charge of the mosque decides to give me a history lesson and tells me in great detail about the remains of Prince Ali. (The same thing happened to me yesterday, in Baghdad, in the mosque of the Khadim Brothers, when a holy man explained to me at length that, at the end of time, Christ would come to kiss the hand of El Madi and, from then on, Muslims and Christians would become brothers.) I listened patiently. After he was murdered in Kerfa, the remains of Muhammad’s son-in-law were buried secretly by the faithful. They remained hidden for many years. Some time later, during the caliphate of Harun Al Rachid, the caliph noticed when he was out hunting crows that the dogs always kept a respectful distance from a certain mound. There they discovered the remains of the Emir. This beautiful mosque was then built to honour them.
While he is instructing me, I observe the mass spectacle of the believers. They come into this enormous rectangular patio with the coffins of the dead held aloft and they walk them around the crypt of the Emir. The great throng of men push and elbow each other, chanting, praying, praising Allah, some in a state of hysterical paroxysm. It is doubtless impressive but, for me, very depressing. Hands and lips reach out to touch and kiss the walls, the railings, the grooves and ridges of the doors, and some of the faithful sob at the top of their voices, prostrate, touching the ground with their forehead. Around the crypt, the group is all male. The women, dark shapes, remain behind, crowded together at the rear of the mosque, keeping a magic distance from the men, who are the only protagonists in this dramatic ceremony. My teacher explains that many of the faithful are pilgrims who have come here from far off – ‘some from Bosnia’ – and that they sleep on these sacred tiles.
‘Isn’t it the same in Lourdes or in Fatima?’, a Spanish friend tries to console me that same evening in Baghdad when I tell him about how uneasy I felt after the visit to Najaf as we drank a warm, acid beer in the semi-darkness during the latest power cut. Is it the same? I don’t think so. In these great centres of Catholic pilgrimage, there is a whole commercial apparatus involved, a major tourist exploitation of faith, which rather undermines this faith, but also makes it seem inoffensive. There is nothing of this here: here faith is pure, integral, disinterested, extreme, the only thing that many of these people, destitute and ravaged by
poverty, have to hold on to as they scream and shout out their prayers, and this could easily be channelled into violence – a holy war or jihad – by a charismatic ayatollah like the one I am visiting in Najaf.
Taking the advice of friends in Baghdad, I asked Morgana and her friend Marta, from the Iberoamerican-European Foundation, not to try to enter the mosque of Prince Ali, and to wait for me instead in the main square at Najaf, and look around the colourful market. But I’ve never had the slightest authority over my daughter, so there they were, swathed in borrowed abayas, with their foreign faces visible to all, passing themselves off as Afghan Muslims! And Morgana, with that temerity that she’s always shown ever since she made her cot shake with her furious tantrums, started taking photographs. An agitated believer went up to her and flung a blow at her face, which was deflected by the camera. The bodyguard accompanying her put his head in his hands, upset at this show of obscurantism. Marta was more fortunate: instead of being greeted with aggression, she received, in English, a marriage proposal, which she turned down.
We visited the other Shia holy city, Kerbala – more open and less claustrophobic than the cramped, poverty-stricken city of Najaf – which is the site of two immense and strikingly beautiful mosques, one of which is the burial place of Imam Hussein, the son of Prince Ali, who was killed in the Yazid invasion. But the hostility in the air was such that we decided to cut short our visit and leave, with great regret, that beautiful place with its golden cupolas, tiled walls and squares and marble floors. In that city as well, in the shady arcades of the market, and in the narrow streets with its houses that looked on the point of collapse, we are pressed on all sides by a crowd that looks on us with hostility and disgust. The attempts of the three Baghdad friends that were travelling with me to convince them that we were not Americans but Spanish Muslims on a religious pilgrimage, does not convince them. My friends tell me that we should hurry up and get out. The democratic virtues of tolerance and coexistence in diversity seem alien to these parts.
When I ask Ayatollah Al Hakim what he thinks about what is happening in neighbouring Iran, where we have recently seen an increase in demonstrations by young students demanding more freedom and democracy from the repressive conservative government, he wriggles out of the question: ‘I do not have reliable information as to what is happening in Iran. We do not even know accurately what is happening in other provinces in Iraq. I do not dare take seriously what certain information media, in Qatar, the Emirates and Jordan, put out because they are just looking to incite violence and hate, so I prefer not to have an opinion on this matter.’
He doesn’t reply very openly when I ask him if he would accept a secular government for Iraq: ‘Would a secular government mean a government against religion?’ he replies tersely. I tell him not, that such a government would not be in favour or against religion, it would be independent and neutral on religious issues, it would restrict itself to guaranteeing respect for all beliefs.
Imam Al Hakin can barely disguise his displeasure: ‘Islam must be respected,’ he says firmly. ‘Like in Pakistan, Egypt or the Maghrib, which are Islamic countries. That is the type of state that Iraq will have.’
I have been given scarcely half an hour and my time is nearly up. One of the imam’s assistants is indicating in a peremptory fashion that I should take my leave. I try to move the conversation on to a more personal level and ask him how he felt when he came back to Najaf, after an absence of more than two decades. The imam is a politician who never drops his guard and he gives me the official answer: ‘I feel both happy and sad. Happy because I am among my own people and the tyrant has been overthrown, but saddened by the two million disappeared that we had in the years of Saddam Hussein, by the common graves where we find the remains of tortured and murdered brothers, and by the suffering and hardship that the Iraqi people are still suffering today.’
I left there convinced that Al Hakim would certainly like the future Iraq to be like Iran, but that he knows that the people of Iraq and, above all, the Americans would find it very difficult to agree to this, and that, as a pragmatic politician, he has given up for now this goal in favour of a more realistic and less theocratic formula: a coalition of religious, political and ethnic forces, in which the Shia, because of their overall majority, would still have majority representation. Despite his vociferous criticism of the occupying forces, I am quite sure that at this stage, at least, he would work with the Provisional Coalition Authority and Paul Bremer.
I discuss this issue with my Baghdad and Spanish friends in a restaurant full of the turbans and abayas of Kerbala, called The Pearl of Najaf, with the inevitable fried chicken with rice, pureed beans and gherkin salad with yoghurt. A menu that would shadow me throughout the twelve days of my stay in Iraq. Morgana and Marta have taken off their veils to eat, and our fellow diners look at them out of the corner of their eyes, with surprise.
I return to Baghdad, with a heavy heart, without being able to get out of my mind the image of these women buried their whole lives – in Najaf and Kerbala, you see young girls buried beneath these robes – in these mobile prisons that deny them any comfort in these suffocating temperatures, which prevent them from developing their bodies and their minds freely, a symbol of their subordinate position, their lack of independence and freedom. This is the Middle Ages, severe and harsh. And if this prevails over the other social and political forces in Iraq, the idea that this country can become a modern, functional democracy in a short period of time, is illusory.
25 June–6 July 2003
4. Looters and Books
If the visit to Najaf and Kerbala was a journey back to medieval Iraq, the morning that I spend in the National University of Baghdad shows me the most modern and progressive aspect of Iraqi society. Young men and women mingle in the courtyards, in the corridors and in the lecture halls with complete naturalness, and many young women walk around without any headgear, showing their arms, although most of them cover their hair with the Islamic veil. The only thing that still brings to mind the Arabian Nights in Baghdad are the eyes of the Baghdad women. It is graduation day and there is a festive, boisterous atmosphere. Entire subject year groups are being photographed under the trees, with bunches of flowers and with their professors in the middle. Young men are dancing to lively music that is being broadcast through loudspeakers, singing at the top of their voices, cheered on by the women. Morgana moves among the dancers, in her element, and she is very well received. The atmosphere is friendly, happy and trusting. (But, the following day, in this cafeteria, a US soldier who was talking to a group of students was killed with a bullet in the head by an individual who ran off.)
I am in the Languages Faculty, which has close to five thousand students, eight hundred of them in the Department of Spanish. They have good teachers, and I interrupt a couple of classes and have a lively discussion with students of both sexes, who are very keen to hear about Spain. By contrast, they know little about Latin America. The building is in a ruinous state because of the looting, but no one seems to be bothered since all the students are in excellent humour.
The lecturers have just been paid their salary for April, a delay of two months. The recent upheavals have meant that salaries have seen some extraordinary readjustments. People who were formerly paid the equivalent of five dollars a month (they were always badly paid, but after the Gulf War and the international embargo salaries reached rock bottom) have now received 250 dollars. However, the Rector has already announced to them that this will be cut back next month to 165 dollars. Nobody knows the reasons for these arbitrary rises and falls, or how long this fickle system, which reflects the chaotic economy of the country, will last. The only thing that is clear is that Iraqi university teachers find it very difficult to live on what they earn, which is why so many of them go to teach in Libya, Jordan or the Gulf Emirates, where the salaries are high.
It is a pleasure to talk to the head of the Languages Faculty, the stout, curly-haired and exuberant Dr Dia Naf
i Hassan, a specialist in Russian literature and language and an expert on Chekhov and Turgenev. His office is an oven, and is practically empty because everything in this university – in the five Baghdad universities – was looted and burned when the dictatorship fell on 9 April, so they do not have ventilators, desks, chairs, computers, filing cabinets or books. The walls are blackened, the windows and window-panes are broken, and there are no tiles on the floor of the corridors and stairs. Perhaps worst of all, they have no records of student enrolments, grades and files because they have all been burned. ‘Like all institutions, the University of Baghdad has returned to a virginal state,’ the Dean jokes. But this hurricane of barbarism which devastated the university, like the Huns of Tamerlane, ‘the sons of hell’, who devastated ancient Mesopotamia, indifferent to the civilisation that produced the artistic and intellectual marvels of Nineveh and Babylon, seems not to have made the slightest dent in the good humour and optimism of the colleagues and students of Dr Dia Nafi Hassan, who tells me excitedly that, as a forerunner of what would soon be happening throughout Iraq, the University of Baghdad had undertaken to implement a democratic system. There had been recent elections, and here, in the Faculty, he had been elected Dean with forty-two of the fifty-three votes cast. He is proud of the legitimacy of his mandate. His enthusiasm seems to be shared by the other members of staff present.