|
COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Nicholas Lemann on when Bush decided to fight
Seymour M. Hersh on who forged evidence against Iraq
From 1991, the motives of the first Gulf War, and why it didn't settle the question of Saddam
The morning the first cruise missiles hit Baghdad, on March 20th, I was in a suite at the Al Rashid hotel, in a room facing south, which provided good reception for satellite phones and a panoramic view of some primary targets: the telecommunications tower; several grand domed palaces; and the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the secret police. I was awake around five-thirty and heard a big, muted whoomping noise. Then my bed moved, as if there had been an earthquake rather far away. I thought I heard a high-flying jet go past, followed by anti-aircraft fire and air-raid sirens. There was more firing and, as a light-blue dawn broke, silence, except for the sound of a rooster crowing, birds singing, and a muezzin calling out "allahu akbar"over and over. Not long afterward, Paul McGeough, the correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, who was staying in the next room, received a phone message from his office saying that we had to move out of the Al Rashid because it was "a high-value target.”
There had been rumors all week that the Al Rashid would be hit, perhaps because, it was said, there was a secret Presidential bunker under it, or because a tunnel linked it to Saddam Hussein's main palace complex across the street, or simply because it was in the way of missiles headed for the palaces or key office buildings nearby. Journalists had been hedging their bets about where to stay once the bombing started, booking rooms in several hotels and moving back and forth. The night before the missile attack, McGeough and I shared a dirty little room with two single beds in the Palestine Hotel, a run-down place that was built in the nineteen-eighties, during the Iran-Iraq war, on the other side of the Tigris River. The Palestine was popular because it overlooks the palace complex but isn't uncomfortably close to it. We were able to get a room when a Canadian news organization ordered its reporter to get out of the country and he gave us his keys, but we were so miserable there that we moved back to the Al Rashid, where the gardeners were still watering the lawn and clipping the shrubs, and where enough of our colleagues were staying that we felt the safety of good company, if not numbers.
I had hoped to stay in my favorite hotel in Baghdad, the Al Safeer, a small, family-run place on Abu Nawas street, on the same side of the river as the Palestine. I stashed food and water and other emergency supplies--candles, matches, batteries--there and visited several times in the days leading up to the war. The Al Safeer is near some open-air fish restaurants, which, in normal times, are brightly lit and jovial, with Middle Eastern music blaring from speakers on the walls. Many of the houses in the neighborhood are dilapidated mansions, with wrought-iron balconies and arched windows and doors. Farther down Abu Nawas from the Al Safeer there are several art galleries, a theatre, and a cafe where men sit outside and play dominoes. Narrow lanes run from Abu Nawas to Sadoun Street, a boulevard lined with watch shops and kebab restaurants and movie houses. The week before President Bush announced that President Hussein had forty-eight hours to get out of town, the movies running on Sadoun Street included "American Pie,"a teen-sex film, and "Inner Sanctum,"a thriller that, judging from the garish illustrations on the billboard advertising it, must be pretty gruesome.
My driver, Sabah, would often take me for a haircut and a shave on one of the back streets near the Al Safeer, at a small barbershop owned by a man named Karim, who has been cutting Sabah's hair for thirty years. Karim served us sweet black tea, in little glass cups and saucers, from...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
