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by Lisa Ndejuru
Baghdad March 12, 2003

Monday I went to the visa office for visa renewal. I was granted another 6 days reprieve. It’s just like this oncoming disaster, one never knows going in how many days one has left or why one is asked to live or was that leave. It’s the strangest feeling to be asking, begging to be allowed to stay in Irak in what is promised by the US to be modern warfare at it’s so-called best. After having weakened the ennemy by twelve years of sanctions and a drawn out disarmement procedure the US government is about to send in their biggest and loudest and brightest and kabboum! It’s absurd. I can’t believe people really do atrocious things like torture and blow others up. I know I don’t want to die here, I really enjoy life. The question is: how do I manage to let go out of the outcome even while I pay attention to every detail of every day and stay conscious? How do I prepare for the possibility of death without giving up on life? Neither is sure. And death is not the worse that can happen. We are looking at some scenarios and I wish I had an off switch on my body: if ever I did not want to go on anymore I could simply turn the switch.

I finally found my wedding gown. The store is called Beth al Iraq. It is owned and operated by Amal. It is one of the most beautiful places I know in Baghdad. I go there to remember that this place is not just poor and beaten people looking to the ground. Beth al Iraq is a place of privilege and luxury. It’s magical. Amal gathers arts and crafts and people. She is a grande dame. Petite yet round, piquante, timeless grace and sophistication: the creme of Baghdad’s cultural milieu have had tea in her salon or in the garden.

The store is made like a treasure cove. Every room has chests or armoires, spilling with beautiful fabrics and woven rugs, perled shawls, carved chessboards and pieces, painted mirrors, and art on the wall. The interior garden sports a palmtree that goes staight for the sky where there used to be a ceiling twelve years ago. There is one room with a fireplace and chairs and fauteils and an alcove with big cussions and thrown rugs in browns and reds. The old stone house is near the bridge. The bridge was bombed in the first Gulf war. The house lost its roof and its third floor. The second and first floors are still standing.

My wedding gown is not in fact a gown as much as a long coat in a fabric so light and translucid I cannot possibly wear it over naked skin until the party is over and we are alone my partner and I. Strange that I should have a gown but no partner. Maybe it is not so strange as every Thursday many many people here in Baghdad get married. Hotels all over the city offer great specials to newly weds on that evening.

For the first time in my life I know that I not only want to be married but that I want to have a ceremony too. I finally feel up to making the various decisions and choices inherent to such a move: my invitations will be stamped into a thick inky recycled paper like the one I got my prescription on when I went to get my eyes checked on kerrada street. I would like flowers, lots of flowers. Maybe the orange blossoms that will be out soon and that I can already smell when I walk near the orange trees on the way to the office. The meal would probably be a potluck pick-nick, or maybe a meshoui when the sun goes down, or if that’s too big, maybe grilled chicken with rice, baked tomato garlic and parsley. Maybe a small liturgy by candle light. Something simple, heartfelt.

I don’t have a vision for the ideal home yet but I think I’d like to live as we do here in a community. In a place and a time and with people who are all working and living in a common blueprint for the world as we know it to be possible. I could see us as I am now, away from home on an assignment or maybe we could be gypsies, traveling peace people, pitching our tent in troubled neighbourhoods, or investing an existing place with music and song, soup and bread and beauty. (This has me thinking I’d like to do more arts more crafts. I would enjoy using the clay I had originally gotten for the children in the hospital. Maybe I could do it with the children in the streets or on the pavement in front of the hotel. There are so many things we could do with the children, if they felt like it). Maybe we could make more soup. Maybe we could pick a part of the park and clean it of the rubbage on it and re-invest the park and play. Maybe this is tacky but I often think about it when walking down abu Nawas street along the Tigris river.

There is a lot of garbage in the park. The other day, walking down the street on the way to Amal’s treasure cove I saw a dead dog among the garbage. It already stank. I did not know what to do. I did not pick it up or bury it and was glad to see it was gone on my way back.

Every time I go to the visa office, I never get my visa the first time I ask for it. I take the sting of rejection very much to heart. Why would Irak not want me to stay? And then I know why: Irak doesn’t need me to stay. I need to stay because I need to come to grips with facts of life and war and I am. I am understanding that the reality here in Irak is not black or white. It isn’t by chance that this current conflict is polarizing world opinions. Many currents come together here and clash. We are at the crossroads of the occident and the orient, coming full circle to the place where our current leading civilisational model began, in a time where it may have reached it’s limits and must adapt, must transform into something greater, more just, more inclusive or die.

As the US is considering using a record setting arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in a desperate attempt at global domination, we, as one humanity are closer and closer to proving ourselves uncapable, un creative and unworthy of the power, the intelligence, the conscience and the free will we can exercise if we so desire.

The greatest challenge of humanity as I see it is to channel energy, steadily, constructively and creatively. I know we have the ressources, the knowledge, the technology, the manpower, and the vision to create a world equal to our collective imagination and I believe there are priorities.

In the 1945 preamble to the Charter of the United Nations , the peoples of the United Nations determined: “to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that the armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, ...”

What common interest of the peoples of all Nations would warrant the use of the armed force?

I propose that we the peoples amend the charter of the United Nations to read that “the armed force shall not be used, ever!”. Then maybe we, the peoples of all Nations could re-unite and “combine our efforts to accomplish” the aims we’ve articulated in our Charter.

Today March 12th 2003 at 6:30 am, the Iraq peace team was in front of UN Headquarters in Baghdad protesting the evacuation of UN personnel. Our Banners read: “Farewell UN. Please advise: who will protect Iraqi children if you leave?”

We, the Iraq peace team have chosen to stay and so we stood along the road the UN shuttles were scheduled to leave on holding up poster size pictures of iraqi people we have met.

The evacuation was rescheduled for Saturday. Sunday I’m up for visa renewal.

Much love from Baghdad

Lisa