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Where to begin.

Yesterday Baghdad fell.

Today is Thursday april 10th 2003. I am sitting in Amman, on Ramsey's computer Alycia Keyes is singing "falling". "I keep on falling in love with you." Love hurts but I think I've said that before. On my first day in Amman I went to the internet café and Celine Dion was singing "Alive". Sometimes it turns out that way and life throws you a song. Life or Sony Music. "gitchi gitchi ladadada, lady marmelade!." Well.. maybe not, the situation here is bad and getting worse. I am flippant because I really don't know what else to do. Since we got here, one week ago, we went to deposit our reports and concerns to the US embassy and the UK embassy. We never made it past security at the US embassy but at the UK embassy Sean O'Sullivan, Dave Havard, Stuart Vriesinga and I were welcomed by two officials and sat down around a table and had a long talk. My emotions got the better of me when we spoke of civilian casualties, of the overrun hospitals and the chaos to come and the official reponse was that it may be painful now but that the pain would be short lived and that people would soon recognize that it was all for the better and "reconcile" with US /UK coalition's position. The man was earnest. I had to leave the room. My tummy is acting up. I cannot eat properly. I guess reaction has finally set in. I shiver and shake often. The reality gap glares at me. I sing to keep it from swallowing me. We also worked on a proposal for a peace convoy to keep the road open and draw attention to the safety of those traveling, to the need of keeping the lines of communication and supply open not only for our Voices but for all civilians. A peace bus convoy to travel back and forth from Amman to Baghdad. The only thing holding us back was red tape. Try as we might, we could not get visas for Iraq. The project was tabled.

The first two or three days were filled with nonstop media work. As soon as we left Iraq we left the isolation we were in after some weeks without news internet or telephone and were assailed by the same uninterrupted newscoverage that everybody else has been under. My poor family had been dealing with weeks of this. I had been shocked in Baghdad once, it was the night the B52's left London to come to start bombing, the phones were still running then and I was on the phone live with radio Pacifica. A pannel was discussing the bombing and asking me what it felt like. It had not yet started and they had footage. I trust Pacifica they have done nothing but outstanding work. I was standing in the hotel lobby of the al Fanar looking out to the sky assuring them that no, it had not started yet, not trusting my own perception, my own experience. I hung up the phone and went to take a drive around the city. And then the bombing started.

When we left Baghdad on april 1st, the ministry of information released a message that was picked up by CNN that a convoy of peaceactivists had been bombed by the americans. When we crossed the border into Jordan our own Thorne Anderson was there waiting, out of his mind with worry. When we got to the first rest stop news crews were waiting with a crowd of people to see the damage. It was a case of misinformation. Our trip was completely uneventful exept for the fact that the drivers drove as though the hounds of hell were at their tails and the first two cars lost sight of the third one for an hour or so. The media is very difficult for me to take in. I can still only take in minimal amounts of CNN in one sitting. After four days I felt completely out of touch with the situation in Baghdad. Old News! I would sit near a crying Um Hayder, our friend from Basra who had left Baghdad some weeks before us and was still waiting for a visa to go to the US for medical care for her son Mustapha who still has shrapnell in his body from the 1998 bombings that killed his brother in Basra. Um Hayder was worried sick about her family, still in Iraq, especially her daughter of 15, Hint, who is terribly afraid of bombs and was hysterical when bombing started in Basra a month or so ago and cannot sleep alone anymore. Um Hayder couldn't leave the television set, starved for every bit of information she could get. CNN BBC AL Jazeera nonstop, it was grueling.Thank god for Mustapha, her son who needed lots of attention to keep out of trouble, play and eat. Um Hayder left Tuesday. She finally got her traveling papers through the nonstop work of Cole, an american friend who had come to continue what Chris had started when he came to get Um Hayder in Iraq. Chris had to get back to the States to his family after a few weeks of desperate wrestling with paperwork and iraqi and american officials.

Yesterday Baghdad fell. A very smug Mr Rumsfeld threatened Syria. I'm shaking again. We received news from Baghdad that the hospitals that had been receiving up to one hundred casualties per hour were not counting any longer, completely overrun. A friend
from Doctors without borders went missing with a collegue, no one has any news. Some journalists were killed in the past days among them a reporter from Al Jazeera. In the war on Afghanistan the Al jazeera was attacked as well and lost at least one reporter, there is speculation if there is foul play, the US trying to silence or at least punish dissenting voices. The Palestine Hotel, across the street from our hotel in Baghdad where all the not imbedded reporters were staying was hit a few days ago and some reuters people were killed. An AP person was either hurt or killed as well.

The news shows people looting, scurrying about, and I'm shaking: these are the proud people who graciously offered me tea on street corners, in galleries and homes, they and all those not shown, locked up in their houses in fear of the chaos as the lid on the pressure that has been built for months, years comes crashing down. The media call it the "power vacuum" a "fluid" situation. Last night we received word that the iraqi border was no longer manned. Thousands of iraqis and jordanians are said to have crossed the border some to go home some to seize the opportunity chaos represents. Hundreds of journalists went down to the border to try and cross into Iraq.

I received hatemail today: someone thought I was supporting the iraqi government, the regime. I don't. I believe war was not the answer. We did not lift the sanctions. For years, over one generation, we actively prevented a people from standing up for itself, growing and developing normally and getting strong enough to decide for themselves what is good for them. That to me is crime.

This morning I attended a media traning session for humanitarian NGOs waiting here in Amman. There are millions of dollars worth of aid waiting to go. The UN holds daily briefings at the Intercontinental as everybody waits for the "fluid" situation to stabilize. Everybody is waiting to see who will call the shots. I learned that most of the humanitarian
workers had refused US accreditation by the HOC, the civilian face of the coalition's military. I had always seen them as part and parcel of the war.
Another part of the business of war. It's not doing them justice. They do some of the most urgent and necessary work in truly gruesome circumstances. They really work directly with the people. But I still believe there is something terrible in creating a catastrophy and then having these specialised emergency crews come in.

And that's what is so horrible all around: it is a man made disaster getting worse. What could grow in a state of emergency? Nothing can be nurtured. No one.

Yesterday was the first time they showed a movie around 8:00pm, a re-run of Ally McBeal.

The news is on again. Day 22 of the "war". Many american soldiers died in Baghdad today. I can't watch it.

Cher is singing "Do you believe in life after love. " I really don't think I'm strong enough.