Diary 4 February 2003, Baghdad
Mary Foster

It is the day before Colin Powell is to give evidence that he says will prove that Iraq is concealing weapons of mass destruction. It is on everyone's mind here in Baghdad - foreigners who are leaving, foreigners who have decided to stay, Iraqis who are leaving, Iraqis who have no choice but to stay. All day it has triumphed in conversations as other attempted topics have inevitably faltered and fallen silent in the gorgon gaze of the looming war.

Today has been a very busy day, and everything about me aches. I go through the emotions of the day: morning's frustration with my inability to connect in any meaningful way with an academic we interviewed; the delight of playing with two small and exuberant children in a new friend's home; the pain of hearing about the war fears of people that I respect and, in another situation, would come to know and love. And, at the end of the day, that incomparable mingling of joy, love and to-the-death-protectiveness that comes with holding a baby, feeling its solid little body, its warmth and vulnerability.

We arrived at Baghdad University in the morning and were shown into the office of the Head of the Department of English. The professor welcomed us with a distancing politeness in polished and class-establishing English. I feel rather small and insignificant, uncomfortably noticing the food stain on my somewhat wrinkled shirt, not an unfamiliar feeling in such settings. Professor Abdul Sattar Jawad introduces us to other professors and doctoral students. I talk to an eloquent drama teacher, Sa'ad Al- Hassani, who teaches Death of a Salesman, Waiting for Godot, and a biography of Martin Luther I am unfamiliar with. He draws out some of the parallels his students are finding between these works and their own experiences of living under sanctions and the threat of war. As he talks, he keeps coming back to thoughts of his older son. Now 17, his son was alone in a car eleven years ago when an American bomb hit the communications tower in Baghdad a short distance from the car. When Sa'ad ran back to the car, he found his son speechless and in shock. He didn't regain his ability to talk for some time.

Sa'ad tells me that the boy is doing well now, a big fan of baseball. But his war trauma has not entirely disappeared, and last month he wrote a song about what he went through. I ask if I would be able to get the lyrics in English, in the hopes that a musician friend of mine back home would be willing to put it to music. His father looks uncertain and changes the topic.

We take a little tour of the English department and are shown the shabby library with its mutilated and outdated books, an all too obvious metaphor for the battering the intellectual life of Iraq has taken over the past decade. Sa'ad tells us that he plans to continue to teach through the war, as a simple act of resistance, a refusal to be cowed by barbarism.

We take a taxi to our next meeting. It is our habit to give out a sheet in Arabic explaining the Iraq Peace Team to everyone we meet, and we choose an opportune moment to hand it to the taxi driver. As we keep our eyes riveted on the speeding road, he reads it and then he bursts into the usual approval and appreciation. I wonder if there is some amusement as well - the smallness and vulnerability of our action somewhat ridiculous in the face of such overwhelming powers - but it is difficult to tell. "You very, very good," he says, smiling broadly. As usual, we wish that we spoke more than four words of Arabic. When we reach our destination, he adamantly refuses to take any payment for the ride, smiling and nodding.

Our next stop is the home of Amal, a teacher, mother and artist. She has been a long-term friend of Voices in the Wilderness, a warm and sparkling-eyed woman. She welcomes us in as though we are already good friends. She understands well what we are trying to do, and is generous in answering our questions about how her children are faring under the threat, how she is preparing for the war, how the sanctions have affected her life and work as a teacher. Her older son, Omer, about eight years old, with his snappy hair cut and black leather jacket, looks like a little rock star. Her daughter Abeer wears a pink "Barbie" jumper. All three of her children are very good looking and love to draw. The two boys draw pictures of Jackie Chan, bicycles, cars, tanks and soldiers. Abeer draws fashionable women and bright-coloured flower gardens. As they draw, Amal tells us that she can't hide anything from the children - everyone is talking about the coming war. Abeer is too young to remember the time that their neighbours' house was demolished by a bomb; the mother, grandmother and one of the children killed. That was in 1993, when they were living close to one of Baghdad's bridges. But she isn't too young to understand and to feel the terror of the current situation. Amal is planning to get out of Baghdad, to try to weather the war in the countryside where the bombs are less likely to find her children. She takes the US government at their word when they say that there won't be a safe place in Baghdad. In 1991, she preferred to stay in Baghdad, refusing to bow to the very real danger. But now, with three children, everything is different.

We spend the early evening with a sculptor we met on our second day in Baghdad. He is becoming well known, but is generous with his time. He is on his way out of the country, invited by friends to show his work in Spain, and possibly France. We speak and joke easily together and I soon feel comfortable enough to ask him how he feels about leaving the country at this time. I regret it immediately as the pain registers on his face. All his brothers and his father are in the army, and his mother is in Basra, close to the border where US troops are amassed. He recalls the terror of the first night of the war in 1991, when he was a young teenager, huddled with his brothers in the basement of his family home with the bombs falling around them. They had only two gas masks among the eight of them, and kept passing them around, each brother insisting that the others take them. The lack of water, electricity, food during the bombing and the immediate aftermath; the long years of hardship afterwards. The oil for food programme, and possibly his own success (though he doesn't say so), finally brought respite. But now it starts again! He is a very open person, and his emotions show clearly on his face. I want so badly to comfort him, but a sense of my powerlessness dries up all my words. We sit in silence for a few moments, and then make yet another attempt to talk of something else.

In the evening we find ourselves in the surreal surroundings of a sixties-style bowling alley, swirling green walls as a backdrop to a fantastic mix of people: our sculptor friend, the international media, friends from Enfants du monde, MSF and other international NGOs, Iraqi friends, an American women's delegation all dressed in bright pink, and of course the omnipresent Hassan, a shoeshine boy who has practically made himself a member of the Iraq Peace Team. It is a fund-raiser that Iraq Peace Team members have organised for Enfants du monde and Bridges to Baghdad. Both NGOs are struggling to provide some relief to the children here. Their work is heart-breaking and difficult.

Mahmoud shows up. He is a Masters student from Yemen who was planning to get out of Iraq, but decided to stay when he heard about the Iraq Peace Team coming to show solidarity with Iraqis. I am moved by the solidarity but sorry that he has put himself in danger. He rounds up about ten of us from Canada and the US and takes us home for dinner. Most of his other guests are from Yemen; only one, a professor we had coincidentally met that morning, from Iraq. The professor has a wry smile on his face and indulges in teasing some of the more credulous among us, playing up to stereotypes of Muslims current in North America. As we eat from the same plates and very literally share bread with each other, the Yemenis open up. "Why is the US doing this to us?" "Why do Canadians and Americans not stop their governments from committing these crimes?" "Don't they understand that this is only creating a backlash?" "Our quarrel is not with ordinary Americans, but ..."

Mahmoud lets me hold his four month year old son, Mohammed. At this point I really have to struggle not to cry when Mohammed happily snuggles into my arms. Their apartment is not in a safe location. What is in store for these good people, who are now my friends?