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| Volume XIII, Winter 2006, Number 4 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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Two Birthdays in Baghdad, by Anna Prouse. Translated by Elizabeth Griffith. Compass Press, 2005. 252 pages. $11.56, paperback.
Deepa Kandaswamy
Writer and political analyst
The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath have so far been about the evil Bush administration, the evil Saddam Hussein, the death of Iraqis, the insurgencies, the American soldiers and embedded journalists from both sides.
Three years later, the world media, depending on where you live, is still filled with tokenism, exaggerations and understatements. It doesn’t matter which side or angle one covers; the bottom line is that the journalists who cover the stories are paid well or are on fellowships to further their careers. They wouldn’t be there otherwise despite their bleeding-heart articles about “poor Iraqis” or the stories about the “brave soldiers.” They then move on to write the next big story or get a book deal out of it. The rest of us, who either watch or read about Iraq, stop for a moment, say, “this is horrific,” maybe do a protest march for a day, and get on with our lives.
This is why this book is refreshing. The author, Anna Prouse, volunteered to work in Iraq as a member of the Italian Red Cross. An emergency medic, she lived through it all and almost died working in a field hospital, which not only treated sick Iraqis but also provided processed bottled water for all. The author doesn’t bother with news analysis or the political ramifications, and she does not take sides. Instead, we are given a glimpse of what it is like to actually live and work in the “officially declared” post-war Iraq, where people struggle to survive amidst the wreckage and destruction.
Prouse writes about the escapism people use to get through horrific situations. Living in a war zone, she discovers that it isn’t easy to accept that your friend has been killed or disabled. She says it is easier to manage if one imagines being on the set of a film or TV serial. The technique worked for her. She pretended she was on the set of a television serial when she had to plunge her arms up to the elbows into the abdomen of a bullet-ridden Iraqi to keep it open. While the doctor was extracting bullets, the hospital tent almost collapsed on top of them, and the generator went out. They managed to save the patient. Another instance is her attempt to make "sangria" for everyone at the field hospital on her birthday. Shopping for bottles of wine, apples and other fruit on the streets of Baghdad shows her determination to make life seem as normal as possible.
For Anna and others like her who worked in Iraq, it was a question of getting things done, be it to help an Iraqi child get medical dressing for burns or to attempt to save an Iraqi with bullet wounds. Therefore, Prouse doesn’t spare anyone when faced with bureaucratic restrictions. She comes down heavily on the officers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who sit in air-conditioned rooms and dictate what the field workers should and should not do. For example, the ICRC was angry that the Italian Red Cross Hospital in Baghdad was having Italian soldiers protect its premises and refused to give them extra toilets! The Italian ambassador insisted on getting a list of everything in the hospital in Italian, Arabic and English! She berates herself for falling for the “dangerous al-Qaeda prisoners” line of the American soldier who refused her entry into certain parts of the Abu Ghraib prison and for not heeding the pleas of the sick at the Abu Ghraib hospital, as they strangely didn’t seem to want to recover and go back to their cells. Neither does she spare the officers of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), who wanted telephone numbers of hospitals in Iraq when the telephone lines were destroyed, or Iranian resistance fighters, most of whom have never set foot in Iran, but are opposed to the regime in Iran and dream of a democratic, pluralistic, Islamic Iran. Prouse tells them, “The shah of Iran was equally damaging to your people as the various ayatollahs are today.”
Anna Prouse writes about the ordinary people who survived the war and are living in the aftermath, not really wanting to be there or just trying to live as normally as they can. For those who were involved in the reconstruction of Baghdad, the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, marked a turning point. From then on, most people including Iraqis saw their time in Iraq as pre- and post-August 19, not as post- and pre-invasion or even post- and pre-Saddam. The sheer violence of the attack and the death toll, which included the UN envoy and Iraqis, sent shockwaves among the organizations, which felt no one was safe anymore. Then the attack on the ICRC office because they insisted on having no military protect them, making them an easy target, forced its personnel to leave. Nevertheless, among others, the Italian Red Cross team stayed, despite the attacks for over a year, until they were able to shift the field hospital, identify a pucca building, and sign a contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Health so that the Iraqi doctors, nurses and medical professionals could have a functioning hospital.
Anna, being fluent in English and Arabic, was recruited by the CPA as a medical adviser and stayed back to work with the Ministry of Health so that the shattered medical system in Iraq could be rebuilt. Her experience with them is informative and insightful. According to Anna though a woman — Entessar Ebrahim Essa — for cultural reasons headed the Nursing Department of the Ministry of Health, over 80 percent of the nurses are male! If we thought that Americans staffed the CPA, we are wrong again. It had people from different countries that weren’t “officially” coalition members: Pakistani waiters, Nepalese security guards, South African bodyguards, Indian cooks, Japanese soldiers, Kosovar laundrymen, Dutch volunteers, etc. The medical preferences of Iraqis come as a surprise for, according to Anna, the majority of Iraqis prefer injections to tablets! Then we hear about the Iranian resistance group, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, whose leader and the majority of whose members are women. Saddam and later the Americans gave them shelter as they have sworn to return to a democratic Iran without the mullahs. We also learn about the kidnapping of young Iraqi doctors in Baghdad, who are later released after their families pay ransom. But most important, we learn about the Iraqis themselves, the people whose hospitality remains unfailing despite adversity. But they are embarrassed that others had to see their country in such conditions. As 75-year-old Ismail puts it, “It would be like inviting a friend to your house and your house is a mess.” There is also relief that they can practice Islam again after years of religious persecution. Jabur, a tea supplier, says it best, “For us praying is our duty to God. However, Saddam killed my nephew and one of my brothers for their religious devotion. He could not bear the idea that they believed in an authority superior to his.”
However, there is anger when the Al Rasheed hotel, where members of the medical team were staying is attacked. Prouse escapes, while her Lebanese friend is hit and others are killed. This is something none of them are able to accept. Seething with anger, they are given trauma counseling, but an American man named Scott spoke plainly, “No, not the terrorists, insurgents, the bombers, the attackers or whatever you want to call them. I am ready to die, but not to be a futile sacrifice.” This clearly states the mentality of disillusioned people who see the deaths of their friends and colleagues not as a result of insurgency, but rather as the direct consequence of their own irresponsible governments, which didn’t bother to provide them basic safety. They have no illusions about how they might appear to the insurgents. As Prouse says, “Like it or not, we represent the symbol of occupation” and goes on to comment on how easily their own governments used them as pawns, “We are just fodder for their cannons, like those poor soldiers who patrol the streets, is my recurring thought. Far from being workers thought of with pride who should be protected. How am I going to reconstruct a health system if two times out of three I’m being shot at or having rockets fired at me?”
Prouse talks about how the attitudes of the non-Iraqis changed after they have been in Iraq for a while. She cites the instance of organizing the Hajj for over 35,000 Iraqis after a 30-year gap. While the CPA and the British were arguing about the modalities, one American spoke up: “The Iraqis have been doing it for centuries. They know how it works. We don’t need to teach them anything. Before Saddam came to power, they always got to Mecca and back under their own steam.” She also describes her own attitude change when the escapism technique didn’t work for her anymore, when she was almost killed and watched her friend Mohammed die.
This is a tough book to read, a two-year journey in a war zone. It covers the various groups who moved in to work with the Iraqis, their relationships with the ordinary people, the media agenda, the friends and strangers you come to love and lose, the CPA and the simmering anger of all involved when orders came in from “above” — a reference to the U.S. government telling them what to do, resulting in their colleagues and friends’ deaths.
The strength of this book is that the author writes about incidents without taking sides, leaving the reader to judge. It is unpretentious and genuine. Unlike media reports that caricature people who worked for or with the CPA as happy hawks or unhappy doves, we see that they were neither. Prouse travels around Iraq and doesn’t stay cooped up in buildings; meeting the people was more important to her. The drawback is that since the book is a translation of the original Italian version, Un’italiana in Iraq, the writing tends to amble along and, at times is repititious. However, you can’t really expect focused, sharp writing from a person who spent two birthdays in Iraq, saw her Iraqi and non-Iraqis friends die and was nearly killed twice.
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