ADVENTURE IN BAGHDAD

The following is an article I wrote for Westport News which pretty much tells the whole story of my recent trip to Iraq:

When the relief and humanitarian aid organization AmeriCares invited me to document their first flight into Iraq last month, I have to admit that I was seized less by humanitarian fervor than by the prospects of raw, adrenaline-fueled adventure.

Right from the start, the trip seemed to contain all the right ingredients for adventure: We had a flight into Iraq but no guarantee of a flight back out. The alternative was a day long drive along what had become the highway famous for hold-ups in broad daylight. After I’d agreed to go, I was asked to sign a two-page disclaimer and fitted for a bullet proof vest, which only added to the adventure.

Although admittedly the mission seemed somewhat dicey, I had the utmost faith in AmeriCares. Moreover, I was aware of the importance of getting medical supplies to the hospitals in Baghdad, which I knew from the television news, had been stripped by looters. So on May 12th, I climbed aboard a chartered Ukrainian cargo plane in Maastricht, Holland, bound for Iraq.

Good Morning, Baghdad!

As it turned out, our Russian-built Ilyushin-76 cargo jet, filled with 80 skids (80,860 pounds) of medical supplies, was the first non-military aircraft to land at Baghdad airport. We were greeted, just as a huge orange ball of sun seemed to be hoisted into the sky above one of Saddam’s huge palaces, clearly visible in the distance.

We were escorted inside a giant hanger where a U.S. Army Lieutenant keyed our personal information into a laptop computer while he welcomed us to Iraq with warnings about travel in and around the city. Outside, some troops took pictures of our plane as two forklifts had already begun emptying its cavernous cargo bay. Meanwhile we listened to small arms fire a few kilometers away and watched an Apache helicopter over-fly the airport and put a quick end to the matter. Welcome to Baghdad!

My first two days in Iraq were spent photographing the movement of the supplies that had begun in Milford, Connecticut, shipped via Maastricht, Holland ending in three separate hospitals in the center of war-torn Baghdad. The Doctors faces revealed the gratitude as they watched a line of hospital workers pass hundreds of cartons of basic medicine and equipment through the front doors of their hospital. I had the feeling they were having a hard time believing what they were seeing. It seemed as if a tremendous vacuum was being filled created when the hospitals had been completely stripped of their supplies in prior weeks. Now U.S. Army troops were camped out in sandbagged bunkers tanks and armed vehicles in front of the hospital to protect it from looters.

The hospital staff thanked us with endless cups of chi, delicious strong black tea mixed with lots of sugar, and extensive tours of all the hospital wards. It was wonderful to witness an effort, which filled such an immediate need, and was appreciated so fully.

Now that the job was done, we were eager to see the city that was the setting for so much recent history. Our tour was lead by Rafal Badri an Iraqi-American Doctor from Cleveland who had grown up in Baghdad. Our core group consisted of three AmeriCares people: John Connell, Logistics Specialist, Peter Tokarczyk, Director of Disaster Services and Randy Weiss, a Product Manager and myself.

Following the military’s example, we traveled in two cars wherever we went—a white Chevy Suburban with dark tinted windows and a well-preserved ’88 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. The driving was hair-raising. Baghdad traffic is a free-for-all with no traffic lights and no traffic cops.

Dr. Badri was eager to show us the city he grew up in as a young boy as well as Saddam’s empire. We passed buildings, familiar from television news, as targets of U.S. air strikes—the telephone tower, the communications building, as well as Saddam’s headquarters buildings and palaces, all of which were partially or wholly destroyed. It was a sad journey in many ways; one that bolstered the argument for an American invasion of Iraq because of the ludicrous disparity between Saddam’s ridiculous wealth with the poverty of the remainder of Iraq’s population.

We had just crossed the Tigris and were headed into a residential neighborhood when we passed the burned out hulk of an old convertible which our driver pointed out was one of Uday’s cars. Suddenly we’d transformed into a group of eager tourists and we took pictures of each other in front of it.

Our first stop was an eerie drive through the open gates of Saddam’s once heavily guarded secret police headquarters. The doctor told us that the people who went in—were usually never seen again. The vibe was very strange. We parked in the front courtyard and watched as looters were tearing out the aluminum window frames, about all that remained to steal. Doctor Badri, his Iraqi patriotism flaring, started to yell at the looters. One of the looters ran over to engage the Doctor in a heated argument in Arabic, which culminated in the man lifting his shirt to show off a line of scars across his stomach. "Saddam! Saddam!" he yelled. He was one of the lucky ones who got out of the place alive. My guess is that he thought he deserved the window frames!

Next we parked outside the gigantic "Mother of All Mosques" —a series of a dozen or so structures gathered around a central dome. Dr. Badri explained that for a Moslem, building a mosque guarantees one a place in heaven. A few minutes later, on the site of what was once Baghdad’s sporting club and horse racing track is a mosque in the beginning stages of construction which—we can hardly believe it—dwarfs even the Mother of All Mosques. This one we dub the "Mother of the Mother of All Mosques." The ridiculously out of proportion scale of these testifies to the scale of Saddam’s insanity.

We continued through Baghdad’s richest neighborhood where the architecture was striking—to the point of being bizarre. The lavishness of the houses and their grounds belonging to Saddam’s closest associates would not be out of place in Beverly Hills.

But it was our visit to one of Saddam’s weekend palaces on the banks of the Tigris that excited everyone the most. A Company of the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry was camped out in several of the large rooms that had not been destroyed by the bomb, which had leveled one side of the building. Much of the original furniture and décor appeared to be Louis Quatorze style, contrasting with the standard Army-issue cots and mosquito nets of the current occupants.

Upstairs, a bomb had landed just on the other side of the wall of Saddam’s bedroom, leaving the room in tact. So of course we didn’t pass up the opportunity to take our pictures on Saddam’s bed. It was true, just as we had heard, the fixtures in his bathrooms were all gold. We stumbled over expensive treasures of silver and precious wood lying amidst the dust-covered rubble. At one point I stepped on an intricately carved silver pot and resisted the temptation to steal a piece of Saddam’s booty.

My promise to Dr. Shawki

The next day, we revisited Al-Kindi and Yarmuk Hospitals, where we’d delivered medicines only the day before, and where lines of people were now waiting to be treated. In the afternoon we were invited to tea with the doctors of the Sherhebel Clinic, one of the best hospitals in Baghdad. There we were introduced to Dr. Hilal Shawki, Baghdad’s top cardiologist. I used the opportunity to discuss my three recent heart operations with the doctor. He sympathized, asked me a lot of detailed questions including what medications I was on, and then shared with me the story of how his clinic had been leveled by a U.S. air strike. It had received a direct hit that left absolutely nothing remaining.

A simple and obvious thought came into my head and, before I could stop, I heard myself say, "maybe I can help you." Although I wasn’t sure exactly what I would do or how I would do it, the sentiment was genuine. Moreover, it suddenly seemed as if I’d been given a way to repay the universe for giving me my life back!

The next day, as we were racing across the desert on our ten-hour drive to the Jordanian border, it occurred to me that my promise to Dr. Shawki tied me to Baghdad. I thought it probably meant that I’d be traveling back to see Dr. Shawki’s clinic when it’s built.

From working with AmeriCares I’ve learned that volunteering means you do it yourself. It is not something you can believe someone else is going to do it for you. I realized that I was "the someone else" and that I was the one who was going to have to help Dr. Shawki rebuild his clinic.

As crazy as Baghdad was, I look at it as a place that offers tremendous opportunity. I can’t think of another place under the sun where there is more that needs to be done.

If you might be inclined to help with the re-building of Dr. Shawki’s Cardiac Clinic—which will undoubtedly be the finest in Baghdad, you can email me at: tony@beneathbuddhaseyes.com

Posted by Tony at June 22, 2003 02:07 PM