Free A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal by Åsne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen Page A
Authors: Åsne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen
is a mediocre tea, like everything else we get, not bad, not good. Just like the flour, not the best, not the coarsest. Everything is in the middle, mediocre.
Wahida nods while her sons carry out large sacks, the rations for the whole family. The food is heavily subsidised by the regime. Everyone pays 250 dinar, around 10 pence. But when the average monthly wage is £4, the remainder disappears fast. All extras are expensive and the majority have had to cut down on everything: food, clothes, house.
- Life is harder, Wahida admits. - Before I was just an ordinary housewife, looking after my family. Now I get up every morning at five, make cheese and yoghurt, which I sell on the street, from a table by our house. I only return home in the afternoon to attend to my own family, she sighs. Like most Iraqis her husband has to hold down two jobs.
The little woman dressed in black slips out of the door. Turkish delight, sunflower seeds and the mixture of nuts lie untouched. So does Karima’s small assortment of shampoo and toothpaste. People are using increasingly less. The quarter kilo of rationed soap is used for most things - face, hair and hands. If one can afford to keep the entire ration, that is. Some are reduced to selling part of it at the market.
Wahida and her sons load the goods onto a rusty car someone has lent them. One can sense the nostalgia in her face when the older woman remembers the times when Iraqis could enjoy the riches the oil brought.
‘Once upon a time’ children were given books at school, four million people had not yet fled the country and no one had to sell their jewels for a piece of meat or some antibiotics.
She waves wearily from the car as they bump off. ‘Once upon a time’, when there was life . . .
One day a notice is pinned up on the board outside Uday’s office. Military parade in Mosul. At last we are permitted to leave Baghdad, with our guides of course, and in a group, and only as far as Mosul. The town lies in the north of the country, on the border of the autonomous Kurdish region. It is one of Iraq’s most important and oldest towns and is where muslin comes from I seem to remember having read somewhere. We skip about the Ministry of Information like little children, happy to be allowed out, to breathe some fresh air, see the country. I proudly tell Abdullah on reception that I won’t be back that night, I’m off to Mosul.
We dash up the motorway at 120km an hour, the radio on full blast, Aliya and the driver in the front, Janine and I in the back.
Janine is the prima donna of the Press Centre. She holds court in her tiny office, in Prada shoes and Ralph Lauren shirts. She is the most up to date concerning rumours and latest news. Something is always going on around her; she is quick-witted and generous with her ideas. She has covered conflicts and wars for fifteen years and won several awards in Great Britain for her reporting from the Middle East, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. She is one of the funniest of our lot and writes for The Times , Vanity Fair and National Geographic . When she’s not covering wars or writing books she moves in the elite circles of London and Paris.
Suddenly we spot a sign indicating that the road to Tikrit bears left ahead.
- Can’t we drop in and have a cup of tea. We need a break, we ask.
- Are you mad! Aliya shouts. - Our permission is for Mosul!
She frantically waves the stamped permission under our noses. She looks almost desperate, as though we might mutiny, take over and drive into Tikrit with her as hostage. But she need not fear; Heyad puts his foot down and whizzes past the exit. We in the back seat know who is in charge. Saddam can keep his hometown to himself.
The greater part of the road between Baghdad and Mosul passes through desert. Where are the fertile plains I had been reading about? The lush fields, watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, have
Wahida nods while her sons carry out large sacks, the rations for the whole family. The food is heavily subsidised by the regime. Everyone pays 250 dinar, around 10 pence. But when the average monthly wage is £4, the remainder disappears fast. All extras are expensive and the majority have had to cut down on everything: food, clothes, house.
- Life is harder, Wahida admits. - Before I was just an ordinary housewife, looking after my family. Now I get up every morning at five, make cheese and yoghurt, which I sell on the street, from a table by our house. I only return home in the afternoon to attend to my own family, she sighs. Like most Iraqis her husband has to hold down two jobs.
The little woman dressed in black slips out of the door. Turkish delight, sunflower seeds and the mixture of nuts lie untouched. So does Karima’s small assortment of shampoo and toothpaste. People are using increasingly less. The quarter kilo of rationed soap is used for most things - face, hair and hands. If one can afford to keep the entire ration, that is. Some are reduced to selling part of it at the market.
Wahida and her sons load the goods onto a rusty car someone has lent them. One can sense the nostalgia in her face when the older woman remembers the times when Iraqis could enjoy the riches the oil brought.
‘Once upon a time’ children were given books at school, four million people had not yet fled the country and no one had to sell their jewels for a piece of meat or some antibiotics.
She waves wearily from the car as they bump off. ‘Once upon a time’, when there was life . . .
One day a notice is pinned up on the board outside Uday’s office. Military parade in Mosul. At last we are permitted to leave Baghdad, with our guides of course, and in a group, and only as far as Mosul. The town lies in the north of the country, on the border of the autonomous Kurdish region. It is one of Iraq’s most important and oldest towns and is where muslin comes from I seem to remember having read somewhere. We skip about the Ministry of Information like little children, happy to be allowed out, to breathe some fresh air, see the country. I proudly tell Abdullah on reception that I won’t be back that night, I’m off to Mosul.
We dash up the motorway at 120km an hour, the radio on full blast, Aliya and the driver in the front, Janine and I in the back.
Janine is the prima donna of the Press Centre. She holds court in her tiny office, in Prada shoes and Ralph Lauren shirts. She is the most up to date concerning rumours and latest news. Something is always going on around her; she is quick-witted and generous with her ideas. She has covered conflicts and wars for fifteen years and won several awards in Great Britain for her reporting from the Middle East, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. She is one of the funniest of our lot and writes for The Times , Vanity Fair and National Geographic . When she’s not covering wars or writing books she moves in the elite circles of London and Paris.
Suddenly we spot a sign indicating that the road to Tikrit bears left ahead.
- Can’t we drop in and have a cup of tea. We need a break, we ask.
- Are you mad! Aliya shouts. - Our permission is for Mosul!
She frantically waves the stamped permission under our noses. She looks almost desperate, as though we might mutiny, take over and drive into Tikrit with her as hostage. But she need not fear; Heyad puts his foot down and whizzes past the exit. We in the back seat know who is in charge. Saddam can keep his hometown to himself.
The greater part of the road between Baghdad and Mosul passes through desert. Where are the fertile plains I had been reading about? The lush fields, watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, have
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