Pernille Bramming* finds that Iraqis reminisce about the past and dream of the future. Anything to forget the present There is hope and there are dreams. It is not what you would expect at all, but how else can the bustle of activity in Baghdad be explained. Even construction is booming. "It will be the last war," people say, an expression of hopefulness in their eyes. After 22 years of war and sanctions, everyone is simply eager to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Nobody says the word "liberation", but this is what everybody is longing for. A liberation from the daily fight for survival. 90 per cent of the Iraqi population is either completely or heavily dependent on the monthly rations that the Iraqi regime distributes, in accordance with the oil-for-food programme. From the roughly 45,000 shops all over the country each person receives rice, flour, beans, oil, sugar, tea and soap. For 30 per cent of the 26.4 million Iraqis this is their only income and they are obliged to sell part of their rations in order to obtain cash and be able to finance other expenses such as rent and clothes. Only about 10 per cent of the Iraqi population has any "real money" and the majority live in Baghdad, making up around one-third of the capital's inhabitants. They drive around in brand- new cars and enjoy luxury goods such as smoked salmon and Danish butter. They are the ones building beautiful new villas. All the while, the masses drive around in beat- up old cars with shattered windshields. They live in houses that cry-out for a new coat of paint and are water-damaged, few even have much furniture. They have sold all of their valuables and are mainly public sector workers. Teachers and university professors, for example, earn the equivalent of $10 and $25 a month respectively. These are the people who keep their spirits up by dreaming of the 1970s, longing for those golden times to return. "Believe me, we used to change cars every month," a young Iraqi man tells me. Although he is probably exaggerating, it was a time when Iraqis were swimming in petrodollars and imported labour performed all of society's menial tasks. The middle class was growing fast; most people had several television sets and bought rice and sugar in 25-kilo bags. In those days, high-school students were sent on trips to Europe, students at the Academy of Beaux Arts went to study in Italy and an airline- ticket to Beirut on Iraqi Airways cost only 8 dinars. One dinar was worth more than 3 dollars. Today, a Gulf Air employee sits in her office in Baghdad with a large pile of money before her: 250 dinar notes, all of which are torn. As she painstakingly tapes them together, all of us count the notes. About 2,000 dinars are worth one dollar so when you exchange money, they load you with thick bundles. Of late, the Central Bank has begun to print 10,000 dinar notes. I would like to be in Baghdad on the day they introduce a new currency. The day that Iraqis will go to the banks with all this "monopoly money" that has been printed over the last 12 years and get it exchanged for "real money" with "real value". I imagine that people will be smiling radiantly on that day. This is all that the people want for now: money. Their own money. Most Iraqi's believe that the Americans will make this happen one day. Few doubt that the Americans and the war will come. Diplomats say so. People say so. Not that anyone wants or wishes for a war. They just want to get it over and done with. This is what differentiates Iraq from other Arab countries, where there are solidarity demonstrations against the war. The question is: have they understood just how poor the Iraqis have become? One only has to walk around the poorer districts of Baghdad to understand this. Seeing, with your own eyes, the small houses with two, sometimes even three families in each. I had the chance to do this last week, when there was a nationwide polio vaccination campaign: 5 million children under the age of six were being vaccinated by the Iraqi Red Crescent in cooperation with 600 volunteers from the International Red Cross, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Iraqi Ministry of Health. They walked from house to house, enquiring about children who had not yet been vaccinated. I joined one of these groups of volunteers in the district of Sho'la, which was built in the 1970s for rural immigrants. It now has a population of 125,000, of which 25,000 are children under the age of six. The streets were not asphalted or paved and an open drain ran down the middle. Garbage was strewn everywhere and goats grazed on waste paper. The area was teeming with children. Everytime we knocked on a door, two or three women answered, carrying small children. Several more children gathered by their side. However, their situation wasn't hopeless. All the children did wear clothes and most had shoes. Most looked healthy although some were malnourished. The tragedy is that life should not be like this in a country as potentially wealthy as Iraq. What is most painful to Iraqis is that they know this. Pediatricians and nurses have done their utmost to reach the WHO's goal of a world free from polio by 2005. Indeed, door to door monitoring by volunteers has been so successful in Iraq (it was the fourth time in one year that a polio vaccination campaign was conducted) that the WHO wants to copy the Iraqi system for use in other countries, like Egypt and India. One has to personally talk to these Iraqis to understand their plight. They are longing for a proper job where they can use their education and skills to create a life for themselves and become part of the world again. Today, an academic would be overjoyed to get a job as a secretary for the UN. A computer programmer would be happy just minding the computers at a cyber-café and feel lucky when a foreign journalist lets him repair her lap-top computer. The education system also suffers from an enormous brain drain. Up to six million Iraqis are believed to have left the country, of whom 300,000 live in the US. Young students are obliged to shuttle between two, three or even four universities in order to take their required courses as there is an acute shortage of university professors. Over the last twelve years the importation of scientific journals on any subject has been completely banned due to UN sanctions. The desire to escape this kind of isolation is extreme. In spite of this, the Iraqi regime is still in control and even though Iraqis seem to have hope, fear can be felt everywhere. Fear of what the future may bring is enormous. It has only been 12 years since Iraq was last bombed and the memories are sharp and clear. "I took part in the rescue-work at Amria," a young Iraqi tells me -- Amria was the shelter in Baghdad which was bombed by mistake in 1991. "I pulled at the leg of a dead person and it just came off." More than 400 women and children died in Amria. The ruins still stand. An artist is working on a monument to this tragedy. It will be made of bronze and depicts peoples faces. Just their faces. Other people talk about staying awake at night counting missiles, just waiting for their house to be hit. About breaking the water-pipe from the street to get water, fleeing to family and friends in the countryside and losing their nearest and dearest. All Iraqis have lost family and friends during the last 22 years and you can see on their faces that life has been tough. Men aged 40 look 15 years older, they have these thick wrinkles on their foreheads. The regime, however, carries on. As does its propaganda. Every evening, the news features Iraq solidarity demonstrations from all over the world. Pictures have clearly been lifted, for example, from the last election campaign in Turkey: the banners say "referendum" in red letters, but translated by Iraqi television into Arabic they say "solidarity" with, "the just Iraq" and "the wise leader". The Ministry of Information has also been busy. A "guide" is assigned to every foreign journalist and we are instructed not to go anywhere or talk to anyone without our "guide". Over the last ten years the Iraqi regime's strategy has been to ally itself with tribes and religious leaders. Mosques are being built everywhere, including the largest and the second largest in the Middle East. This seems like pure madness unless the aim is to stay in power, at any cost. The Ba'ath Party is a shadow of its former self, as is its ideology -- the Syrian-Iraqi version of national-socialism. All the power that was snatched from religious establishments during the 1950s, 60s and 70s is, slowly, being returned. The same is true for tribal leaders. Since the beginning of the 1990s Saddam Hussein has held regular meetings with them in order to buy their support. Meanwhile, the power base of the regime has been heavily eroded. Power is centred around a very small group at the very top. It remains to be seen exactly how many Iraqis will actually defend this elite. Every house in Iraq contains a weapon, people say. At first they declare that they will use these weapons against any invading army. But if you look closer into their eyes, you can see a "no", even though they say "yes". If you openly declare that, "I believe the Iraqi people want peace. I believe that it's going to be only a few who would join a guerrilla war", you can see from their eyes that they agree. Indeed, it is this internal showdown that people fear most. There is so much to avenge, it is staggering. During the uprising of 1991, in the southern Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala, people went to the homes of Ba'ath officials and murdered them. It is exactly these kinds of incidents that everybody fears will be repeated as soon as the Saddam Hussein's regime falls. If anarchy ensues, it could soon lead to catastrophe. There is a real fear that the food rationing system might break down. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to maintain law and order and a regimented work schedule. The Iraqis know this. Maybe this is why there is a general belief that residential areas will not be hit by bombs -- and why people are building new houses everywhere. In Basra, they are even building a new casino -- in preparation for the return of the Kuwaitis to their summer residences in the Shatt Al- Arab. On the Kuwaiti border, land prices are on the increase over expectations of a renewal in the once bustling trade across the border. The art galleries in Baghdad are filled to capacity. There are now 42 galleries of which 25 show modern art. In the 1970s there were only five. The canvasses are hanging and stacked everywhere. In the offices, brand new computers are just waiting to be connected to the Internet. The artists have also worked hard over the last 12 years to create a market in Jordan and the Gulf for their art. Now they are dreaming about their first exhibitions after the war. Maybe in two or three months. One only hopes that they won't be disappointed. * Pernille Bramming is a Danish journalist. The article above, which appeared in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen this week, was translated for Al-Ahram Weekly by the author. Copyright Weekendavisen Berlingske.
