Bizarre Bazaar
Postcards from Around the World
ABC News' Terry McCarthy has been reporting on war, peace, and everything in between from all around the world for 20 years. He writes about daily life in the areas he is reporting from.
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A SILENT SCREAMING
October 17, 2006 2:09 PM
I said goodbye to an Iraqi friend today. He is leaving the country, taking his family to Syria. He is a vanquished, broken man, and seeing him was unbearably sad.
Six months ago one of his two brothers was killed by one of the militias that increasingly rule the streets here after dark. Ten days ago he found his other brother’s corpse in the morgue. The body had cigarette burns all over the back, and the face was blue and swollen from a beating. One bullet had been shot into his skull, killing him after he had suffered much pain.
My friend had been negotiating by cell phone with the men who took his brother, hoping to buy his freedom. They first demanded $10,000. He had gathered that sum together, but wanted proof his brother was still alive before handing over the cash. Then the amount went up to $20,000 – a bad sign. On a hunch my friend went to the morgue, and found his brother’s body there. The kidnappers had already killed him, even as they tried to extort more money from his family.
It is hard to see a grown man cry. It is even harder to see a grown man who is beyond crying, whose pain is so all-enveloping that there is no free part of him that can see his pain and cry about it.
He leaves for Syria with no larger plan, no great dream to fulfill, no soaring ambitions. Although his wife and daughter will be safer with him in Syria than Baghdad, that is not the real reason he is leaving either. He is leaving because his life, as he knows it, is over in Iraq. “It is all finished here,” he said. “All I want to do is sleep.” By which he means shut his brain down and forget all that has happened. But judging by his haggard face, sleep has not been coming to him much since his second brother’s death.
Every day, 30 or 40 families in Baghdad go through similar experiences of bereavement. I sometimes envisage their collective psychic pain as one vast ink-black cloud hanging over Baghdad, casting a shadow on everyone in the city. My friend is right. Life is finished in Baghdad – at least life as it is normally understood in civilized society. Children no longer play on the side-streets, women no longer spend time together shopping for clothes, men no longer sit down to chat in tea shops. A silent screaming echoes along the streets, and it is impossible to close one’s ears to it.
October 17, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (10)
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Thank you for your eloquent description of the grief experienced by your friend. Your description of the pall over Baghdad oppresses me, as it should for anyone, and I hope for those decision makers who keep us there. Unlike other representations of the Iraq conflict from other media outlets, your words here have the resonance that only the truth can. I appreciate your honest approach to this conflict, and the effect it has on the Iraqi's.
Posted by: Sherry | Oct 17, 2006 8:08:24 PM
When you take stock of how tragic the collateral damage of war is to the innocent, it makes you realize there's almost no excuse for war, and that it certainly must only be a last resort, and a desperate one at that...
Posted by: Kenji | Oct 17, 2006 9:17:43 PM
Those last two comments are perfect examples of the hypocisy of liberalism: lip service to caring about others, while all they really want is the illusion that the world is as safe and comfortable as their middle class homes (forgetting of course that their safety is only ensured by people with guns who patrol their neighborhoods 24 hours a day).
The insurgents aren't stupid. They know that the average person would rather live in a fantasy world than address the issues of a real one - and journalists facilitate the carnage by presenting it as the only issue.
Posted by: John Kantor | Oct 18, 2006 10:50:34 PM
Well Kenji, a useless war like the one in iraq does nothing to protect or enhance any freedom, it endangers them. This war is creating a lot more terrorists, how the heck can you claim this to be a good thing?
Posted by: Aamir ali | Oct 19, 2006 11:58:44 PM
You misinterpreted what I said. My point was that we should NOT be fighting a war in Iraq; invading Iraq was NOT a last, desperate resort. None of our rationales for the invasion warrant the amount of misery and death that have resulted.
Posted by: Kenji | Oct 20, 2006 1:56:36 AM
Your article describing the grief in Iraq was unbearable.
Just ask who is responsible for all this?
Bush and Blair that is all who have blood on their hands and call themselves Christians too!
Posted by: ali | Oct 20, 2006 8:26:53 AM
1. Thanks for this blog - a welcome addition to/change from talking points, placenames and numbers.
2. Tribalism, human cruelty and forced migration are a constant in human history - hundreds of millions of human beings have these experiences in their (ancestors') recent past: Indians and Pakistanis (creation of Pakistan and then Bangladesh), Irish Americans, descendants of Blacks enslaved by Europeans, Arabs and Americans, Tutsi and Hutu, Ibo in Biafra, Tamils and Sinhalese, Tibetans, the Jews of Europe, Quechua-speaking South Americans, Ukranians starved by the Soviet regime, Taiwanese still pining for mainland China, Palestinians, Native Americans, ethnic Germans from anywhere east of Germany,Armenians, black Africans drowning right now while getting away from often inter-ethnic violence and poverty, refugees from Congo or Sudan, Christians and Muslims in Aceh and elsewhere in Indonesia, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Berbers from Algeria, Bosnians, Croats, Serbs and Kosovars - the list goes on literally ad nauseam.
The world is a big place - with luck and willpower, your friends family may be able to pick up the pieces of its broken life somewhere else, and perhaps learn how to smile again one day. My heart goes out to them.
3. To John Kantor: "hypocrisy of liberalism"...what does this mean? In 2000, 100 million Americans were convinced Mr. Bush would be bad for the country; now another 100 million have joined them. He's even worse than Mr. Carter was - remember how depressed he got us all. There are really awful people out there who had proven they wanted to kill as many Americans as possible, and he has autistically and clumsily gone mainly after the wrong guys, while turning so many (both wide-eyed lunatics and sober-minded people who were very much our friends) against us.
4. To ali: The last time anyone looked, virtually all the killing is between Sunnis and Shiites. So while things would probably be very different in Iraq if this war had not been declared in 2003, the responsibility is squarely in the hands of those who actually kill. Please stop blaming others.
5. How about extremists like 3. and 4. going at it at ten paces, and allowing the rest of us (those who are able to show some tolerance and open-mindedness, as well as an ability to get over their often very real grievances) get on with our lives.
Posted by: rob | Oct 21, 2006 1:29:46 PM
You are a great writer - you really make us feel what is really happening - unbelievable to the average person
Posted by: Dianne | Oct 24, 2006 10:43:56 AM
yOU ARE VERY GOOD AT DRAWING WORD PICTURES. iT IS LIKE pAINTING A VISION WITH WORDS. mAKE US SMELL THE SMELLS, SEE THE SIGHTS, FEEL THE PAIN. hOWEVER, DON'T FORGET THE GOOD THINGS, TOO. i AM SURE THERE MUST BE SOME THAT GO UNREPORTED.
wHAT ABOUT JOY, EVEN IN SMALL THINGS? iS IT ALL FEAR AND SORROW? sURELY NOT.
Posted by: DIANA | Nov 12, 2006 4:26:47 PM
My heart and prayers go out to the innocent victims, like Haider, of this and all wars. Will man ever stop the insanity of war against man? We are ALL brothers, regardless of our differences. I wish God/Allah would stop man's madness to his brother, but He is leaving it up to us to do ourselves. Oneday, I hope and pray we, or our children and their children, will finally live in a world of peace. Until that day, may we do our best to help the innocent ones like Haider, so that they will NOT spend the rest of their lives with such pain and suffering. :(
Posted by: John E. Zimmer | Nov 14, 2006 7:13:11 AM
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