[Mb-hair] Guardian Unlimited: 'He's just sleeping, I kept telling myself'

Tue Sep 14 10:30:47 PDT 2004

Thanks,
Sending on
Michael
--The Mb-civic list is an email discussion group that focuses
on politics, current events, world situations and related
topics. For more information or to subscribe to this list
please go to:

http://www.islandlists.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mb-civic


> vincent edwards spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you
> should see it.
> 
> -------
> Note from vincent edwards:
> 
> just in case you dont read it in us newspapers love and peace  vincent
> -------
> 
> To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to
> http://www.guardian.co.uk
> 
> 'He's just sleeping, I kept telling myself'
> On Sunday, 13 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in Baghdad when US
> helicopters fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians. G2 columnist Ghaith
> Abdul-Ahad, who was injured in the attack, describes the scene of carnage -
> and reveals just how lucky he was to walk away
> Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
> Tuesday September 14 2004
> The Guardian
> 
> 
> It started with a phone call early on Sunday morning: "Big pile of smoke over
> Haifa Street." Still half asleep I put on my jeans, cursing those insurgents
> who do their stuff in the early morning. What if I just go back to bed, I
> thought - by the time I will be there it will be over. In the car park it
> struck me that I didn't have my flak jacket in the car, but figured it was
> most probably just an IED (improvised explosive device) under a Humvee and I
> would be back soon.
> 
> On the way to Haifa Street I was half praying that everything would be over or
> that the Americans would seal off the area. I haven't recovered from Najaf
> yet.  
> 
> Haifa Street was built by Saddam in the early 80s, part of a scheme that was
> supposed to give Baghdad a modern look. A long, wide boulevard with huge
> Soviet high-rise buildings on both sides, it acts like a curtain, screening
> off the network of impoverished alleyways that are inhabited by Baghdad's
> poorest and toughest people, many of whom are from the heart of the Sunni
> triangle.  
> 
> When I arrived there I saw hundreds of kids and young men heading towards the
> smoke. "Run fast, it's been burning for a long time!" someone shouted as I
> grabbed my cameras and started to run.
> 
> When I was 50m away I heard a couple of explosions and another cloud of dust
> rose across the street from where the first column of smoke was still
> climbing. People started running towards me in waves. A man wearing an orange
> overall was sweeping the street while others were running. A couple of
> helicopters in the sky overhead turned away. I jumped into a yard in front of
> a shop that was set slightly back from the street, 10 of us with our heads
> behind the yard wall. "It's a sound bomb," said a man who had his face close
> to mine.  
> 
> A few seconds later, I heard people screaming and shouting - something must
> have happened - and I headed towards the sounds, still crouching behind a
> wall. Two newswire photographers were running in the opposite direction and we
> exchanged eye contact.
> 
> About 20m ahead of me, I could see the American Bradley armoured vehicle, a
> huge monster with fire rising from within. It stood alone, its doors open,
> burning. I stopped, took a couple of photos and crossed the street towards a
> bunch of people. Some were lying in the street, others stood around them. The
> helicopters were still buzzing, but further off now.
> 
> I felt uneasy and exposed in the middle of the street, but lots of civilians
> were around me. A dozen men formed a circle around five injured people, all of
> whom were screaming and wailing. One guy looked at one of the injured men and
> beat his head and chest: "Is that you, my brother? Is that you?" He didn't try
> to reach for him, he just stood there looking at the bloodied face of his
> brother.  
> 
> A man sat alone covered with blood and looked around, amazed at the scene. His
> T-shirt was torn and blood ran from his back. Two men were dragging away an
> unconscious boy who had lost the lower half of one leg. A pool of blood and a
> creamy liquid formed beneath the stump on the pavement. His other leg was
> badly gashed.  
> 
> I had been standing there taking pictures for two or three minutes when we
> heard the helicopters coming back. Everyone started running, and I didn't look
> back to see what was happening to the injured men. We were all rushing towards
> the same place: a fence, a block of buildings and a prefab concrete cube used
> as a cigarette stall.
> 
> I had just reached the corner of the cube when I heard two explosions, I felt
> hot air blast my face and something burning on my head. I crawled to the cube
> and hid behind it. Six of us were squeezed into a space less than two metres
> wide. Blood started dripping on my camera but all that I could think about was
> how to keep the lens clean. A man in his 40s next to me was crying. He wasn't
> injured, he was just crying. I was so scared I just wanted to squeeze myself
> against the wall. The helicopters wheeled overhead, and I realised that they
> were firing directly at us. I wanted to be invisible, I wanted to hide under
> the others.
> 
> As the helicopters moved a little further off, two of the men ran away to a
> nearby building. I stayed where I was with a young man, maybe in his early
> 20s, who was wearing a pair of leather boots and a tracksuit. He was sitting
> on the ground, his legs stretched in front of him but with his knee joint bent
> outwards unnaturally. Blood ran on to the dirt beneath him as he peered round
> the corner. I started taking pictures of him. He looked at me and turned his
> head back towards the street as if he was looking for something. His eyes were
> wide open and kept looking.
> 
> There in the street, the injured were all left alone: a young man with blood
> all over his face sat in the middle of the cloud of dust, then fell on to his
> face.  
> 
> Behind the cube, the other two men knew each other.
> 
> "How are you?" asked the man closer to me. He was lying against the cube's
> wall and trying to pull out his cellphone.
> 
> "I am not good," said the other, a young man in a blue T-shirt, resting
> against a fence. He was holding his arm, a chunk of which was missing,
> exposing the bone.
> 
> "Bring a car and come here please, we are injured," his friend was saying into
> his cellphone.  
> 
> The man with his knee twisted out, meanwhile, was making only a faint sound. I
> was so scared I didn't want to touch him. I kept telling myself he was OK, he
> wasn't screaming.
> 
> I decided to help the guy with the phone who was screaming. I ripped his
> T-shirt off and told him to squeeze it against the gash on his head. But I was
> scared; I wanted to do something, but I couldn't. I tried to remember the
> first-aid training I had had in the past, but all I was doing was taking
> pictures.  
> 
> I turned back to the man with the twisted knee. His head was on the curb now,
> his eyes were open but he just kept making the faint sound. I started talking
> to him, saying, "Don't worry, you'll be OK, you'll be fine." From behind him I
> looked at the middle of the street, where five injured men were still lying.
> Three of them were piled almost on top of each other; a boy wearing a white
> dishdasha lay a few metres away.
> 
> One of the three men piled together raised his head and looked around the
> empty streets with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the
> boy in front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then
> he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on his arms
> and stretched his hands towards something that he could see. It was the guy
> who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help his brother. He wanted
> help but no one helped. He was just there dying in front of me. Time didn't
> exist. The streets were empty and silent and the men lay there dying together.
> He slid down to the ground, and after five minutes was flat on the street.
> 
> I moved, crouching, towards where they were. They were like sleeping men with
> their   arms wrapped around each other in the middle of the empty street. I
> went to photograph the boy with the dishdasha. He's just sleeping, I kept
> telling myself. I didn't want to wake him. The boy with the amputated leg was
> there too, left there by the people who were pulling him earlier. The vehicle
> was still burning.
> 
> More kids ventured into the street, looking with curiosity at the dead and
> injured. Then someone shouted "Helicopters!" and we ran. I turned and saw two
> small helicopters, black and evil. Frightened, I ran back to my shelter where
> I heard two more big explosions. At the end of the street the man in the
> orange overall was still sweeping the street.
> 
> The man with the bent knee was unconscious now, his face flat on the curb.
> Some kids came and said, "He is dead." I screamed at them. "Don't say that! He
> is still alive! Don't scare him." I asked him if he was OK, but he didn't
> reply.  
> 
> We left the kids behind the bent-knee guy, the cellphone guy and the blue
> V-neck T-shirt guy; they were all unconscious now. We left them to die there
> alone. I didn't even try to move any with me. I just ran selfishly away. I
> reached a building entrance when someone grabbed my arm and took me inside.
> "There's an injured man. Take pictures - show the world the American
> democracy," he said. A man was lying in the corridor in total darkness as
> someone bandaged him.
> 
> Some others told me there was another journalist in the building. They took me
> to a stairwell leading to the basement, where a Reuters cameraman, a cheerful
> chubby guy, was lying holding his camera next to his head. He wasn't screaming
> but he had a look of pain in his eyes.
> 
> I tried to remember his name to call his office, but I couldn't. He was a
> friend, we had worked together for months. I have seen him in every press
> conference, but I couldn't remember his name.
> 
> In time, an ambulance came. I ran to the street as others emerged from their
> hiding places, all trying to carry injured civilians to the ambulance.
> 
> "No, this one is dead," said the driver. "Get someone else."
> 
> The ambulance drove away and we all scattered, thinking to ourselves: the
> Americans won't fire at an ambulance but they will at us. This scene was
> repeated a couple of times: each time we heard an ambulance we would emerge
> into the streets, running for cover again as it left.
> 
> Yesterday, sitting in the office, another photographer who was looking at my
> pictures exclaimed: "So the Arabiya journalist was alive when you were taking
> pictures!"  
> 
> "I didn't see the Arabiya journalist."
> 
> He pointed at the picture of the guy with V-neck T-shirt. It was him. He was
> dead. All the people I had shared my shelter with were dead.
> 
> Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
> _______________________________________________
> Mb-hair mailing list
> Mb-hair at islandlists.com
> http://www.islandlists.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mb-hair