- He writhes in pain, moaning with every other breath.
The Iraqi police colonel's chest is covered in bandages, his legs from
the knees down nearly completely hidden from view due to thick bandages
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album33&id=legs
- holding what is left of his shins together.
-
- "We gave him first aid and requested a transfer
because we don't have any specialists left," Dr. Aisha tells me, her
name changed as requested since doctors are now technically forbidden to
talk to the media or allow them to take photos in Iraqi hospitals unless
granted permission from the Ministry of Health and its US-advisor.
-
- And even then we are only allowed to talk with "spokespeople"
at select hospitals.
-
- Yarmouk would certainly not be on the top of their list
of hospitals for the press to visit, as being one of Baghdad's larger and
busiest hospitals and located in the middle of the capital city the majority
of casualties are brought here.
-
- The colonel's face is scrunched
up as his pain is constant. Involuntary whimpers are audible as he squeezes
his eyes closed from time to time, dreaming of relief.
-
- "We sent him to a neurological hospital which couldn't
treat him because all of their specialists have left the country,"
Dr. Aisha continues. Her frustration is expressed in her precisely spoken
words, hammering out the details like a veteran on the front lines.
-
- So the colonel was returned to Yarmouk untreated. He'd
been guarding a polling station when a suicide bomber detonated nearby.
The shrapnel turned his legs into hamburger and left his chest split open.
-
- "I asked him not to leave the house, not to obey
the Americans," his wife who is standing nearby with their little
boy and girl tells me, "But he said that he had to go or the Americans
would cut his salary. And also because he said it was his duty."
-
- She looks over to him as another whimper emits from his
contorted face, then looks back at me with anger flashing in her weary
eyes.
-
- "The Americans told him he should die with his countrymen!
God damn them for what they have done to my husband! God damn them for
what they have done to Iraq!"
-
- We promptly thank her and hastily leave the room, not
wanting to draw more attention to ourselves.
-
- While walking towards the next room down the grimy hallway
and broken windows Dr. Aisha waves a fly away from her face, as they constantly
buzz around inside the hospital.
-
- "He will probably lose his legs. All we have is
rotator doctors and residents since all of our specialists left the country
so they wouldn't be kidnapped. I've been here two days straight without
sleep," she says as a group of nurses approach her to sign several
files.
-
- In the next room there is another policeman. His abdomen
was blown open by a mortar blast at a polling stationhe is holding a blue
bandage to his face which caught some shrapnel Tubes
run from his stomach off one side of the bed.
-
- His father sees Dr. Aisha as we approach and begins talking
to her, "This hospital is so dirty! I want to transfer my son! The
care is horrible!"
-
- She calmly explains to him that they are doing their
best; without enough doctors, without enough cleaners, without enough nurses,
without enough supplies, without enough medicine.
-
- The angry father's son is a 28 year-old policeman named
Jalil Hassan who shifts uncomfortably in his bed. The room smells of rotten
bananas and flies are everywhere. Anytime a nurse walks into the room of
eight beds she/he is inundated with angry and stressed family members.
-
- Nearby is a voter, 27 year-old Amir Hassan
His polling station was mortared as well. He caught shrapnel near his waist
and is waiting for some pain medication that does not exist.
-
- "We asked the Americans for supplies," Dr.
Aisha tells me later when we exit the room, "But they didn't help
us any. How can we continue like this? When an American private is badly
wounded they fly him to Germany or America. Here we have high ranking police
officers and Iraqi soldiers who are brought to this dirty hospital with
no specialists!"
-
- Abu Talat and I thank her for her time and for taking
the risk necessary to bring us inside her hospital.
-
- I notice new windows in her office-last time I was here
they had been blown out by a nearby car bomb. This place turns into a field
hospital every time a car bomb generates massive casualties, which is just
about every day. I wonder how long her new glass will last.
-
- I also notice the new white paint on a couple of the
buildings. Abu Talat notices me looking at it in disbelief and begins laughing
and holding his hands up.
-
- Back out on the streets we head out to find some lunch.
We have our usual ritual of his driving and fixing interviews simultaneously.
As he holds the phone as far from his face as possible to find a number,
I grab it from him to dial and he steers us back away from the side of
the street.
-
- "Name," I ask. "Dr. Hamad," he replies.
I find it, dial, hand the phone to him and say, "Calling."
-
- "Thank you," he says while we weave down the
road a little further. He's searching his pockets for his lighter as he
holds the phone to his ear, so I light his cigarette and we straighten
out again. We have this down to a science.
-
- There are always a pair of his glasses on the dash-sometimes
his reading glasses, sometimes his bi-focal specs which he never uses despite
my badgering. I bothered him for a year to get new glasses and applauded
him when he proudly showed them to me recently.
-
- Of course now he never wears them.
-
- The streets are filled with traffic once again after
the election lockdown, trucks full of Iraqi Police wearing black facemasks
battle their way through throngs of cars, aiming their Kalashnikovs at
everyone in futile attempts to make their way forward.
-
- "I feel very much threatened when I see those police
or American soldiers aiming their guns at us," states Abu Talat when
a truckload of Iraqi soldiers rolls past, of course aiming their guns at
us as they make their way through an intersection, "I don't accept
this."
-
- We stop to get some shawarma across the street from the
Australian military outpost which was recently car bombed. I scan the building,
chunks of it three floors up blasted off from the explosion.
-
- A few days after the attack the nearby Australian embassy
decided to relocate to "Camp Victory," a large US military base.
-
- Back in my room we watch the news while eating lunch
and drinking tea. Storm clouds are billowing around the recent polling,
as Mishaan Jiburi, one of the candidates, accused the electoral commission
of deliberately failing to supply materials in Sunni areas.
-
- Arab voters in the north who had planned to boycott the
elections in Kirkuk decided at the last minute to vote so as not to lose
the oil-rich city to the Kurds. Thus, not enough ballots were supplied,
and now the plot thickens.
-
- "I think the decision came from Baghdad," Jiburi
told reporters, "They were concerned with keeping the Sunnis out of
the game."
-
- Just yesterday interim Vice-President Ibrahim al-Jaafari
warned of the possibility of civil war if the US military withdrew from
Iraq prematurely.
-
- Keep in mind the "elections" were just three
days ago.
-
-
- (c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
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- Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
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