Two Birthdays in Baghdad

Middle East Policy, Winter 2006 by Kandaswamy, Deepa

Two Birthdays in Baghdad, by Anna Prouse. Translated by Elizabeth Griffith. Compass Press, 2005. 252 pages. $11.56, paperback.

Deepa Kandaswamy, writer and political analyst

The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath have so far been about the evil Bush administration, the evil Saddam Hussein, the death of Iraqis, the insurgencies, the American soldiers and embedded journalists from both sides.

Three years later, the world media, depending on where you live, is still filled with tokenism, exaggerations and understatements. It doesn't matter which side or angle one covers; the bottom line is that the journalists who cover the stories are paid well or are on fellowships to further their careers. They wouldn't be there otherwise despite their bleeding-heart articles about "poor Iraqis" or the stories about the "brave soldiers." They then move on to write the next big story or get a book deal out of it. The rest of us, who either watch or read about Iraq, stop for a moment, say, "this is horrific." maybe do a protest march for a day, and get on with our lives.

This is why this book is refreshing. The author, Anna Prouse, volunteered to work in Iraq as a member of the Italian Red Cross. An emergency medic, she lived through it all and almost died working in a field hospital, which not only treated sick Iraqis but also provided processed bottled water for all. The author doesn't bother with news analysis or the political ramifications, and she does not take sides. Instead, we are given a glimpse of what it is like to actually live and work in the "officially declared" post-war Iraq, where people struggle to survive amidst the wreckage and destruction.

Prouse writes about the escapism people use to get through horrific situations. Living in a war zone, she discovers that it isn't easy to accept that your friend has been killed or disabled. She says it is easier to manage if one imagines being on the set of a film or TV serial. The technique worked for her. She pretended she was on the set of a television serial when she had to plunge her arms up to the elbows into the abdomen of a bullet-ridden Iraqi to keep it open. While the doctor was extracting bullets, the hospital tent almost collapsed on top of them, and the generator went out. They managed to save the patient. Another instance is her attempt to make "sangria" for everyone at the field hospital on her birthday. Shopping for bottles of wine, apples and other fruit on the streets of Baghdad shows her determination to make life seem as normal as possible.

For Anna and others like her who worked in Iraq, it was a question of getting things done, be it to help an Iraqi child get medical dressing for burns or to attempt to save an Iraqi with bullet wounds. Therefore, Prouse doesn't spare anyone when faced with bureaucratic restrictions. She comes down heavily on the officers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who sit in air-conditioned rooms and dictate what the field workers should and should not do. For example, the ICRC was angry that the Italian Red Cross Hospital in Baghdad was having Italian soldiers protect its premises and refused to give them extra toilets! The Italian ambassador insisted on getting a list of everything in the hospital in Italian, Arabic and English! She berates herself for falling for the "dangerous al-Qaeda prisoners" line of the American soldier who refused her entry into certain parts of the Abu Ghraib prison and for not heeding the pleas of the sick at the Abu Ghraib hospital, as they strangely didn't seem to want to recover and go back to their cells. Neither does she spare the officers of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), who wanted telephone numbers of hospitals in Iraq when the telephone lines were destroyed, or Iranian resistance fighters, most of whom have never set foot in Iran, but are opposed to the regime in Iran and dream of a democratic, pluralistic, Islamic Iran. Prouse tells them, "The shah of Iran was equally damaging to your people as the various ayatollahs are today."

Anna Prouse writes about the ordinary people who survived the war and are living in the aftermath, not really wanting to be there or just trying to live as normally as they can. For those who were involved in the reconstruction of Baghdad, the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, marked a turning point. From then on, most people including Iraqis saw their time in Iraq as pre- and post-August 19, not as post- and pre-invasion or even post- and pre-Saddam. The sheer violence of the attack and the death toll, which included the UN envoy and Iraqis, sent shockwaves among the organizations, which felt no one was safe anymore. Then the attack on the ICRC office because they insisted on having no military protect them, making them an easy target, forced its personnel to leave. Nevertheless, among others, the Italian Red Cross team stayed, despite the attacks for over a year, until they were able to shift the field hospital, identify a pucca building, and sign a contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Health so that the Iraqi doctors, nurses and medical professionals could have a functioning hospital.