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My Iraq: a reporter's 20-year retrospective

The longest-serving Western correspondent in Baghdad tracks the lives of two Iraqi friends – from dinners under the moon and palms to the heartbreak of war.

from the May 3, 2009 edition

Page 4 of 5

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"When were you in Fallujah, again?" I ask her.

"When you were there," she says matter-of-factly.

Nermeen was a volunteer with the Iraqi Red Crescent, helping civilians trapped in the devastating battle between the US and insurgents. She later wrote about an entire family – all but a 9-month-old baby – killed by a US airstrike. I was with the American forces as they moved into neighborhoods controlled by insurgents who'd rigged buildings to explode. They rained more artillery shells on Fallujah than in any urban battle since Vietnam. The explosions through the night felt like the end of the world. What was left at the end looked like it.

It's not something we talk about often. The US soldiers are her son's age, and Nermeen wishes they could go home to their mothers and girlfriends.

"That day I left Fallujah, I saw all these dead bodies everywhere, demolished houses everywhere," she says. Iraq has become a republic of need, she adds. "It changed my life to trying to help those poor widows and orphans."

Even more reason for her to stay.

In my years going back and forth between Iraq and the US, I've become convinced that it's only distance that makes things look simple. The labels we use – Baathist, insurgent – don't mean nearly as much to Iraqis as they do to us. Even the Iraqis who returned from exile with their fixed ideas of wrong and right found themselves in uncertain territory. And those who lived here through Saddam find themselves strangers in their own country.

In the '90s, when we first met, Bassim knew almost every corner of this city and walked the streets as if he owned them – greeting old friends, helping people during hard times, pointing out the history of every lane and alley.

The evenings are what he and many other Iraqis miss most. People had little freedom, and, under the US-led sanctions of the '90s, hardly any money. But there was a rich social life – dinners that lasted until 2 in the morning, wedding receptions that went on until dawn.

Bassim has reinvented himself three times. From shipping in Basra, he went to Kuwait as a fund manager and was forced out after Saddam's disastrous 1990 invasion. He became a successful antiques dealer here, selling old watches, carpets, and paintings. And now, instead of the retirement he'd envisioned fixing antique clocks, he's a refugee in Jordan.

All that's left of his life in Iraq fits in a canvas suitcase on his bed. The night before he leaves Iraq again, he pulls painting after painting from the depths of the bag – each like an old friend.

"Look at this one," he says, pushing up his glasses to read notes on the corner of a sketch of the profile of a woman. " 'What is a woman but philosophy?' " he reads, losing himself in the works.

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