dancin' in the streets

[pynchonoid]

jbor:
>After 23 years of
>oppression and fear the people of Iraq can finally
>live again.

Except for the ones killed -- predictably, either by
the traditional methods or because of the margin of
error of the so-called "precision" munitions'  -- by
US and UK and Australian forces.  


<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/09/1049567748685.html>

The instinctive reaction of parents is to get their
children out of the city. Some are even making them
walk to the country. But Wael Sabah was stuck in
Baladiyat, on the city's far eastern flank where,
neighbours say, she thought her children were out of
harm's way.

But their descent deep into hell starts the second the
pilot in a low-flying F/A-18 pulled the trigger,
unleashing a missile that rips apart their home and
their lives.

Tiny 12-year-old Noor, her long black plait a tangle
of blood and dust, is dead; in the next cubicle in the
Kindi Hospital trauma ward, her younger brother, Abdel
Khader, is dead; and across the way, their mother is
dying in a sea of her own blood.

If it is possible to have a nightmare within a
nightmare, Kindi Hospital is it. The horror of war in
Baghdad is distressing, but it is not possible to walk
into this hospital without questioning the very
essence of humanity as we think we know it.

Kindi has too much death and too much pain. It doesn't
have enough medical staff, drugs and equipment; it's
running out of body bags and clean water is dependent
on electricity in a city of day-long blackouts.

Patients facing emergency surgery can have only 800
milligrams of ibuprofen, the same amount an Australian
doctor might prescribe for muscle pain, and there is a
critical shortage of anaesthetics. They have resorted
to making their own fracture-fixing frames with
lengths of steel and moulding clay. 

Hygiene is poor - the wards and emergency rooms are
filthy and because its laundry has been forced to
close by the blackouts, doctors are making do with
torn gowns instead of towels and wipes.

Patients keep arriving in a procession of racing
ambulances, muddied utilities and battered taxis. An
army of exhausted, weepy support staff help them on to
trolleys, scattering the flies that feed on the blood
of the last patient.

And dozens of relatives stand in the shadows of the
forecourt, consoling each other about the dead and
waiting for news on the half-dead. Men cry openly,
uncontrollably; women wail, clutching each other for
support.

Anger at the West occasionally becomes violent. Guns
have been cocked and punches thrown at foreign
reporters seen to be intruding on Iraqi grief.

A woman drops to the floor in the waiting area,
screaming her 12-year-old son's name: "Feran! Feran!
Tell me where he is!" Another son tries to console
her, assuring her that he is merely wounded after an
air strike on their neighbourhood, and that he's going
to be fine.

But Feran had just been declared dead on arrival at
Kindi.

A utility races in - lights on, horn blaring. On the
back, an old man sobs broken-heartedly. He cradles a
small boy who seems lifeless, his eyes peering blankly
from pools of his own blood; the rose-coloured stain
on his white shirt is getting bigger and his tongue
hangs from his mouth in a foamy mess. 

His head is split open but there is no time to learn
his story. He is wheeled into the hospital. A medical
team takes one look at him, decides he needs services
they can't provide and he is wheeled back out; into an
ambulance that screeches off through the hospital
gates, to another medical centre.

The utility gives chase, with the man on the back
still in tears. And nobody has time for the two
corpses next to him which have been locked in an
intimate embrace by the movement of the vehicle.

Kindi's 12 operating theatres are in use around the
clock. A haggard and tearful Dr Tarib Al Saddi stands
outside the hospital, trying to have a break, hoping
to compose himself as the wind whips at his soiled
white coat.

"I have done 12 operations today - crushings,
fractures and amputations. You see that these
Americans are hitting civilians - their homes, their
streets, their cars and even those who walk about.
They hit anyone. One of the ambulance drivers says
they have struck Al Yarmuk Hospital, so now we worry
about a strike here." 

Lips quivering and cheeks stained by his own tears, Dr
Al Saddi goes on: "Everyone is anxious and angry,
maybe I'm the only calm one here."

He locks onto a disconsolate woman in black, slumped
against a wall. He makes me look at her beautiful
face, into her tragic eyes, and says: "She was driving
in the car with her 23-year-old son. They put a bullet
in the head because he failed to stop at an American
check-point."

The woman cuts in: "He was innocent. We were on our
way home. Why do the Americans do this? God forgive
them!"

Dr Al Saadi asks: "How can anyone who comes to
liberate a country do this - lacerate and destroy our
people? Do they really think that somehow after a few
days this woman will love them?"

There is little talk of Saddam Hussein here.

Hazem Mohammed Jabeel, 37, feels the need to prompt
his wounded seven-year-old son, Ayman, to give
reporters a V-for-victory sign. And despite the fact
that his wounded foot will be keeping him here for
some time, Haroot Manouk, a 32-year-old fighter, wants
to soldier on: "We'll show them, you'll see, all of
you will see."

Surgeon Mohamed Kamil says there has been a marked
change in the nature of Kindi's workload since the
arrival of US troops in Baghdad at the weekend. "We're
now getting not just shrapnel wounds, but pieces of
people," he says. "These are wounds from missiles and
rockets. They are amputations. They require more
urgent surgery."

The numbers have been rising steadily at the hospital
- today it received more than 200 injuries and 35
corpses. Six other hospitals serving the city report
similar figures and now they are having the overflow
from Iraq's hard-pressed military hospitals foisted on
them.

Nothing prepares a visitor for the scene at the
hospital morgue. I've been into several in Iraq now
and I think I know what to expect - the bodies are
always mangled, frequently burnt beyond recognition,
but usually treated with as much dignity as each
having its own cold metal tray allows.

But when the double refrigeration doors are opened on
one of several buildings out the back at Kindi, there
is just a pile on the floor - maybe 20 or 25 corpses;
it is impossible to tell.

Some of the faces are scorched black. Some have their
clothes ripped off, their intestine hanging out. Limbs
protrude from the pile, lying across other corpses and
it is impossible to tell who is who in this Dalian
drama.

The traffic to and from the morgue is pitiable.
Hospital orderlies wheel the dead in and families
bring makeshift coffins to take the dead out.

And when a group of foreign cameraman moves in to film
the scene, the four men charged with moving the bodies
in and out of the morgue react badly, angrily chasing
them away.

"Why are you taking photos? For Bush?" one of them
yells, waving his arms. "Tell him to go to hell."



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