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... es, their own civil structure, their own government when they have been deprived of every last paper that might have provided something at least to build upon? Back outside we pass more buildings pitted by war and destruction. At one high-rise, its entire western wall missing, we can see clearly a man hanging from a metal beam, stripping the wire from the ceilings of the otherwise empty building. Below him on the street, his donkey waits next to a wooden cart filled with odds and ends. Across the street, an old man sits resting in the shade of a previously half-constructed building, now half-demolished before ever being finished.
Another block down a group of workers stand in an alleyway between businesses waist-deep in piles of paper and plaster, using shovels and their hands to move the debris into carts. They wear long white kafiyahs over their faces, their only protection against the toxic dust. Behind us, barbed wire surrounds a couple banks but at only knee-level, it is easily stepped over. At this point, however, there doesnt seem much left in the banks, stores, or businesses worth taking. When the Coalition forces arrived in Baghdad they didnt stop the looting. They didnt surround any of the museums or hospitals or government ministries except, of course, the Ministry of Oil.
To a nation already doubtful of the real reason for this war, such a move proved to be extremely symbolic. In the commercial district of Baghdad, I stop to film a bombed-out shopping mall, whose destruction alone meant the loss of hundreds of civilian jobs. The front of the building has collapsed on one side so that the metal neon sign out front still hangs askew. There is no longer an inside to the building, just piles of debris surrounded by two-story concrete poles. As I contemplate this one example of so much loss in such a small space, two men walk by. Seeing my camera and guessing correctly that I am Western, they raised their fists and shout, Amrike's Ali-Babas!
Amrike's Oil Ali-Babas! Ali Baba, of Arabian Nights fame, was the thief to rob all thieves. The Americans too like this term, Ali Baba, adopting it like rag head or insurgent to mean, in the simplest of terms, bad guy. The fact that the Americans are calling the Iraqis Ali Babas and the Iraqis are calling the Americans Ali Babas is a perfect metaphor for the situation here.
Everyone is a bad guy. Be afraid of everyone. I try to videotape a checkpoint set up at an interstate on-ramp leading out of Baghdad but am stopped by a U. S. soldier who wants my camera. The checkpoint, he says, is a secure area and no cameras are allowed.
I am able to keep my camera only when I agree to film over the footage and so I have no way to adequately portray the line that was queuing there. Around thirty cars had been waiting in line for at least an hour to get through. Perhaps this wouldnt be such an inconvenience if it werent 110 degrees in the sun and gasoline wasnt at such a shortage. Also off limits to filming are the gasoline queues, which stretch for blocks at each barbed-wire gas station.
It is telling that despite living atop one of the worlds largest oil deposits ordinary Iraqi civilians now must wait for hours and sometimes even days just to be able to get a little gasoline for their generators. When the station closes for the day, drivers must decide: risk losing their space in line by going home and coming back the next day or sleep overnight in their vehicles. If they remain, they put their own lives at risk as well as the lives of their family members, now home alone without the head of household and without any gas for the generator to light the darkness around them. In response to growing demand, the black market for oil has flourished. Children now line the streets selling corroded tin cans full of gasoline, sometimes at fifteen times the market value. The traffic situation in Iraq is unstable at best and, as we drive south towards Nassariyah, we are of course held up many times.
At each stop, children flock to the windows, with bananas or gas cans to sell us. With such desperation present in these childrens lives, the contents of these cans can be questionable. In some cases the gasoline is actually a mixture of gasoline and kerosene or even water. Eventually, we do stop for gas, but at a petrol station, where the tankers are still unloading their cargo of oil. There are children working at the station too. The owner of the station lives right next to the pumps, in a tiny white plastered house surrounded by a small yard of sand and enclosed by a chest-high concrete wall.
Just fifty feet away from the house, tankers chug noisily and civilian cars honk impatiently. On the other side, a main road teems with noisy cars and impatient traffic. The air is filled with dust and grime. As small as it is, the house is overflowing with men, women, girls and boys, all selling gasoline. Two women in their twenties walk by balancing cans of gasoline on top of their heads, their long black alias hanging limp in the heat. Beside the wall, several small boys sit atop plastic gas cans, waiting or resting momentarily before being sent back out to the streets.
Behind the wall, in the tiny, dusty courtyard wait four young girls, ages 10 to 14. No doubt because of their prime age for kidnappings and the growing sex trade, the girls are watched closely and they remain behind the concrete wall. Their job is to fill the cans, one after the other, without spilling any near the house. The girls wear faded matching pink and white calico dresses that drag in the dirt and all except the youngest wear headscarves. They are thus covered from ankle to top of their heads on a day when even the lightest fabric feels heavy and burdensome in the heat. Around us, the air is filled with exhaust fumes that seem to stick to the skin and then bead down our foreheads.
The sun is terribly bright and reflects back off the sand all around us, casting the entire scene in shades of white and yellow. As I chat with these girls, I cant help but keep looking back and forth from the tiny house to the gas station to their ragged figures before me. I try to imagine how my views of America would have been shaped had I come of age in this tiny house next to a gas station surrounded by sweaty, shouting men and barbed wire. The oldest has shining eyes and a beautiful smile that she tries to hide behind her scarf as she surveys me quizzically from behind the wall.
Her sister next to her is more upfront. She stoops in the sand at her feet and draws a line with her finger. On one side the line, she places an X, points to herself and says Iraq. On the other side, she places another X, says Amrikes and points to me. Slowly, she traces her finger from me in America to her in Iraq.
The she rises, looks at me with a quizzical smile and shrugs her shoulders, her hands held out in question. Why are you here? As I am contemplating the question and whether she means myself or my country and how on earth to begin explaining by way of signs in the sand, a man walks up to me. He has been watching our exchange and he motions for me to look across the wall at the girls feet, which I hadnt noticed until now that are all barefoot. The man looks at me with a look of anger, his eyes burning.
He waves his arm again, emphasizing their feet without saying a word. Finally, he speaks. So! Amrikes has the oil, he says, stretching his arms wide to take in the gas station before us. Now what about Iraq?
Now what about us? - Baghdad, Iraq, September 2003 Three years later, I am still pondering these questions. Rather than improve with time, the situation in Iraq has only deteriorated beyond belief. Around 30, 000 Iraqi civilians have now been killed as a direct consequence of the war and occupation. Suicide bombings have increase dramatically.
Rapes have continued unhindered and womens rights and freedoms have essentially disappeared into the shadows. The paradox of it all is that if this was a war for safety from supposed terrorists, for oil, for for some other American interest, then we have failed on all fronts. Terrorist attacks inside Iraq are happening at a rate of nine times what they were before 2003 and on an international scale have tripled in that time. Continuous fighting and a lack of infrastructure have prevented the pumping of Iraq's oil for both the Iraqis and for the U. S. And the Iraqi people are now joined in their suffering by the families of more than 2, 000 U.
S. troops who have been killed fighting a war that increasingly begs for explanation. What about Iraq, indeed. And what about us?
Why are we there and when will we realize our mistake and come home?
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Research essay sample on Barbed Wire Gas Station
