Editor’s Note: Cheryl Diaz Meyer has returned to Iraq to cover rebuilding efforts. In a personal journal, she reflects on the chaos she encountered at a Baghdad hospital. There, amid the disarray, watching women give birth in bare-bones conditions, she also found that life goes on. In March, she covered the war with Marines of the 2nd Tank Battalion. This report is based on an e-mail she sent to family, friends and colleagues.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Their bright, intelligent eyes studied me, their stained white robes blending in with the dirty fingerprints on the walls. Midnight had come and gone… Then it was one… two … three…four o’clock in the morning.

It was dark for miles around, and we were huddled in Kadhamiya Hospital, a safe haven in a city where gangs of criminals have been perfecting the art of ambushing unwary victims. It wasn’t always this way. Certainly not during the time of Saddam Hussein, who was captured last weekend.

We were huddled in a bright, fluorescent-lit room. And this time, I was a journalist from the Philippines. Yesterday, I was in Najaf, one of the holiest cities in Iraq for Shiite Muslims, and my translator decided I was Azerbaijani. Each day, he gets more and more creative. When I wake up in the mornings, I never know who I will be that day.

“Where are you from?” asked one of the doctors. I looked at my translator inquisitively.

“Where am I from, Saleem?”

“You are from the Philippines, of course, ” he said with conviction.

We have come to Baghdad to do a story about the security situation in Iraq. We had planned to follow the ambulances around for the night. But the hospital wasn’t dispatching the ambulances. There is no working phone system in Baghdad, and the injured would never make it to the hospital if they waited for an ambulance.

So I gave up on that plan around 9 p.m. and decided to focus on the patients already in the hospital, one of only two in Baghdad with an emergency room.

Hours passed. The doctors were supposed to be sleeping during their night rotation. But they found the presence of a journalist a welcome respite from their daily routine. They kept me company during my overnight vigil waiting for victims of violence.

But the only patients who came in were women – robed in long, black, billowing abbayas – pain etched on every inch of their faces. They were in labor, and the doctors couldn’t be bothered to get up. Instead, they waved the women on to the third floor, the obstetrics department, which had one female doctor for most of the night.

The obstetrics department handles an average of 30 births per day. Once a woman is dilated, she has about 20 minutes to give birth before the next woman is shuffled onto the birthing table. A gloved hand and a pair of scissors expedite the process.

The downfall 

“Greed will be the downfall of Iraq, ” said one doctor in clear, concise English.

The simplicity, eloquence and truth of that statement made me want to cry. Looting during and after the war was so widespread that not a person was left unaffected.

But I have found that in this country of great paradox, one sees the most despicable deeds and the most inconceivable acts of honor. In such extreme circumstances, humans are pushed to their limits, and the truth of character is revealed.

The hospitals in Baghdad are a pathetic mess. They have a shortage of medicine, medical equipment and supplies. The stench is a combination of blood, pharmaceuticals and human excrement.

But the problem is not simply a shortage of supplies – it’s the greed of a staff that has been pilfering the hospital’s supplies of medicine and equipment, alleged Dr. Esam, who is the brother of my translator.

Under Saddam, Iraqis learned to be creative in supplementing their meager wages by stealing the supplies in their care.

So when the doctor blew the whistle on the hospital’s director after the war, he says he was offered a nice car and $20,000 to shut up. It would take 15 years to earn that sum on a doctor’s salary in Iraq.

He declined and instead led a rebellion to oust the former Baathist – and succeeded. He didn’t consider this particularly heroic in light of the fact that he had stayed in the hospital at the height of the war and fought off looters for several days. It’s mainly because of his efforts that Kadhamiya Hospital is one of the better hospitals in Baghdad today.

Don’t trust anyone, not even my brother, the doctor.

-Saleem, translator

But the doctors were educated enough to know that my Patagonia fleece top was probably not from the Philippines, my manner not quite of the Far East and my American accent came too easily.

I don’t like this business of half-truths. But in Iraq today, it is a matter of life and death.

When asked, all the other U.S. photographers who are working in Iraq just laugh and say that they haven’t been Americans in months.

Anger and antagonism

It’s my first time back to Iraq since I covered the war in the spring as an embedded journalist with the Marines and then as a unilateral journalist in Baghdad. It’s a very different place from the Baghdad I remember. The energy is different – both the energy of the U.S. military and that of the Iraqis.

The military has closed much of its book to journalists, my colleagues and I believe. Many in the public, meanwhile, believe that the media has told too many negative stories that scare people back home.

And the Iraqis have become angry at America and downright antagonistic toward Americans. The United States is the world’s superpower and they believe it should be able to fix all their problems – quickly.

But here we are, eight months after the war’s end and still they are suffering from shortages in fuel, sporadic electricity, garbage and sewage in the streets, high crime and, in their view, anarchy.

Ah, what is this democracy?

-Driver

“Ah, what is this democracy?” my driver once screamed as we nearly collided with yet another car driving in the wrong direction.

I’ve given up on gasping every time we have a near fatality, because I can’t stand the exhaust that gets sucked into my lungs from the thousands of vehicles vying for every inch of space on the road. Most vehicles spewing fumes here were made in the ’70s and ’80s, before the sanctions were imposed on Iraq, halting the country’s progress for the last two decades.

Democracy?

Should Iraq have a democracy or a dictatorship? That was the question I posed to doctors in the Kadhamiya Hospital. Iraqis insist that they don’t want a dictator. But a democracy will never work in Iraq either, the doctors said.

Because Iraqis are verry, verry different, they said, their bushy eyebrows flickering with meaning that I wasn’t sure I grasped. How so? I asked, hoping to be enlightened.

Years of war have damaged the Iraqis, the doctors said. You can see it clearly in the children who will welcome a foreigner one moment and throw stones the next.

There is a deep and odd violence that characterizes the people. The lack of motivation and laziness is tantamount to a national illness. It will take several generations for this to change, the doctors said. Iraqis say they need a blend of democracy and dictatorship because the people are too uneducated to make decisions for themselves. They don’t know the meaning of democracy.

To illustrate their point, the doctors told me a story. A woman was interviewed on a prominent TV network.

“Do you think Iraq should have a democracy, voting for a new president every four years?”

“Yes, democracy is great,” she replied. “We could loot every four years.”

I understood the doctors’ complaints, because I have lived them these past 10 days in Baghdad. It is a verry, verry strange place.

Bad luck

In the hospital that night, I met a 22-year-old patient by the name of Mohannad. I only sort of met him, because he was actually under a blanket, his leg sticking out, wrapped in bloody gauze.

He was comatose, drugged with Valium. He still had a bullet lodged in his leg, because it was Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, and the surgeons were on vacation.

“Such bad luck to be shot during Eid,” my translator remarked. “I fear that he might lose a leg because gangrene will develop in the bullet wound.”

Mohannad was shot by a cousin. The cousin explained that Mohannad was being very bad. He had killed a man, and looted and robbed him.

Mohannad’s family is financially comfortable. They own four cars. The problem is that all his criminal activity reflects badly on the family, and in a tribal society, this could bring some nasty results if a victim’s family decided to exact revenge on Mohannad’s family.

So the family decided that in order to save the family honor, Mohannad should be killed. The cousin, a policeman, was designated to do the job. But the cousin decided to shoot him in the leg instead, because Allah prohibits killing, he said.

And so now he watched over his cousin, hoping his recovery would take a long time.

Eventually, the doctors caught on to me, and I let Saleem weave the final touches to the tale of my identity. It’s great to be back in Baghdad.

ON THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD – A sickening WVOOOOOM! accompanied by a desperate call of INCOMING!!! woke me from my battle-weary sleep.

In the fractions of a second that my poor, numb brain registered the sound of the 122mm rocket that landed 20 feet from our camp, I thought, “Where do you get off lighting those things up so close to sleeping souls?” We were lined up in our sleeping sacks, trying to erase the horror of the day’s battle that left four Marines dead and another 17 injured, when the explosion awoke us.

“Where do you get off lighting those things up so close to sleeping souls?”

We had traveled 31 miles yesterday on a highway controlled by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Everywhere we went we were met with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. My writing colleague Jim Landers sank back at the end of the day mumbling something about having stepped into hell.

I had barely extricated myself from my cocoon, when another rocket flew over us. The lieutenant colonel said the counter battery was tracking the source of the rockets and would destroy them.

The men of the Bravo command amphibious assault vehicle (AAV), with whom we had made a home for the last two days, looked at each other, shaking. And then the third one hit.

I jumped out of my sack, barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt. I collected my chemical suit, gas mask, Kevlar helmet, hiking boots, glasses and backpack and ran to the AAV for shelter.

“Oh my gawd, it’s a mermaid.”

“Oh my gawd, it’s a mermaid,” a young lance corporal, Keith Chandler, had barely covered up his skivvies with his sleeping bag before I trampled over him and perched myself on top of an MRE box, cursing under my breath. Getting into the AAV with all my protective gear normally takes me about a minute of huffing and puffing, and Lance Cpl. Chandler watched in disbelief as I leapt forcefully into the 3-feet-high entrance, throwing equipment in all directions.

After about 30 minutes, we straggled out, shaken, ready to take our chances. I crawled back into my sack, whimpering small comforts to myself.

If it was going to happen, then it would happen, and hopefully it would be quick. 

I prayed as I waited for sleep to take me away from the misery and fear. I thought, I don’t care what it takes – who gets hurt or who gets killed – just, please, make them stop. And with each explosion of our artillery, I cheered in my heart because it was one step closer to making me safe.

“I don’t care what it takes – who gets hurt or who gets killed – just, please, make them stop.”

Only the chickens

The following morning would reveal a minibus with a man, woman and two children lying in a pool of blood; a sedan with a man in the passenger seat covered in a blanket; a man lying prostrate in front of a delivery truck; two men lying next to a car, one of whom was believed to be a three-star general in the Republican Guard; and countless others at various checkpoints.

After weeks of waiting for action, we seem to have gotten it in full with the 2nd Tank Battalion. Each day is increasingly hectic as we race toward Baghdad, blowing through town after town, only waiting to resupply ammunition and to evacuate the dead and injured.

Rattled and shaken

My stomach has been weak since last night’s close call. Several journalists traveling with us have quietly begun talking about leaving. We are rattled and shaken. And the increasing violence to which we bear witness is taking its toll.

For myself, I can only say that I am determined to see Baghdad, if my will permits.

In the Eastern Marshes of southern Iraq, 5,000 Iraqis have returned to reclaim land and restore the marshes once destroyed by Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War Shiite uprising. The Dallas Morning News photographer Cheryl Diaz Meyer reports on the conditions of the marshes.

Dear Family, Friends and Colleagues,

It’s really quite a giggle.  I’ve got henna painted in floral design on my right hand extending from my inner wrist down to the tip of my middle finger.  It’s still drying and crusted on my skin like leprosy.  But underneath is the beautiful orange pattern, which delicate hands detailed onto mine with much precision.

Today, I spent the afternoon laughing with the young Muslim women at the Grand Mosque in Manama, Bahrain, as they painted my hand and each other’s with geometric and floral designs.  The geometric designs with intricate detail are considered Indian, and the floral designs are considered Arabic.

It was a real insight, this henna-coloring girl-bonding thing.  Suddenly I understood why women of Muslim faith welcome a separate existence from their male counterparts in half of their living.  It was entertaining and fun to be glammed up and watch others do the same and not have to worry an iota about someone of the opposite gender staring at me.  It seems that as a foreign woman I am often stared at.  It’s not that there aren’t other women who roam this rather modern and open society uncovered, but I inspire some curiosity, perhaps because of my mixed heritage.  There are many Filipinas here who work as guest workers and I have that in my appearance.  Then again, not quite.  My German-American roots on my father’s side are also mixed in me and I carry myself like an American woman who lives the unrestrained life of one who has choices and opportunity.  I know that for many here, I am a conundrum.

My story of the afternoon really began yesterday evening as I shopped for an “abbaya,” the long black dress and veil that many religious women here wear for “protection.”  As I shopped for a fashionable abbaya, not really knowing what fashionable is, I happened to enter a little shop in the old “souk” or market where a young woman and her mother were getting fitted for a new abbaya.  The shop had many lovely choices to pick from: black abbayas with black embroidered trim, black abbayas with black embroidered trim with little shiny sequins, black abbayas with red embroidered trim, black abbayas with black fringe on the cuffs, black abbayas with swirly embroidered trim, and so on ad infinitum.

But these women were being fitted specifically for what I don’t know.  So I took the opportunity to stare, since staring woman to woman seems acceptable in these parts of the world, and eventually decided to chance that they might speak English.  I was looking for an abbaya, how did I pick one, I wanted one that was closed in the front, how long did it take to hem the bottom, etc.  The young woman, whom I later came to know as Khadija of Bangladesh, gave me an informative speech about the meaning of the abbaya and the high points about how to find a fitting one.  She later explained that she worked at the Grand Mosque as a tour guide and if I wished to visit tomorrow, I could do so from 10 am to 5 pm — for free.  I thanked her kindly as she left with her parents, doubting that I would ever see her gentle face again, but if I had time, I would certainly come by the mosque.

And as it so happened, I did have time on my hands, so I took her up on the offer.  As I approached the entry she appeared from behind two other guides, and with surprise in her eyes, she greeted me warmly.  I took her tour with two Germans, outfitted in my new abbaya, which many of the young women guides coohed over.  How much did I pay for it, where did I get it, how did I know Khadija, and so on.  At the end of the very informative tour, I was invited for refreshments since today was the day after Eid.  And then I was directed to a carpeted, pillow-laden area where women congregated and were apparently painting henna on the hands and feet of guests.  There I was introduced to Faiza, another Bangladeshi woman who revealed that she was “sort of” engaged to a young Bangladeshi man who was presently studying in America.  She said that the last time she saw him was a couple of months ago when he visited her over the holidays.

Her parents permitted them to see each other, she explained, because they were family friends and had known each other since childhood, therefore they could not forbid it.  Faiza was covered in an abbaya, a scarf, and another contraption that covered her entire face minus a slit for her eyes. Khadija explained that Muslim women could choose to wear the full-face cover if they were so beautiful that they needed extra “protection.”  I wanted to know who determined whether a woman needed extra “protection” and was it just a woman being vain thinking she was so beautiful that men could not possibly control themselves in her presence.  Faiza never revealed whether it was she or her parents who wanted her to wear the full face covering.

Faiza’s next customer was an Uzbek woman who worked also as a tour guide at the Grand Mosque.  She was the Russian-speaking guide.  Her name was Noora and she was supposed to be tending the cardamon coffee, tea and sweets table, but instead she was playing hooky and having her hands painted in henna.  Whereas I got a simple floral design from my wrist to the tip of my middle finger, she was getting her entire hand painted, then the next, and finally continuing up her arms as aging Australian women tourists with bad knees waited their turn for Noora to finish.

Every time Faiza the painter would get distracted or another guide would check on the progress of Noora’s hands, Noora would send them away to check on a renegade tourist accidentally wandering into the great hall without the proper covering or she would quickly admonish Faiza to keep her eyes on the task at hand.  I dubbed her “the manager.”  And she took my teasing in stride as I egged her on and she commandeered all the younger Muslim women to do her bidding.  Later she revealed that her husband, who was Bahraini, didn’t even like henna hand painting.  But this was really for her so she didn’t care what he thought.

I left the U.S. on January 29 and arrived in Kuwait three days later.  My layover was in London and, having never been to London, I decided to take the subway into the city to entertain myself during a 14-hour layover.  I did the whirlwind tour, and as the day progressed the weather deteriorated until I was eating my first plate of fish n’ chips watching the sleet blow sideways outside a pub window.  In the subway, each minute brought another announcement of a line that was closed, until it became my line that was closed and desperately I hopped from line to line to finally arrive at the airport among a throng of other late, bug-eyed passengers.  By the time I made it to my gate, my plane was cancelled and the ticketing line was several hundred deep.  Remembering a story related to me just that morning from a fellow passenger, I knew that the counter would close in two hours, not all customers would be assisted, and whoever dared to stay in line for the night would be the first ones helped the following morning.

So without much adieu I chattered happily with the passengers in line with me, and sat down on a cart with two poles supporting my rear.  The line diminished as each hour passed until finally I was 20th in line at 2 am.  By morning, a new line developed alongside ours and apparently several planes of people who had waited all night for take off were released from their planes, and they felt perfectly justified in cutting in front of us.  A nasty scene ensued as passengers began to curse at each other, push, shove and generally try to get ahead. The Indians, Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis were definitely winning this fight.  They had all the practice.  The rest of us were gasping for breath trying not to faint as the pressure became increasingly impossible to bear.  It was actually quite frightening.  A woman nearly fainted, I was weak and nauseous and others were crying.  It was a royal mess that even the policeman didn’t have the courage to straighten out.

After getting my ticket reissued, I waited all day and watched as 97% of the day’s flights were again cancelled.  Since I was on standby, I was sure my chances of getting on my flight to Kuwait were close to nil.  But after enduring a long wait in line, told that all standby positions were cancelled, having my luggage assigned to a different passenger, and finally told at the gate that the agent never reissued my ticket after all, they straightened it all out on the spot and I was on the flight to Kuwait.  That was a good thing because after three days of no sleep and very little sleep before departing Dallas, I didn’t believe that physically I could have made it to a hotel in London.  I was simply out of steam.

Seven hours later, I met up with Jim Landers, a writer from our Washington, D.C. bureau, who met me at the airport with a shuttle arranged from the desert oasis Marriott Hotel.  I checked in around 10 am, showered and slept until the following morning when Jim dared to wake me to tell me that the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Dallas!  Not the kind of news I would want to wake up to on any given day, much less out of a moronic stupor.  At that moment, after everything I had just been through, it seemed like the world was coming to an end as I slept in a delicious featherbed on the other side of the globe.

We’ve been in Bahrain about a week, and haven’t done much but dine with rich Bahrainis who seem to have adopted us during this week of Eid.  Typically, this is family time like Easter is to Christians, but Bahrainis have taken Jim and I in and wined and dined us as they rabidly attack our country.  We had a particularly memorable dinner with Anwar, the editor-in-chief of one of the big daily newspapers that reports the news as the government would like to hear it.  He had an evil air about him as he whispered in my ear that America was bad, bad, bad, and that if he had a gun he would keeeell George Bush himself.  He spent an entire evening feeding us beautiful wine and lamb extolling the sins of our government and our country.

I hardly said a word, happy to let Jim debate with this man all evening, wondering if I would spend the night puking my guts out.  People in this part of the world see Americans so differently from how we see ourselves.  It simply amazes me that they can blame us so wholeheartedly for everything that is wrong in this part of the world.  I rarely hear people talking about their responsibility in the chaos that has long been a part of the history here.  Instead they will spend hours talking about the sins of America and never acknowledge that they have done nothing to make the Middle East a more peaceful place.

We are returning to Kuwait tomorrow morning under mixed circumstances.  I have proposed to my boss, Director of Photography Ken Geiger, that I should be dispatched to Baghdad to wait for the troops and report as they enter the city.  The Al Rashed Hotel in Baghdad is chock full of journos waiting for the war to arrive on their doorstep.  The port of entry seems to be Jordan and then a bus ride in to Baghdad. 

Jim and I got second passports issued here in Bahrain so as not to antagonize the Iraqi government with our Kuwaiti visas stamped all over.  The newspaper management hasn’t made a decision yet, and they are weighing heavily whether to have someone in Baghdad given the dangers.  It’s a difficult decision, and despite my proposal, I am nearly sick with fear, but I feel strongly that Baghdad is the place to be for me as a photographer. 

The military has announced that The Dallas Morning News will be granted several positions for embeds with the army and Marines, but I believe it will be a highly-controlled agenda and it will be difficult to make pictures of situations as they unfold.  In photography, there is no retelling the story, either you’ve got the photo or you don’t.

I have been struggling with an overwhelming sense of unease since my arrival in the Middle East and it is really pervading my whole being.  I have all of my body armor, my chemical protective gear and all the possible precautions including my stash of fine hot chocolate, yet I have moments where my stomach turns over in terror as I think about the possibilities of what may happen as we cover this story.  It’s so unnerving, this fear.  Oddly, as I live out of suitcases in the most glamorous hotels in the area, the possible conflict seems completely surreal and incongruous with my present reality.  It contributes to my angst and anxiety.

As I drift off to sleep, a Pepsi runs through my veins hampering my precious rest and my mind wanders to the swirls and floral patterns of my henna-painted hands.

Love from the desert,

Cheryl

Zebullah, 12, listens to an English lesson from his nurse Abdul Satar through a window at the Khoja Bahauddin Hospital in northern Afghanistan. Zebullah’s foot was injured and his two uncles were killed when the Taliban fired a rocket into their house during a Taliban attack on their village.

Editor’s note: On Oct. 10, 2001 Cheryl Diaz Meyer, staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News, left Dallas for Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to join News reporter Tracey Eaton. The pair have journeyed to Dushanbe (D-YOU-SHAHM-BEH), Tajikistan, where they ventured across the Afghan border to Khoja Bahauddin (HO-juh BO-DEEN). After nearly two weeks in Khoja Bahauddin, they have moved on to Taloqan (TAHL-oh-KAHN), where they were awaiting the fall of Kunduz (koon-DOOZ).

A couple of oblique references need to be clarified: “John” is John Davidson, visuals editor. “Massood” is Ahmed Shah Massood, former leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated in September.

Cheryl and Tracey are more than our co-workers, they are our friends, part of our newspaper family. Through Cheryl’s e-mail journals, we’ve been able to feel and be part of their incredible journey.

Ken and John,

More people came in last night from Khoja Bahauddin, Massood’s town, which is some 1 1/2 hours from the Tajik border where many journalists are staying and where the aid organizations are also located. It’s not on the map because it was created four years ago when Massood was pushed north by the Taliban.

This town is where we anticipate to work out of. News is that the Monday convoy, which we were supposed to be on, was held up at the border overnight by Russian guards. They left at 10 a.m. and arrived in Khoja at 10 a.m. the following day. They slept on the ground or whatever.

In Khoja Bahauddin, we should be 1 or 3 hours away from the front lines – there are varied reports. It’s a drive plus an hour on a horse through a river. Supposedly the Northern Alliance cannot make a move because they have inferior weaponry so they are simply waiting for the U.S. to bomb the Taliban there. There is some firing back and forth, but it’s just a show. They are too far from each other.

The Northern Alliance got hold of a bunch of rations dropped by the U.S. and have kept most of it and pawned the rest at the market where journalists can find American peanut butter and other items the Afghans have no clue what to do with. They eat rice and beans most of the time.

The foreign ministry in Khoja Bahauddin was Massood’s place before he was killed. NBC is camped on his property. Many others have simply pitched tents in the so-called “garden.” Word is that they are serving free rice three times a day for the journalists. I will pick up some hard cheese and salami for the first week or so, and then we’ll go to canned meats and fish after that. I have decided to hire a second car for the ride to the border because we simply have too much baggage; we are loaded down with water and other supplies.

I am thrilled to think I have convinced a fellow from Bloomberg to part with his sleeping bag after he leaves in some four days. It’s fancy, small and very, very light. The ones at the local sport shop weigh a ton.

Apparently we must buy a generator. There is little electricity there, and with all our equipment needing recharging, we won’t be able to rely on kindness. Apparently journalists are feeling frustrated by the amount of equipment breaking down due to the sand and are getting quite ornery about whatever is working. I tried to scam a beautiful red small generator off an Austrian fellow who’s returning to Moscow soon, but he was too fearful of the repercussions with Russian customs. It was quite a lovely one, however.

For your comfort, some 1,300 or more journalists have gotten accredited in Dushanbe on their way to Afghanistan, and no one has gotten hurt. So things are rough but not terribly dangerous, it seems. There’s more danger to our equipment and personal health than anything.

Cheryl