Red meat for both sides:
Reporter's translator opened doors in Baghdad
WOMAN'S GUIDING HAND LED TO STORIES OF STRUGGLE
By Dana Hull
Len Vaughn-Lahman - Mercury News
Dana Hull, a Mercury News staff writer, center, had an intrepid guide, Ban Adil, 27, left, leading her through her postwar coverage of Iraq.
The Al-Hamra Hotel in Baghdad is a gold mine for Iraqis seeking work. Every morning, dozens of drivers, translators, and ``fixers'' arrive at the hotel, milling in the lobby and on the front steps as foreign photographers and reporters clatter down the stairs. In a country where the unemployment rate hovers near 70 percent, working for journalists and their American cash is a prized job.
The subculture of war reporting is overwhelmingly male, and most of the Iraqis who seek work at a handful of Baghdad hotels are young men as well.
Ban Adil, 27, was an exception. She arrived at the hotel each morning immaculately dressed, wearing makeup and a traditional hijab that always matched her clothes. Both a modern, university-educated career woman and a traditionalist, she was eager to earn money as a translator while there was any to be made. When I first met Ban in late May, she was also five months pregnant.
The daughter of a Sunni father and a Shiite mother, she wore her Islamic headdress by choice; she felt it commanded respect from men.
Ban proved to be an excellent guide, leading me to stories that I might not have found without her: a world of grieving widows in dark back bedrooms, mothers struggling to feed their babies, the women's ward in Iraq's largest mental hospital.
We drank tea with women who said the worst thing about Iraq's unemployment was that their idle husbands were home and driving them crazy. We talked to a female politician about how she balanced work with the needs of her young son. Nearly all the women were thrilled that Saddam Hussein was gone but perplexed by the lack of postwar planning.
While men tended to speak about politics and Iraq's future in broad terms, women talked about their daily lives, from the lack of electricity to the delay in getting rations. Those frustrations often turned into the best stories. ``Wayn Kahrabaa?'' -- ``Where is the electricity?'' -- became the Arabic phrase I learned to say the best.
Arrival in May
I arrived in Baghdad in late May. The initial euphoria that surged through the streets when Saddam was toppled April 9 had worn off, and criticism of the U.S.-led occupation was growing. When Baghdad fell, a window of opportunity was thrust open. But as the temperatures began to climb and power outages persisted, you could listen to Baghdadis and almost hear that window closing.
The slaying last week of Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, may be a huge psychological boost to the U.S. military effort, but it is a card game that few Baghdad residents follow. Many are surely happy that Saddam's sons are gone, but instead of Saddam or weapons of mass destruction, they were searching for the most basic human needs: clean water, reliable electricity, stable jobs, food.
Security was still so unstable that many women and girls were afraid to leave their homes or walk to school alone. But my guide and translator was adventurous -- Ban had a dark sense of humor when it came to crime and attacks by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). She had no qualms about traveling to dangerous places, even as the heat soared to 120 degrees and her pregnancy became more pronounced.
Her resourcefulness saved me many times. One day, Ban spoke about her 3-year-old daughter, Nadia, and the child's constant bouts with diarrhea. We decided to do a story about the lack of clean drinking water, and Ban immediately took me to Al-Hurriyah, a Baghdad neighborhood where the streets were flooded with raw sewage.
I didn't know if it was appropriate to knock on people's doors. ``It's not a problem,'' Ban said, banging on the first gate that we came to. ``Any woman here will gladly talk to us about water.''
Within seconds, a young mother whisked us inside. She showed us the tiny kitchen where baby bottles were boiling on propane stove burners, and complained about the long lines for cooking gas. She then led us to her neighbors, who had spent the morning mopping a foot of sewage from their floor.
``Please tell Bush that we cannot accept these conditions,'' said Etimad Muneer, 29, who said a 7-month-old baby in the neighborhood had died of cholera the day before. ``We are afraid of disease.''
Interesting pair
We were an odd sight -- the American journalist and the pregnant translator -- and women were eager to talk to us, gathering around us and speaking all at once. They stressed that the American-led occupation was not making their lives better; If anything, they felt, things were getting worse.
Ban drew herself into another story about Baghdad's tumult one morning when she showed up late. She had been stopped at two checkpoints on her way. ``It's terrible,'' she said. ``The Army doesn't have any translators.''
We drove back to the checkpoint. There, young soldiers were screaming -- in English -- at nervous Iraqis who were confused by the new checkpoint and weapons rules. A man in a white pickup had been stopped, and the soldiers were giving him a hard time -- he had a pistol and three bags stuffed with Iraqi cash.
Then Ban intervened, listening as the man spoke in frantic Arabic. He insisted that he was a merchant who sold chickens, and he couldn't deposit his money because none of the banks was open. He was afraid to drive around with money in the car, and said he needed a pistol to protect himself from bandits. He had already been robbed twice.
Ban translated for him as he pleaded with the military to tell American occupation officials to open the banks. The soldiers relented and let him go.
Before long, we had more stories than we could keep track of. We went to Al-Fallujah to write about a spate of guerrilla attacks on American soldiers. I was nervous about being there: The city seethed with anti-American sentiment, and one man eagerly showed me a set of dog tags that he had ripped from the neck of a soldier who had died in a grenade attack the night before.
At one point, I went to talk to an Army officer for a few minutes and then ran back to our car. Ban wasn't there, and I panicked. Then I saw her: She was across the street, interviewing a large crowd of Iraqi men, and wearing a bulletproof vest over her pregnant belly.
Strong women
We found another strong spirit in Haifa Aziz Daoud, who was known as the ``Iron Woman'' of Iraq's Electricity Commission because of her forceful, Margaret Thatcher-like personality. This mother of six worked countless hours to restore electricity to Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.
In June, she was shot and killed in front of her home while making breakfast for her children. Her husband and colleagues fear she was assassinated because she cooperated with American officials.
``In Iraq, the woman is precious,'' said Nida Ismail, a civil engineer. ``To kill a woman in front of her family . . . All of the female engineers are afraid. They don't want to come to work. Haifa was brave. We took courage from her.''
Working with Ban allowed me to interview scores of other Iraqi women. And she was a hit with the American soldiers, who complained that they rarely got to speak to regular Iraqis.
One afternoon, a young soldier took us on a tour of an opulent palace that belonged to Saddam's elder son, Uday. Ban despised Uday and said he was well-known as a rapist. Uday had vanished and would not be found until he died in a firefight with U.S. soldiers five days ago.
The palace was known as the ``Love Shack,'' notorious for wild parties and a vast collection of tacky nude paintings. We three entered a marble bathroom, and Ban was furious. ``Three or four families live in a house the size of this bathroom,'' she fumed. ``And no one in Iraq has ever even been inside these palaces. No one can even imagine the wealth that was here.''
When we left, the soldier told me it was the first time he had talked to an Iraqi woman at length.
My last day in Baghdad was a Friday. We went to Al-Kazimiyah, Baghdad's overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood, for Friday prayers. Non-Muslims are allowed in the celebrated gold-domed mosque there but are not supposed to enter the inner sanctum of the shrine. To my surprise, Ban suggested that we sneak in. ``Don't say anything,'' she said, as she gave me a long, black abaya to wear. ``If anyone asks, I'll say you are my mute cousin from Iran.''
I followed Ban into the shrine, clutching her hand as we made our way through the labyrinth. Hundreds of women surrounded us, stopping to pray and pushing from behind. I kept my head down, but she kept nudging me to gaze up at the gold ceiling.
Fond farewell
Later that night, we said goodbye in my hotel room. We laughed and cried as we talked about all the stories we had worked on, and joked about the ones that never panned out. Maybe next time.
When I called her a few days ago from London, Ban was on her way to the Al-Hamra again. She was looking for work. Her son is due in October, and she wants to save more money so she and her husband, Selwan, who is also working as a translator, can buy their own house.
``Hey, lady,'' she said over the static of two satellite phones. ``How are you?'' Without missing a beat, she gave me an update on the news:
``We had electricity last night for a few hours, but then it turned off. Someone threw a grenade at the convention center and a diplomatic car was on fire. And, oh yeah, there was an attack with RPG in Mansur; one soldier was killed. Did you hear about that? They formed the new government, but Saddam has a new tape. He says don't support the government.
``It's hot here, very hot. When are you coming back?''
DANA HULL, a Mercury News reporter, recently returned from a seven-week assignment in Iraq.
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