Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid

Author:Anthony Shadid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2006-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER WHEN I SAW WAMIDH AGAIN. HIS anger had cooled since our first meeting after the war, but he was no less insistent. He had refused to take part in a U.S.-sponsored political process, deeming it collaboration. So where did that leave him? “The Americans are trying to keep this dichotomy—it’s either Saddam or the American occupation,” he said. “Even before the war, I rejected this.”

But the fury he had articulated, against the occupation, against the government for surrendering the capital without a fight, had faded. Now he seemed voiceless. What had replaced fury was a gloomier sentiment. Baghdad, to him, was entropic, and he was at a loss, filled with regret. His anger had turned to grief, and his grief was reflective.

“How did we allow such a perversion to come?” Wamidh asked, directing his question at no one. “Why couldn’t the country reform the regime of Saddam or put an end to it except by the arrival of foreign troops?” We both shook our heads. “It’s a very sad situation in Iraq. Really. A lot of people are thinking the country is doomed. That there’s no solution.” This was the gloom that, in time, would come to dominate conversations in Iraq. “They think what is coming is going to be worse.”

Mohammed Hayawi, a bald bear of a man, was one of those pessimists. Unshaven, his face was beefy but friendly. He often smiled, but the heavy bags under his tired eyes would deepen as the day wore on. He looked much older than his thirty-eight years. By chance, I had met him before the war at his shop, the Renaissance Bookstore, along Mutanabi Street, and long remembered our conversation and how he had seized the opportunity to talk. At that time, he had been unable to understand the American obsession with Iraq and Saddam. Why the crisis after crisis? For weapons of mass destruction? We don’t have any. If we did, he had declared, we would have fired them at Israel. For Saddam? What, he had asked, does he have to do with us?

On this summer visit, my first since Saddam’s fall, the narrow stretch of bookstores where Hayawi’s is located looked a little shabbier than before. Plastic bags, oil tins, and paper were strewn along the street; some of the rubbish was smoldering and hordes of flies hovered over broken eggs. Horns blared in two lanes of traffic, one more than the street had been built for. An unusual summer breeze prompted vendors to sprinkle water over the road to keep dust from blowing into their shops. At every turn were the lingering scars of looting—arches with their windows broken, yellow brick walls scalded black. Before the war, the market had stayed open till ten P.M., sometimes eleven. Now the street shut down by three P.M., often earlier.

Mohammed sat inside his store with relatives and employees, trying to keep himself cool with a fan, as sweat poured down his jowly face and soaked his blue shirt.

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