Saddam is Dead, Long Live Saddam: Tales from the New Iraq
This year, throughout all of Iraq, there is no daylight savings time. I asked a friend in Baghdad why precisely this was.
"I was still a child in 1982 but I remember well when Saddam instituted daylight savings time." he said. "Even in Suleymania [the locus of my last few posts, posts move now to the south where names and current locations are hidden for the safety of all], people were demonstrating, saying 'why did he change the time? Saddam has no brain.'"
"But daylight savings time is not a Saddamist creation, it's a worldwide phenomenon, and there's a reason for it." I insisted. "It lengthens the summer day."
"Yes, I see, but for those who pray, they prefer not to have it because they can read the Qur'an all night and then the dawn comes earlier, and they can sleep then."
"Who can sleep in this summer heat when the sun is up?" I asked. "This can't be what people do in the summer, I can't get enough sleep as it is!"
The question was not a theoretical one. We have power in our neighborhood for nine hours a day. Five of those come at night, between 12:30 and 5:30. The house where I am does not have a generator of the size necessary to run an air conditioner, only a computer. And thus, because the sun is already up, or close to it, by 5:30, a slow waking process begins.
First, there is an ominous click, and the whirring, clattering and terribly noisy split A/C unit goes silent. Light has already begun to penetrate the room at this early hour, and the heat starts to rise as well. I remove the blankets, and then the sheets. Finally, I have no choice but to remove my sleeping mask, it makes my face hot, and sunlight falls into my eyes, the curtains being too sheer to block it out. I am on a hard wood bed with a comforter serving as my blanket, and the sun has let me see all of my surroundings, my desk just to my left, the whitewashed wall to my right, a metal storage cabinet just before me, and the empty bed where my wife was until minutes before on my left. The whole room isn't more than 150 square feet, there is nothing else in it. But at least it's in a safe and nondescript area.
I try in vain to shut my eyes, but the heat only rises, and pools of sweat gather on the pillow, and on my comforter. Soon even those are not comfortable, I am feeling quite thirsty, and I am forced to rise, only 15 minutes after the first click. Were daylight postponed, I could nap outside as I do when the power unexpectedly flips off in the middle of the night, for another hour. For now, however, there will be no sleep, not until power returns at 2:30 pm for four hours, thereby splitting my days into two, the AM period, three hours of sleep, and then the PM period, followed by five hours of sleep. Work, whether from home, at the courthouse, or in the university, is confined to the AM period, without air conditioning unless I am meeting someone important, and nearly always with me dreadfully short of sleep.
I would really enjoy that extra hour of summer night. But alas, it has become clear that it is not to be, at least not in the near future. The wisdom behind daylight savings time was lost, supposed benefits exaggerated, all because it was instituted in 1982 by Saddam Hussein. The logic reminded me of the logic often extended to justify the prohibition of chess among the Shi'a-namely, that the usurping caliph Yazid, who killed Shi'a Islam's Third Imam, enjoyed a game of chess now and then. I could only hope that Yazid, and Saddam, left behind no documentary evidence concerning which hand they used to clean themselves after using the toilet. I have grown accustomed to my own methods and could not well countenance a prohibition, legal or religious, without much difficulty.
In any event, so it is, and so I slowly devolve into insanity in 48C heat (that's 118F for the Americans), generator power during working hours (generators can run computers so I write this in a pile of sweat in my underwear, with deep apologies to all if it turns out that Saddam used to do that too) and no legal work or interviews that can take me to air conditioned government buildings, at least for today, because it's Friday. But at least Saddam and his influences are gone.
Except that yesterday I had to take an AIDS test because I am "resident" in Iraq, which means I'm here for than 20 days. This was actually a rather streamlined procedure. First, you go to a guy and get 4 photos. Four, it is said, is what you must purchase, no less. Then, you go to another guy and get a copy of your passport. Then, you clear a checkpoint (before this you are at the mercy of the suicide bombers who might notice a foreign passport you are getting copied--after this I'm getting the Iraqi passport next time if it kills me), and go to a guy who leads you to another guy who takes one of your photos, hands you back the other three and says you don't need them, and hands you a green folder. He gives it to you, you go to another line, and that guy looks at the folder and hands you a paper, and sends you back where you just came from, and that guy stamps both. Then back again to the guy who just gave you the paper, and he signs the two stamps. Up and back, and then up and back. Then you take all of this to the window, where the guy writes something, and send you to the hospital, beyond checkpoints again. By this time if you are lucky it is 10:30, which means they are done with blood tests for the day. So you go home. Day one is complete.
The second day you go back at 8 am sharp and stand in line with your papers. The line is in a foyer that is covered and has a weak fan that serves as the only ventilation, in temperatures easily exceeding 40C. Only foreigners are in this line, packed tightly with about 20 people ahead of me. Immediately ahead of me are three Turkish professionals it seems, and behind me are some Thai laborers. There's a few Indians too, I don't know what they are here for. The line snakes from the clerk's window left, and circles back around to the exit, where the dreaded sun can be seen outside beating the dusty earth. The sweat pours from everyone's body, the Indians start to smoke, and the room, with its smoke, with its sweat, with a poorly running fan exudes as masculine an atmosphere as can be imagined. I keep Sara close, she is the only woman there, but we can't get too close, given how hot it all is. Temperatures rise, and tempers flare as it becomes clear that the clerk, with all the stamping and signing, can only process about 10 applications per hour. It is a battle to keep to the line, not to devolve to Third World rush the window chaos, and every so often the line appears almost to break. But it holds, heaven help us, we held that line. Two hours later it is my turn. Stamp, sign, stamp sign, stamp again, and off to the lab, where blood is drawn. This part is fast, as they can draw blood faster than the clerk can stamp. Then back to the clerk for the results.
I buy a coke for Sara and for me and we drink it in the shade, before returning t that dreaded line to get our results. We wait ten minutes, I wonder how much longer I can do this, and the Thais appear from their tests. One of them gives me a thumbs up and smiles. His hands are dusty and hard, he is barely shaven, he reeks of sweat and clove cigarettes, but right now, he is my best friend, he has suffered with me in this battle of the AIDS test. I return the gesture. Observing the Thais (they seem more practiced in this affair in Iraq than I), it becomes clear there is no need to wait, the results beat us back, we have all passed. Sara thinks it must be an AIDS Express test (is there such a thing?), my father in law remotely says maybe they pass you provisionally and run the test later (but then how do they find me? I'm hiding north for the most part), and my friend Ali says it must be to make sure I am not a Vulcan and do indeed have red blood. I figure I'll ask though and when I take my results back through the checkpoint to someone to get them stamped again, I ask him. Well, I think they check, he says, but really it's about collecting 10,000 dinars ($8) in revenue from all foreigners. For God's sake has nobody heard of a visa? But it doesn't matter, he signs and stamps and sends me to a building, where they sign and stamp and send me to another building, where the green sheet that kept getting signed and stamped is thrown away and I am sent to room 14.
In room 14 the fellow tells me everything I've done to date is wrong, I'm Iraqi, there are documents to show this (my parents' citizenship). I have to do the Iraqi abroad system. Back down to another stamp sign, stamp sign and one more time stamp sign. Now off for a blood test they say. I just took it, I said. Where's the green paper, they say? You threw it away, I said. Well if you don't have it then you have to take it again, they say. We go to room 19 to resolve this. Room 19 is staffed with Kurds who don't seem to know Arabic, and so my Kurdish wife assumes full control. She tells them she is my lawyer (she remains a member of the Iraq bar and so can prove it), speaks to them in Kurdish and we get it resolved. One woman signs my passport, another stamps it, and hands it back again to the first person who signs it and stamps it again, and then back again to the other who signs the second stamp. Iraqis can tag team sign and stamp like nobody else. This room is air conditioned at least, and I sit on a couch. I am reluctant to leave and return to the heat. My arm is still sore from where they drew blood. I am trying to remember whether they used a disposable needle. Sara assures me they did.
Ask them, I tell my wife-lawyer, how exactly this nightmare is supposed to ease foreign investment, trade, contact, whatever? Even the Kurds require it up in the north, it's the only thing they all agree on--everyone wants foreign help, and AIDS tests. Why? Kurdish conversation follows, then my wife speaks.
"It's been this way since the 1980's, it is standard, they say."
"Only in Iraq. I've been to 78 countries and this is the first where I have to get an AIDS test, and I'm Iraqi." I haven't actually been to 78 countries, more like 40 maybe, but if I say 40, they'll think it's actually 15, that's how Iraqi hyperbole works.
More Kurdish, then "well they say it was instituted in 1982 and they aren't going to change it just because foreigners don't like it."
I don't know if it was 1982, but the irony was delicious. Apparently not everything done by Saddam in 1982 turns out to be so bad, only the stuff that is capitulation to the West and its inhabitants. The stuff he did that made their lives rather miserable while traveling to Iraq apparently is fine. As the mark on my forearm shows, the resistance to the Muslim world lives on in Iraq, even as the tyrant lies dead.
"I was still a child in 1982 but I remember well when Saddam instituted daylight savings time." he said. "Even in Suleymania [the locus of my last few posts, posts move now to the south where names and current locations are hidden for the safety of all], people were demonstrating, saying 'why did he change the time? Saddam has no brain.'"
"But daylight savings time is not a Saddamist creation, it's a worldwide phenomenon, and there's a reason for it." I insisted. "It lengthens the summer day."
"Yes, I see, but for those who pray, they prefer not to have it because they can read the Qur'an all night and then the dawn comes earlier, and they can sleep then."
"Who can sleep in this summer heat when the sun is up?" I asked. "This can't be what people do in the summer, I can't get enough sleep as it is!"
The question was not a theoretical one. We have power in our neighborhood for nine hours a day. Five of those come at night, between 12:30 and 5:30. The house where I am does not have a generator of the size necessary to run an air conditioner, only a computer. And thus, because the sun is already up, or close to it, by 5:30, a slow waking process begins.
First, there is an ominous click, and the whirring, clattering and terribly noisy split A/C unit goes silent. Light has already begun to penetrate the room at this early hour, and the heat starts to rise as well. I remove the blankets, and then the sheets. Finally, I have no choice but to remove my sleeping mask, it makes my face hot, and sunlight falls into my eyes, the curtains being too sheer to block it out. I am on a hard wood bed with a comforter serving as my blanket, and the sun has let me see all of my surroundings, my desk just to my left, the whitewashed wall to my right, a metal storage cabinet just before me, and the empty bed where my wife was until minutes before on my left. The whole room isn't more than 150 square feet, there is nothing else in it. But at least it's in a safe and nondescript area.
I try in vain to shut my eyes, but the heat only rises, and pools of sweat gather on the pillow, and on my comforter. Soon even those are not comfortable, I am feeling quite thirsty, and I am forced to rise, only 15 minutes after the first click. Were daylight postponed, I could nap outside as I do when the power unexpectedly flips off in the middle of the night, for another hour. For now, however, there will be no sleep, not until power returns at 2:30 pm for four hours, thereby splitting my days into two, the AM period, three hours of sleep, and then the PM period, followed by five hours of sleep. Work, whether from home, at the courthouse, or in the university, is confined to the AM period, without air conditioning unless I am meeting someone important, and nearly always with me dreadfully short of sleep.
I would really enjoy that extra hour of summer night. But alas, it has become clear that it is not to be, at least not in the near future. The wisdom behind daylight savings time was lost, supposed benefits exaggerated, all because it was instituted in 1982 by Saddam Hussein. The logic reminded me of the logic often extended to justify the prohibition of chess among the Shi'a-namely, that the usurping caliph Yazid, who killed Shi'a Islam's Third Imam, enjoyed a game of chess now and then. I could only hope that Yazid, and Saddam, left behind no documentary evidence concerning which hand they used to clean themselves after using the toilet. I have grown accustomed to my own methods and could not well countenance a prohibition, legal or religious, without much difficulty.
In any event, so it is, and so I slowly devolve into insanity in 48C heat (that's 118F for the Americans), generator power during working hours (generators can run computers so I write this in a pile of sweat in my underwear, with deep apologies to all if it turns out that Saddam used to do that too) and no legal work or interviews that can take me to air conditioned government buildings, at least for today, because it's Friday. But at least Saddam and his influences are gone.
Except that yesterday I had to take an AIDS test because I am "resident" in Iraq, which means I'm here for than 20 days. This was actually a rather streamlined procedure. First, you go to a guy and get 4 photos. Four, it is said, is what you must purchase, no less. Then, you go to another guy and get a copy of your passport. Then, you clear a checkpoint (before this you are at the mercy of the suicide bombers who might notice a foreign passport you are getting copied--after this I'm getting the Iraqi passport next time if it kills me), and go to a guy who leads you to another guy who takes one of your photos, hands you back the other three and says you don't need them, and hands you a green folder. He gives it to you, you go to another line, and that guy looks at the folder and hands you a paper, and sends you back where you just came from, and that guy stamps both. Then back again to the guy who just gave you the paper, and he signs the two stamps. Up and back, and then up and back. Then you take all of this to the window, where the guy writes something, and send you to the hospital, beyond checkpoints again. By this time if you are lucky it is 10:30, which means they are done with blood tests for the day. So you go home. Day one is complete.
The second day you go back at 8 am sharp and stand in line with your papers. The line is in a foyer that is covered and has a weak fan that serves as the only ventilation, in temperatures easily exceeding 40C. Only foreigners are in this line, packed tightly with about 20 people ahead of me. Immediately ahead of me are three Turkish professionals it seems, and behind me are some Thai laborers. There's a few Indians too, I don't know what they are here for. The line snakes from the clerk's window left, and circles back around to the exit, where the dreaded sun can be seen outside beating the dusty earth. The sweat pours from everyone's body, the Indians start to smoke, and the room, with its smoke, with its sweat, with a poorly running fan exudes as masculine an atmosphere as can be imagined. I keep Sara close, she is the only woman there, but we can't get too close, given how hot it all is. Temperatures rise, and tempers flare as it becomes clear that the clerk, with all the stamping and signing, can only process about 10 applications per hour. It is a battle to keep to the line, not to devolve to Third World rush the window chaos, and every so often the line appears almost to break. But it holds, heaven help us, we held that line. Two hours later it is my turn. Stamp, sign, stamp sign, stamp again, and off to the lab, where blood is drawn. This part is fast, as they can draw blood faster than the clerk can stamp. Then back to the clerk for the results.
I buy a coke for Sara and for me and we drink it in the shade, before returning t that dreaded line to get our results. We wait ten minutes, I wonder how much longer I can do this, and the Thais appear from their tests. One of them gives me a thumbs up and smiles. His hands are dusty and hard, he is barely shaven, he reeks of sweat and clove cigarettes, but right now, he is my best friend, he has suffered with me in this battle of the AIDS test. I return the gesture. Observing the Thais (they seem more practiced in this affair in Iraq than I), it becomes clear there is no need to wait, the results beat us back, we have all passed. Sara thinks it must be an AIDS Express test (is there such a thing?), my father in law remotely says maybe they pass you provisionally and run the test later (but then how do they find me? I'm hiding north for the most part), and my friend Ali says it must be to make sure I am not a Vulcan and do indeed have red blood. I figure I'll ask though and when I take my results back through the checkpoint to someone to get them stamped again, I ask him. Well, I think they check, he says, but really it's about collecting 10,000 dinars ($8) in revenue from all foreigners. For God's sake has nobody heard of a visa? But it doesn't matter, he signs and stamps and sends me to a building, where they sign and stamp and send me to another building, where the green sheet that kept getting signed and stamped is thrown away and I am sent to room 14.
In room 14 the fellow tells me everything I've done to date is wrong, I'm Iraqi, there are documents to show this (my parents' citizenship). I have to do the Iraqi abroad system. Back down to another stamp sign, stamp sign and one more time stamp sign. Now off for a blood test they say. I just took it, I said. Where's the green paper, they say? You threw it away, I said. Well if you don't have it then you have to take it again, they say. We go to room 19 to resolve this. Room 19 is staffed with Kurds who don't seem to know Arabic, and so my Kurdish wife assumes full control. She tells them she is my lawyer (she remains a member of the Iraq bar and so can prove it), speaks to them in Kurdish and we get it resolved. One woman signs my passport, another stamps it, and hands it back again to the first person who signs it and stamps it again, and then back again to the other who signs the second stamp. Iraqis can tag team sign and stamp like nobody else. This room is air conditioned at least, and I sit on a couch. I am reluctant to leave and return to the heat. My arm is still sore from where they drew blood. I am trying to remember whether they used a disposable needle. Sara assures me they did.
Ask them, I tell my wife-lawyer, how exactly this nightmare is supposed to ease foreign investment, trade, contact, whatever? Even the Kurds require it up in the north, it's the only thing they all agree on--everyone wants foreign help, and AIDS tests. Why? Kurdish conversation follows, then my wife speaks.
"It's been this way since the 1980's, it is standard, they say."
"Only in Iraq. I've been to 78 countries and this is the first where I have to get an AIDS test, and I'm Iraqi." I haven't actually been to 78 countries, more like 40 maybe, but if I say 40, they'll think it's actually 15, that's how Iraqi hyperbole works.
More Kurdish, then "well they say it was instituted in 1982 and they aren't going to change it just because foreigners don't like it."
I don't know if it was 1982, but the irony was delicious. Apparently not everything done by Saddam in 1982 turns out to be so bad, only the stuff that is capitulation to the West and its inhabitants. The stuff he did that made their lives rather miserable while traveling to Iraq apparently is fine. As the mark on my forearm shows, the resistance to the Muslim world lives on in Iraq, even as the tyrant lies dead.
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