IRAQ: Michael Jansen spent yesterday wandering the streets and book markets of Baghdad and reports on the fatalism of what may come . . . aswell as people's belief that they will get through it
The sun rides high in the pale blue sky, the city is spending a dozy, peaceful day on this, the 12th anniversary of the beginning of the US aerial blitz which devastated this country. Baghdad sleeps late. Businesses, schools and government offices are closed. Traffic is light. Cars rush along the wide boulevards past the famous fountain of a peasant woman pouring water from a jug. Red lights are ignored.
Around noon clouds of smoke rise from the simple restaurants ranked along the banks of the ancient grey-brown Tigris in preparation for the cooking of masgouf, a delicious river carp, grilled before an open fire. It is a speciality of Baghdad, which very few Baghdadis can afford these days. A few of the restaurants have one or two tables with customers, small family parties.
A scattering of shops begins to open at noon, just about the time Iraq and Russia concluded a new oil agreement. On the plane from Amman, I met an Egyptian businessman who was signing a deal for the supply of spare and replacement parts for Iraq's energy sector under the oil-for-food programme. I expressed surprise that his company was going ahead at this time.
"They asked me to come," he shrugged.
Once the deal is signed, the Egyptian foreign ministry will submit the contract to the UN sanctions committee for approval.
"That can take at least a month and assembling the parts and shipping them can take many more," the Egyptian remarked. "If there is war, no one knows what will happen."
The 4½ million citizens of this grand, sprawling capital go about their business as normally as they can while expecting bombers and cruise missiles to target them a second time soon.
"There is a new Bush in the White House, he wants to finish his father's war," remarks a rug seller in the souk just off columned Rashid Street, the city's most famous thoroughfare. "But we Iraqis have been here for 5,000 years and we will be here for another 5,000 years, long after the Americans have packed up their planes and tanks and sailed away."
Two well-dressed elderly gentlemen sitting in plastic chairs in the splendid courtyard of the 13th-century Mustansiriya university also expect war. As tea was being served in small glasses, the older man, in overcoat, muffler and hat, made a prediction. "The war will come after the Eid," the Feast of the Sacrifice, which ends the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. "The Eid comes on the ninth of February," he asserts. "The attack will be after that. There is nothing we can do about it. We cannot stop Bush, we can only defend ourselves as best we can."
The gateman takes me on a tour of the high- vaulted classrooms of the university, the second-oldest in the Arab world, founded a quarter of a millennium later than Cairo's venerable al-Azhar. Built on the left bank of the Tigris, al-Mustansiriya is a two-storey dun-coloured brick building with pointed arches and a spacious central courtyard.
Al-Mustansariya was known for Islamic theological teaching, jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, pharmacy and mathematics. Here the scientific accomplishments of the ancient Greeks were translated and taught and elaborated upon by Arab doctors and men of science. Preserved for the world.
I chance upon another obvious foreigner in a corridor between two classrooms.
"Are you also a journalist?" I ask.
"No, I'm with the UN."
"What agency?"
"UNMOVIC."
A weapons inspector on his day off.
"From what country?"
"UN, we don't speak of our home countries."
He is European, perhaps from central or eastern Europe. On his narrow shoulders, weighed down by a black backpack, could rest the heavy decision of whether there is war or peace.
The university's library once boasted thousands of rare and valuable volumes. It was sacked by the Mongols and books were thrown into the Tigris, the gateman states. Two decades ago the rebuilt library housed one of the oldest existing maps which showed the world as round. Today the map is no longer displayed and the library is an empty echo chamber. Iraq's treasures have been hidden to protect them from the newest round of warriors.
The weekly book souk takes place on Friday. A vast array of old books and new, magazines, and newspapers cover the pavements in the open-air market. Books in Arabic, English, French, German and Russian.
Theology books, comic books, women's magazines and sex manuals are thrown willy-nilly across the rough pavement. Occasionally there is a sort of rough classification.
For instance, most of the medical texts are concentrated in a courtyard. Ancient tomes bound in leather with gold lettering share the pavement with the latest, smart paperback texts. Students and veteran practitioners rifle through the pages, pausing at an article of interest.
I encounter the clutch of German peace activists who were on the plane with me. I ask about their itinerary, in case they have an event which might interest me.
"Our programme will be ready tomorrow," says one. "We'll keep in touch."
They are going to tour hospitals and educational institutions, to investigate the deficiencies 12 years of sanctions have wrought.
A couple of French peace delegates pause for a chat. They are carrying rare books they have purchased after an exhaustive search inside the dingy second-floor shops which overhang street-level display windows.
One book, The Arab Awakening, by George Antonius, a Lebanese with Egyptian and Palestinian connections, describes the emergence of Arab nationalism after centuries of Ottoman rule and is considered a text by Arab individuals and parties who have taken part in this struggle.
It's a rare and valuable book long out of print, yielded by an Iraqi household which can longer make ends meet due to sanctions and bought for a fistful of dinars worth just a dollar or two.
I pick up a book on Iraqi painters, published in 1972, with an introduction by my old friend Jabra Jabra, one of Iraq's most distinguished poets, essayists and novelists, whose works have been published in English. A Cambridge man, he also translated T.S. Eliot into Arabic. Jabra is gone, killed in a car crash several years ago. Iraqi painters, potters and poets are the best in the Arab world.
Being the heirs of ancient Mesopotamia has certain advantages. But there are also disadvantages. For under the Middle East's ancient deserts lie vast pools of oil.
"The British came for the oil in the 30s," says an Iraqi teacher employed as a driver. "Now the latest big power wants it. Why can't they see that we are very happy to sell it to them? Why can't they spend the billions of dollars they are going to waste bombing us on education, health and the environment and improve the lot of all the people in the world?"
On my return to my small hotel, its owner asks about my day. When told of the pundit who said the war would come after the Eid, he nods. "My daughter who's eight, asked me if there would be war. I said I thought so. She replied, 'Let it be after the Eid, Baba, let them give us at least the feast.' Then I am ready."