Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [99]
“My country is collapsing, and it’s my job to watch this collapse,” she told me. “The Iraqi people are waiting for their dream, and now they find it’s only a nightmare. People find out that nothing has been done. Many people who hated Saddam Hussein now wish he’d come back. They’re feeling they were fooled.”
Islamists gathered up power, and set about reestablishing the domination of men over women. They prowled the streets, threatening to kill women who bared their heads, encouraging men in the mosques to do the same. So that was one thing: Atwar was a woman on television at a time when rabid armies were trying to stuff women back into unseen rooms. Behind her elaborate and vague explanation of taking the hijab because she had seen death, I felt the big, unspoken truth of her fear, and believed she did not speak of this fear because she was too proud.
Then there was the ancient and relentless question of sect, tearing apart the Muslim people ever since Muhammad’s earliest descendents tried to shape the religion and move it forward. Like so many lingering tensions, this had been squashed by Saddam and his endless armies of spies, policemen, and torturers. The Sunnis were in charge under Saddam, and the Shiites and Kurds kept quiet. And then Saddam was gone, power and oil and money were all up for grabs, and Iran came rushing into Baghdad and the south—and the sectarian war began.
Atwar was a theological half-breed; she didn’t fit anywhere. Her mother was Shiite, her father Sunni. She told people she didn’t believe in sect. Her country kept on breaking down, and Atwar kept on refusing to acknowledge it. She wore a gold pendant in the shape of Iraq to indicate her disdain for splitting people into categories: Shiite, Sunni, Kurd. That pendant was famous. Anonymous callers threatened to kill her for wearing it. She battled her editors about whether people in the stories should be identified as Sunni or Shiite. Atwar thought the sectarian identifications were immoral. The hatred was hot enough already, she told her bosses. She wanted to calm things down, not stoke the anger.
There was no place in Iraq for a woman like that.
At a time when Iraq was so blood-jaded and numb it seemed as if shock had abandoned the country for good, the bombing of the gold-domed shrine gripped the nation. Atwar must have been shocked, too, because she didn’t stop to ask permission. She rounded up the camera crew, piled into a van, and raced homeward. She thought she was safe in Samarra, surrounded by her own people. She called her younger sister and told her not to worry. “I’m among family,” she said. The crew found the roads into the city choked shut. Soldiers had surrounded and sealed the town, desperate to contain the violence. The entire country was clapped under curfew. Shiite gangs roved the streets, mad for vengeance, slaughtering Sunnis.
In the farmlands outside town, Atwar’s crew set up a shot with the rooftops of Samarra in the distance. Curious villagers gathered around. As the light faded from the wintry sky, Atwar picked up the microphone. She arranged her haggard features into a television face and spoke straight into millions of Arab living rooms, to the far corners of Iraq, the other Muslim countries, and the wide world beyond. She must have known that civil war was at hand. Her words were defiant, and scared.
“Whether you are Sunni or Shia, Arab or Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis,” she said. “[We are] united in fear for this nation.”
When the live shot was over, Atwar called the Baghdad bureau. She talked with her colleague, Amna.
“Iraq is swinging on your chest,” Amna teased Atwar. She meant the pendant.
“Yes, Iraq is swinging between insurgents and these Iraqi politicians,” Bahjat said wryly. “It needs a warm chest to lie upon.”
By now the gunmen were coming for her. They had seen her on television, and they were hunting her down, peeling up the country road in their pickup truck. “Where’s the announcer?” they