Suicide bomber

It’s not that I didn’t see any death last time around. It’s just that I didn’t see so much of it, and it wasn’t so overwhelming. The death here is awful. It's horrible and inhuman. Bodies aren't even bodies anymore. Which is why it’s so easy not to see them.

It didn’t hit me until much later that theseare scenes that soldiers (and certainly Iraqis) see too often. It isn’t only the killing that stays with them afterwards (as I've been examining. so many of them tell me they don’t know if they’ve killed people, don’t know where the bullets landed when they sprayed), it’s the images of death. The kind of death that lets you believe there aren’t families attached to these bits of flesh. There aren’t mothers and fathers wondering where there loved ones are or if they’ll be home for dinner. It’s another suicide bombing, just like the day before and the day before that. Just like the one that might go off tomorrow. One day sooner to going home.

This day there were just over a dozen bodies, maybe more it's hard to tell. Then I hear about a hundred dead on the same day and I am so relieved I was not there. Again, bits of human beings who may never even be claimed because they are not recognizable. They will be among the "disappeared" of Iraq, never counted because Americans don't do those counts and Iraqis have lost count. The first suicide was difficult and then the next I was on automatic and I knew it was time to go.

It was the smell. I couldn’t get it off of my clothes, out of my hair, or away from that space below my nose that is known to turn odor to memories. I stood under the shower for more than an hour but immediately sensed it again once the water was off. Burnt flesh. Too many people. Kids. One barely breathing when we arrived and I wanted so badly for him to be dead so he wouldn’t suffer any more. Shreds of skin and hair, clothes and metal and melting plastic. It’s just like a movie, people had told me, and it’s true. Just like a horror flick but this time no one stands up, dusts himself off and prepares for the next scene.

Just moments before this we were seated around an Iraqi feast, offered by farmers from Amarra: rice, soup, dates and homemade yoghurt. We left when someone called over the radio that an IP vehicle was on fire in the street at one of the pilgrimage entry points. They said there were casualties. So we went.

The worst part is that in many ways I was unmoved. I took photos, my hands shaking only a bit in the beginning. I wondered what kind of photo it would be: prurient interest or a story to tell. Some images are too gruesome even to look at, to know how flesh is so empty once soul is gone. Would I want anyone else to see the images I now have in my head? But I couldn’t stop, as if to show how horrible it really could be, and also how normal.

I hear later there were police officers crying and beating themselves with their rifles (I missed the shot). And a man burned from head to toe who was still alive when medics arrived. I was on the other side of the street trying to figure out if the boy in the major’s arms would survive. Or how long it would be before someone would tell me to leave. Could I really be standing in the middle of all this and no one is noticing? Someone quickly hands me a loaded pistol as he bends to check if someone is alive. I hold it in my left hand and my camera in my right wondering which deserves more attention. I contemplate where to put the gun – think about my pants pocket or tucked into my waistband. I laugh for a moment at the thought of me shooting myself in the leg, laugh only because everything is too absurd. I run back to an American soldier and hand him the gun – “take it, I can’t hold this,” I tell him, and he will tease me about it later.

One Iraqi man led me to the worst of sights, and then to another to make sure I recorded the damage. “It’s my son,” he says pointing to a scrambled pile of metal and blood that once was a school bus. Too many feet to tell which son he was talking about. And then he was gone, a mirage disappearing into the smoke-filled street. I remember there were Iraqi dinar on the ground and for one dissociative moment - just a fleeting moment - I forgot why it was there and wondered if I should pick it up and put it in my pocket. Did others have the same lapse as they pushed aside a dismembered head to steal bus fare while police secured the scene? My black boots with deep grooves were thick and sticky. I swore that day to throw them away, that cleaning would not get rid of the mess or the memory. (which I still can’t get myself to do. This will be a story in itself). In time most of the recognizable bodies were covered and then removed, so it became more like a normal car crash except for the head that still lay in the middle of the street (why the fuck couldn’t they take away the head?) and the woman who was next to it on her back with her hands and feet splayed. At least her face was covered. And the pair of feet next to her that wore those damn tennis shoes. Don’t even know if it was a suicide bomber but they wear tennis shoes, not sandals like the others, to run fast, the soldiers tell me. Looking at the photos later – there is one that still makes me close my eyes -- I see the body of the American soldier crumpled on the street. I don’t even remember seeing him really, except maybe his soft, young face from close up, before they lifted him into a blue bag and carefully carried him away. But there he was, America’s finest, another casualty of this stupid war. And the translator who was with him. Her body was already gone by the time we arrived. (Later I will embrace her close friend as she weeps uncontrollably. This, I think is the hardest part. It isn’t blood and soulless bodies, but those who are left behind who are the most difficult to document. So we stand in a dark hallway and she cries and I tell her she will be all right and try to allay her fears that the Americans will not abandon her, all the while hoping I am not telling a lie. I just don’t know.)

Then suddenly every vehicle is a potential car bomb and the street is cleared. The US robot motors out to check on cars and one, then I think two, bombs are dismantled. But to me every vehicle will hold a bomb and I’d rather be in the middle of destruction than near destruction about to happen.

In a moment of comic relief I must use the restroom. A translator cannot believe when I ask him to help me find a loo. “Aren’t you afraid?” he asks. “Of a bathroom? When I’m standing in front of a bomb scene?” He decides to help me and asks a bystander if I may use the bathroom in his house. The Iraqi is gracious, as they are, and agrees right away. A US major screams that the place is not secure and when I emerge from the loo there are three soldiers in this poor man’s living room. I apologize, and leave.

I am completely calm as we walk back to the humvees and the soldiers joke about the uptight major and what’s for dinner. I almost want to join in but haven’t the stomach, watch instead as an exhausted Iraqi translator climbs into the humvee, takes off his helmet and stares into the seat in front of him.

The soldiers make fun of the frightened ING – call the Iraqi General “Puss in Boots” -- and I don’t care. I am enraged the Iraqis are hiding in nearby buildings as US soldiers secure the scene. I can’t imagine how they will secure their country if they are too afraid to be in the middle of what I have seen.

Two weeks later I am sitting in Sri Lanka watching an outdoor movie with three small children stuck to my sides and in my lap just wanting to be held. I remember sitting in front of a television in Iraq watching the Tsunami unfold on Fox (all they had). Soldiers on both sides on numerous days said how much they wished they could be there. “At least we’d feel like we’re doing something and helping people. No one wants us here,” they said to anyone who would listen. Indeed the Marines in Sri Lanka are considered heroes, miracle workers, for fixing the streets, the rail line, the water. I wish more soldiers could be here too, for healing. Or just to feel like they were being used for something good in the world. Or maybe just to feel like they weren’t being used.