Message in a Bottle

By Kelly Hayes-Raitt

(Eds. note: Kelly Hayes-Raitt, a member of Santa Monica's Commission on the Status of Women, is one of ten women from Southern California joining a humanitarian mission to Baghdad. This is the first in a series of dispatches she plans to send from the Iraqi capital. "Destination Baghdad," Jan. 29)

BAGHDAD, Feb.3 -- There’s so much to experience, assimilate and articulate in such a short time. In three days, we’ve had official tours through a pediatric hospital’s children’s leukemia ward, a food distribution center, an orphanage and the bomb shelter where a US bomb killed over 400 civilians during the 1991 “aggression,” as the Gulf War is called here.

We’ve met with government officials from the General Federation of Iraqi Women and from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and attended a press conference with the Iraqi liaison to the UN inspectors during which a visiting European Union MP delegation asked questions in front of the international press.

It’s too early for me to sort through the layers of government manipulation -- of both the Iraqi women and of this American woman. Government officials read from the same briefing page: First we are warmly welcomed as American people, then the effects of the “US sanctions” are dramatically outlined. There is little talk of impending war. Undeniably, the sanctions have had a devastating effect on Iraqi families, and that is the message Harry wants us to take home.

(Our group has nicknamed this country’s leader so that we may have some open conversation among ourselves.)

News is state controlled, of course, and we are warned about talking with Iraqis about Harry. They are, however, able to criticize Bush -- and do so quite freely, particularly about the sanctions. America is not singled out; generally the critiques are more polite when made to our faces, but it’s interesting to be on this side of the spin.

Numbers are slippery and elusive, examples are well-rehearsed. In my ignorance about the Middle East, the information I’m receiving is in a vacuum and I haven’t yet learned to trust my own impressions.

From the deputy director of the General Federation of Iraqi Women, for example, we are told that the sanctions are interrupting children’s education: Lead pencils can’t be imported because the tops may be used to make bombs. While this incredible statement may be true, I mentally noted that her translator was taking notes with a lead pencil.

Yet, I haven’t seen the widespread oppression our government uses to justify a new war. Although armed soldiers police busy corners, they smile easily and are friendly to both natives and tourists. (On our last day, they insisted on posing for photographs with us outside our hotel.)

People move about freely with unguarded expressions, women call and wave to us and I’ve had several spontaneous, unscripted conversations with people on the street. Bombing them doesn’t strike me as a way to achieve their political freedom.

I’m still adjusting from culture shock. It was one week ago today I saw Sting singing “Message in a Bottle” to a global audience during half-time of our gluttonous Super Bowl. I feel quite isolated -- within this country (where the only news I can get is filtered through reporters at the international media center) and within our group.

The “Code Pink” women with whom I am traveling are radically conspicuous, wearing cape-like hot pink signs pinned to their backs that declare “Women for Peace” in English. They hold daily “actions” in crowded squares and call themselves “vigilantes” in their press releases.

I compared their demonstrating to a group of North Koreans parading around the streets of LA wearing bright neon signs in indecipherable Korean -- before I learned how truly upsetting that would be given that country’s statements later in the week.