THE
ROVING EYE 'All life is
waiting' By Pepe Escobar
DAMASCUS - Only her eyelashes can be seen
in profile, fluttering obsessively like the wings
of a butterfly. She is like her own striking,
svelte Kaaba, surrounded by an ocean of pilgrims -
full black elegantly draped chador over
jeans and a discreet mauve pair of pointy shoes,
full hijab, only the heavily kohl-rimmed
eyelashes trying to decode the torn-down messages
in Arabic script, and then the official's request
for a pile of abstruse documents. Inevitably she
has to sit down, like everyone else, in
the
antechamber of purgatory - the cramped, dingy room
of the consular section at the Iraqi Embassy.
Her first words, when she breaks her
silence, are "Waiting ... All life is waiting."
Then her story shapes around familiar contours.
She is a young, educated, skilled
professional - a veterinarian from Baghdad. Her
husband "was killed" two months ago, she says with
an almost imperceptible shrug, as if it were
self-evident. By her side, her six-year-old kid,
frightened look, hair plastered with gel and
wearing sunglasses. Her little daughter was left
behind in Baghdad, with her family.
In a
less harsh universe she would have been the female
lead in a Hollywood tear-jerker - those
kohl-rimmed eyelashes under the black-veiled face
filling the screen, and the audience, with awe. In
unforgiving real life she is just one more Iraqi
refugee - one more whose story will never make it
to the front pages of US corporate newspapers or
be carefully re-enacted by glamorous Diane Sawyer
lookalikes.
The inflow through the dingy
room is relentless - from grandmas who seem to
have just sprung up from the kitchen to aged
peasants who've been sporting the same coat for
decades, from housewives in white scarves and
plastic sandals dragging their reluctant children
to sheikhs in fine blue robes with golden
cufflinks, golden watch and golden mobile phones.
All are equal in the face of distress.
Occasionally, a chador-clad woman - a war
widow - breaks down into pungent wailing: she
cannot produce the stamp, the seal or the piece of
paper the bureaucracy demands. When a small wooden
window is closed - distress has to be meticulously
processed - the men protest in vain to the fully
made-up official in dressed-to-kill mode.
A mom and daughter are also waiting. They
look like an average mom and daughter from Queens
in New York or Camden Town in London. But Mom is
visibly about to give it all up and collapse, and
daughter tries all she can to maintain their
dignified composure. Their house was destroyed by
a car bomb on New Year's Eve in Baghdad (eight
people died). Mom reaches for her purse to show
the dog-eared photos. The bomb was aimed at a
restaurant.
They miraculously escaped
because they were in the back yard. Now the head
of the family, a sexagenarian, is ill and cannot
find work. "Nobody helps us. They destroyed our
country. Why? Why?" They are aiming for a visa to
the United States. "Impossible." Too many pieces
of paper to collect. Mom warns, "Believe me, there
are at least 6 million of us like this" - a
reference to the millions of currently displaced
Iraqis.
Suddenly an eerie silence envelops
the squalid room. Business is closed for the day.
More protestations. So much distress, so much
paperwork to fill, so little time. The lucky ones
will have to come back in a day, or two or many,
to another window through another gate, and be
crammed by the hundreds, called by name for hours
on end to collect the stamp, seal or document that
might open a small window of hope. "My friend has
a company in Guangzhou." "Is it better to try for
a Spanish visa, or for Portugal?" "Don't try
Australia, you will wait forever."
The
striking veterinarian widow would like to resettle
in England. But tomorrow night she will only make
it to the lone night bus to Baghdad, where she
hopes to rescue her little daughter, and then,
back to Syria, resigned to keep waiting, waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of what life might have
been.
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