"We want a stable government. We want our rights. Is it better for my daughter to become a prostitute?"

July 28th, 2005 2:55 pm
In Basra, one man

gives the average

Iraqi a voice
Knight Ridder



By Leila Fadel

BASRA, Iraq - Every morning Hussein Abdul Razak al Ayash wakes up, leaves the shabby hotel where he lives for a couple of dollars a night and sets up his outdoor office: a plastic chair, colored permanent markers and a stack of large sheets of thick white paper.

He sits between the Basra tourism office and a theater, picks up a marker, listens to life on the bustling streets of the second largest city in Iraq and writes. The Sidewalk Newspaper comes to life among the honking car horns, the street vendors and the wafting smells of sewage.

"Good news. The government is increasing the ration card.

"100 kilos of sadness and pain for every family.

"50 kilos of problems for every house.

"250 kilos of garbage on every street.

"5 random shots (one might shoot you in the head, depending on your luck)."

He lines up the papers like dominoes intersecting at right angles and keeps his work from blowing away with jagged rocks, broken bricks and strips of masking tape. People gather in this southern port city and begin to read their grievances sprawled out on the sidewalk.

Throughout the day more than 1,000 people pass by, stop and read.

One woman carrying three shopping bags read a mock dialogue between a government minister and an unemployed man. The man refused to pay $400 for a government job.

Like this man, Nithal Jameel can't pay a bribe and her 20-year-old daughter, a civil engineer, sits at home. She's job-hunted for weeks, and nothing.

"Speak, press," Jameel commanded the news media, her free hand waving in the air. "We want a stable government. We want our rights. Is it better for my daughter to become a prostitute?"

Others gathered around her and issued their own complaints.

"I have no electricity."

"There is no water."

"Our government is corrupt."

"Where is the security?"

Al Ayash's paper is a reflection of life in the city where the war started more than two years ago.

Now it's one of the safest places in Iraq. People feel free to gather around this makeshift newspaper without fear of a passing car bomb or a mortar attack. Kidnappings, assassinations and poverty do plague Basra, however. Musicians have been beaten and killed in the street and piles of trash and sewage fill the city.

Al Ayash, an electrical engineer, couldn't find a job after Baghdad fell. His own complaints poured from his pen, and six days after the capital was captured he established a newspaper of dark satire about life in Iraq.

For about two years the Basrawi man laid out his sheets of paper in the capital in the most basic expression of free speech. Two months ago he packed up and took his product on the road. Now he helps the unassuming people in his hometown express their opinions.

The editor in chief is the people of Basra, he said. The political leanings are the opinions of the masses. The purpose: to keep Iraqi voices loud.

"I write about the suffering of the people and the pulse of the street," he said. "The people ask me, where is the freedom, where is the security, where is the peace?"

There are no advertisements to bring in revenue and there's no charge to read al Ayash's work. This keeps it pure, he said. All he asks for is a little money or a couple of sheets of paper to keep writing.

"When there is an explosion in London the world erupts," he said. "But when the Iraqis are slaughtered and killed there is no outcry."

He stood next to his chair and surveyed his work. Every day, he'll be here writing for the people from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. His blue eyes, shaded by the brim of a hat, are hopeful. One day this will make a global impact, he said.

But can words pasted to the pavement do anything?

"I pass here every day and I read this," one woman said as she gestured to the papers next to her feet. "But even if I read, there is no solution to my problems. It will end up in the trash."