A tube story

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

Two scenes from the tube did on a job on me tonight. The first one was from a documentary called "Iraq's missing millions". Yes you guessed right. It referred to the 20 Billion Dollars of Iraqi money that simply evaporated during Bremer's "governance" of the "new" Iraq. The 20 Billion dollars of Iraqi money that were meant to "reconstruct" Iraq. The program filmed a hospital in Diwaniya, the Southern part. This was no hospital, this looked like a run down insalubrious toilet. No hospital sheets, no curtains, no medication, no oxygen masks, no surgical gloves, no intravenous serums... In something that looked like an ancient non-functional incubator, laid Zahra, an infant girl and not too far, Abbas, her twin infant brother. Zahra looked blue black, the colors of asphyxiation. She lacked Vitamin K and some other drug. She was terribly malnourished. She lacked air, she lacked life. The doctor had no oxygen mask. He pressed a long thick tube, the only one available, against her tiny nostrils, trying to insert bits of it, hoping to give her some oxygen, hoping to revive her ever slowing heart beat. Zahra's father was absent. He went searching for the drug and the vitamin K on the black market. Zahra's father had to pay for them from his own pocket. By the time he made it back to the hospital and despite the doctor's best efforts, Zahra was gone. The doctor told Zahra's grandmother: "This infant is finished". The following day, Abbas, her twin brother was finished too.(...) The second scene was from Guantanamo. You know Gitmo Bay, your seaside resort. 380 "prisoners" are still with no trial. Many of them are on hunger strike. One of them is Sami al-Hajj, a sudanese cameraman working for Al Jazeera. Married, father of small boy... By the time he made it back to the hospital and despite the doctor's best efforts, Zahra was gone...

continua / continued