How lonely are the yards I pass in this town. Loneliest of all are yards featuring some instrument of gaiety and pleasure, a trampoline or swimming pool, say -- which stand slack and silent.
The dream of consumer America since World War Two has been this: to imagine some public or mass facility (swimming pools, playgrounds, parks, ice cream machines, movie theatres) as owned by oneself and one's family. I remember as a kid when my parents bought a deep fryer. Wow -- we can make fried dough and donuts just like at the fair! Except that they are all for us. This titillating dream of possession is one of the chief engines of consumer spending. No matter how much nostalgia hangs in the air over public facilities that went kaput (passenger rail, movie theatres, parks, video arcades, ice cream counters), the mainstream of our society is eagerly seeking after yet more insulation from the public. "Home theatres" are now in vogue.
That little thrill of exclusive access dies quickly. Proof of this statement may be observed easily by cycling the streets of any suburb in the summer: count the empty, silent swimming pools, trampolines, swing sets, basketball hoops, yards.
And yet hope springs eternal that the next home-this-or-that will really be the one, the one thing that finally makes suburban life exciting. But suburbs are the physical contours of a philosophical and emotional prudery that simply cannot be exciting. Suburbs are anti-culture, if we take culture to be the creative mixing by which humans collectively produce. Suburbs are destined to be deadening because they are designed to separate, to withdraw away from the road and toward the woods.
And yet ironically, this cowardly, greedy withdrawal (dreams of exclusive pleasure) inward is at the same time a rapacious expansion of the sizes of human settlement. The more Americans dream of retreat from society, the more nature pays the price. Not to mention culture, left behind in the cities to its diminished fan base.
How lonely stand the yards, how silent the pools. They are the stillborn descendants of lively city parks and pools. And yet how suburbanites dream that these facilities will enliven their days!
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Port Authority Station, 4:30 am
I was dragged back down toward sleep in time to be thrown roughly into New York. The Lincoln Tunnel’s antiseptic light surrounded us, deceptively, for a few minutes, before the warm, brutal streets of the city emerged around us. Into the labyrinthine Port Authority we roared. I was amazed to see people propped and drooped in tired posture outside the metal and glass doors which usually keeps passengers away from the rumbling of the buses. It was 4am. They had spilled out by pressure from the inside, and I could see hundreds of people waiting in lines snaking about the interior of the terminal, in weary resignation.
Moving inside, weaving through and around tableau of conflict or fatigue, annoyance or belly-shaking laughter, I worked my way up to the information booth where a young white man berated a young black man for all the ills of his trip so far. “You don’t run things?” he said, “”Well then, who is your supervisor? How can you not know if the second bus is coming??” Scott and I found the line which, indistinct as it was, merging with other lines, was a paragon of order compared to St. Louis.
I made a run for the street in order to find a particularly cheap phone card. As I darted through one passageway to the other side, I was pulled up short by the bodies of sleeping men. One old man, hatted, slumbered chin to his chest against a pay phone. He sat on a milk crate, and leaned back against it. His hands drooped over his thighs. A younger man lay on his side next to him, oriented toward the wall, his belly spilling out white. I felt like I had slipped into a passageway back through the Great Depression. But instead, the machine of the economy was churning forcefully ahead. This sort of scene was normal for the poor. Every morning Port Authority looks like this.
When I went up a floor I found all the normal ways in and out barricaded off, except for one staircase. It looked like an emergency, but no one hurried or looked alarmed. People slept on the floor. I ascended to street level and was suddenly in a world of hoods and thugs, police and menacing taxi drivers. I went outside and crossed 42nd street to the 24 hour pharmacy. A keen stench hit me right in the middle of the street. It was dark, and the lights of the movie theatres and sports bars still sparkled brightly. In the store an older woman was berating a young man. “Tell me you didn’t know that!” she was shouting. “Tell me you had no idea! How many times did I remind you?” his face was only inches from hers. Who was menacing whom? Who were they and how had they become entangled, one old and white, one young and black, and silent, here at 4:15am in the blank light of the pharmacy, right next to a clerk and customer completing a normal, indifferent, transaction. Finding no phone cards I ran back across the street.
As I navigated through the police and thick necked station staff toward the stair case I was surprised at how ad-hoc and half-assed the “security” seemed. A quick “Got a ticket?” the men would ask, challengingly, while selectively waving others through. How similar to the figures of trouble are the guardians of order; how helter skelter and willy nilly these “procedures,” these “regulations,” these “mechanisms.” It is all seat of the pants tyranny. Iraq must feel like this and far worse, with the thugs equally represented in the police and the militias. Every morning is like this, I marveled, and yet here and now it feels totally fresh, unreckoned, unready, absurd. I wormed back down through the bodies bent in their postures of torment and the others, awake and wondering how they had stumbled into this. Before getting back into line I bought a sandwich from the snack bar. The man in front of me was buying a hot dog, or trying to. He laboriously counted out his change, and then scattered it, and pinched up each coin yet again. The cashier pursed her lips, trying not to look at him. She too was wondering how she had come to be here, with drugged up demons and smelly old men. I felt how close I was to him, wondering that I could see the acne on his neck and his oily hair, and yet be so far removed from his world!
Back in line with Scott, at gate 82, I saw the same man, still fumbling with his money. Everything was far from him, even his pockets. The bills played tricks on him, squirreling out from pockets and under the hang of his shirt. “Hey! You’re losin’ your money!” called out the black women from the line, and each call would twist him around again, to bend all the way to the floor to pluck up the errant bill. We hooted, we couldn’t believe it. He was made of plastic, twirling and tottering about in an endless effort. The money tormented him, sneaking out even after his efforts to stuff it back in. His shoulder bag got tangled up with a rope, which pulled over the pole, clanging it loudly on the floor. He righted it but could not free his bag, like a newspaper on a fence.
There were tensions in the line. “She is tryin’ to cut in!” came voices. We boarded, and waited long past the scheduled time. A large contingent was on its way to Foxwoods casino. “I wanna say Bingo!!” one woman chanted several times. Then the bus started, and all the tension flooded right out of us puppets, and we fell asleep, heads swaying like heavy flowers on turns.
New Jersey glide
From 2am Philadelphia into New Jersey I was in that smooth sleepless comfort that is bound to pick me up at least a few times on every Greyhound run. The bus had lost all friction, and so had I. I saw Independence Hall and Liberty Bell Hall slide by. There was only a mild hiss of air around the glass casing of the bus and the muffled bump along of irregular asphalt somewhere deep below us as we crossed the Delaware into Camden and Cherry Hill. I was every bit as lucid as New Jersey’s post industrial landscape, as pale corporate buildings and retro diners gleaming with an excess of chrome and deep red neon, as pre-owned auto lots and rows of toll booths marked with red ‘X’s and green arrows. How beautiful it was, so quiet and empty, and how beautifully soft and blank I felt bumping swiftly through it.
Greyhound's late night DJs
Guy
It was as if the tall driver knew precisely what burned us, and how to soothe what burned. Taking the voice of an amiable tour guide, he went through the rules, giving us glimpses of humor. “There is not much to hold onto in the bathroom,” he said as we moved through the dark city, “so you are lucky to come out of there dry. Please accompany small children. We are now passing near the famous arch, which you can see on the right. Saint Louis was named for France’s Louis the Ninth, whose buccaneers sailed up the river in 1674 and claimed the land for France. Louis the Ninth was known for such wisdom and goodness that he was called Saint Louis. There are other versions of the story, though. I hear there was also a Mr. Louis who had settled here, and was generous to all travelers. He ran a brothel house; church going folks say it was a “waffle house” to their kids. Some people say the city was named after him. . .So beer drinkin’ folk have their St. Louis, and church-goin’ folk have their St. Louis.”
Guy was a Greyhound Garrison Keilor, slyly slipping tales of mythical figures into straight sounding introductions of places. He commented on Effingham (where a Mister Effingham’s hotel had brought primitive flush toilets to the frontier, for which the phrase was coined, “If its yellow, let it mellow; if its brown, flush it down.”), and Terre Haute (after blind old Terry, whose horse got into other people’s gardens). I was only dimly conscious when he signed off the air at Indianapolis, mildly reminding people not to leave behind their children, boyfriends, girlfriends, dogs, cats, pigs, and cows.
Curve Ball
Heading out of Indianapolis, our heads already bobbing, we were hit by another late night DJ. Like Guy, he started straight and then curved hard. This man was black, while Guy spoke like a white professor. This driver played all with vocal style. He told no wry stories nor embroidered anything, adding no new content. All he did was stretch out the tail of each announcement until it was hardly recognizable and we were all shaking with chuckles and hoots. The one I remember best was like this: “There will be no cell phones or other electronic devices without proper headphones. In addition, please keep the volume to a level that only yoooo-ouuuuu can ee-eeee-e-e-e-njo-ooooooooy.”
In this way he turned mundane prohibitions into sly numbers, like mandolin strings loosened until they emit an absurdly long, looping yawp. “I have to ask you to keep hold of seat backs while moving to and from the bathroom, so as to ensure the saa-a-a-afe-ty-yyyy of yo-oooo-ou and yourr chi-ii-iiiii-ldre-e-e-e-en.” The absurd riffs he strummed on the rules poked us out of our sleepiness. My belly quaked, unable to hide my delight inside my exhaustion.
The Dog
The third driver to tickle us I cannot remember when she drove or where. The third and last night, long rolling Pennsylvania night? As usual I was awoken in the midst of her spiel. A black woman of about 50, she was vigorous, sharp, jolting. “Cuz you’re not flying the friendly skies. You ain’t riding Amtrak,” she concluded, “you are riding THE DOG. That’s right, this is THE DAWG you’re on, and please do not forget it.”
Several times through the night she exhorted us in a church like fervor: “There is just one thing I want y’all to do. Turn to your neighbor, say hello, and get to know each other. Cuz if you don’t and God forbid you don’t – for all the ice cream, cole slaw, fried chicken, chocolate fudge sauce, pepperoni pizza (I’m makin’ myself hungry) – if you don’t, the day is surely gonna come, y’all, when you’re gonna be asked the question: have you ever slept with someone you don’t know their name? And I do not want you to have to answer ‘yes’!” When she pulled us into Philadelphia or wherever it was she thanked us again for takin’ THE DAWG, leaving us with her pungent, potent voice ringing in our groggy, scalp itchy, fluorescent-lit, bumbling, floating existence.
It was as if the tall driver knew precisely what burned us, and how to soothe what burned. Taking the voice of an amiable tour guide, he went through the rules, giving us glimpses of humor. “There is not much to hold onto in the bathroom,” he said as we moved through the dark city, “so you are lucky to come out of there dry. Please accompany small children. We are now passing near the famous arch, which you can see on the right. Saint Louis was named for France’s Louis the Ninth, whose buccaneers sailed up the river in 1674 and claimed the land for France. Louis the Ninth was known for such wisdom and goodness that he was called Saint Louis. There are other versions of the story, though. I hear there was also a Mr. Louis who had settled here, and was generous to all travelers. He ran a brothel house; church going folks say it was a “waffle house” to their kids. Some people say the city was named after him. . .So beer drinkin’ folk have their St. Louis, and church-goin’ folk have their St. Louis.”
Guy was a Greyhound Garrison Keilor, slyly slipping tales of mythical figures into straight sounding introductions of places. He commented on Effingham (where a Mister Effingham’s hotel had brought primitive flush toilets to the frontier, for which the phrase was coined, “If its yellow, let it mellow; if its brown, flush it down.”), and Terre Haute (after blind old Terry, whose horse got into other people’s gardens). I was only dimly conscious when he signed off the air at Indianapolis, mildly reminding people not to leave behind their children, boyfriends, girlfriends, dogs, cats, pigs, and cows.
Curve Ball
Heading out of Indianapolis, our heads already bobbing, we were hit by another late night DJ. Like Guy, he started straight and then curved hard. This man was black, while Guy spoke like a white professor. This driver played all with vocal style. He told no wry stories nor embroidered anything, adding no new content. All he did was stretch out the tail of each announcement until it was hardly recognizable and we were all shaking with chuckles and hoots. The one I remember best was like this: “There will be no cell phones or other electronic devices without proper headphones. In addition, please keep the volume to a level that only yoooo-ouuuuu can ee-eeee-e-e-e-njo-ooooooooy.”
In this way he turned mundane prohibitions into sly numbers, like mandolin strings loosened until they emit an absurdly long, looping yawp. “I have to ask you to keep hold of seat backs while moving to and from the bathroom, so as to ensure the saa-a-a-afe-ty-yyyy of yo-oooo-ou and yourr chi-ii-iiiii-ldre-e-e-e-en.” The absurd riffs he strummed on the rules poked us out of our sleepiness. My belly quaked, unable to hide my delight inside my exhaustion.
The Dog
The third driver to tickle us I cannot remember when she drove or where. The third and last night, long rolling Pennsylvania night? As usual I was awoken in the midst of her spiel. A black woman of about 50, she was vigorous, sharp, jolting. “Cuz you’re not flying the friendly skies. You ain’t riding Amtrak,” she concluded, “you are riding THE DOG. That’s right, this is THE DAWG you’re on, and please do not forget it.”
Several times through the night she exhorted us in a church like fervor: “There is just one thing I want y’all to do. Turn to your neighbor, say hello, and get to know each other. Cuz if you don’t and God forbid you don’t – for all the ice cream, cole slaw, fried chicken, chocolate fudge sauce, pepperoni pizza (I’m makin’ myself hungry) – if you don’t, the day is surely gonna come, y’all, when you’re gonna be asked the question: have you ever slept with someone you don’t know their name? And I do not want you to have to answer ‘yes’!” When she pulled us into Philadelphia or wherever it was she thanked us again for takin’ THE DAWG, leaving us with her pungent, potent voice ringing in our groggy, scalp itchy, fluorescent-lit, bumbling, floating existence.
Saint Louis Station
The station had once been a grand bank. But the intricately painted ceiling panels and Doric columns did little for the people lining up at gate four at 3 in the morning. The line of bags and suitcases was interrupted, after a mere 10 yards, by a row of seats. There was a small gap in the middle of the row through which one person could squeeze, to the bathrooms or to the “Target: Terror” video games lining the walls. This small opening made me think the line ought to go through it and curve around along the wall and the arcade games. The statuesque woman with the small child with the Spider Man backpack got behind me, and the 3 Amish men and one woman formed a small covey behind her.
But all was not settled. An Indian man I recognized from our last bus soon walked up, asked, “Are you waiting for gate 4?” and plopped his bags down near mine, where I was sitting. I should have told him right then, nipped it in the bud, him and the jolly Mexican man he hung with, told him that the line was back there behind the Amish folk. If I had said something, then maybe the small Mexican woman with her children might not have showed up with their fleet of bags and sowed further confusion by indignantly refusing to budge.
But I said nothing. And of course Greyhound did nothing. I can imagine a Sidney Milgram of sadistic inclinations reaping new data every night from the chaos and bad tempers brewing around gate 4. More and more people drifted into the orbit of the “line,” accreting to it in some available niche until its course was a matter of some debate – at least from those, mainly between the benches and the arcade games, who felt the interlopers were stealing ahead of them.
My incipient disquiet deepened, and suddenly came out into the open. The hard faced Indian guy, grinning, said, “I was here a long time ago, with this woman. And this guy [meaning me] is right behind me.”
“I was in front of you,” I said, and his grin disappeared. My brother Scott was lying down on the edge of the marble floor. Seeing the crowd tighten its muscles for a struggle, I picked my way through its byzantine structure of bodies in order to alert him about boarding before things got to crazy to allow me to break away. He lay on his back in his baseball cap, utterly asleep, deaf to the seething movements of the “line” on one side and the snack bar on the other. He squeezed behind me, eyes floating in some other place.
Already I noticed several people planted ahead of us who had not been there before. Though I was indignant at the immediate injustice done to me, my protests failed to have any effect because I did not whip up the anger of the other people behind me. the Indian man, suddenly, was directly in front of me. “Why are you in front of me?” I said.
“Everybody’s pushing up,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said, but he did not budge. “I was here when you lined up!” He stood there saying nothing more, and my anger flared. “Are you in front of me?” I asked of a black woman to my left. Finally she relented, striking a deal that “let” me go ahead of her, while not having to give up her ill-gotten gains over everyone else.
“No one’s gettin’ in front of me,” said the young mother behind me, but to no effect.
When a young woman in the screwed over section by the arcade games began calling out that the line ran back there, I piped up again. This time I singled out the plump woman and her family who had crowded in behind the Indian man. “This is not the line,” I said, “it is back there.” As usual in these deep in the night debates, logic mattered less than fierce tenacity. She fought back in words at first, mentioning this or that person she had come in with – nothing to any logical connection to the matter of the line. And when I persisted, arguing firsts and laters, she simply clammed up like the Indian man and refused to move.
Then came an announcement came over the PA system, murky but just legible enough, that all holders of reboard pass 341 should proceed immediately to gate two. I knew this was for the Chicago bus, but I said nothing when the Indian, his Mexican buddy, and even the Desert Storm vet I liked, got all lathered up and scrambled over to gate two (we all held the same pass). I watched them go gleefully. I had got them out of line without openly attacking them. When they straggled back a minute later, my backpack was in the face of the Indian man – a trivial victory that left the larger state of affairs intact except that I was in front of him, a gratifying win. The war vet and the New York Mexican with the Che shirt simply hung about at the front of the line. And then it began to move.
The Indian and the black woman and the Mexican matron gave way before me, but they gave nothing to the wronged folk – including my brother – behind me. As we nudged forward and out the door, the cemented fault lines of rage finally broke, and people tumbled forward in a mad bid to hold their position against everyone else. each time I looked back for Scott he was further back, just ahead of the bewildered bearded faces of the Amish men in their straw hats. When I finally reached the tall fatherly bus driver (whose name tag read Guy) I blurted out, “Those four Amish people got pushed back by all those people, you ought to let them on first.”
I was surprised that he responded. “Where?” he asked, looking up, and I pointed them out and his finger followed mine, picking out their Hobbiton faces and drawing them helter skelter through the detritus of the crowd. “Thank you,” he said to me, and I found two seats for me and Scott. The tiny Amish woman in black bonnet and dress pressed up the aisle long before he made it, face flushed with frustration. Plumping down in the seat I had saved he vented his rage, quietly but with plenty of amazed “What the fuck??”s.
Think of conditions of civil war: it is not a moment when ancient hatreds resurface, but when people kill out of a sense of pervasive insecurity. The state breaks down, captured by one group, which suddenly threatens all others, and to push another out is only to protect oneself. Civil wars do not merely happen in the Old World, where hatreds flourish in the soil like hardy grape vines. They can happen here. The grievances that give rise to civil wars are as old as that three-second flame of rage at being cut off on the highway, or in the ticket line. Generalize these flames to entire sections of society.
But all was not settled. An Indian man I recognized from our last bus soon walked up, asked, “Are you waiting for gate 4?” and plopped his bags down near mine, where I was sitting. I should have told him right then, nipped it in the bud, him and the jolly Mexican man he hung with, told him that the line was back there behind the Amish folk. If I had said something, then maybe the small Mexican woman with her children might not have showed up with their fleet of bags and sowed further confusion by indignantly refusing to budge.
But I said nothing. And of course Greyhound did nothing. I can imagine a Sidney Milgram of sadistic inclinations reaping new data every night from the chaos and bad tempers brewing around gate 4. More and more people drifted into the orbit of the “line,” accreting to it in some available niche until its course was a matter of some debate – at least from those, mainly between the benches and the arcade games, who felt the interlopers were stealing ahead of them.
My incipient disquiet deepened, and suddenly came out into the open. The hard faced Indian guy, grinning, said, “I was here a long time ago, with this woman. And this guy [meaning me] is right behind me.”
“I was in front of you,” I said, and his grin disappeared. My brother Scott was lying down on the edge of the marble floor. Seeing the crowd tighten its muscles for a struggle, I picked my way through its byzantine structure of bodies in order to alert him about boarding before things got to crazy to allow me to break away. He lay on his back in his baseball cap, utterly asleep, deaf to the seething movements of the “line” on one side and the snack bar on the other. He squeezed behind me, eyes floating in some other place.
Already I noticed several people planted ahead of us who had not been there before. Though I was indignant at the immediate injustice done to me, my protests failed to have any effect because I did not whip up the anger of the other people behind me. the Indian man, suddenly, was directly in front of me. “Why are you in front of me?” I said.
“Everybody’s pushing up,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said, but he did not budge. “I was here when you lined up!” He stood there saying nothing more, and my anger flared. “Are you in front of me?” I asked of a black woman to my left. Finally she relented, striking a deal that “let” me go ahead of her, while not having to give up her ill-gotten gains over everyone else.
“No one’s gettin’ in front of me,” said the young mother behind me, but to no effect.
When a young woman in the screwed over section by the arcade games began calling out that the line ran back there, I piped up again. This time I singled out the plump woman and her family who had crowded in behind the Indian man. “This is not the line,” I said, “it is back there.” As usual in these deep in the night debates, logic mattered less than fierce tenacity. She fought back in words at first, mentioning this or that person she had come in with – nothing to any logical connection to the matter of the line. And when I persisted, arguing firsts and laters, she simply clammed up like the Indian man and refused to move.
Then came an announcement came over the PA system, murky but just legible enough, that all holders of reboard pass 341 should proceed immediately to gate two. I knew this was for the Chicago bus, but I said nothing when the Indian, his Mexican buddy, and even the Desert Storm vet I liked, got all lathered up and scrambled over to gate two (we all held the same pass). I watched them go gleefully. I had got them out of line without openly attacking them. When they straggled back a minute later, my backpack was in the face of the Indian man – a trivial victory that left the larger state of affairs intact except that I was in front of him, a gratifying win. The war vet and the New York Mexican with the Che shirt simply hung about at the front of the line. And then it began to move.
The Indian and the black woman and the Mexican matron gave way before me, but they gave nothing to the wronged folk – including my brother – behind me. As we nudged forward and out the door, the cemented fault lines of rage finally broke, and people tumbled forward in a mad bid to hold their position against everyone else. each time I looked back for Scott he was further back, just ahead of the bewildered bearded faces of the Amish men in their straw hats. When I finally reached the tall fatherly bus driver (whose name tag read Guy) I blurted out, “Those four Amish people got pushed back by all those people, you ought to let them on first.”
I was surprised that he responded. “Where?” he asked, looking up, and I pointed them out and his finger followed mine, picking out their Hobbiton faces and drawing them helter skelter through the detritus of the crowd. “Thank you,” he said to me, and I found two seats for me and Scott. The tiny Amish woman in black bonnet and dress pressed up the aisle long before he made it, face flushed with frustration. Plumping down in the seat I had saved he vented his rage, quietly but with plenty of amazed “What the fuck??”s.
Think of conditions of civil war: it is not a moment when ancient hatreds resurface, but when people kill out of a sense of pervasive insecurity. The state breaks down, captured by one group, which suddenly threatens all others, and to push another out is only to protect oneself. Civil wars do not merely happen in the Old World, where hatreds flourish in the soil like hardy grape vines. They can happen here. The grievances that give rise to civil wars are as old as that three-second flame of rage at being cut off on the highway, or in the ticket line. Generalize these flames to entire sections of society.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Iraq's Human Tide -- Independent
Patrick Cockburn in Sulaymaniyah
Published: 30 July 2007
Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.
Yet, while the US and Britain express sympathy for the plight of refugees in Africa, they are ignoring - or playing down- a far greater tragedy which is largely of their own making.
The US and Britain may not want to dwell on the disasters that have befallen Iraq during their occupation but the shanty towns crammed with refugees springing up in Iraq and neighbouring countries are becoming impossible to ignore.
Even so the UNHCR is having difficulty raising $100m (£50m) for relief. The organisation says the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees - Syria and Jordan - have still received "next to nothing from the world community". Some 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, Jordan has taken in 750 000 while Egypt and Lebanon have seen 200 000 Iraqis cross into their territories.
Potential donors are reluctant to spent money inside Iraq arguing the country has large oil revenues. They are either unaware, or are ignoring the fact that the Iraqi administration has all but collapsed outside the Baghdad Green Zone. The US is spending $2bn a week on military operations in Iraq according to the Congressional Research Service but many Iraqis are dying because they lack drinking water costing a few cents.
Kalawar refugee camp in Sulaymaniyah is a microcosm of the misery to which millions of Iraqis have been reduced.
"At least it is safe here," says Walid Sha'ad Nayef, 38, as he stands amid the stink of rotting garbage and raw sewage. He fled from the lethally dangerous Sa'adiyah district in Baghdad 11 months ago. As we speak to him, a man silently presents us with the death certificate of his son, Farez Maher Zedan, who was killed in Baghdad on 20 May 2006.
Kalawar is a horrible place. Situated behind a petrol station down a dusty track, the first sight of the camp is of rough shelters made out of rags, torn pieces of cardboard and old blankets. The stench is explained by the fact the Kurdish municipal authorities will not allow the 470 people in the camp to dig latrines. They say this might encourage them to stay.
"Sometimes I go to beg," says Talib Hamid al-Auda, a voluble man with a thick white beard looking older than his fifty years. As he speaks, his body shakes, as if he was trembling at the thought of the demeaning means by which he feeds his family. Even begging is difficult because the people in the camp are forbidden to leave it on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Suspected by Kurds of being behind a string of house robberies, though there is no evidence for this, they are natural scapegoats for any wrong-doing in their vicinity.
Refugees are getting an increasingly cool reception wherever they flee, because there are so many of them and because of the burden they put on resources. "People here blame us for forcing up rents and the price of food," said Omar, who had taken his family to Damascus after his sister's leg was fractured by a car bomb.
The refugees in Kalawar had no option but to flee. Of the 97 families here, all but two are Sunni Arabs. Many are from Sa'adiyah in west Baghdad where 84 bodies were found by police between 18 June and 18 July. Many are young men whose hands had been bound and who had been tortured.
"The majority left Baghdad because somebody knocked on the door of their house and told them to get out in an hour," says Rosina Ynzenga, who runs the Spanish charity Solidarity International (SIA) which pays for a mobile clinic to visit the camp.
Sulaymaniyah municipality is antagonistic to her doing more. One Kurdish official suggested that the Arabs of Kalawar were there simply for economic reasons and should be given $200 each and sent back to Baghdad.
Mr Nayef, the mukhtar (mayor) of the camp who used to be a bulldozer driver in Baghdad, at first said nobody could speak to journalists unless we had permission from the authorities. But after we had ceremoniously written our names in a large book he relented and would, in any case, have had difficulty in stopping other refugees explaining their grievences.
Asked to list their worst problems Mr Nayef said they were the lack of school for the children, shortage of food, no kerosene to cook with, no money, no jobs and no electricity. The real answer to the question is that the Arabs of Kalawar have nothing. They have only received two cartons of food each from the International Committee of the Red Cross and a tank of clean water.
Even so they are adamant that they dare not return to Baghdad. They did not even know if their houses had been taken over by others.
Abla Abbas, a mournful looking woman in black robes, said her son had been killed because he went to sell plastic bags in the Shia district of Khadamiyah in west Baghdad. The poor in Iraq take potentially fatal risks to earn a little money.
The uncertainty of the refugees' lives in Kalawar is mirrored in their drawn faces. While we spoke to them there were several shouting matches. One woman kept showing us a piece of paper from the local authority in Sulaymaniyah giving her the right to stay there. She regarded us nervously as if we were officials about to evict her.
There are in fact three camps at Kalawar. Although almost all the refugees are Sunni they come from different places and until a month ago they lived together. But there were continual arguments. The refugees decided that they must split into three encampments: one from Baghdad, a second from Hillah, south of Baghdad, and a third from Diyala, the mixed Sunni-Shia province that has been the scene of ferocious sectarian pogroms.
Governments and the media crudely evaluate human suffering in Iraq in terms of the number killed. A broader and better barometer would include those who have escaped death only by fleeing their homes, their jobs and their country to go and live, destitute and unwanted, in places like Kalawar. The US administration has 18 benchmarks to measure progress in Iraq but the return of four million people to their homes is not among them.
Published: 30 July 2007
Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.
Yet, while the US and Britain express sympathy for the plight of refugees in Africa, they are ignoring - or playing down- a far greater tragedy which is largely of their own making.
The US and Britain may not want to dwell on the disasters that have befallen Iraq during their occupation but the shanty towns crammed with refugees springing up in Iraq and neighbouring countries are becoming impossible to ignore.
Even so the UNHCR is having difficulty raising $100m (£50m) for relief. The organisation says the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees - Syria and Jordan - have still received "next to nothing from the world community". Some 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, Jordan has taken in 750 000 while Egypt and Lebanon have seen 200 000 Iraqis cross into their territories.
Potential donors are reluctant to spent money inside Iraq arguing the country has large oil revenues. They are either unaware, or are ignoring the fact that the Iraqi administration has all but collapsed outside the Baghdad Green Zone. The US is spending $2bn a week on military operations in Iraq according to the Congressional Research Service but many Iraqis are dying because they lack drinking water costing a few cents.
Kalawar refugee camp in Sulaymaniyah is a microcosm of the misery to which millions of Iraqis have been reduced.
"At least it is safe here," says Walid Sha'ad Nayef, 38, as he stands amid the stink of rotting garbage and raw sewage. He fled from the lethally dangerous Sa'adiyah district in Baghdad 11 months ago. As we speak to him, a man silently presents us with the death certificate of his son, Farez Maher Zedan, who was killed in Baghdad on 20 May 2006.
Kalawar is a horrible place. Situated behind a petrol station down a dusty track, the first sight of the camp is of rough shelters made out of rags, torn pieces of cardboard and old blankets. The stench is explained by the fact the Kurdish municipal authorities will not allow the 470 people in the camp to dig latrines. They say this might encourage them to stay.
"Sometimes I go to beg," says Talib Hamid al-Auda, a voluble man with a thick white beard looking older than his fifty years. As he speaks, his body shakes, as if he was trembling at the thought of the demeaning means by which he feeds his family. Even begging is difficult because the people in the camp are forbidden to leave it on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Suspected by Kurds of being behind a string of house robberies, though there is no evidence for this, they are natural scapegoats for any wrong-doing in their vicinity.
Refugees are getting an increasingly cool reception wherever they flee, because there are so many of them and because of the burden they put on resources. "People here blame us for forcing up rents and the price of food," said Omar, who had taken his family to Damascus after his sister's leg was fractured by a car bomb.
The refugees in Kalawar had no option but to flee. Of the 97 families here, all but two are Sunni Arabs. Many are from Sa'adiyah in west Baghdad where 84 bodies were found by police between 18 June and 18 July. Many are young men whose hands had been bound and who had been tortured.
"The majority left Baghdad because somebody knocked on the door of their house and told them to get out in an hour," says Rosina Ynzenga, who runs the Spanish charity Solidarity International (SIA) which pays for a mobile clinic to visit the camp.
Sulaymaniyah municipality is antagonistic to her doing more. One Kurdish official suggested that the Arabs of Kalawar were there simply for economic reasons and should be given $200 each and sent back to Baghdad.
Mr Nayef, the mukhtar (mayor) of the camp who used to be a bulldozer driver in Baghdad, at first said nobody could speak to journalists unless we had permission from the authorities. But after we had ceremoniously written our names in a large book he relented and would, in any case, have had difficulty in stopping other refugees explaining their grievences.
Asked to list their worst problems Mr Nayef said they were the lack of school for the children, shortage of food, no kerosene to cook with, no money, no jobs and no electricity. The real answer to the question is that the Arabs of Kalawar have nothing. They have only received two cartons of food each from the International Committee of the Red Cross and a tank of clean water.
Even so they are adamant that they dare not return to Baghdad. They did not even know if their houses had been taken over by others.
Abla Abbas, a mournful looking woman in black robes, said her son had been killed because he went to sell plastic bags in the Shia district of Khadamiyah in west Baghdad. The poor in Iraq take potentially fatal risks to earn a little money.
The uncertainty of the refugees' lives in Kalawar is mirrored in their drawn faces. While we spoke to them there were several shouting matches. One woman kept showing us a piece of paper from the local authority in Sulaymaniyah giving her the right to stay there. She regarded us nervously as if we were officials about to evict her.
There are in fact three camps at Kalawar. Although almost all the refugees are Sunni they come from different places and until a month ago they lived together. But there were continual arguments. The refugees decided that they must split into three encampments: one from Baghdad, a second from Hillah, south of Baghdad, and a third from Diyala, the mixed Sunni-Shia province that has been the scene of ferocious sectarian pogroms.
Governments and the media crudely evaluate human suffering in Iraq in terms of the number killed. A broader and better barometer would include those who have escaped death only by fleeing their homes, their jobs and their country to go and live, destitute and unwanted, in places like Kalawar. The US administration has 18 benchmarks to measure progress in Iraq but the return of four million people to their homes is not among them.
Bottled Out -- from the Independent
July is surrendering to August, and a blazing afternoon sun has drawn the lazy crowds into Union Square in Manhattan. Loving couples are entangled on its dusty lawns, mothers perambulate babies, young men escape into their iPods while tatty old dames lounge on benches clasping paper fans. In this heat, one prop binds the human diversity together, however: the plastic bottle of water.
Never mind that dotted conspicuously at decent intervals all around the shady park are public water fountains. On this sultry afternoon, they are lonely and neglected, except for one where a nanny and infant are playing at putting fingers over the spout to see how far they can make it spray. A newly purchased bottle of spring water rests in a cup holder of the pram, in case either one of them should actually need to slake their thirst.
Even a decade ago, there would have been queues for the fountains. No longer. They have been rendered almost redundant by bottled water, rather as public phones have been by mobiles. We used to live perfectly well without either of these modern accessories. Today, they are vital to our happiness.
No one would suggest returning to the pre-wireless age, of course. But as the heat builds across America this summer, a backlash against packaged water is gathering. It is led by environmentalists, consumer activists and increasingly by local political leaders. The media is gulping down the brouhaha; and the beverage business, with much to lose, is starting to squeal.
The H2O militants, who include the mayors of cities such as New York, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, are asking why spend your hard-earned cash on buying fancy brands of bottled water such as Fiji, Poland Spring, Aquafina and Dasani, when the stuff that comes out of the tap at home - or from the fountains in public spaces - is perfectly good? The quality controls imposed on public water supplies here by federal regulators are, after all, far more stringent than those required of bottled water.
But it is not just an issue of wastefulness. Rather, the principal objection to our love affair with bottled water has to do with ecology. It takes energy and oil to make those bottles, all of which contributes to global warming. And then there is the question of where you throw them when you are done.
According to most estimates, less than a fifth of empty bottles in the United States are actually returned by consumers for recycling. The rest end up in landfills where they will take hundreds of years to decompose.
New York launched a public service advertising campaign in June, reminding residents that the metropolis has some of the most pristine public water supplies in the country, all of it from the Catskill Mountain watershed, north up the Hudson Valley. Just a week ago, the federal government delayed plans to build an expensive new filtration system for the city because the quality of its water right now is still unimpeachable.
This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to a new controversy about where some of the bottled water actually comes from - neither springs nor glaciers - repeated his pitch. "New Yorkers can turn on the tap whenever they want and fill up a glass of some of the most delicious water on the planet," he said. "And that's something I hope New Yorkers will continue to do, because drinking tap water, instead of bottled water, is not just easier on your wallet: it's also easier on the environment."
The economics of the bottled water industry in America are astounding, and there is little to suggest that the "just say no" pleadings of Mr Bloomberg or anyone else will have any impact. In 2006, wholesale revenue for the purveyors of bottled water, including beverage giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola, topped $11bn (£5.4bn). That's more than Americans pay to go to the movies every year. And the industry is set to grow at the rate of about 10 per cent annually.
Americans consumed 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water last year. Equally unsettling is the background story of how all this water is distributed. Upwards of one billion bottles of the stuff are shipped around the US every week. That's a lot of exhaust fumes. To shift that amount of water (it is a heavy commodity) you need a fleet of no fewer than 37,800 18-wheeler lorries. It doesn't help that the most popular bottles are the small, slip-in-your-backpack size, making more plastic to chuck.
The poster-child for the packaged hydration objectors is Fiji Water, a popular US brand that stands out from others in part because it is among the most expensive and, therefore, the most chic. It is usually $1.50 for half a litre, more expensive than petrol. True, there are even more pocket-burning varieties, most famously a brand called Bling H2O that sells at one suburban New York bar for $55 per bottle. Paris Hilton (of course) has been spotted sipping Bling. No one would deny that spending that much on water is plain obscene.
Buying Fiji water is not entirely rational either, because it really does come from a remote corner of the island of the same name. First the bottles have to be shipped there. They are filled, trucked to port and then brought by ship across the Pacific before distribution across the US. The best way to expand your carbon footprint? Drink Fiji.
What, on this bright day, does Sean Gallagher, 26, an actor from Los Angeles in New York for an audition, have hiding in his shoulder bag? (Sean has been picked because he is sitting on a bench directly across from one of the Union Square water fountains.) Oops, there it is: Fiji Water.
"I needed a container," he blurts almost immediately. And it is true; the square Fiji container with its patterns of South Pacific blossoms has more capacity than most of the competition. He swears when he is finished, he will refill it with regular water. Sean admits that buying Fiji is particularly ironic in his case because he has three municipal water engineers for uncles lecture him for ever about the purity of tap water. "I am not into this yuppy bullshit of buying Fiji because of the brand."
Sitting beside him is mathematics student Russell Avdek, 21. He has eschewed the fountain in favour of Poland Spring. He too is contrite, swearing tap water is his usual tipple. But he bought the bottle from a vendor across the park "because it's just convenient." Fair enough. What he finds "outlandish", he says, is people buying whole cases of bottled water in supermarkets to take home. He too says he will refill from a tap.
Then there is Marilyn Smith from Nebraska, in New York on a Christian mission and found lingering by the dog run. Poking from her bag is a bottle of Nestlé Pure Life. She would drink from the fountains, she says, but fears that in "a big city like this it might not be sanitary". What she did not know, however, is that Pure Life is among a number of leading bottled water brands that are not quite what they seem.
Last week, the Pepsi Company succumbed to pressure from a group called Corporate Accountability International, to change the labels on its Aquafina water, the largest-selling brand in the US. Up to now, three initials, PWS, are all that tells you that what is inside actually comes from the same sources as the water in your kitchen. In future, the words will be spelled out in full: public water source.
Other popular brands that are little more than tap water, if refined a little with extra filtering, are Dasani from Coca Cola and, yes, Pure Life. "That is a rip-off," said a disgusted Ms Smith.
It is the dodgy marketing of some varieties of bottled water that has riled San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, who has just banned city employees using public funds to buy any kind of bottled water, for functions like meetings or conferences. "We are now exposing an underbelly truth - a big percentage of bottled water in this country is tap water," he declared the other day. Some of America's poshest restaurants, including Chez Panisse and the Larder, both in the San Francisco area, are also taking a stand, refusing to offer bottled water to patrons.
Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, a town as proud of its water quality as New York, has even gone so far as to forbid firemen from taking bottled drinking water with them on emergency calls.
There is not a major news programme in the United States that has not run a bottled-water story in the past seven days, focusing particularly on the provenance of brands like Aquafina. "Aquafina. It sounds so nice, so refined, so special" said Katie Couric on the CBS evening news the other night. "You might think this biggest-selling brand of bottled water must come from someplace special. Well, today we found out it doesn't." Ouch.
Offended by this assault, the industry contends that consumers should be allowed the choice. "We think it's unfortunate it's turned into this either-or battle," comments Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association. "We do feel like we're being unfairly targeted."
This reporter, meanwhile, will return now to the Union Square and the dog run with his pooch. But, because it is still hot, first he has a purchase to make. A bottle of PetRefresh. It is a product designed exclusively for our four-legged companions which, according to the company's web site, "begins with natural water from high mountain streams of unusual purity, clarity, and beneficial mineral contents". I will spare you the rest of the blurb. (And, in truth, I will spare the dog from having to drink it, too.)
Never mind that dotted conspicuously at decent intervals all around the shady park are public water fountains. On this sultry afternoon, they are lonely and neglected, except for one where a nanny and infant are playing at putting fingers over the spout to see how far they can make it spray. A newly purchased bottle of spring water rests in a cup holder of the pram, in case either one of them should actually need to slake their thirst.
Even a decade ago, there would have been queues for the fountains. No longer. They have been rendered almost redundant by bottled water, rather as public phones have been by mobiles. We used to live perfectly well without either of these modern accessories. Today, they are vital to our happiness.
No one would suggest returning to the pre-wireless age, of course. But as the heat builds across America this summer, a backlash against packaged water is gathering. It is led by environmentalists, consumer activists and increasingly by local political leaders. The media is gulping down the brouhaha; and the beverage business, with much to lose, is starting to squeal.
The H2O militants, who include the mayors of cities such as New York, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, are asking why spend your hard-earned cash on buying fancy brands of bottled water such as Fiji, Poland Spring, Aquafina and Dasani, when the stuff that comes out of the tap at home - or from the fountains in public spaces - is perfectly good? The quality controls imposed on public water supplies here by federal regulators are, after all, far more stringent than those required of bottled water.
But it is not just an issue of wastefulness. Rather, the principal objection to our love affair with bottled water has to do with ecology. It takes energy and oil to make those bottles, all of which contributes to global warming. And then there is the question of where you throw them when you are done.
According to most estimates, less than a fifth of empty bottles in the United States are actually returned by consumers for recycling. The rest end up in landfills where they will take hundreds of years to decompose.
New York launched a public service advertising campaign in June, reminding residents that the metropolis has some of the most pristine public water supplies in the country, all of it from the Catskill Mountain watershed, north up the Hudson Valley. Just a week ago, the federal government delayed plans to build an expensive new filtration system for the city because the quality of its water right now is still unimpeachable.
This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to a new controversy about where some of the bottled water actually comes from - neither springs nor glaciers - repeated his pitch. "New Yorkers can turn on the tap whenever they want and fill up a glass of some of the most delicious water on the planet," he said. "And that's something I hope New Yorkers will continue to do, because drinking tap water, instead of bottled water, is not just easier on your wallet: it's also easier on the environment."
The economics of the bottled water industry in America are astounding, and there is little to suggest that the "just say no" pleadings of Mr Bloomberg or anyone else will have any impact. In 2006, wholesale revenue for the purveyors of bottled water, including beverage giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola, topped $11bn (£5.4bn). That's more than Americans pay to go to the movies every year. And the industry is set to grow at the rate of about 10 per cent annually.
Americans consumed 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water last year. Equally unsettling is the background story of how all this water is distributed. Upwards of one billion bottles of the stuff are shipped around the US every week. That's a lot of exhaust fumes. To shift that amount of water (it is a heavy commodity) you need a fleet of no fewer than 37,800 18-wheeler lorries. It doesn't help that the most popular bottles are the small, slip-in-your-backpack size, making more plastic to chuck.
The poster-child for the packaged hydration objectors is Fiji Water, a popular US brand that stands out from others in part because it is among the most expensive and, therefore, the most chic. It is usually $1.50 for half a litre, more expensive than petrol. True, there are even more pocket-burning varieties, most famously a brand called Bling H2O that sells at one suburban New York bar for $55 per bottle. Paris Hilton (of course) has been spotted sipping Bling. No one would deny that spending that much on water is plain obscene.
Buying Fiji water is not entirely rational either, because it really does come from a remote corner of the island of the same name. First the bottles have to be shipped there. They are filled, trucked to port and then brought by ship across the Pacific before distribution across the US. The best way to expand your carbon footprint? Drink Fiji.
What, on this bright day, does Sean Gallagher, 26, an actor from Los Angeles in New York for an audition, have hiding in his shoulder bag? (Sean has been picked because he is sitting on a bench directly across from one of the Union Square water fountains.) Oops, there it is: Fiji Water.
"I needed a container," he blurts almost immediately. And it is true; the square Fiji container with its patterns of South Pacific blossoms has more capacity than most of the competition. He swears when he is finished, he will refill it with regular water. Sean admits that buying Fiji is particularly ironic in his case because he has three municipal water engineers for uncles lecture him for ever about the purity of tap water. "I am not into this yuppy bullshit of buying Fiji because of the brand."
Sitting beside him is mathematics student Russell Avdek, 21. He has eschewed the fountain in favour of Poland Spring. He too is contrite, swearing tap water is his usual tipple. But he bought the bottle from a vendor across the park "because it's just convenient." Fair enough. What he finds "outlandish", he says, is people buying whole cases of bottled water in supermarkets to take home. He too says he will refill from a tap.
Then there is Marilyn Smith from Nebraska, in New York on a Christian mission and found lingering by the dog run. Poking from her bag is a bottle of Nestlé Pure Life. She would drink from the fountains, she says, but fears that in "a big city like this it might not be sanitary". What she did not know, however, is that Pure Life is among a number of leading bottled water brands that are not quite what they seem.
Last week, the Pepsi Company succumbed to pressure from a group called Corporate Accountability International, to change the labels on its Aquafina water, the largest-selling brand in the US. Up to now, three initials, PWS, are all that tells you that what is inside actually comes from the same sources as the water in your kitchen. In future, the words will be spelled out in full: public water source.
Other popular brands that are little more than tap water, if refined a little with extra filtering, are Dasani from Coca Cola and, yes, Pure Life. "That is a rip-off," said a disgusted Ms Smith.
It is the dodgy marketing of some varieties of bottled water that has riled San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, who has just banned city employees using public funds to buy any kind of bottled water, for functions like meetings or conferences. "We are now exposing an underbelly truth - a big percentage of bottled water in this country is tap water," he declared the other day. Some of America's poshest restaurants, including Chez Panisse and the Larder, both in the San Francisco area, are also taking a stand, refusing to offer bottled water to patrons.
Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, a town as proud of its water quality as New York, has even gone so far as to forbid firemen from taking bottled drinking water with them on emergency calls.
There is not a major news programme in the United States that has not run a bottled-water story in the past seven days, focusing particularly on the provenance of brands like Aquafina. "Aquafina. It sounds so nice, so refined, so special" said Katie Couric on the CBS evening news the other night. "You might think this biggest-selling brand of bottled water must come from someplace special. Well, today we found out it doesn't." Ouch.
Offended by this assault, the industry contends that consumers should be allowed the choice. "We think it's unfortunate it's turned into this either-or battle," comments Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association. "We do feel like we're being unfairly targeted."
This reporter, meanwhile, will return now to the Union Square and the dog run with his pooch. But, because it is still hot, first he has a purchase to make. A bottle of PetRefresh. It is a product designed exclusively for our four-legged companions which, according to the company's web site, "begins with natural water from high mountain streams of unusual purity, clarity, and beneficial mineral contents". I will spare you the rest of the blurb. (And, in truth, I will spare the dog from having to drink it, too.)
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