| September/October 2000
by Kathy Kelly
It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home. Our FOR delegation members speak very quietly with one another as we wait for a hospital official to brief us about conditions at the Saddam City Medical Center, in the Al Mansour children's wing. Dr. Mekki, the director, is away; someone has been sent to one of the wards in search of a senior doctor to speak with us. As I flip open my diary, it dawns on me that at this time four years ago, in March of 1996, our first Voices in the Wilderness delegation visited Iraq. It's thirty delegations later, yet not much has changed within this hospital. What must doctors and workers here be thinking, as one delegation after another hears the litany of shortages, views the dying children? When the doctor enters the office, my grim mood lifts immediately. It's Dr. Qusay, of whom I've spoken so often, to so many. My companions meeting him for the first time will probably feel the same warmth toward him that I do, and hold him in the same esteem. He easily educes a sense that we're working, in concert, to solve intractable problems - that even little gains, in the face of ridiculous odds, are rewarding. I wonder how he maintains his quiet, indomitable strength. Two years ago, when I first met him, he solicitously accompanied us up to his ward, apologizing that the elevator didn't work, that hallways were dark because they had no light bulbs. Suddenly he raced away in response to a furor down the hall where hospital visitors shouted for help at the bedside of Ferial, a seven-month-old baby whose mother was sobbing frantically. Ferial had just suffered a cardiac arrest. Dr. Qusay swiftly bent over her and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Little Ferial's heart had given out in a fight against malnutrition plus septicemia - full-body infection. The hospital lacked both the nutrients and the antibiotics this little one desperately needed. I watched Dr. Qusay face the anguished mother to pronounce the verdict, "I am sorry, but your child cannot live. We have not the oxygen, we have not the tube." How many times, since then, has Dr. Qusay felt shattered, having to speak tragic words to disbelieving parents? Now he is explaining to us that in a very real way he thinks we are all fathers and mothers to these children. It's a challenge to invent new ways to help them. And when something works, "Well, you see," he says, "this keeps you hopeful." He carefully details some of the greatest problems they presently face. They've run out of high protein biscuits formerly supplied by UNICEF. They lack immunizations for MMR - measles, mumps, and rubella. (Actually, sufficient batches of the vaccine arrive, but electrical outages interfere with proper storage and damage the vaccines.) So far, his tone has been that of a kindly teacher, one who wants us to understand. Then he lowers his head and shakes it back and forth several times. "We had a terrible tragedy recently. Our incubators are old and broken down, but some we try to repair. We placed an infant inside a patched incubator, thinking it would work, but the sealant was faulty, and the baby grew very cold. In fact, we lost that baby." I jot down in my notebook, "Incubators - mom!!"
Shortly before the Gulf war began, I applied to join the Gulf Peace Team, a nonviolent, nonaligned encampment that would interposition itself on the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, between the warring parties. The organizers placed me on a waiting list. To my surprise, I learned in early January that if I could be in Boston in two days, I could join a US contingent on the last plane to enter Baghdad. I had just enough time for a hurried visit with my parents, who tried their hardest to dissuade me from going. As I flew out their door, the last thing I heard my mother calling out, in her thick Irish brogue, was, "Kathy, what about the incubators?! What about the incubators?!" She was referring to testimony from Nayireh, a young Kuwaiti girl, who told the US Congress that she had witnessed invading Iraqi soldiers barge into a Kuwaiti hospital and steal the equipment. With luminous eyes and a compelling presence, she told of her horror as she watched the menacing soldiers dump babies out of incubators. Months later, when the war was a distant memory, reporters learned that "Nayireh" was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti emir, that doctors in Kuwait could not corroborate her testimony, that in fact the supposedly stolen incubators had been placed carefully in storage during the invasion, and that the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm had rehearsed with the young woman how to effectively give apparently false testimony. "What about the incubators?" The Desert Storm bombardment destroyed most of Iraq's electrical grid, in effect pulling the plug on incubators in hospitals across the country. It ruined refrigeration units, sewage and sanitation facilities. Life-saving devices in modern hospitals were rendered useless if not destroyed outright. Thus, as the Allied bombing proceeded, my mother's question, "What about the incubators?" became intensely relevant, but went largely unasked. Now, when our teams visit Iraq, following nine and one half years of the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history, we see incubators, broken and irreparable, stacked up against the walls of hospital obstetrics wards. Sanctions have prevented Iraqis from importing new incubators and from getting needed spare parts to repair old ones. And this is to mention only one vitally needed item that sanctions prohibit. Dr. Qusay's heroism is commendable. Earnest as ever, he tells us of other methods he wants to pursue, in the wake of the tragedy incurred by an irreparable incubator. "I have heard about, maybe you know it, the kangaroo method; and this they do in Australia. I tell the mothers of tiny infants to try it. They can place the baby between their breasts and wrap themselves in a garment and this may keep the baby warm enough. Or I tell them to try to find gauze and cellophane and with this they might recreate conditions like an incubator. You see, we must invent and try to cope." And while Iraqis push themselves to cope, struggling against incredible odds, we here must try to invent anew the passionate concern that once prompted my mother's question, "What about the incubators?" Lacking yellow ribbons, war fever, and the orchestrations of public relations experts, we must yet reach hearts and minds in the US with the simple truth that whether the babies are Kuwaiti or Iraqi, child sacrifice is wrong.
|
||||
