Well, what a day we had yesterday, but this morning in the soft morning sunlight it already seems a lifetime away. Usually after a big Greenpeace action there's a big party. Yesterday, after an evening running tapes and stories to the press in their fancy hotels across town we had time for two nearly cold beers (not with the cameraman in case you were wondering - it's hard to keep a date when work is calling, but the satellite phones aren't) we had to get back before curfew.
Here the curfew kicks in at 11pm and runs until 4am. Only a fool or gangs of kids playing football break the curfew. It is hairy enough just driving through town in the dark before 11pm...
There are no streetlights and the driving is pretty crazy - cars drive in both directions on both sides of the road, sometimes to get round rubble or roadblocks - sometimes just because they can. So when you taxi is going full tilt, with lamps on full beam in the pitch black and two kids and four goats suddenly stroll across in front of you, seemingly impervious, it sure makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
But curfew is a different matter. I am told if people are seen by the troops during curfew they shoot first and ask questions after. I don't believe that is policy, but I can believe that in the town there are endless nighttime shadows and noises that would make the strongest nerves fray.
We heard yesterday about the British soldiers that were attacked during the day in Basra and I have seen the animosity from some towards the Americans here in Baghdad.
Yesterday when we gave water to the troops escorting us to the contaminated house - one of our drivers asked why I had given Americans OUR water. I told him that they were only human and thirsty and I would not want to see them suffer anymore than I would want to any one else suffer - he smiled and nodded, but I think it was more a tolerance of my apparently simple view of life rather than in agreement.
So now we are public. We can say Greenpeace out loud instead of whispering the word in corners. We can wear our Greenpeace shirts and badges, we can walk tall (well not that tall in my case) and proud without fear of being found out. It is liberating and of course makes life a little easier. The journalists are welcoming and some even seemed to actually enjoy being with us yesterday - but of course to them we are just that day's story. It is more interesting to see the reaction of the drivers and translators they have with them. One took me aside yesterday under the shade of the solitary tree outside the US checkpoint and thanked us for what we had done on behalf of the people of Iraq. I don't think our small efforts should afford us that much gratitude, but it is a measure of how hopeless they feel and how ignored they feel that our few acts are worthy of such praise. Now, if we could really move political opinion and get the IAEA back here - that would be the time to give thanks - then we would throw a really big party.
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