Blast that shook a nation
By Aishah Ali
10 April 2000
IT was Feb 13 and the eve of Isra' Mi'raj (the Prophet's ascension), 1991.
Iraq was in
the thick of the Gulf War. Bombs and missiles rained on the city of Baghdad.
To protect the children and the weak, several shelters had been built.
These
self-contained abodes were equipped with food, hot water, electricity and
medical
supplies.
At night, parents sent their children there and they would watch television
or play
games before climbing into their bunk beds, protected from the violence
outside.
On that fateful morning, Ummi Ghayda - who had made it her duty to care
for the
children with the help of other parents and servants from the first day
the Al-Amiriah
shelter opened - decided to take two hours off.
"It was about 4am and I had gone to my mother's house which wasn't too
far away to
wash clothes. Suddenly my brother came in, shouting about the shelter being
bombed.
"I rushed there but we - the thousands of rescue workers, and parents -
couldn't get
the children out. The shelter was constructed in such a way that the door
automatically shuts when there are chemicals in the air. And it wouldn't
open till the
chemicals cleared."
It took two days before rescue workers could rip open the place. The bodies
of the
children were beyond recognition. They had either been burnt or drowned
in scalding
water from the burst pipes.
"My heart broke," says Ummi. "How could they? This is a civilian shelter!"
"I started looking for my two children. I couldn't find them. Only a few
bodies were
intact and they were sent to the morgue. The rest had simply melted. I
just lost
control."
Evidence of the children's tragic end remains on the wall and ceiling of
the shelter for all
to see - bits of human skin, hair, and handprints.
Every visitor to Baghdad sympathetic to the plight of the Iraqis would
be shown the
shelter.
As you enter the dark alley leading to the hall where the rows of beds
once were, a ray
of light descends from a gaping hole in the roof blasted open by a missile
bomb.
On the walls are photographs of boys and girls who had died. Colourful
flowers on the
wreaths line the floor.
In the basement, Ummi shows stains from burnt flesh on the wall. One is
a clear
silhouette of a woman who died clutching her baby in her arms. On the ceiling
are little
handprints of children who were flung up from the bunks.
"Only 14 children survived. We don't know how. They were possibly thrown
to a part of
the shelter where they were protected from fire or hot water," she explains.
The hardest thing for Ummi was the evacuation process. Failing to locate
her children,
Ghyda, 16, and Mustaffa, two, she joined other family members to help clean
the place.
"There were families who lost as many as nine members. A Palestinian woman
died with
her four daughters. Fortunately, her husband and son were not in the shelter.
He comes
here quite often. We meet the parents of the victims at every anniversary."
"These people died as martyrs," says Ummi.
Since that day, she has vowed to make the shelter her home.
Asked what she does everyday, she snapped: "What do you do in your house?"
Ummi had an annexe built next to the shelter which she turned into an office.
She has two other children - daughter Maissa, 25, and son Maisan, 18. The
former is a
graduate of an arts college.
The family has a house outside Baghdad but Ummi says her children are used
to not
having her at home. Her husband divorced her after she refused to let go
of the shelter
and its memories.
"I am not a heroine. I just want to be strong for Iraq."
* Note: The writer was part of an 11-member working group who accompanied
Datuk Seri Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali to Iraq from March 25 to 29 to see the
effects
of the sanctions on the people there.