Friday, March 10, 2006

Note: All names have been changed to protect privacy

Midday report

It’s around 4pm and I have just sat through my first interview.  A.M.A.  He was born in 1973, but looked around 50.  Beard. Dark hair, impish smile, wearing a tan suit, black shirt and wine red tie.  His forehead was high, and his hair was long on top, slicked back with gel, looked dirty.  Underneath his beard his face was handsome, though his upper cheeks had acne scars. He sat next to an interpreter, a middle aged Arab woman in a light violet sweater.  Her straight hair was cut above her shoulders.  His story was of imprisonment. When he was first arrested he was with a group, and was asked to undress in the hot sun, and stayed many hours in the hot sun.  His mother was killed while riding in a car with many members of his family.  They were on their way to visit him in Abu Ghraib.  The family’s car came across an American hummer with US soldiers.  A soldier on the roof signaled for the driver to go forward, but the US driver didn’t realize this, and thought that they were trying to attack! So ran them repeatedly off the road.  The mother was killed, and a sister was severely injured and remains mentally disturbed until this day.

While listening to this interview, I drew two pencil sketches, and one large drypoint. For those who do not know, a drypoint is when you scratch into a copper plate and then using oil based inks and cotton paper you print the image in a press. Drypoint is known for its very soft delicate lines, has the advantage of being very direct in terms of drawing, but the plate will only last for 8 or 10 pulls. To do a larger edition you need to steel face the plate to give make the burr permanent. In drypoint it is the burr on the surface that holds the ink, as opposed to etching where the trough etched out of the plate in the acid holds the ink.

Late Afternoon Report

Right now I am in an interview with another victim -- J.K.A.  He was in Abu Ghraib, and other prisons.  As I am not part of the law team, I and C.B., a photographer here doing portraits of the victims, are asked to come to the interviews only 45 minutes to an hour after they begin.  As such, I miss the beginning of the stories, and can only infer how the interviewee got picked up.  When I arrived, I immediately started a pencil sketch, and then went right into making a copper drypoint drawing as I really think that these prints will be the central images of this project.  So, I drew and in J.’s portrait, I incorporated a lot of text of what he was saying as I was drawing, so that this second print will have lots of information coming from the victims own words. 

Now, I am trying to transcribe what is being said as I type it in. At this point J. is describing being punished in prison, by officers who thought he was his brother, also in the same prison.  Evidently the brother had made the mistake of laughing when he witnessed a soldier tripping.

… J. was hung up by his wrists in steel cuffs (his feet not touching the floor) for over an hour once in a steel box cage.  In a second incident, he was sick and in the infirmary, and was brought out of the infirmary when it was cold and raining hard and made to stay outside in the rain. 

One of the most difficult things he witnessed:  He saw a father and a son humiliated.  The son was asked to hit his father hard across the face, and the father was asked to do the same. The father hit his son, but the son refused to hit his father, and as punishment he was forced to dig a pit, and made to get into the pit, and then the father was told to burry his son, and they made him do that until the son was covered up to his head.  One of the father’s hands was strange, J. thinks it was a birth defect, so he used only one hand to throw the dirt on his son.  He had no shovel, but used his hand to move the dirt.  Now there is clarification in the story.  In the beginning both father and son dug the hole.  They used their hands to dig the hole, but it was dirt that the Americans had brought and dumped there, so it was not the hard dirt of the ground, but loose. Soldiers told the son to lie down in the hole.  A US solider (named W.) helped throw the dirt on the son to burry him.  When the dirt reached the son’s head, he was allowed to get out.  (How?) Then the son was made “to make like a donkey”, and the father was made to ride his son like a donkey for an hour around the prison.  This was very humiliating for both the father and the son, and hard for J. to watch.

Another incident: J. watched as three American soldiers, including one woman -- a blond -- beat a prisoner with their fists.  J. could see for about 15 minutes, but then the soldiers moved the prisoners out of his sight, and J. only heard the prisoner’s screams.  He made it sounds as if this lasted for several hours -- well into the night.  When the prisoner came back to the infirmary (where J. was), the man was beaten up, and acted like a crazy person.

J. is now explaining to us that he has not told us the most upsetting things that happened to him because he has terrible nightmares when he remembers them, and has been in a state of mental collapse since he got out of prison.  He once caught himself hitting his son and didn’t know why and took his son to the hospital.  He is thinking that he does not want to talk about these things that are so terrible. 

He does not want to talk about the terrible things that happened.  The lawyers are trying to tell him that this is the time to talk about it.  They explain that he has come very far to tell these things, and that they too have come very far to hear them.  They explain that they know that these memories are difficult, and that they wish that he did not have to tell what happened, but that if he wants to tell them, he must do it now.  He says he has constant stomach aches, which he has no explanation for, and that he never used to loose his temper but that now he worries that he will loose his temper. 

J. will tell one of these difficult stories.  It is more psychological than anything else. His brother came to visit him, one of his other brothers, not the one in prison, and told him that everything was gone from his house, even an old watch, and even his clothes, the things that were in his house -- the things that were very dear to him, his wealth and this affected him very much because these were personal things to him and his family. Gifts to members of his family.  Gifts from his wife, members of his family.  

He is telling that his uncle, his father’s brother, who raised him, went crazy when J. was detained.  This uncle went crazy and hit his head on the wall in the house continuously and committed suicide that way.  He loved him very much and was very dear to him. This is very hard for him.

When J. was first arrested, it was the middle of the night.  He was pulled from bed, naked, and taken out into the street and handcuffed.  His son came running out with a robe to cover his father, and a soldier pushed his son and took the robe and put it in the mud and stepped on it, and gave it back to the son, and his son started crying and this was very very painful for J. to watch. 

There was a cow in the family, that he milked for his children.  At the time he was arrested the cow was pregnant and had a miscarriage and died and this affected him very much. 

He still has a good relationship with his wife.

When they were first arrested, handcuffed, and a bag was put on his head a guy came around and put a stick in “inappropriate places,” and it was very humiliating.  This happened in the prison, not at Abu Ghraib, another prison.

The night he was arrested his wife and kids were put in one room and the soldiers stole everything. 

As he was being released, he was told to sign a paper that claimed that none of his belongings were with the soldiers.  He said he would not sign, but was advised by other prisoners to sign, because otherwise he may not be released, and he signed but wrote on the paper that he lost many things and all his money since his arrest.

J. was a farmer in his former life, and continues to farm.  He is from Fallugaa. He grows cucumbers, and has bought five cows since he left prison.

Evening Report

I cannot write much more. It is 11pm, and I would like to go downstairs one more time to see S. who will be leaving tomorrow before I wake up.  Just one very important thing has happened this evening and I must write at least a little about it.

H.A., the man on the box in the hood and the cape with the wires attached to his hands is living in Amman now.  S.B. interviewed him in the past.  He runs a organization that supports victims of torture in Iraq.  He came to the hotel today, and I met him after dinner.  H.A. is a very large man.  He is tremendously interesting to look at, with a large face, and a big smile, and big expressive hands.  One of his hands is crippled.  I do not know how it became crippled, but I heard from S. that it was further injured by the soldiers when he was in Abu Ghraib. 

H.A. and I talked, with H.M. as a translator.  (H.M. is from Detroit and is working on the case, with S., also from Detroit, who was the first lawyer to work on this case).  H.A. gave me a CD that he has made for his organization, and he said it has some very difficult footage he would like me to watch.  I will watch it tomorrow.  He has also invited me to come with him this week to a friend’s store, a friend who has an antiques store, for tea.  I said I would love to go.  He has also agreed to pose for one of my portraits, but not in the hotel lobby, he joked, because that is too bourgeois.  I explained to H.A. that S. and I were trying to raise money for this case in the U.S., and that perhaps directing the money to H.A.’s support group for victims of torture would be appropriate.  

-Daniel