No One Needed to Die
Something was tugging at the corner of my eyes, and somewhere deeper as well. But just as insistently, something else was preventing me from turning around.I was standing in the rubble of the Canal Hotel, the United Nations headquarters, which had been devastated by a terrorist bomb. I was exhausted--from the 120-degree sun in which I had done an awful lot of media interviews, and from trying to stop thinking about what had come to pass that day.
So I tried to make conversation with Ronnie Stokes, a senior American colleague who always took the time to look after others. But then I could take it no more and abruptly turned around.
In front of me, in two rows, lay twelve neatly draped white sheets. I went breathless, felt panicky. I didn't know what to feel, think, or say. Were the sheets . . . . ? Then I saw the tips of a pair of feet sticking neatly out from under a sheet. I remember thinking how very pale and white they were. I found my voice.
"Who is that?" I whispered.
"Rick Hooper," said Ronnie.
Dear Rick Hooper. There were not many people I loved more in the U.N. He was a forty-year-old American, a key figure working on Arab issues, an idealist contributing far beyond his age and rank. He had lived and worked in Palestine for many years and was deeply committed to ending the occupations that even many Muslim leaders chose to ignore. His intimacy with the Arab world and his own country's politics enabled him to propose ever-so-small steps that might build towards peace.
When Iraq was occupied in 2003, Rick and I were among those approached to go help there as part of a small U.N. team led by Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant, strikingly handsome Brazilian who was the world's number one diplomatic trouble-shooter. Neither of us was interested. We felt that this was an American show and that the U.N. would be humiliatingly irrelevant there.
But I changed my mind, agreeing to become Sergio's spokesman in Baghdad. And I tried to persuade Rick to do the same. At a farewell party at U.N. headquarters in New York, I told him that my going was based on the expectation of his coming.
My happiest moment in Iraq was when I heard that Rick would indeed join us. I thought he might be able to help Sergio convince Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, that only an early end to the American occupation would stop the violence. As it turned out, by the time Rick arrived, Bremer had already decided that Sergio and the U.N. were no longer relevant to American goals in Iraq. But of course we could not leave.
Another person I wanted in Iraq with us was Reham al Farra, a brilliant young Jordanian woman. At twenty-six, she had become a columnist for a major newspaper, and she now worked in the news division that I headed back at U.N. headquarters in New York. When my deputy spokesman in Baghdad left for two weeks of vacation, I moved heaven and earth to try to get Reham to be his replacement. Unfortunately, I succeeded.
And then there was Abona. You could call him a waiter, I guess. A youngish man with a slight limp, he was utterly devoted to all of us at the U.N., and he made sure we got the tea or coffee we needed in the cafeteria or in our offices. He carried a silver tray with mostly small cups of Turkish coffee. He did not speak much English.
A person of immense dignity, Abona had a face etched with the pain of Iraq. But he was soft-spoken and did not say much. He refused to take a tip, even if you insisted. I hardly knew him. But I wept when I heard the news of his death. No one else's death hit me harder that day. He must have gone to someone whose room was near the blast site to find out if they needed a cup of coffee.
Who lives in such a catastrophe, and who dies, is always a mystery. I escaped death purely by chance. Sergio asked me urgently to make some changes in a statement I had drafted, about the killing of a Reuters cameraman by American fire outside Abu Ghraib prison. As a result, I was unable to attend a meeting in his office about the mounting death toll of civilians at the hands of American forces. The renowned humanitarian Arthur Helton was there, along with Gil Loescher, a leading authority on refugee and other human rights issues. Six of the seven people in that meeting died on the spot. Gil Loescher lost both legs. His luck was that he ended up hanging in the rubble in such a way that he didn't bleed rapidly.
As for me, I escaped twice. In my office, I had just moved my chair to retrieve a document when the bomb exploded. Had I not moved at that instant, my body would have been slashed by the shards of window glass that flew into the room. Most of those who died that day were killed by glass; I suffered only minor wounds, although I also have severe memory problems at times.
Twenty-two of my friends died that day. Every one of them was trying to convince the Americans that the only way out of the Iraqi disaster was a quick end to occupation. But the cold-blooded terrorists did not care to know whom they killed as long as they could hit at the U.N., which too many Iraqis viewed as being almost synonymous with the United States after the punishing sanctions that we, the world body, had imposed on them.
The terrorists deserve the strongest condemnation. But the U.N. and the U.S. are hardly blameless. We U.N. employees, more than five hundred of us, should not have been in the middle of an intense war zone, where security concerns allowed us to do very little. But the U.S. wanted us there, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan had obliged.
The trauma of August 19 for the U.N. goes beyond the viciousness of the attack. Also tragic is the fact that there was no strong outcry over the atrocity from Iraqis, Arabs, or Muslims. Even though the U.N. plays a vital role on so many political and humanitarian fronts, the organization has not recovered its footing in the Islamic world.
We must convince Muslims that the U.N. is their friend, not a mouthpiece or surrogate for the United States. If we cannot, I fear that twenty-two wonderful people will have died in vain.
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