Black humour in Iraq

Black humour in Iraq
Amitava Kumar

I had bought tulips for Mona on Tuesday. The day had suddenly become warm and the florist had put the tulips outside her shop. I was on my way home from school and there they were small clusters of pink and red and yellow flowers. Up close, I saw that there were some that were of a deeper shade, close to burgundy. I bought four of those.

Mona was pleased. She placed the tulips in a vase near the kitchen window. Sunlight cut through the glass and made everything bright.Two days later, I was changing the water in the vase when Mona came down to the kitchen. She had been listening to the radio in her study. She came and stood near me. I could hear the sound of a man’s voice reading the news on the radio upstairs. Mona said, “There was news about Iraq.”

I could guess what she was going to say. President Bush had ordered bombings in Iraq the previous week. I had read that the bombing had sent defence stocks soaring up; the news that the Iraqi oil industry might be badly hit had pumped up the value of Exxon, Chevron and Texaco shares. One reporter had said: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas the designer of the F-15.” I expected Mona to give me more of that depressing news. Instead, she said, “There was a report on theatre in Iraq. Black humor is very popular now.”I turned away from the tulips. Mona said “Listen to this. My friend is a carpenter. He makes coffins. Business is great. He’s having a sale. Half price off for newly weds.” Last year, Mona and I had celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I don’t know whether she was thinking about that. But I did.

And then I thought of the Iraqis. Holding the flowers in my hands, I was thinking of the Iraqi dead. Even before the recent bombs, the condition of the Iraqis gave little cause for envy. According to the UNICEF, half a million children have died in Iraq under a decade of sanctions. The bombing during the Gulf War left enough depleted uranium there to prompt the UK Atomic Energy Authority to warn in 1991 that if particles from merely 8 per cent of that mass were inhaled there could be “2300,000 potential deaths.”

The UN says that there has been a seven-fold increase in cancer in southern Iraq. According to the British journalist, John Pilger, “In Basra’s hospitals, the cancer wards are overflowing.” Jawed Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and a member of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians told Pilger: “The dust carries death....Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer in five years’ time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We are living through another Hiroshima. Of course, we don’t know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed (under sanctions) to get the proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level in our bodies.”

There is some black humor, I am convinced, if you consider the situation of the poor Iraqis. Twenty million people suffering under a dictator...are suddenly threatened by a new compassionate president thousands of miles away...who drops smart bombs on them.

The Iraqis die. But Wall Street makes a killing. And, of course, if he is still alive, the carpenter from Baghdad.

The writer teaches English at Penn State University and is the author of ‘Passport Photos’.