What is everyday life like in liberated Iraq? For Maryam Khaldoon Hakim, born the last weekend in April into an upper-middle-class family, it goes like this: First a cat climbs through a bomb-shattered bedroom window and tries to bite her. Then the electricity fails for a while, as it so often does. Maryam’s mother, Mona, changes diapers by the flame of a smoky oil lamp. The baby becomes congested and won’t nurse. After seven days she turns yellow, stricken with jaundice. The children’s hospital in her south Baghdad neighbourhood where she was taken on Saturday doesn’t have enough of the special lights required to treat jaundice. It doesn’t even have clean water. There is no propane gas with which to boil it. Transfusions of blood from an uncle keep Maryam alive. No vitamins or calcium supplements are available, but she’s a plump child. Alhamdulillah, says her mother. (Thanks to God). Eventually another treatment bulb is found, but not an incubator. So Maryam lies in a rickety metal crib draped in towels. A few inches away writhes a scrawny boy, also jaundiced. In Al-Alwiyah Children’s Hospital, a place of dirty floors and concrete walls painted pale green, tiny patients wail with their bellies distended. Of the 160 children here, most are suffering from diarrhoea. They drank contaminated water. Mothers and grandmothers crouch over the children, panicked and praying. They haven’t seen a doctor for several hours. Some clutch precious stocks of bottled water and canned milk — enough, perhaps, to keep their babies alive through the night. Mona, 31, dressed in a flowered housecoat and head scarf, is so distraught she can barely speak. Her baby, Maryam, is among the lucky ones. Mona and her extended family are not going hungry and still have some money in reserve. Her father, Ghanim Khedhr, is a retired Army officer. Her 40-year-old husband, Khaldoon, is an engineer, a lieutenant colonel who worked on helicopter projects under Saddam. As the sun starts to set, Khaldoon stands weeping outside the entrance to the hospital. The grandfather, 65-year-old Ghanim, flares with anger: ‘‘There’s no milk, no medicine, no salaries, no safety in the streets. Under Saddam it was better than now!’’ In the hospital, a cluster of distraught mothers start shrieking at an American reporter. ‘‘Why are you here?’’ one asks angrily. ‘‘If you can’t help, then leave.” That night, still fearing the worst, Mona and Khaldoon stay at the hospital, tending to baby Maryam. In a nearby crib, a 5-day-old baby dies. Doctors report seven to 14 infant deaths a week in the wards, nearly all from diarrhoea. But by Sunday afternoon, a small measure of relief has arrived: air conditioning. Somebody rigged a line from the emergency grid. Now medications can be refrigerated. ‘‘We’ve got enough supplies for two or three days,’’ says pharmacist Adnan. Maryam receives calcium supplements. Somewhere a proper incubator, with a jaundice-fighting light, is found. Her colour looks better. She begins to take her mother’s breast milk. Thanks to God, the parents say. Their baby, born into freedom, may live to see it. (LAT-WP)
