The Road to Baghdad: Making Peace with Many Truths

The flight to Amman, Jordan, is delayed for almost seven hours. A man on the previous flight from Amman has died. It is odd watching his covered body roll its way past those of us waiting to board. Is this just the beginning? It feels like a foretelling of the brand of death we are to see along the way: clearly visible yet covered in a shroud determined to hide certain truths against prying, inquisitive eyes.

Indeed, death in many guises accompanies us as our vehicle hurtles toward Baghdad. I am traveling with Anna Bachman, a peace friend I met in Baghdad last year; Nathan Mussleman, a young Mennonite who has been studying Arabic in Syria and is making his third trip to Iraq; and our favorite driver, Sattar. The highway itself, once inside of Iraq, is a modern marvel: a very nicely paved road, two to three lanes in each direction. We are traveling 100 to 145 kilometers per hour in a loosely connected convoy with two other suburban-type vehicles—other drivers with other passengers. Not many signs of war along this highway: a few blackened areas where some sort of bomb or missile had exploded—no hole in the ground, just greasy splotches 20 to 40 feet in diameter. Hulks of burnt and gnarled vehicles appear here and there. Were these bombed or had cars crashed?

And then come the toppled power-line towers. Some are 25 feet tall, others much larger, and one after the other is broken in half. It goes on for miles and miles. It is as if a giant Ali Baba and his thieves came riding along, smote down each tower at its middle, and then magically swept away the connective lifeline of electrical wire. “There are two stories,” Sattar offers. “Some say the Coalition forces knocked the towers down on the way to Baghdad to make certain there would be no electricity. And others say thieves toppled the towers, stole the wire, and sold it for profit. They come at night so no one sees them.”

The sides of the road open to vast expanses of desert vistas for as far as the eye can see—that is, visible only once the sun comes up, which is the case when we come upon the crash. The vehicle had taken at least one roll and landed right-side up. The woman passenger had already been taken to the hospital, but the dead bodies of her husband and the driver are still inside. The driver, Sattar tells us, after we spend two hours at the site, was a good friend who drove this way with him just the day before. Exhausting, 12-hour, back-to-back journeys between Baghdad and Amman have become the norm as suvs and smaller vehicles carry those now thronging to Iraq: journalists, private security guards, mothers seeking to visit with their children in the military, contractors, peace groups, business people of every persuasion, and even tourists. With two to three trips being made per week by each driver, this may be one of the more dangerous jobs in the country. And yet as the highway death toll rises, many come to replace the dead—and claim the $250 one-way fee.