パレスチナ人の友人から、突然、なんの断り書きもなしに届いたメールは、ファルージャの様子を伝えてくるものだった。ファルージャに医療支援で行った欧米系のボランティアが書いたものだと思う。途中まで読んで、つらくて止めてしまったけれど、少しでも多くの人に伝えたいので、このままアップ。救急車への妨害、病院の破壊、停電、あまりにも多い怪我人、死んでいく子ども。この事実の前に、どうやったら「米国への協力」を語れるのだろうか。

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 05:22:04 -0700
Subject: Please Read - eyewintess report from Falluja - by Jo Wilding

****Jo is in Falluja today again, more soon****

I\'m sorry it\'s so long, but please, please read andforward widely. The truth of what\'s happening inFalluja has to get out.
Hamoudie, my thoughts are with you.

April 11th Falluja

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highwayeast to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to andfrom a lorry that?s not burnt, stripping it bare. Weturn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha andAhrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full ofpeople and a few possessions, heading the other way,past the improvised refreshment posts along the waywhere boys throw food through the windows into the busfor us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a localsheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedinand has cleared this with them. The reason I?m on thebus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my doorat about 11 at night telling me things were desperatein Falluja, he?d been bringing out children with theirlimbs blown off, the US soldiers were going aroundtelling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but thenwhen people fled with whatever they could carry, theywere being stopped at the US military checkpoint onthe edge of town and not let out, trapped, watchingthe sun go down.

He said aid vehicles and the media were being turnedaway. He said there was some medical aid that neededto go in and there was a better chance of it gettingthere with foreigners, westerners, to get through theamerican checkpoints. The rest of the way was securedwith the armed groups who control the roads we?dtravel on. We?d take in the medical supplies, see whatelse we could do to help and then use the bus to bringout people who needed to leave.

I?ll spare you the whole decision making process, allthe questions we all asked ourselves and each other,and you can spare me the accusations of madness, butwhat it came down to was this: if I don?t do it, whowill? Either way, we arrive in one piece.

We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes aretorn open straightaway, the blankets most welcomed.It?s not a hospital at all but a clinic, a privatedoctor?s surgery treating people free since airstrikes destroyed the town?s main hospital. Anotherhas been improvised in a car garage. There?s noanaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge andthe doctors warm them up under the hot tap in anunhygienic toilet.

Screaming women come in, praying, slapping theirchests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I holdher until Maki, a consultant and acting director ofthe clinic, brings me to the bed where a child ofabout ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. Asmaller child is being treated for a similar injury inthe next bed. A US sniper hit them and theirgrandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.

The lights go out, the fan stops and in the suddenquiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarettelighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. Theelectricity to the town has been cut off for days andwhen the generator runs out of petrol they just haveto manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donateshis torch. The children are not going to live.

?Come,? says Maki and ushers me alone into a roomwhere an old woman has just had an abdominal bulletwound stitched up. Another in her leg is beingdressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, awhite flag still clutched in her hand and the samestory: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when Iwas hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by USmarines, other parts by the local fighters. Theirhomes are in the US controlled area and they areadamant that the snipers were US marines.

Snipers are causing not just carnage but also theparalysis of the ambulance and evacuation services.The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed isin US territory and cut off from the clinic bysnipers. The ambulance has been repaired four timesafter bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streetsbecause no one can go to collect them without beingshot.

Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a fewsaid we were completely insane to come to Falluja andnow there are people telling me that getting in theback of the pick up to go past the snipers and getsick and injured people is the craziest thing they?veever seen. I know, though, that if we don?t, no onewill.

He?s holding a white flag with a red crescent on; Idon?t know his name. The men we pass wave us on whenthe driver explains where we?re going. The silence isferocious in the no man?s land between the pick up atthe edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has justgone from our sight around the last corner and themarines? line beyond the next wall; no birds, nomusic, no indication that anyone is still living untila gate opens opposite and a woman comes out, points.

We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can seethe car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet arevisible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he?s deadalready. The snipers are visible too, two of them onthe corner of the building. As yet I think they can?tsee us so we need to let them know we?re there.

?Hello,? I bellow at the top of my voice. ?Can youhear me?? They must. They?re about 30 metres from us,maybe less, and it?s so still you could hear the fliesbuzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times,still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bitmore.

?We are a medical team. We want to remove this woundedman. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can yougive us a signal that it?s OK??

I?m sure they can hear me but they?re still notresponding. Maybe they didn?t understand it all, so Isay the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. Iyell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Notsure, I call again.

?Hello.?

?Yeah.?

?Can we come out and get him??

?Yeah,?

Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud thatrises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell.Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Ranaand Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. TheKalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to is hair andhand and we don?t want it with us so I put my foot onit as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls outthrough the hole in his back. We heave him into thepick up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.

I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he?sbarefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitationNike pants and a blue and black striped football shirtwith a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies form theclinic pull the young fighter off the pick up, yellowfluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over,face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front ofthem, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.

We wash the blood off our hands and get in theambulance. There are people trapped in the otherhospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming,lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of theambulance, passports and ID cards held out thewindows. We pack it with people, one with his chesttaped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legsjerking violently so I have to hold them down as wewheel him out, lifting him over steps.

The hospital is better able to treat them than theclinic but hasn?t got enough of anything to sort themout properly and the only way to get them to Baghdadon our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic.We?re crammed on the floor of the ambulance in caseit?s shot at. Nisareen, a woman doctor about my age,can?t stop a few tears once we?re out.

The doctor rushes out to meet me: ?Can you go to fetcha lady, she is pregnant and she is delivering the babytoo soon??

Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing himand me by the window, the visible foreigner, thepassport. Something scatters across my hand,simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through theambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying throughthe window.

We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue lightflashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in USmarine uniforms on the corners of the buildings.Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possibleand I can see tiny red lights whipping past thewindow, past my head. Some, it?s hard to tell, arehitting the ambulance I start singing. What else doyou do when someone?s shooting at you? A tyre burstswith an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.

I?m outraged. We?re trying to get to a woman who?sgiving birth without any medical attention, withoutelectricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you?re shooting at us. How dareyou?

How dare you?

Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance intoreverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridgein the centre of the road , the sots still coming aswe flee around the corner. I carry on singing. Thewheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.

The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shakemy head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to seeif we?re OK. Is there any other way to get to her, Iwant to know. La, maaku tarieq. There is no other way.They say we did the right thing. They say they?vefixed the ambulance four times already and they?ll fixit again but the radiator?s gone and the wheels arebuckled and se?s still at home in the dark givingbirth alone. I let her down.

We can?t go out again. For one thing there?s noambulance and besides it?s dark now and that means ourforeign faces can?t protect the people who go out withus or the people we pick up. Maki is the actingdirector of the place. He says he hated Saddam but nowhe hates the Americans more.

We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts explodingsomewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes latera car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screamingbefore I can see that there?s no skin left on hisbody. He?s burnt from head to foot. For sure there?snothing they can do. He?ll die of dehydration within afew days.

Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher.Cluster bombs, they say, although it?s not clearwhether they mean one or both of them. We set offwalking to Mr Yasser?s house, waiting at each cornerfor someone to check the street before we cross. Aball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smallerballs of bright white lights. I think they?re clusterbombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of mymind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares,incredibly bright but short-lived, giving a flashpicture of the town from above.

Yasser asks us all to introduce ourselves. I tell himI?m training to be a lawyer. One of the other men askswhether I know about international law. They want toknow about the law on war crimes, what a war crime is.I tell them I know some of the Geneva Conventions,that I?ll bring some information next time I come andwe can get someone to explain it in Arabic.

We bring up the matter of Nayoko. This group offighters has nothing to do with the ones who areholding the Japanese hostages, but while they?rethanking us for what we did this evening, we talkabout the things Nayoko did for the street kids, howmuch they loved her. They can?t promise anything butthat they?ll try and find out where she is and try topersuade the group to let her and the others go. Idon?t suppose it will make any difference. They?rebusy fighting a war in Falluja. They?re unconnectedwith the other group. But it can?t hurt to try.

The planes are above us all night so that as I doze Iforget I?m not on a long distance flight, the constantbass note of an unmanned reconnaissance drone overlaidwith the frantic thrash of jets and the dull beat ofhelicopters and interrupted by the explosions.

In the morning I make balloon dogs, giraffes andelephants for the little one, Abdullah, Aboudi, who?sclearly distressed by the noise of the aircraft andexplosions. I blow bubbles which he follows with hiseyes. Finally, finally, I score a smile. The twins,thirteen years old, laugh too, one of them anambulance driver, both said to be handy with aKalashnikov.

The doctors look haggard in the morning. None hasslept more than a couple of hours a night for a week.One as had only eight hours of sleep in the last sevendays, missing the funerals of his brother and auntbecause he was needed at the hospital.

?The dead we cannot help,? Jassim said. ?I must worryabout the injured.?
We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pickup. There are some sick people close to the marines?line who need evacuating. No one dares come out oftheir house because the marines are on top of thebuildings shooting at anything that moves. Saadfetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry,he?s checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin willfire at us, that peace is upon us, this eleven yearold child, his face covered with a keffiyeh, but foris bright brown eyes, his AK47 almost as tall as heis.

We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag witha red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from thebuilding, cover this side and Rana mutters, ?Allahuakbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.?

We jump down and tell them we need to get some sickpeople from the houses and they want Rana to go andbring out the family from the house whose roof they?reon. Thirteen women and children are still inside, inone room, without food and water for the last 24hours.

?We?re going to be going through soon clearing thehouses,? the senior one says.

?What does that mean, clearing the houses??

?Going into every one searching for weapons.? He?schecking his watch, can?t tell me what will startwhen, of course, but there?s going to be air strikesin support. ?If you?re going to do tis you gotta do itsoon.?

First we go down the street we were sent to. There?s aman, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small roundred stain on his back. We run to him. Again the fliesave got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I?m byhis knees and as we reach to roll him onto thestretcher Dave?s hand goes through his chest, throughthe cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatlythrough his back and blew his heart out.

There?s no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive,his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed,they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gateand they shot him. None of them have dared come outsince. No one had dared come to get his body,horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditionsof treating the body immediately. They couldn?t haveknown we were coming so it?s inconceivable tat anyonecame out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.
He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.

We cover his face, carry him to the pick up. There?snothing to cover his body with. The sick woman ishelped out of the house, the little girls around herhugging cloth bags to their bodies, whispering, ?Baba.Baba.? Daddy. Shaking, they let us go first, hands up,around the corner, then we usher them to the cab ofthe pick up, shielding their heads so they can?t seehim, the cuddly fat man stiff in the back.

The people seem to pour out of the houses now in thehope we can escort them safely out of the line offire, kids, women, men, anxiously asking us whetherthey can all go, or only the women and children. We goto ask. The young marine tells us that men of fightingage can?t leave. What?s fighting age, I want to know.He contemplates. Anything under forty five. No lowerlimit.

It appals me that all those men would be trapped in acity which is about to be destroyed. Not all of themare fighters, not all are armed. It?s going to happenout of the view of the world, out of sight of themedia, because most of the media in Falluja isembedded with the marines or turned away at theoutskirts. Before we can pass the message on, twoexplosions scatter the crowd in the side street backinto their houses.

Rana?s with the marines evacuating the family from thehouse they?re occupying. The pick up isn?t back yet.The families are hiding behind their walls. We wait,because there?s nothing else we can do. We wait in noman?s land. The marines, at least, are watching usthrough binoculars; maybe the local fighters are too.

I?ve got a disappearing hanky in my pocket so whileI?m sitting like a lemon, nowhere to go, gunfire andexplosions aplenty all around, I make the hankydisappear, reappear, disappear. It?s always best, Ithink, to seem completely unthreatening and completelyunconcerned, so no one worries about you enough toshoot. We can?t wait too long though. Rana?s been goneages. We have to go and get her to hurry. There?s ayoung man in the group. She?s talked them into lettinghim leave too.

A man wants to use his police car to carry some of thepeople, a couple of elderly ones who can?t walk far,the smallest children. It?s missing a door. Who knowsif he was really a police car or the car wasreappropriated and just ended up there? It didn?tmatter if it got more people out faster. They creepfrom their houses, huddle by the wall, follow us out,their hands up too, and walk up the street clutchingbabies, bags, each other.

The pick up gets back and we shovel as many onto it aswe can as an ambulance arrives from somewhere. A youngman waves from the doorway of what?s left of a house,his upper body bare, a blood soaked bandage around hisarm, probably a fighter but it makes no differenceonce someone is wounded and unarmed. Getting the deadisn?t essential. Like the doctor said, the dead don?tneed help, but if it?s easy enough then we will. Sincewe?re already OK with the soldiers and the ambulanceis here, we run down to fetch them in. It?s importantin Islam to bury the body straightaway.

The ambulance follows us down. The soldiers startshouting in English at us for it to stop, pointingguns. It?s moving fast. We?re all yelling, signallingfor it to stop but it seems to take forever for thedriver to hear and see us. It stops. It stops, beforethey open fire. We haul them onto the stretchers andrun, shove them in the back. Rana squeezes in thefront with the wounded man and Dave and I crouch inthe back beside the bodies. He says he had allergiesas a kid and hasn?t got much sense of smell. I wish,retrospectively, for childhood allergies, and stick myhead out the window.

The bus is going to leave, taking the injured peopleback to Baghdad, the man with the burns, one of thewomen who was shot in the jaw and shoulder by asniper, several others. Rana says she?s staying tohelp. Dave and I don?t hesitate: we?re staying too.?If I don?t do it, who will?? has become an accidentalmotto and I?m acutely aware after the last foray howmany people, how many women and children, are still intheir houses either because they?ve got nowhere to go,because they?re scared to go out of the door orbecause they?ve chosen to stay.

To begin with it?s agreed, then Azzam says we have togo. He hasn?t got contacts with every armed group,only with some. There are different issues to squarewith each one. We need to get these people back toBaghdad as quickly as we can. If we?re kidnapped orkilled it will cause even more problems, so it?sbetter that we just get on the bus and leave and comeback with him as soon as possible.

It hurts to climb onto the bus when the doctor hasjust asked us to go and evacuate some more people. Ihate the fact that a qualified medic can?t travel inthe ambulance but I can, just because I look like thesniper?s sister or one of his mates, but that?s theway it is today and the way it was yesterday and Ifeel like a traitor for leaving, but I can?t see whereI?ve got a choice. It?s a war now and as alien as itis to me to do what I?m told, for once I?ve got to.
Jassim is scared. He harangues Mohammed constantly,tries to pull him out of the driver?s seat wile we?removing. The woman with the gunshot wound is on theback seat, the man with the burns in front of her,being fanned with cardboard from the empty boxes, hisintravenous drips swinging from the rail along theceiling of the bus. It?s hot. It must be unbearablefor him.

Saad comes onto the bus to wish us well for thejourney. He shakes Dave?s hand and then mine. I holdhis in both of mine and tell him ?Dir balak,? takecare, as if I could say anything more stupid to apre-teen Mujahedin with an AK47 in his other hand, andour eyes meet and stay fixed, his full of fire andfear.

Can?t I take him away? Can?t I take him somewhere hecan be a child? Can?t I make him a balloon giraffe andgive him some drawing pens and tell him not to forgetto brush his teeth? Can?t I find the person who putthe rifle in the hands of that little boy? Can?t Itell someone about what that does to a child? Do Ihave to leave him here where there are heavily armedmen all around him and lots of them are not on hisside, however many sides there are in all of this? Andof course I do. I do have to leave him, like childsoldiers everywhere.

The way back is tense, the bus almost getting stuck ina dip in the sand, people escaping in anything, evenpiled on the trailer of a tractor, lines of cars andpick ups and buses ferrying people to the dubioussanctuary of Baghdad, lines of men in vehicles queuingto get back into the city having got their families tosafety, either to fight or to help evacuate morepeople. The driver, Jassim, the father, ignores Azzamand takes a different road so that suddenly we?re notfollowing the lead car and we?re on a road that?scontrolled by a different armed group than the oneswhich know us.

A crowd of men waves guns to stop the bus. Somehowthey apparently believe that there are Americansoldiers on the bus, as if they wouldn?t be in tanksor helicopters, and there are men getting out of theircars with shouts of ?Sahafa Amreeki,? Americanjournalists. The passengers shout out of the windows,?Ana min Falluja,? I am from Falluja. Gunmen run ontothe bus and see that it?s true, there are sick andinjured and old people, Iraqis, and then relax, waveus on.

We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so welook more western. The American soldiers are so happyto see westerners they don?t mind too much about theIraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave thewomen unsearched because there are no women soldiersto search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things aregoing to be OK.

?Al-melaach wiyana, ? I tell him. The angels are withus. He laughs.
And then we?re in Baghdad, delivering them to thehospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt manoff groaning and whimpering. She puts her arms aroundme and asks me to be her friend. I make her feel lessisolated, she says, less alone.

And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holdingand George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sundaythat, ?I know what we?re doing in Iraq is right.?Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their familyhome is right.

Shooting grandmothers with white flagsis right? Shooting at women and children who arefleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances isright?

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks likewhen you brutalise people so much that they?ve nothingleft to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anaesthetic becausethe hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire andthe city?s under siege and aid isn?t getting inproperly. I know what it sounds like too. I know whatit looks like when tracer bullets are passing yourhead, even though you?re in an ambulance. I know whatit looks like when a man?s chest is no longer insidehim and what it smells like and I know what it lookslike when his wife and children pour out of his house.

It?s a crime and it?s a disgrace to us all.

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■ 想像を絶する
英文を分からないながらに最後まで読みました。米海軍のスナイパーが既に人間ではなく殺戮の機械になっているように見受けられます。動く人間はすべてが標的、という…。 ファルージャの写真を見ていても、人は的確に首など急所を打たれているようですし、威嚇ではなくはじめから「殺す」つもりで攻撃していますね。 まるで映画みたいだと思いました。 今まで知らなかっただけなのでしょうが、このような残虐で、一方的な殺戮の舞台があっさりと出来てしまうことに唖然としました。 これがイラクの人々の受けてきたことだったなら、邦人を人質に取っているグループの犯行声明から聞こえる気がしていた「悲鳴」の意味が分かるような気がします。 結構長い文章ですが、これほど生々しく状況を伝えるものもないと思います。どなたか日本語に訳してくださる方がいないかと…
luz (2004-04-14 20:56:02)