By Nada Bakri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 12, 2009
BAGHDAD A dozen or so Iraqis sat quietly on wooden benches in a dimly lighted room, their eyes fixated on a television playing the American movie "Alvin and the Chipmunks" at a little past noon on a recent day. Despite Arabic subtitles, few seemed to follow the plot.
They were the relatives of 15 Iraqi prisoners and had made the journey to spend an hour or so with them at Camp Cropper, a prison on a U.S. base near Baghdad.
For the detainees and their families, the fleeting minutes that followed, punctuated by hope and frustration, anxiety and relief, were meant to answer fears. But often they inspired only more worries and raised more questions: How was a sick mother getting by in a distant village? How was a wife, left alone, supporting a detainee's family? More important, they dwelled on clues of an anticipated release, in a country in which hundreds, perhaps far more, have been jailed for years without charges in what many Iraqis deem an appalling miscarriage of justice.
At 12:40 p.m., an Iraqi woman in beige pants and a blue striped shirt announced that the visit had started. She recited the rules in a stern, authoritative voice as she stood in the middle of the waiting room, a long space divided in two. On one side, the families sat on the row of austere benches. On the other, children gathered in a play area next to U.S. soldiers' desks, where biometric data are gathered.
"You can kiss them, you can hug them, but you cannot give anything to them," the interpreter explained. "It is forbidden to exchange anything with them."
The prison, inside Camp Victory, one of the largest military facilities in Iraq, houses more than 10,000 detainees. Some are probably innocent, many officials have acknowledged. Others are considered dangerous, held on suspicion of murder, kidnapping, aiding foreign fighters and carrying out "terrorist operations," according to Brig. Gen. David Quantock, who is in charge of the detention center.
Most detainees will be transferred to Iraqi prisons or released by year's end under a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that took effect in January. The rest, considered the most dangerous, will be tried before Iraqi judges starting in December. About 2,200 will remain at the U.S.-run facility.
At 1 p.m., the visitors, assembled in one line, were led to a rectangular-shaped outdoor space bordered by black iron bars. A makeshift white nylon ceiling hung low over them. They were ordered to stand behind a blue line at one side of the hall. The inmates, in yellow suits or white traditional gowns, followed. Each was given a number that corresponded to the one the relatives gripped in their hand.
They stared at one another for a few interminable seconds. The interpreter then announced they could embrace. In a moment, children ran toward their fathers. Mothers hurried behind them. Fathers determined to maintain their demeanor smiled, cried, laughed and occasionally sobbed.
Sally Faysal, 4, jumped toward her father, Firas, as he extended his arms. Her mother, holding her 3-year-old son named Iraq, followed with her in-laws.
"How are you? How is everything? I missed you so much," Firas said.
"Thank God, we're all good. How are you?" asked his mother, Souad Dawaly.
For the next 10 minutes, under the watchful eyes of U.S. soldiers and civilian Iraqi employees from the Ministry of Justice dressed in camouflage, relatives kissed and hugged, laughed and wiped a tear or two from the face of a mother or wife. In vain, they struggled to cover months in minutes. Even then, their encounters were interrupted by a photo-taking opportunity that the U.S. military offered them, before the backdrop of an Iraqi flag emblazoned with a purple heart.
"You have one more minute left," the interpreter announced at 1:10 p.m.
Sally wrapped her arms around her father's neck and kissed him three times. He reached for the hand of his son, asleep on his mother's shoulder, and kissed it.
They were then escorted separately to a room with 18 phone booths, separated from each other by a sheet of glass. They shuffled inside silently.
"Adults cannot leave the booth, but children can," they were instructed.
Faysal waited for his family in booth 13. An officer in the Iraqi army, Faysal, 30, was arrested three months ago during a midnight raid on his apartment in Baghdad. His mother said she does not know what accusation he faces. Like many other visiting that day, she had refused to hire a lawyer. The misconception was common: Bringing a lawyer, she thought, would make relatives look guilty.
"Daddy, I learned how to dance," Sally told her father over the phone.
He burst into laughter. "I love you so much," she told him.
She kissed the phone, handed it to her mother, then ran off toward the small table outside booth 8, where a U.S. soldier drew pictures with three other kids.
Faysal and his wife reached to the glass, as though their fingers were touching. Their son banged on it with both hands. Only a few minutes were left, and the snippets of other conversations -- urgent as they came to an end -- drifted from cubicle to cubicle. They were the whispers of interrupted lives.
"Mom, hurry up, time is almost up," one daughter said.
"Yes, I planted the garden," a mother reassured her husband.
"She bought her son a computer for $500," a wife bragged of a friend.
At 2:15 p.m., soldiers announced that the visit was over. Families were again assembled in one line and were escorted to a bus outside the visitation center.
"It was like a dream," said Dawaly, Faysal's mother. "Just like a dream. It comes and goes so quickly. And only the fragments remain."
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