Remembering Night the Sky Caught Fire

The owner of the outdoor fish restaurant overlooking the Tigris asked whether I was there to watch Saddam Hussein’s palace across the river get bombed.

Yes, I answered.

No fan of the Iraqi president, he said this was why he had stayed open that chilly night instead of fleeing.

“It’s a historic moment never to be missed,” he said as he served masguf, a river fish grilled over burning palm fronds and wood.

It was Wednesday, Jan. 16, 1991, a day after the deadline the United Nations had set for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

Last-minute peace efforts, including a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, had gotten nowhere. We were expecting the bombing to begin at any moment. U.S. and other diplomats were leaving the capital of 4 million people, and so were tens of thousands of Iraqis, crammed into buses and cars.

My mother, wife and two sons had stayed put through some 20 missile strikes in our neighborhood during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. They were at first reluctant to leave me alone in Baghdad.

But this time Iraq was facing armies from some 30 nations and an awesome American arsenal within striking range on the Saudi border. My family finally agreed to join the exodus.

Before sunrise on Jan. 16, I drove them to my hometown of Karbala. The one-hour drive south tripled in length because the four-lane highway was jammed with cars, minibuses, trucks and even tractors carrying people--some still in nightgowns.

I installed my family with relatives. The less fortunate camped in the cold and rain, in palm groves on Karbala’s outskirts, its public parks, its narrow sidewalks. Even before it had started, the war was leaving its scars on Iraqis.

Back in Baghdad that afternoon, I asked Minister of Information Latif Nessyef Jassim if the government had contingency plans in case the allies bombed out the phone lines. He answered: “Let them try and they will see if they can return alive to their bases!”

As dusk approached, the streets were quiet. Troops manned roadblocks at main junctions of a city that history books call “The House of Peace.”

The government confined the small contingent of Western reporters to the Al-Rashid Hotel. I, as an Iraqi citizen, could move around Baghdad, but it was confusing and frightening to cover war in a city that was my home.

My last report on the night of Jan. 16 summed up: Saddam defiant, Iraq bracing for military showdown, Baghdadis cowering at home.

Then I went to the fish restaurant to await the big bang.

An hour after midnight, nothing had happened. Perhaps war had been averted by last-minute diplomatic activity? I went home.

At 2 a.m. I entered my house on 15th Street. Then my phone rang. My neighbor, Um Ali, had seen me parking and wanted to know what was happening. Had war been averted? I knew she would be extra anxious, having a son commanding an antiaircraft base.

“Not sure,” I answered, then added, “Inshallah.” God willing.

At 2:30 a.m. the first bombs fell. Um Ali screamed, and the line went dead.

Explosion after explosion rattled my windows. Iraqi antiaircraft batteries on high buildings fired back nonstop. Over the city of “a thousand and one nights,” the sky looked as if tens of thousands of firecrackers had gone off.

From my second-story window I could see flames spilling from the Dora oil refinery and a nearby power station. From afar, I could see that part of Saddam’s huge presidential complex was ablaze.

Electricity and running water went off.

A dawn tour of Baghdad revealed a ghost city with some of the main government buildings and communications centers either knocked out or heavily damaged.

Iraq seemed on its way back to the Middle Ages.

At the Al-Rashid Hotel, the Information Ministry officials seemed to have changed. Gone was the confidence; they looked nervous.

Baghdad had hardly caught its breath when air raid sirens sounded at 10 a.m. Just as before dawn, no one could see any aircraft, only the tracers of antiaircraft fire.

The attacks came intermittently throughout the day while Iraqis continued to flee. Each raid brought the wail of ambulance sirens. A tour of downtown indicated a few old houses had collapsed after nearby communications facilities were knocked out. Police sealed off the area; few casualties were reported.

From the seventh floor of the Al-Rashid, I watched a Tomahawk missile hit by Iraqi gunners land close by. Had its warhead exploded, the hotel would have been blown up.

Air raid shelters were scarce, so people sought cover on the ground floors of their own homes whenever the air raid sirens howled.

As the days stretched on with no civilian targets hit, people began watching the attacks from their rooftops. But when bombs started falling on bridges over the Tigris and closer to civilian targets, fears increased.

By nightfall on the first day, the city was in full darkness. The government’s jamming equipment had been knocked out, and around a fire they had made of tree branches near my house, Iraqis gathered to listen to BBC and Voice of America reports of the bombing. Some argued about who was to blame, Saddam or the Americans.

“Both,” said Abu Nizar, a retired teacher and my next-door neighbor. Then, realizing the danger of seeming to criticize Saddam, he quickly corrected himself: “I mean, the Americans.”

The writer was an Associated Press correspondent in Baghdad when U.S. planes first attacked the city on Jan. 17, 1991. After the war, the Iraqi government, angered by his reporting, withdrew his journalist’s accreditation and he left the country. He is now based in Cairo.