As I write, the call to prayer sounds again in the street of Najaf. Yet, on
the edges of the city, U.S. and coalition forces maneuver closer, and rumors
of an impending attack are increasing. Having just arrived yesterday, we are
still trying to get a grip on the situation. Even as I write, other members
of our group are driving around town, trying to size up the situation, and
looking for the place where our presence will be most effective.

This afternoon we had planned to visit a hospital where, we had been told,
U.S. troops had opened fire and killed several people who pulled up to the
hospital, not knowing it had been occupied by them. Today, just before
leaving, we were informed (by the news team from Al-Arabia news from Dubai,
who had just interviewed us) that it might be certain death to approach the
hospital. Snipers in the building, we were told, would kill anyone who
approached. And that the troops there were not U.S. at all, but Spanish. We
held a quick council and decided that we had come to confront U.S. troops,
not Spanish, and that if we were going to get shot before we could say a
word, there was no chance to get a message across in any case. We cancelled
our plan.

The reason this was on our minds in the first place was that yesterday when
we arrived, we were told at al-Sistani's office that the U.S. had occupied
the main hospital in the area, forcing people to go to smaller, overcrowded
clinics. This, combined with Rahul's report (on epirenotes.org) of the U.S.
forces closing hospitals elsewhere, and the report mentioned in our earlier
update of lack of medicines, made us think that this was worth looking into.
Then we were told about the people who had driven up to the hospital
unknowingly, and were shot without warning. On the way from Kerbala to
Najaf, we had passed an army base with a sign on the fence that said "Guards
will fire without warning." We hadn't realized how true that was!

Let me back up a bit, to our drive over from Kerbala yesterday. I may have
mentioned before the general sense of disorder. There were no traffic
signals, and very few traffic police to help out. It was a tangle at every
intersection, and a relief to get out of town onto the highway (4 lanes),
where we sped southward to Najaf.

At the edge of town, we ran into a police checkpoint, where, to our dismay,
we were stopped because our passports had not been stamped at the border!
There was some talk of sending us back to the border, but thanks to the
letters we had from al-Sistani and others, we managed to get through. One of
the policemen came with us, and directed us to al-Sistani's office.

It's hard to describe our entry into Najaf, the city itself, and the entry
into al-Sistani's "office." There are a million details that it is
impossible to capture here; I can only share some impressions. As in
Kerbala, life seemed to be going on as normal. There were cars and buses and
people walking everywhere. But the landscape seemed like a battleground (as
indeed it is!), with rubble and twisted metal and a general worn-down
feeling to everything, as if it had been beseiged for 10 years (as indeed it
has been!).

The entry into al-Sistani's was an entry into an armed camp. There were many
guards with rifles as we walked thorugh a labyrinth of streets (alleys?) too
narrow for a car to enter. Yet the atmosphere was somehow relaxed, as if
this were normal. One guard played with a small child, his rifle leaning
against the wall. Others smoked and talked, guns across their laps. And
people passed by, women and children and old men, coming and going on their
daily errands. WE were the abnormality! In one place, a break in the wall
let us look down into the ruins of some ancient building, and I realized
that the street we were walking on was maybe twenty meters above the
original floor of this building. Along the sides, for the roof had fallen
long ago, columns carried a series of arches, and dusty tiles hinted at it's
past splendor. The we turned another corner and were swallowed up in the
roar of a huge industrial-size generator in a shed, bringing the light of
the modern world to this ancient place.

Another omnipresent modern touch, that we see in Latin America as well as in
the U.S., was the ever-present TV, left on even in the midst of our meeting.
(At the police station, they were watching soaps as they interrogated us!)
Later, when we met with al-Sadr's representatives in the lobby of our hotel,
the TV was also on the whole time, and no one (myself excepted, perhaps)
even thought of turning it off. Even in the bazaar around the holy shrines
in Kerbala, booths in the street with multiple TV sets and loudspeakers
thundered out their ancient holy messages in the new universal
electro-technical language.

I can't go into all the details of our meetings with the organizations of
Sistani and Sadr, but there were some common themes. Both received us and
our mission warmly, but warned of the dangers we were exposed to in Najaf.
Sistani's office advised us not to stay, as they could not protect us. They
had enough of a challenge protecting their own people, they said. When they
learned that we were going to stay anyway, they offered to help us contact
the various media in town. Sadr's people, on the other hand, while also
warning us of the danger, offered to send us armed bodyguards. They seemed
to be surprised that we declined, saying that we came to oppose the use of
violence, and that it would be inappropriate for us to have armed men with
us, even as protection.

We have been interviewed by various news teams, from the moment of our
arrival. Our story is being seen in Lebanon, Iran, Dubai, and al-Jazeera is
waiting for their turn. We have not seen any western reporters yet, nor has
there been any response from major U.S. media to us. The bright spot so far
is that we are going to be interviewed on Democracy Now tomorrow, and just
this evening we have received requests for interviews from Boston and Radio
Euzkadi.

The word is definitely getting out, even in the silence of the major media.
We have received messages of encouragement and thanks from Asia, Latin
America, North America, and Europe! People-to-people contacts, web sites,
and list serves are making connections and taking our story around the
world.

To all of you who have written, too many to reply to, we send our thanks.
Your words feed our souls and spirits, and make us see that, whatever may
happen, our mission has already touched many lives, and is already, in that
sense, more successful than we could have hoped. There is still more to be
done, where all of you are, as well as here.

Goodbye for now.


Mario