Press
'Our Freedom Has
No Taste'
(AP) Donna Abu-Nasr,
an Associated Press correspondent based in Cairo, recently
revisited some of the people she had gotten to know on
assignments to Iraq before the war.
"Life is not
beautiful these days."
Widad al-Orfali's art gallery used to be a cultural haven in
Saddam's time. Shortly after Baghdad fell, members of the Iraqi
National Congress returning from exile occupied the gallery, and
al-Orfali was at home, her living room walls covered in
paintings she had salvaged from the gallery.
"I am sad," she said. "I cannot live without my gallery."
Its occupiers have promised to vacate it soon, but Al-Orfali
said she would be afraid to reopen it as long as Baghdad was
unsafe.
I had last seen her on New Year's Eve. She was bent over a
notebook in her gallery, composing lyrics to a love song for a
young Iraqi singer she had discovered, unfazed by the approach
of war.
"I don't wait for death. Let death wait for me," she said then,
74 years old and bubbling with life and optimism.
Now she could barely crack a smile. She moved slowly and spoke
bleakly of the future. Like several of the people I met before
the war, she had a dull, dazed look.
