J amil Roubayee, a year-old doctor, glances around the emergency room and tugs nervously at the stethoscope in the pocket of his white coat. On the other side are two ailing women as well as a little boy afflicted with sickle-cell anemia. Because of the international blockade against Iraq, Roubayee says, the hospital lacks antibiotics and other medicines necessary to treat the patients.
At least one of the men will soon die, he predicts, and the boy may lapse into a coma. Once the U. You have patients dying in front of you, and there is nothing you can do about it. We hope there will be no war. Yet the mood in this city of nearly 4 million is that there will be war, and as each day passes, the gloom deepens.
As foreign diplomats evacuate their embassies and prepare to fly out of the country, Iraqis wait at service stations in lines 30, 40, 50 cars long to buy enough gas to make sure they can drive out of the city in case of attack. The government closed the museums and moved its Babylonian and Abbasid treasures to bomb shelters.
Many Iraqis were putting tape over their windows to prevent shattering in case of bombing. Spirits grow darker with each government pronouncement and directive. Officials ordered families to learn safety precautions at hastily organized civil-defense training centers. Some 10, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel began undergoing mandatory civil-defense instruction.
Officials told the owners of buildings in Baghdad to convert their basements into well-equipped bomb shelters. Iraqi TV showed lengthy footage of soldiers at the front chanting patriotic slogans and saying how ready they were to defend Iraq if attacked by the U. The Baghdad newspaper al-Jumhuriyah published advice on how to identify a chemical-bomb attack: there will be a muffled explosion with a lot of smoke, leaves will fall from trees, and the ground will quickly become littered with dead insects.
