NOWHERE TO HIDE B-
Norway Sweden Iraq
(86 mi) 2016 d: Zaradasht
Ahmed Official
website
It’s difficult to
diagnose this war. It’s an undiagnosed
war. You only see the symptoms—the
killing, displacements, blood baths. But
you don’t understand the disease.
—Nori Sharif
—Nori Sharif
First of all, not to be confused with the 1999 Korean action
flick by the same name, and nearly ten other films also using the same title,
so there’s little excuse not to come up with something new, though to be fair,
it does fit the material. The ultimate
tragedy of this recent outpouring of Middle East documentaries is that the
United States simply had no business being there in the first place, with no
justifiable reason to invade Iraq in 2003, where we’ve simply opened up Pandora’s
Box and made of mess of things there ever since, including the presence of al
Qaeda and Isis who have been everpresent in the region, where it has gotten so
indescribably bad, with cities reduced to rubble and conditions returning to Byzantine
times, that it seems impossible to clean up the mess, leaving streams of dead
and displaced people with few, if any, options.
Though the film does not recognize a distinction, as unlike Syria, where
citizens have been bombed by their own government, this is not a film about
refugees, where citizens have a legitimate fear for their lives, seeking asylum
somewhere else where they will be safe, as the displaced people here don’t
really have a beef with their own government, who they do not view as a threat,
but are victims of a war with Isis, a jihadist military organization that overran
their territory in a power and land grab, with people fleeing from their homes,
ending up in a temporary shelter in the middle of the desert. But the price paid to run Isis back out of
that territory is what reduced these cities to rubble, where there are no homes
left or businesses to return to. So where
do these displaced people go? That’s the
unanswered question for which there really are no answers. The opening of the film introduces us to Nori
Sharif, married with four children, a medic working in a hospital in the town
of Jalawla, a professional job with a government salary where he worked for
more than a decade, indicating the problems he was used to treating changed
over the years from simple fractures to severe battle injuries. Because of his familiarity with the region,
the filmmaker, an Iraqi Kurd living in Norway, offered him a camera with
instructions how to use it, asking him to record examples of what he sees. While the area of Diyala province is mostly a
mix of Kurds, Sunni, and Shiites with a tradition of living quietly and peacefully,
where the remoteness of the region caused little interest to the rest of the
world, that all changed with the American invasion in 2003, where it is now one
of the most battle-scarred regions, described as the “Triangle of Death.” One of the first decisions made by the
occupying Americans was to disempower the Sunnis, the party of Saddam Hussein,
including police and army personnel, who had a stabilizing presence in the
region, causing instant friction, leading to a Shiite majority in the new
government, arousing the ire of the Sunni population, which initially fueled
the insurgency aimed against the Americans, making their continued presence
extremely unpopular. The film actually
begins in 2011 as the last of the American troops are withdrawing, creating an
Iraqi jubilation that they finally have their country back again.
The immediate effect of the film, however, is the raw and
amateur quality, much of it resembling reality TV, where Nori attempts to
explain what he’s filming, but he offers no historical context, so many viewers
will be left in the dark, unable to ascertain who’s fighting who, or why. This grainy quality does the film no favors,
as it’s clear Nori is not a filmmaker, yet it’s his footage that we’re watching
as we witness a local wedding or get firsthand footage of emergency room
treatments, where his eyes provide the focal point of the entire film. It’s clear the world outside has become much
more dangerous, as he sits on his roof at night, but reports that a dozen
others in his neighborhood have been killed by snipers, where neighbors are
killing neighbors. Nori is not a
journalist, but he leaves out pertinent details, where the fighting between the
Shiites and the Sunnis constitute most of the violence in Iraq, as the
insurgency simply found a new enemy once the Americans left, namely the party
aligned with the Americans. With the
arrival of Isis jihadist fighters, the violence reaches unprecedented heights,
with the radio announcing the death of nearly 2000 Iraqis in just a single
month. Add to this land mines, car
bombs, and suicide bombers, where a curfew is imposed in his town from 5 pm to
5 am, where eventually we get a sense that Kurds are fighting Isis for control
of his town, as Jalawla borders Kurdish territories. Yet when Nori takes his camera and films
inside the gruesome remains of a car used in a suicide bombing, many will think
he’s crossed an ethical line in an obsession to reveal all the brutal details,
where one wonders if we need to see dismembered body parts and pools of blood
in what resembles graphic crime scene footage, where the audience is usually
spared this kind of horrific detail.
Shortly afterwards we hear a discussion about several young men who
lived nearby that were kidnapped and beheaded, while dead bodies are left on
the steps of the local police station in another message to residents. Finding it too dangerous to stay, most of the
staff and all of the doctors abandon the hospital, as Nori is one of the few
who stay, yet we hear the constant sound of an approaching battle that sends
them home as well, gathering what they can in their car and leaving in a
hurry. What follows is a frenzy of chaotic
actions, with Nori handing the camera to one of his sons, pointing out the Isis
flag hoisted atop the city as he documents his exit, frantically moving from
one village to the next, constantly in fear, but all are under attack, where
they keep escaping deeper into the abandoned homes in the desert until they finally
discover the Sa’ad IDP Camp (Internally Displaced Persons), providing emergency
shelter in rows upon rows of identical two-roomed huts, with as many as twenty
people to a hut, yet there is running water nearby. It’s not much, where there’s next to nothing
for their kids to do, but it’s a safe haven.
Only during this final exodus does the film really elevate
to a level of poignancy, as the subject shifts from objectively filming
hospital victims or casualties of Iraqi infighting, where people were still
able to lead some semblance of a normal life in Jalawla, yet now the camera was
subjectively pointed at Nori himself, as he becomes the film’s central focus,
forced to flee from his home and his job, where constant uncertainty greets
him. Running out of water, his kids get
sick, with bugs invading the face of one of his sons, where this journey into
the unknown is an anxiety-ridden experience, forced to endure horrible
circumstances, where their very survival comes into question. Falling off the edge of a life they once knew,
they are suddenly in a freefall where nothing makes sense anymore, as they are
surrounded by confusion and fear.
Joining others in similar circumstances, with new families arriving
every day, it’s clear this is not a place you want to be, as people share
horror stories of what they’ve witnessed to force them from their homes. While at least Nori’s family remains intact,
not something everyone can say, yet they’ve reached a point of suspension,
where their paralyzed lives are literally on hold, where any future is
uncertain. After a passage of time, with
Isis driven out, Nori and a select few return to Jalawla to inspect the
hospital, where it’s done without permission, as they don’t have security
clearance to be there, apparently under Shiite military control, but everything
has been demolished, all the medical equipment smashed and destroyed, where it
resembles the total destruction and ruins of war, where there’s nothing left to
return to. As he pauses in reflection afterwards
at a bridge overlooking a river, he finally realizes there’s absolutely no hope
of return, which will devastate his family, still stuck in the temporary
shelter, as there’s nowhere else to go.
This transition from the hope and promise of a liberated Iraq in the
beginning to the utter annihilation of their future is hard for anyone to
reconcile, especially those forced to endure this kind of loss and deprivation,
where it’s impossible to understand this kind of emotional upheaval, becoming
one of his nation’s casualties, viewed as little more than collateral damage,
joining thousands of internally displaced people in Iraq, which pale in
comparison to the nearly half a million dead and millions of refugees exiting
neighboring Syria. Human deprivation is
damaging, wherever it occurs, especially in such a senseless fashion, where
human life means so little. This rare,
insider’s view offers a glimpse of life in the far corners of the Middle East,
where conflicts remain and tragedy is an everyday occurrence, reveals a future that
has been stolen from this younger generation, forced to endure squalor and
catastrophic harm, yet somehow life goes on, even if there’s no home to return
to. In America, perhaps the only
incident remotely similar is the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in
New Orleans, which flooded more than 80% of the city, where the storm displaced
more than a million people in the Gulf Coast region, with many able to return
home within a few days, but up to 600,000 households were still displaced months
later. Brilliantly filmed by Spike Lee
in When
the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2005), the film is a blistering
portrait of government ineptitude and moral outrage. Lacking the artistry and moral indignation of
Lee’s film, the onus of this film is with the viewers, carrying a similar
message of displacement, featuring the casualties of war and the trauma of being
uprooted from what was formerly your life, subjectively placing the viewer in
this family’s situation, having no chance of ever returning home, where your
life has been stripped of its possibilities, literally placed on hold, and suspended
until circumstances that have yet to materialize can develop.
