Building Saddam’s Bunkers



Of all the places in all the World that I have ever been, the one which evokes the most interest is Baghdad. There are several reasons for this, the town still evokes images of the Arabian Nights and Sinbad the sailor, it has that exotic tinge reserved for those far away destinations most people never see except in their dreams, but when people talk to me of the land of the two rivers they have something else in mind other than Turkish delight and dancing girls. I was the man who built Saddam’s bunkers and spent two and a half years in Baghdad supervising their construction, and the subject still fascinates they who meet me for the first time.

The story starts in prosaic enough fashion with an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, on behalf of some outfit looking for a body who knew a mite more about concrete than how to spell it. I adjudged that I more or less fitted the bill. Having answered the advert, I was summoned to an interview in a rather elegant house in Berkley Square. Like the nightingale of fable I sang beautifully, so beautifully did I warble that I got the job and fetched up in Baghdad.
This was the period of the Iran Iraq war, and Iraq together with it’s capital city was chaotic and very dangerous, with bombs going off occasionally, and not all of those were of foreign origin, Saddam was not popular with his people, and now and again their hatred overcame their fear of the tyrant. In the south of the country the war was known as Saddam’s war.

The Iraqi Government had commissioned thirty four bomb shelters, plus one control centre. These were not any old shelters. The bunkers were designed to take a direct nuclear strike, as Iran was suspected of being close to developing a nuclear capability and the Iraqi authorities wanted some protection for the populace. Not that I am here referring to the hoi poloi, far from it, these structures were to be built for the protection of the hierarchy of the al Bath party, the poor bloody infantry could fry in the event of an attack.

These structures were the most technically challenging of my career, in terms of concrete, I had to re-invent physics in order to make the production feasible. First there was the excavation. Baghdad is situated between two of the World’s greatest rivers, this means that you only have to stick a shovel in the ground to hit the water table, this meant that pumps had to be installed to remove the ground water during the construction process, Each shelter contained ten thousand cubic metres of dense impermeable concrete, that is four thousand metric tons of cement, you could build a lot of patios with amount of the grey powder.

After the hole had been excavated, the soil had to be compacted to make a base capable of supporting the structure. Once that had been done, a layer of base course was put down. Base course is compacted lumps of large stone, in this case it was a metre thick. After the base course came the blinding, this serves no structural purpose, it is simply there to provide an even surface for the following construction. After the base course, the nitty gritty actually starts.

First the base of the shelter is laid down, this is a slab of reinforced concrete one metre thick, dense and impermeable, i.e., the ground water will not seep into the shelter. Onto the base are added the outer walls, again a metre thick. Naturally there was a roof, we gave our structures all the mod cons.

While all this intense activity was going on, and make no mistake, we were working twelve hours a day six days a week, and, in the heat of the summer all through the night as well, life in Baghdad continued at it’s frenetic pace. Things were tight in the town, food was scarce, onions had not been seen on the streets of Baghdad for six months and if you saw a queue of people snaking around the block it was Lombard Street to a China orange that some one had eggs to sell. That was life for the average Joe in this town, but for we of the elite, life was very different. Our food was trucked in from abroad, we had access to special shops from which the locals were banned, in those emporia they accepted any currency under the sun except the Iraqi Dinar. And then there were the night clubs, pulsating with the rhythms of the belly dancers and choked with folk who could afford to spend ?75 on a bottle of whiskey, and remember, this was back in 1982. I could not help wondering if this was like Berlin had been in the dark days of the war, a people terrified of what was to come and trying frantically to blot such images from their minds.

Back on site things were moving at frenetic pace, we had three years to complete the project, believe me, that took some doing. The shelters were divided into two distinct sections. There was the part of the structure which was below ground, this was where the people would congregate in the event of an attack. Each shelter was designed so that fifteen hundred souls could live there for thirty days independent of the outside world. What if you were unfortunate enough to pop your clogs while in residence? No problem, each shelter was equipped with its own crematorium.

The second part of the bunkers were above ground, this section was for use as libraries, leisure centres etc. In the event of an attack the designated tenants would be herded down into the lower section, and the bomb proof doors would be sealed. This is where people ask “How come part of the shelter was above ground?” Easy. A nuclear device is not triggered by percussion, the detonation is effected by barometric pressure, when the device reaches a certain level above ground, it is detonated by the air pressure, it destroys by blast. It was blast the bunkers had to withstand, not the vibration of impact. It was one of these shelters which was attacked during the first gulf war, a homing device was attached to the ventilation shaft, the smart bomb went down the shaft and the results went round the World courtesy of the media.

Every good story should have a sting in the tail, and this one is no different. Many years after the events described here, I found myself in the middle of the Sahara Desert, as one does. There I met a man who had been in Baghdad at the time of the war, and he told me a curious tale. The shelter targeted by the Americans had been used by the Iraqi intelligence services, and the impending attack was known about. Prior to the attack, all intelligence equipment was moved out of the premises and civilians were moved in, many of whom were killed in the attack, providing sympathetic propaganda in favour of the government. Now, I can not attest to the veracity of what I had been told, but what I do know is that the exterior of the shelter had been modified from the original, and that the people killed had been in the upper section of the shelter not in the more secure lower area. This to me suggests there may have been some truth in the tale I was told, but, who knows?

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Where Were You on That Day? What Is Your 9-11?



“Every generation has its Elvis.”

The sentiment expressed in this simple sentence was verbalized by a young white South African woman the moment we realized the impact that 9-11 would have on ours. As we stood staring open mouthed at our T.V in the board room late in the afternoon of September 11th 2001 watching the first of the towers burning and the horror of the events unfolding rendered us numb, many of us were unaware of the events leading up to the attack.

At the time I was working as a graphic designer for a marketing company that managed the brands of various food products, my functions included the designing of the packaging, advertising and sales aids. On that day I sat blissfully unaware, behind my computer working on the packaging design of new product designed to add instant ease and flavor to any pasta dish. The furthest thing on my mind was the politics of a world at war.

Until then I had seldom considered the events beyond our boarders. Apartheid had played such a powerful roll in the lives of South Africans of my generation that it had consumed our political awareness and left us with the opinion that the horrors of apartheid were unequaled but possibly by the events of the Jewish Holocaust or the Sub Saharan African genocide.

The world had been watching us and every decision we took, indeed every word spoken by our leaders was the focus of the world’s attention. Or so we believed. It was with shocking fear that we realized the world does not revolve around Nelson Mandela or the politics of Africa, it has bigger fish to fry.

The door burst open and our sales agent fell into the office yelling for us to put CNN on.
“Some idiot just flew his plane into the twin towers.”

We hadn’t heard yet that it had been an attack. It was, at that stage, an accident.

I continued to design an inane pack for pasta.

The phones continued to ring.

The agents continued to make deals.

The clock continued its ticking.

At some stage we learned it was an attack and our interest peaked. One by one we drifted into the boardroom and as the horror of the events slowly seeped into our apartheid saturated and indeed fatigued minds, we changed. All of us. In moments.

We stood in silence as we watched in disbelief as children lost parents and a confused and horror stricken city shook. Out of that silence, broken only by the reporters firing information and running commentary, Mandy spoke. “Every generation has its Elvis.” She said quietly. Her meaning was clear and I turned to face her. She continued to talk; explaining her meaning to those she believed had not understood her.

Wordlessly I left the boardroom, collected my belongings and left the office early. I worked very close to home and was there in minutes. The TV was off when I walked in through the front door of my parent’s granny cottage. My mother immediately asked what was wrong and I told her. We put the TV on and for the next few days did little else but watch the twin towers fall and fall and fall, over and over again.

The closest I had ever come to knowing an American was a teenage missionary worker who had come to Durban to work with the poor and homeless. I had never met a New Yorker and in 6 and half years since the attacks, had come no closer.

The day I got an MNF invitation on Facebook from a New Yorker, I off course noticed his country of origin and the city he was in but it meant little but to inform me of his place in the world. I accepted the invitation with little consideration and attempted no contact. There he sat on my friends list, silent. I never noticed a status update, I never viewed his profile page, and in fact I had totally forgotten his city of residence until a day I nearly, unintentionally, blew it.

I had booked to trek Mont Aux Sources and had posted photographs of the peak I intended to summit. I made a comment on the photograph describing how excited I was to climb it and how I believed it was Gods resting place immediately after creation.

For reasons I still do not completely understand he sent me a sticky and I thanked him. Within a day or two I got a message from him in my inbox. I had received so many inane and in fact irritating messages from men who had attempted cheap thrills that I very nearly dismissed it but for one small question at the end of a brief message. He had commented on my smile and I wondered how he could possibly, as my profile picture at the time was of an unsmiling woman that was me.

“Tell me about the seat of God?” he wrote.

“Tell me about your fantasies?”

“What are your vitals?”

“Awesome cleavage, can I touch?”

These were questions I was getting used to and that caused new friends to loose their friendship status. He asked none of them.

“Tell me about the seat of God?” was what he asked.

“Tell me about the seat of God?”

So I did. It was only then that I took notice of the city he was in. New York. Well then there is little wonder he doesn’t know what mountain I am referring to. Unless he has ever been to South Africa, Kilimanjaro will probably be the only African summit he would ever have heard of and even then in terms quite unromantic. It is only to Africans that Africa is so precious.

I have always loved Mont Aux Sources, but here was another reason to love her, she had instigated conversation between a random New Yorker and a barefoot African.

We have been corresponding for more than six months now and have become friends, but on the eve of the anniversary of what must have been a dreadful day in the life of this man, I am reminded that we have not spoken about the events of that day. It has been mentioned twice in brief terms but never discussed. I will never encourage conversation about it. Unless he mentions it and chooses to discuss it, I will allow him his 9-11 and I will keep mine, for though I am not a New Yorker and though I can’t possibly empathize with any New Yorker, I do have my 9-11.

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