I have no dates in mind for the following little tale but must have been around mid 80’s or a little later.
It was about six thirty in the evening and three of us were sitting in my room on the eighteenth floor of the Meridian Hotel in central Baghdad. There was one of our exhibition customers, Awat al Barzenji my Kurdish friend and myself. Awat was drinking his usual Coke and we were on beer and sitting around a small table adjacent to the window and sliding door which led onto the balcony. From there you had a fine view up the river and over the north western part of Baghdad. The sun had already gone down and you wouldn’t believe there was a war on as the place was so illuminated it must have been almost visible from the Iraq/Iran border to the east.
Suddenly there was an enormous sharp crack. An explosion. We knew what it was immediately. It was another Iranian Scud missile attack. Awat jumped up shouting “I saw it, I saw it come down”. The three of us rushed out onto the balcony, I had grabbed my camera as I went. “Look its landed up Abu Nawas” Awat said. Abu Nawas is the small road that runs parallel with the Tigris river and marks the edge of the river. Well, not so much the river as the mud flats which are accessible where decking had been laid leading out to a few fish restaurants. Smoke was rising from where the Scud had come to earth which was about four hundred metres north of our hotel. It certainly looked bad news for anyone living up there as we knew these things can flatten half a street when the go off.
After the explosion there was a quiet lull in proceedings. The traffic around our hotel was always heavy early evening and tonight was no exception. Within a short space of time it got spectacularly worse as a convoy of fire engines, police cars and ambulances all tried to force there way onto Abu Nawas to get to the scene of the carnage. There were traffic lights on the corner below us. Cars were stationary and people milling about with much shouting and gesticulating as the convoy attempted to force there way through this pinch point. The three of us of course found it all very amusing like watching a Keystone Cops movie. We stayed on the balcony for maybe an hour as the action played out in front of us.
Next day I drove up Abu Nawas and past the scene of the previous evenings entertainment. There was as if nothing had happened. No bombed out buildings. No streets flattened. No nothing except a bit of disturbance of the mud flats. It was a miracle. It wasn’t until later that I was told that the missile had indeed landed on the banks of the Tigris and all of its explosive force had been nullified by the mud. I believe that was the only Scud raid on Baghdad which didn’t result in huge loss of life.
