Iraq may seem foreign, but stories in 'Baghdad Hospital' are human
January 29, 2008
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Some scenes of war are unsurprising but gripping nonetheless. In the new HBO documentary "Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone," there is the woman, injured during a bombing at sunset prayer. She left her home to buy bread.
"Suddenly I found myself surrounded by flames" and corpses, she says in a hospital bed, blood dried to gashes in her cheeks, a tube running from her nose. "I ran away, but my side was hurting ... and there was a hole
Her doctor checks her vitals and moves onto a 7-year-old boy who was injured while playing with friends; they died in front of him.
These casualties of war were filmed by Dr. Omer Salih Mahdi, during moments when he wasn't operating or dodging death.
I understand some TV viewers might think Iraq seems foreign and abstract. But the stories and emotions of "Baghdad Hospital" are not foreign at all. They're as human as all of us.
What you take are long glances at regular people (regular Iraqi people) talking to each other about what's happening in their lives, which happens to be death and chaos.
There is yet another little boy in a hospital bed who was playing in street when his father and brother were blown up. The boy himself was hit by shrapnel. After he was rushed to the hospital, with no anesthesia for miles, E.R. workers held down his arms. Doctors poked holes in his chest to drain blood.
He screamed. But he lives, at least for now. He is 6 years old.
What's surprising is seeing, from time to time, some adults in the hospital smiling. One laughs while someone claims to read palms. Another laughs about narrowly escaping death at the hands of torturous extremists who beat him anyway.
It's almost as if they're smiling because they're not dead yet, as if they're taking this opportunity to grin because this could be the last time someone, somewhere, will have the chance to see them smile.
And then it's back to work, although not for the narrator-filmmaker. In the midst of losing his uncle, father, cousins and 17 friends, Dr. Mahdi had yet another choice to make. A bomb-injured pregnant woman entered the E.R. He could save her or her baby, an impossible choice.
"That was just one incident that made me question whether I could continue in this job," Dr. Mahdi says in narration.
Last year, after filming "Baghdad Hospital," he moved to Indiana. He's studying journalism at Ball State with a Fulbright scholarship. Matters of life and death are now in other people's hands.
delfman@suntimes.com
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Some scenes of war are unsurprising but gripping nonetheless. In the new HBO documentary "Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone," there is the woman, injured during a bombing at sunset prayer. She left her home to buy bread.
"Suddenly I found myself surrounded by flames" and corpses, she says in a hospital bed, blood dried to gashes in her cheeks, a tube running from her nose. "I ran away, but my side was hurting ... and there was a hole
Her doctor checks her vitals and moves onto a 7-year-old boy who was injured while playing with friends; they died in front of him.
These casualties of war were filmed by Dr. Omer Salih Mahdi, during moments when he wasn't operating or dodging death.
I understand some TV viewers might think Iraq seems foreign and abstract. But the stories and emotions of "Baghdad Hospital" are not foreign at all. They're as human as all of us.
What you take are long glances at regular people (regular Iraqi people) talking to each other about what's happening in their lives, which happens to be death and chaos.
There is yet another little boy in a hospital bed who was playing in street when his father and brother were blown up. The boy himself was hit by shrapnel. After he was rushed to the hospital, with no anesthesia for miles, E.R. workers held down his arms. Doctors poked holes in his chest to drain blood.
He screamed. But he lives, at least for now. He is 6 years old.
What's surprising is seeing, from time to time, some adults in the hospital smiling. One laughs while someone claims to read palms. Another laughs about narrowly escaping death at the hands of torturous extremists who beat him anyway.
It's almost as if they're smiling because they're not dead yet, as if they're taking this opportunity to grin because this could be the last time someone, somewhere, will have the chance to see them smile.
And then it's back to work, although not for the narrator-filmmaker. In the midst of losing his uncle, father, cousins and 17 friends, Dr. Mahdi had yet another choice to make. A bomb-injured pregnant woman entered the E.R. He could save her or her baby, an impossible choice.
"That was just one incident that made me question whether I could continue in this job," Dr. Mahdi says in narration.
Last year, after filming "Baghdad Hospital," he moved to Indiana. He's studying journalism at Ball State with a Fulbright scholarship. Matters of life and death are now in other people's hands.
delfman@suntimes.com
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