It must have been the 15th or 16th of February 1989, when I came to school in the morning, as usual, and immediately noticed that we will not take our lessons that day. There were buses waiting outside the school and a couple of students were standing at the school entrance, telling everybody to drop their school backpacks in the classes and gather in the school yard.
It was obvious that we were going to march on a „spontaneous“ demonstration, as they were called by the media. Well, it was spontaneous, wasn’t it?
Soon, the girls of „Al-Qadissiya Middle School“ filled the school yard, as if it was Thursday morning when we used to gather for the weekly flag ceremony. The principal came out and turned on the microphone. The mic made an earsplitting sound, then she knocked on it twice to split our eardrums even more, and finally she started talking: „ahm, ahhhm, good morning girls! Today is an important day; we will have the honor to welcome three great personalities in Baghdad: the king of Jordan, the president of Egypt and the president of North Yemen. I’m sure you have heard about the upcoming event on TV. They are coming to Iraq to sign an agreement to establish the Arab Cooperation Council.“
She talked a lot about the advantages of this agreement and that it was going to be a historical moment and so on, but I didn’t really listen. It was eight in the morning, time for daydreaming in the first lesson, not standing in the fresh morning breeze to listen to political blah blah.
The really important information to us was when she said: „A lot of the students in Baghdad will celebrate this historical event by lining up on the road sides to welcome the arriving guests. The busses will take us now and we should be back to school at noon!“
Any event that kept us from studying was welcome. We didn’t really mind leaving school. We got into a bus and were taken to the main street that led from the airport to the city center.
The whole road was closed off for traffic. The teachers distributed paper flags of the four countries to us and we took our places on the sandy road bank behind the crash barriers. It was still cold in February but it wasn’t very bad since we stood in the sun. At first, we were chatting all the time and looking at the road, waiting excitedly to see the presidents and the king. But after two hours of waiting, we started to get bored, tired, thirsty and our feet started to ache. Then the rumors started going through the rows of students: „The plane of president Mubarak was delayed.“; „They’ve arrived and took another way.“; „We will stay here till late afternoon.“ and a lot more. I always wondered where such rumors came from. We had no mobile phones at that time, nor a Walkie-Talkie. Nothing could possibly bring this information from the airport to us. Was there someone standing somewhere, saying something and enjoying his words traveling through the masses? I never figured it out and I’m afraid this will stay an unsolved mystery for me.
Anyway, the real trouble was that most of us started to get very thirsty, so a teacher went to a house nearby, rang the bell and asked them for water. A woman came out with a bottle of water and a tray of cups. From almost every house of the neighborhood people came out offering us water, food and even asked if we needed to use the toilet or the phone. These gestures made waiting much easier.
I don’t know how long we waited till the motorcade appeared at last. It was led by many police motorcycles, followed by a lot of black Mercedes cars with the security staff, and in the middle, the car carrying president Saddam Hussein and one of the guests. I think the first was king Husain of Jordan. We waved, clapped and we sure called out some slogans that I don’t remember anymore. When that convoy passed, it was clear that only one guest was going to be escorted at a time, which meant more waiting and standing on the road side for us.
Time passed somehow and we waved for Mubarak, the president of Egypt and for Salih, the president of Northern Yemen. After the last guest arrived, the exhausted mass of students returned to the buses and the road was opened for traffic. When I came home I had blisters on my feet and I was starving.
The next day, pictures of that historical meeting of the three presidents and the king were all over the newspapers. The most popular picture was one on which the four of them are seen holding each other’s’ hands and raising them in the air; a photo, that soon became a symbol for the beginning of a new era of unity and peace in the Arab world. At that moment, no one would have thought, that except for king Husain of Jordan, who lived and died as a king, the rest of the members of the Cooperation Council would fall, one after the other in very unfortunate ways.
The light of hope that was lit in Baghdad on the 16th of February 1989 didn’t last for long. The work of the Arab Cooperation Council was put on ice after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and was never resumed again.