SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 GQ.COM.AU 257BACK TO BAGHDAD, CONT. FROM P232A short ride later, we’re thrust
inside a gaudy, endless array
of rooms – each impeccably
furnished with marble and
chandeliers. Al Muderis signals
that he’s been inside the palace
once before, a sort of child prop
for a ceremony held for Saddam
Hussein. In a large room off
a main corridor, the Iraqi-
Australian finally meets the man
who’s invited him back.
Stoic and gentle, Haider
al-Abadi probes with questions
on osseointegration. He queries
the safety of the procedure,
and marvels about the
remarkable way in which
bone fuses to titanium.
“Have you seen The
Terminator?” asks Al Muderis.
Al-Abadi looks lost.
“What about RoboCop, have
you seen RoboCop?”
“Yes, yes I have.”
“It’s just like that.”
The Prime Minister’s primary
focus seems firmly set on the
personal wellbeing of the injured.
“It’s very important for them
to feel like they’re back to
nor ma l aga i n.”
The embattled Prime
Minister’s eyes go warm and
bright when Al Muderis pulls
out a laptop and shows him a
short clip of a once wheelchair-
bound patient walking again.
“He’s an Iraqi, he trained
in Baghdad, and he’s willing to
help his fellow Iraqis,” the Prime
Minister later tells GQ. “Every
Iraqi is proud of him. He shows
that Iraqis are very resilient.”
Stepping back down the palace
footsteps, Al Muderis closes his
eyes and, for a moment, takes in
the heat. The surrounding
gardens are pristine and
manicured, the rendered walls
a warm, saturated beige. An
armoured SUV pulls up and
the moment is gone.On his final night in Baghdad,
Al Muderis is granted a rare
treat – a glimpse of Baghdad,
the real Baghdad, past the Green
Zone. Owing to the fact that
he was an invited guest of the
Prime Minister, his handlers
have erred on the side of
extreme caution at all times.
As such, this excursion in an
armoured SUV is accessorised
by a military motorcade – the
head of which is a Land Cruiser
packed with Ministry of
Defence officers, each
brandishing an M16 rifle.
Following a brief presentation
to a group of orthopaedists,
Al Muderis sits in a sprawling
restaurant set on the banks of
the Tigris River. The eateries
and bars that line the waterway
are where Baghdad comes to
socialise – dinners stretching
into the early hours of the
morning as locals take in the
cooler temperatures, a welcome
respite from the sun’s harsh heat.
As a child, Al Muderis used to
swim in the Tigris, taking
courage from his older, brasher
cousin. His childhood home sits
just up the river. From there,
he’d take strolls along the water
with his mother and father.
Appetites eventually sated,
the cavalcade folds back into the
Green Zone at a glacial pace –
security, naturally, is far slower
on the way back.
Before leaving Iraq, Al
Muderis delivers the opening
speech at TEDxBaghdad. To
the organisers’ surprise, he
insists on presenting in English,
telling the story of his journey
from Baghdad to Australia, and
back. “Things have changed in
this country. I’m very pleased to
see that this place is way better
than when I left it.”
He ends the speech with,
“God bless you all,” and it
doesn’t feel the slightest bit
disingenuous. If you looked
closely during the live
performance of the national
anthem that opened the event,
you could see tears crawling
down the doctor’s face.
At the conclusion of his talk,
Al Muderis is mobbed byadmiration and mobile phones.
A disorderly queue forms, and
20 minutes of fan photos quickly
pass. “This is crazy,” he says,
between selfies.
Al Muderis’ grin only ends on
being firmly told by a prime
ministerial delegate that he’s
a flight to catch.
At Baghdad International,
with the group out of earshot,
the delegate gently mentions
that, a night earlier, at the
precise moment we re-entered
the Green Zone, a car bomb
detonated a few suburbs over.
“It used to be one or two
attacks a day,” he says. “It’s much
better now, maybe only once
every week or two. It’s safe.”
As Al Muderis prepares to
depart, one final hurdle presents
itself – baggage allowance.
The vast stack of patient x-rays
weighs in at some 20kg – barely
fitting into his luggage. They
are the images he’ll need to
further assess the next steps for
each patient.
The same delegate snaps his
fingers, disappears momentarily,
and presents an appropriately
rugged solution. The images,
carefully collected, are now
double bagged in industrial-
strength garbage bags.
Everything in place, Al
Muderis is fed from the private
lounge, back into the armoured
Mercedes, bound for his flight.
“I’m still in shock,” he says as
the car crosses the runway.
Sure, in this moment, he still
feels decisively more Australian
than Iraqi. But the cultural
ledger has tipped a fraction
– like a compass eventually
creeping back to True North.
Some roots, maybe, are too
deep to pull.
On the tarmac, he clutches
the garbage bag full of x-rays
close to his chest. They’ll act
as a map – a raison d’être – back
to Baghdad, in a few months
time. Al Muderis then boards to
business class, and the Australian
departs, an Iraqi again. nneutralised by telling people
about the techniques that are
employed by politicians or
whoever it is.”
While inoculating people
against misinformation can be
useful, Prof Lewandowsky says
at least some responsibility lies
with the reader. Being aware of
dubious or misleading
information is the first step.
“Generally, people who are
sceptical and who look critically
at the evidence can do very well
in discerning what information
is true and what isn’t,” he says.
“Scepticism is a good thing. But
it’s important to point out that
scepticism doesn’t mean that you
just disbelieve everything – it
means looking at the evidence
and that you believe things
supported by evidence.”
Some have called this the
post-truth era, a world in which
discussions of issues are defined
not by facts, but by feelings.
British Conservative politician
and Brexit campaigner, Michael
Gove, said last year that people
“have had enough of experts”.
This new ecosystem, former
President Barack Obama told
the New Yorker, “means
everything is true and nothing is
t r ue”.
But evidence does matter.
Expertise matters. Facts matter.
Ultimately, the responsibility for
being well informed rests not
with companies but individuals,
to question information and seek
out sources that confront, rather
than confirm, our existing
points of view. If there is some
comfort to be taken from the
research of people like Professor
Lewandowsky, perhaps it’s that
the most important lesson in the
fight against fake news is also
the simplest – don’t believe
everything you read. n