Baghdad

The 15-hour, overnight bus ride from Amman to Baghdad was silent except for the odd horn from a passing oil tanker and cling of the good-luck bells hanging from our driver’s rearview mirror. For 350 km to the border none of the 15 or so passengers, from an Iraqi expat living in the States to a mother and two children, say a word. We all just stare through the smashed windshield down the four lane empty freeway, or out the sides and the endless desert, waiting for the sun to set and push some cool air through the open front door.
For the first hour or so I’m constantly trying to guess who the suicide bomber on my bus is, which bag the bomb is in, and working out strategies for escape from the bus if something should go wrong. But this grows tiresome after a while, and soon you fear nothing, and only feel a little on edge. I just wish a checkpoint would check our bags, but we are never searched, even at the border. In sha allah (phonetically spelt): God willing.
The highway has check points every 50 km, where a Jordanian police officer would breifly look at our passports: that’s it. It prooved the usual one hour or so with customs and a $10 exit tax at the border. Waling up to the Iraqi customs office I pass four US soldiers sitting on the steps with machine guns. They barely notice me. They aren’t older than 20 and look less than totally relaxed. But other than a tank and a humvee, this is the only US presence I see, and with about 50 other people from buses or taxis, I have my free entry stamp within 30 minutes, no questions asked. It was harder to get into Syria or Turkey than Iraq, of all places.
By 8am we covered the 550km of 6-lane nothingness into Baghdad: no check points, no US soldiers, sparse traffic, maybe one or two hulks of a burnt out Iraqi tank, and people selling black-market gasoline on the side of the road from 2 litre coke bottles and jerry cans. The only reason you would buy from them is becuase the petrol stations close after 5pm. Gas in Syria and Jordan had a comparative price to Canada. In Iraq, the gas may be low quality, but its less than 5 cents a litre.
My bus unloads just outside city center, on the south-side of the Tigris River, and a kind man I befriended directs me into a waiting taxi which will take me near my hotel, which costs $7.50 US a night, has hot water, but intermittent electricity, as the US rotates rolling black-outs across the city: three hours on, three off.
Spend the morning walking the streets, which feel like any other ME city I’ve been to: dirty, broken buildings and sidewalks, tons of cars and horns. Blocks and blocks of shops and street markets, the air polluted from thousands of desiel generators spewing black smoke to power refridgerators during the blackouts. Satelite dishes are the big sellers flooding the markets right now, as they were restricted during Saddam’s regime. And unlike before, where Saddam’s face was a mandatory presence on all buildings and shops, the only place you’ll see Saddam’s face now is on the Iraqi Dinar. The largest bill is 250 ID, which at one time equalled about $750 US, but is worth only 12 cents now and will buy you a falafel. Thus, my pocket, like everyone’s, is bulging with a wad of bills 2 cm thick, maybe 20 dollars worth. Currency is exchanged on the street by weighing giant stacks of bills rather than counting them. This is changing starting yesterday, however, as the new Dinar is phased in, sans Saddam’s face.
It’s hard to tell which buildings were destroyed by US bombs, which ones were destroyed during the first Gulf War, and which ones simply looked that way before both wars due to civil neglect. Some are obvious, however, and during a two hour tour of the city with a hired taxi driver, I can see the remnents of the Ministry of Planning building, Saddam’s son’s building, Sadam’s palace, and the central post office next to my hotel.
Some areas, like the airport, the palace, and the Sheraton and Palestine hotels, are completley cordoned off with giant rows of two meter-high concrete walls, piles of razor wire, a couple tanks, US soldiers and plain clothesed IP (Iraqi Police), who are contracted out by the US for added protection. Other areas of the city, such as around the gold mosque, are void of a US presence, and my guide tells me this area is controlled by the Shiite Muslims and is actually the safest place in Baghdad. Throughout the day, however, the odd three-vehicle humvee patrol will plow through the traffic, and a fairly constant chop of the US helicopters are heard overhead.
The Gold Mosque is teaming with worshipers, and you can pick out the recent flood of Muslims from Iran by their green sashes, who under Saddam were not allowed to enter country. While there, chatting to a female journalst from the Washington Post doing a feature for the Smithsonian and dressed like an Iranian women in a black burqa, a low and hollow boom, like a giant canvas drum being struck then immediatley muffled, is heard and felt, maybe 20 blocks away. People briefly turn their heads to look at the pigeons surrounding the mosque’s outdoor court scatter, then carry on their business. My guide, Khaild, a middle-aged man with 6 sons who used to work for a German power company before they pulled out of Iraq after the 1990s embargos were set in place, says these bombing attacks are common, about 4 or 5 a day. I hear two more bombs go off in the distance later that day. On the evening news that night I learn the first boom I heard was a suicide bomb attack at the Turkish embassy, most likely over the fact that Turkey wishes to send troops to “assist” in Kurdish-occupied Norhtern Iraq.
Back at my visit to the Sheraton, I am frisked and my bag is searched as I line up to enter the hotel area, along with dozens of journalists who come and go from the hotel as they please. Again, most of the soldiers I talked to were 20 years old and were on their first tour of duty. Most really had no idea what they were guarding or why, while the ones who maybe did wouldn’t say. It was really just a very hot and dull job for them, though there is an edge of unease, as people are blown up on a daily basis, such as three days ago when a suicide bomber got behind some barricades at a hotel thought to be frequented by the CIA. As I walked past the spot, ten blocks from my hotel, I have to walk 10 meters around the site, now gaurded heavliy. I stop briefly to look at the small, black scarring on the pavement where the car actually went boom, and immediatley four men with machine guns point to me and yell in Arabic. No stopping here. I cross to the other side of the street, through the mad traffic, to where shop windows opposite the explosion where shattered and bulldozers scoop up rubble.
Firdos Square, opposite the Sheraton, is where Saddam’s statue was torn down in a media frenzy, and a new, dark green modern statue of some sort sits atop a collumn in Saddam’s place. A few workers tend to mending the gardens and tile work of the deserted circle.
At night, I am advised to stay indoors, as gun fights, especially in my area, are common, and the IP, which I am told not to trust, have weak and ineffective patrols. Unlike Syria and Jordan, where I never had to fear thieves or violence, Baghdad at night is a fairly lawless place, when even the US soldiers don’t patrol.
The next morning feels fine. I’m not thinking about suicide bombers or escape strategies. I think, in this atmosphere, your fear is relative. It doesn’t take bravery or recklessness to come here. Everyone goes about their daily business. There are millions of people in Baghdad, the city covers a huge area. The chances of being hit are slim. I don’t feel afraid at all; just, like everyone else I think under the surface, maybe a little on edge. I laugh at how silly it was to worry about coming here. None the less, I’m leaving today.
I hadn’t planned on coming here at all, and I have to be in Cairo in a few days. Rather than bus back, which I hear could take 24 hours, I pay $20 US for a GMC, the common, white, huge, suburban trucks that act as taxis leaving for Amman when they fill up with 8 people. Like before, the Iraq border takes 20 minutes to cross, but the Jordan border is backed up literally for miles. Oil tankers stretch down the highway as far as I can see, while a seperate three lanes, filled with GMCs and the usual orange and white Iraq taxis, is about 600 cars full and moving at a rate of about one car every five minutes. My fellow passengers, who I’ve befriended but speak very little English with, eventually communicate to me that they want me to tell the border guards that I am late for a flight in Amman, and could they please let us come to the front of the line. I didn’t want to abuse Arab hospitality, but the GMC guys figured we’d save four or five hours. So being a foreigner, there was a good chance the scheme would work. And it does, to an extent, and after much harrangling and angry stares from other people leaving Iraq, we only have to spend 4 hours at the border, and I arrive in Amman at 2am to wake up my hotel manager, where I left my bags three days ago.