Out of Iraq

I flew out of Baghdad this afternoon and landed in Amman a couple of hours ago. I'm excited to spend a couple of days here going to Petra and the Dead Sea, getting a massage at the luxurious Four Seasons and doing a bit of shopping.

That said, I'm really sad about leaving Baghdad. Our crazy frat house had become my home, and the guys had become my brothers. And as war-torn as the city itself may be, I feel like it's my war-torn city. Saying goodbye was really hard -- everybody came outside to wave me off, and I wanted to cry. J, my American coworker, is one of my favorite people in the world, and I hate that I won't get to see him every day anymore. I think it's going to be very strange to go back to living alone.

Fortunately, A is in Amman at the moment as well, so I don't have to totally divorce myself from Baghdad quite yet. We're going out on the town tonight and to Petra tomorrow, so hopefully it'll take my mind off of being sad.

The quest for alcohol

We're throwing a party tonight because I'm leaving tomorrow, which led to a hilarious quest to buy beverages. It was sort of a ridiculous proposition in the first place -- buying alcohol in an Islamic country, on a Friday, during Ramadan. Poor planning led to the Friday part of that equation; the rest was fairly unavoidable.

There are a few remaining liquor stores in Baghdad, and a few of our guys -- a Christian and a couple of lapsed Muslims -- know exactly where to find them. We asked G, the Christian, to go to the liquor store where he usually buys Amstel and Corona, but it's closed for the entirety of Ramadan (which raises a question about how its proprietor supports himself, no?). We knew the location of two other stores, but they were closed too. At this point, we began to panic a little bit, because we had invited 25 people over and we figured they would be expecting alcohol. Somebody told us that there was a liquor store near the PX in the Green Zone, but we soon learned it had been shut down because soldiers were buying alcohol, which they're not allowed to drink.

And then a British security consultant next door told us about the "tactical shop," which reportedly sold beer out of a sketchy little trailer in a remote part of the Green Zone (U.S. officials call it the International Zone, or IZ). We got step-by-step directions and set out. Getting there requires a complicated series of turns at intersections marked only by small yellow signs proclaiming "tactical shop." We drove off a paved road, essentially into a dump, and saw a series of battered trailers. Sure enough, one of them had two signs: "Tactical Shop" in yellow and "IZ Liquor Store" in green. The trailer couldn't have been more than eight feet wide, and the passageway was even narrower than that because of the cases of beer stacked high on both sides. We got two cases of Corona, one case of Amstel, four bottles of wine and a bottle of Absolut (for mixing with pomegranate juice).

The party is on.

Chaos

So I've been terrible at posting this week. I apologize. It's my last week in town, and life is basically chaos. I'm trying to finish two different long-term assignments while following major developments this week. Our two best staff members quit this afternoon, a decision that may not stick but is not good for the office.

And then there's Blackwater. I just wrote that "Sunday's shooting has inflamed deep-seated frustrations with Blackwater among Iraqis, many of whom view the company’s contractors as highly paid bullies who fail to respect citizens or customs of the country where they work." This is probably an understatement. Iraqis hate Blackwater contractors, and it's hard to blame them. These guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (I think the average salary for a contractor in Iraq runs about half a million) to drive around like bad-asses in their SUVs with M-16s poking out from the sunroof. They are arrogant, disrespectful of Iraqis and somewhat thuggish. I hate to generalize about an entire 1,000-person operation, but I have never had a good experience with Blackwater. Essentially, Iraqis see Blackwater as epitomizing everything terrible about Americans.

It will be interesting to see whether the revocation of the company's license sticks and if the Blackwater guys are forced out of the country. It would be a huge turnaround, considering the prestige their contractors have carried for the last four years. Whatever happens, my American colleague had a point yesterday when he said "Damn, it's nice to see the Iraqi government sticking up for it's people."

Shopping, redux

I got to go shopping with two of my coworkers yesterday, which was a rare chance at true freedom -- no work, just looking for pretty things to bring home. S wanted to buy a painting for his mother's house in Baghdad, A wanted art to decorate his family's new home in Amman, and I went along for the ride.

With the exception of the bodyguard lurking outside, it felt fairly normal. We walked around a series of adjacent galleries, compared our favorite paintings, chatted with the owner and generally had a good time. I bought an absolutely amazing painting -- it's hard to describe, but it's an abstract painting of a couple of "Baghdadi doors," a minaret of a mosque, etc. It's royal blue with other bright colors (lots of gold) and some raised texturing. It's going in my bedroom when I get back.

The gallery owner was clearly pretty desperate to make a sale -- when my coworker asked about the price of the painting I was looking at, he said "Oh, whatever you think." We eventually settled on $20 American for something that was similar to pieces that people were charging $150 for in American military compounds. These guys can't make a single sale most days, so having three people walk in with money to spend was pretty exciting. All told, we gave him the equivalent about $100 American (for five paintings, one of them framed), and he couldn't stop thanking us.

The roof

I have a confession to make that will disappoint most of my good friends. When I moved into our house, directly next door to a 12-story hotel, it didn't occur to me to go up to the roof of said hotel. Even when I began spending most of my leisure time in the hotel, I never went higher than the third floor. I'm a failure.

That said, I finally made it up yesterday. Oh my lord, it's amazing. I'm disappointed in myself for not seeing it before now. You can actually see the entire city from up there. The Tigris glimmers on three sides and the golden minarets of mosques tower in every corner of the city. I lost my breath for a moment marveling at the beauty of Baghdad, and spotting the carcass of a bombed car a few blocks away didn't totally ruin the feeling. My head felt clearer during my 15 minutes on the roof than it has since I've been here.

A couple hours after I discovered the roof, J and I were driving by the river. J glanced at the sun setting over the Tigris and sighed. "Sometimes I love this city," he said. I couldn't agree more. Everybody warned me that Baghdad would get under my skin, that I would love it so much that I would never want to go back. I won't go quite that far; I'm pretty excited to see the Bay Area and New York and all my favorite people. But Baghdad has become part of me, and I couldn't be happier about that. I may have to find a way to get back here at some point.

Tomorrow I will take pictures from the roof, I promise.

Iftar

It becomes a bit difficult to think through complex assignments at about 6 p.m. after a full day of fasting, so the break-fast at about 7:15 p.m. is eagerly anticipated at our office. For the past two days, every single person in the house has gathered for Iftar together as soon as the sun sets -- the first time since I've been here that we've all eaten together. We all gather around a television where the government-controlled station counts down to official sundown, an occasion marked by a clip art depiction of a firing cannon. Then all 20 (or so) of us gather around the dining room table, where food is abundant.

Perhaps it's just nostalgia now that I'm in my final week in Iraq, but Iftar has been really meaningful for me. After 10 weeks of working and living with these people in very close quarters, I do feel like they are family, so it's been pretty great to celebrate the holiday with them. Our Iftar parties have been similar to an American Thanksgiving -- a somewhat dysfunctional family, all crowded around a big table, laughing and stuffing ourselves. It makes me glad I'm fasting so I can be a part of it all.

Ramadan

Ramadan begins today. Living in an Islamic country during holy days is fascinating. Restaurants close altogether, since there's nobody to buy food during the day -- everyone fasts. Among my coworkers are a large number of people who don't practice Islam (no prayers, no visits to the mosque, in several cases no belief whatsoever), but they all celebrate Ramadan. Celebrating only high holy days is obviously not limited to Muslims, but when it's such a huge commitment -- no food or drink during the day for an entire month! -- it seems particularly striking.

Because everyone at home is fasting, I am too. We'll eat two meals a day: a break-fast/dinner at 8 or so, then something light before we all fall into bed at 2:30 (or 3, or 4...). I don't really eat during the morning anyway, and if I'm running back and forth to different meetings I occasionally miss lunch, so I don't think this will be a huge problem. And no, it's not the first step to my conversion.

There is one definite problem, however. I'm leaving tomorrow night to go on a trip with the military for three days. Since I'm only fasting because everyone else is fasting, presumably I wouldn't do it around soldiers (it would be a bit awkward to say in the dining hall that I'm not Muslim but I am fasting for Ramadan). Additionally, soldiers work incredibly hard in still-brutal heat, so I think maybe I should not pass up opportunities for fuel -- and the idea of working outside all day without water sounds unappealing. On the other hand, plenty of Iraqis do the same thing...

So much testosterone

On an average night, there are three women (one of whom speaks no Arabic, one of whom speaks no English) and roughly 13 men sleeping at our house. This automatically connotes a frat house environment, a stereotype that our particular men seem to embrace. Last night we started coming up with the list of "You know you live in an Iraqi frat house when..."

10. Despite having a cook who prepares full meals, the majority of the population ate meatballs for dinner last night. Meatballs and beer.
9. You fall asleep most nights at 4 a.m. to the sound of pool balls crashing together.
8. American movies worth watching are sorted into two categories: lots of violence or slapstick humor. Major bonus points for attractive women in either category.
7. Our 400 news channels from all over the world are ranked by how attractive the young female newscasters are. Al-Arabiya currently maintains a significant lead.
6. Serious discussions ensue fairly regularly about the possibility of inviting Moqtada al-Sadr to play pool.
5. You can't convince a soul that french fries are not a vegetable.
4. People regularly wonder aloud when they last showered.
3. The general consensus determines that it's acceptable for Iraqi women to wear hijab, but never Lebanese women because they're so much hotter.
2. Running upstairs for two minutes to wash your hands before taking a cookie from a platter of about 100 of them means no cookie for you.
1. At least three people are crowded around the Playstation in their boxers at all hours between 9 a.m. and 4 a.m.

D-day

As I type, we're crowded around the bank of TVs in our office watching the start of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker's presentation to the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. Although I don't think anyone is expecting huge surprises out of this testimony, this is a big deal for us -- all of our work has revolved around this day for at least six weeks. It's hard to describe how I feel watching this: I'm bizarrely nervous, as if this is a referendum on our work, not just the military's. In some ways it is -- Ike Skelton just cited something I wrote this morning (no mention of my name), and a lot of our work is likely to come up in discussion. Political developments over the next several days or weeks could also determine the course of my company's work in the long term.

I also am nervous that there will be too much political infighting and not enough discussion about how the continued U.S. military presence is affecting Iraqi civilians. A poll in The Washington Post this morning showed that most Iraqis think security has gotten worse since the troop "surge" -- not a single person in Anbar province and Baghdad, where the majority of additional troops are based, said they feel very safe. And, of course, things are much worse where there are fewer troops. Combine that with the fact that many Iraqis don't have jobs, water, electricity, schools, etc. and you get a pretty bleak situation. Although I believe Gen. Petraeus is a brilliant guy, he's looking at this from a military perspective, which only touches the tip of the iceberg.

More later...

Finals week

Students at Baghdad University are taking end-of-term exams this week, which brings a whole host of problems unique to students in war zones. Many of them haven't been to class in weeks, so they are essentially taking exams based on independent study. Yesterday my colleague's 23-year-old daughter, S, came to our office, and I talked to her a bit about her experience in school.

S's father (my coworker) moved his whole family -- S, her mom, and her brother and two sisters -- to Jordan last year because he feared for their safety in Baghdad (he stayed behind because he earns a good salary here). They became illegal residents in Amman, doing everything they could to get their residency permits but essentially running from the law. Making it worse for S, who was a second-year college student at the time, she couldn't attend a university in Jordan because she was not a citizen (additionally, Jordanian universities refuse to accept Iraqi college credits, meaning she would have had to start over). She and her family decided that she would study on her own in Jordan and fly back to Baghdad for exams.

S said that it's incredibly isolating to attempt to replicate a college experience on her own. She doesn't know anyone in Amman and rarely goes out, studying all day in the room she shares with her sister and helping her mother around the house. As exam time came near this summer, she wasn't even sure that her hard work would pay off -- she still hadn't gotten a residency permit in Jordan, and if she traveled back to Baghdad she might not be able to reenter Amman. With just a week to go before the exams began, she finally got a permit. She flew back to Baghdad, worrying her father terribly, and is sitting for exams this weekend. Then she'll go back to Amman, continue her studies on her own, and make plans to come back at the end of the next term.

S was nearly crying as she told me what her college experience used to be: sitting with friends at coffee shops helping each other review for tests, staying out too late, developing crushes on classmates. Now she steps on campus for exams only, then beelines back to Jordan. Many of her classmates' families cannot afford to move them out of the country, so they still have a community here, and S is crazy with jealousy. She's begged her father to allow her to move back to Baghdad, but he says absolutely not. As much as he loves having S here, my coworker is counting down the hours until she is safely out of Iraq again. We're at 48 and counting...

Best picture ever

For some reason, the Americans in our compound were really, really fascinated by the Larry Craig scandal. I guess it just struck us as so delightfully trivial that we couldn't resist. We read all the coverage, gossiped about the details, etc. The photo below depicts a particularly wonderful moment in which a conversation about Iraqi politics stopped dead when someone heard a CNN anchor announce the start of the audio tape of Craig's interview with the police. These brilliant, talented people leaped off the couch and crowded around the TV to hear every word. None of us could stop laughing for a good 10 minutes. Fortunately, someone had a camera, and you can even make out Craig's face on the TV (and yet, you can't recognize any of these people unless you know them personally).

Time marches on

I don't think I was under any delusion that life in the U.S. would stop altogether while I was gone. I accepted early on that people would keep going to work, eating and sleeping and ::sigh:: even having fun without me. But I don't remember giving people permission to keep having all these life events while I'm thousands of miles away. And yet, my small circle of loved ones seems to be having a tremendously eventful summer. In the past few weeks:

• A friend got engaged
• A family friend got married
• OFH started his senior year of college
• So did my baby sister -- yikes!
• A close friend moved to DC
• A friend left my company and moved back to NYC
• Another moved to a new apartment in NYC
• At least three friends got their first grown-up jobs
  
• One good friend had a painful breakup
• A friend was officially cured of cancer, six years after I sat in her hospital room
  
• THREE favorite people, including the best friend who was already too far away, moved from NYC to Boston so two of them can get Ph.Ds or some ridiculous thing
• I lost one intolerable coworker from my very small office and gained a wonderful one
  
• One good friend moved to NYC to start law school

Maybe that's the normal rate of life, but it sure feels like the world is on fast-forward back there, and it makes me feel left out! Gchat and phone calls are wonderful, but I would give anything to have been there for any one of these events or these people. Last night one of the new Boston residents was describing a hilarious scene involving four of them hauling stuff into a fourth-floor walkup because the movers weren't going to get it all done, and it actually made my heart ache. I've got all these people describing their new lives -- new homes, jobs, relationship statuses, etc. -- and I just want to be there to lug boxes or hang pictures or buy beers. I want to feel like I'm being a good friend to people who should have good friends around, and it's hard to do that from here. I'm having flashbacks to freshman year, when I had a huge fear of being left out by my older, cooler friends.

So I have a request: can you all start having more boring lives for a couple of weeks? I'll be back soon, and hopefully you'll all be willing to help me play catch-up in person. But honestly: no more moves, no more weddings/engagement/breakups, no more new anything. Just for three weeks, okay?

Love,
Briony

Dress to impress

The more time I spend with other western women here, the more I realize how much the question of what to wear starts to dominate our lives. At home, unless I'm going to work I basically exist in jeans and t-shirts. I am not the fussiest person about clothes, to put it mildly, so in Iraq I'm forced to put WAY more thought into these choices than I'm used to.

As I've explained here before, my goal in moving around Baghdad is to blend in as a normal Iraqi woman. This means wearing a hijab and either an abaya or Iraqi-looking shirt. I own two shirts that I bought here, neither of which I would wear in the U.S. (suffice it to say they both have a significant number of sequins). So, when I'm going to an interview in Baghdad, I generally wear one of the shirts with jeans and sequined flip-flops -- there are a lot of sequins in my life. If we're going to a conservative neighborhood where an insurgent group dominates, I wear the full abaya, but I try to avoid that if at all possible.

Of course, I have an entirely different costume for trip out with the military. Besides the flak jacket and helmet, I'm also required to wear a long-sleeved shirt on the helicopters, and wearing a trendy Iraqi shirt would just be weird. I generally opt for a button-down collared shirt and khakis, plus hiking boots (which have saved me from spraining an ankle several times already).
The problem occurs when I have a need for both sets of clothing -- whenever I need to travel through Baghdad to meet the military (i.e. every time I go out with them). Often, I can get away with my button-down shirt and a hijab for the short drive to the military pick-up point, but today that wasn't the case. I went to lunch at Camp Victory, a military base at the airport -- a lengthy drive from the office, on the most dangerous road in the city. The REI shirt wasn't going to cut it.

The solution was slightly complicated, but it worked. Abaya and hijab to the airport (where I was attending a lunch meeting with Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the three-star general that is second in command to Gen. Petraeus), stash both in the car in exchange for body armor and helmet for the short helicopter ride to Odierno's home. On the way out, throw the body armor and helmet in the trunk, abaya and hijab back on. As I was adjusting my hijab for the drive home, I realized how crazy this all was, and yet how accustomed to it I've become. Tomorrow I have no appointments, and I'm going to be perfectly happy to sit home in my jeans and t-shirt.

Shopping

After eight weeks in Baghdad, I finally was able to wheedle our security guys enough to convince them to let me go out on a food shopping trip for the house. We basically have one man whose entire job is to shop for everyone's food, and he stays busy -- it's a huge job. At any given point, there are between 12 and 20 people here, so shopping is done on a large scale. I had been wanting to go for a while now, but it took a while to convince M, our security chief.

I expected to come back today and write a post about how inspiring it was to see the bustle of the market; life going on even as a war is going on, blah blah blah. But honestly, the whole trip was a little depressing. The market, which was in the neighborhood once considered the single safest area in Baghdad, was relatively empty, with just a handful of people picking out vegetables and a few shop-keepers trying to get rid of some merchandise. But it was the look in people's eyes that really got me -- everyone was moving very quickly, glancing around nervously, looking for signs of trouble. I can't blame them, as this neighborhood has been bombed eight times in the past six weeks. I wasn't allowed to speak English, so I walked silently next to our house shopper, dressed in an abaya and hijab. Even so, I felt people's eyes boring into me, like they knew that I was an intruder. I'm sure it was my imagination -- DH told me as much -- but I was uneasy the whole time.

Also, as someone still longing for the produce at Monterey Market in Berkeley, I found the selection in Baghdad even worse than in D.C. (which is saying something...). I see why we don't get served a lot of vegetables -- the choices were basically limited to tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and potatoes (not a vegetable). There were some bruised apples and sickly oranges, but that was the extent of it. I cannot even articulate how happy I will be to spend four days eating in California.

The haircut story

In one of the worst decisions I've ever made, I decided to get my hair cut yesterday. Without a translator around. I was desperate for a trim, and this lady who runs a salon downtown was in our living room with all her supplies.

I held my fingers slightly apart to indicate I wanted about an inch taken off. She nodded, repeated "beautiful hair" a few times in English, and took up her scissors. With one cut, I lost seven inches of hair from the left side of my head. At that point, I couldn't do a thing about it -- I had to let her keep cutting, as I watched in horror in my bedroom mirror.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but after the whole experience was over I ran out of the room and began to cry. This may sound totally silly, but I felt completely violated. I liked my hair. I know I gripe about how much I shed and how insanely thick my mane is, but I really liked it. And she took that away. I instantly experienced this profound sense of loss that I still haven't shaken. This happened less than a week after our compound got stormed and my car got shot at, and though that day prompted an anxious day, I never cried -- and a phone conversation with a very wise friend calmed me down. I've now talked to two other close friends about the hair debacle, and despite their best efforts neither of them made much progress trying to convince me that this was not a life-threatening crisis.

My hair is now about shoulder length at its longest point, with incredibly dramatic layers going up to nose-length bangs. Bangs. I haven't had bangs since third grade. The layers make my stick-straight hair look bizarrely curly, but only on the ends, and it does this weird Farrah Fawcett feathering thing. There are people who have this haircut, even people who look good in it, but I'm not one of them. Half of it is too short to be pulled up, and these stupid bangs fall in my eyes. I hate it.

I am pleased to say I managed to look in a mirror a few minutes ago without feeling like I was going to cry all over again. I really, truly hate this haircut, but it's not wild and crazy or even poorly executed -- it's just not me. There are many women who have this haircut, so it's not like I'll look like a freak walking down a city street. Most of my male friends probably wouldn't notice it.

Apparently the normal growth rate for hair (about half an inch a month) can be sped up slightly by limiting its exposure to chlorine and other chemicals and eating a protein-rich diet. I've resolved not to set foot in the pool again while I'm here and force down as much mystery meat as possible.

Sleep

I've been thinking recently about the war's effect on the simplest parts of life. Outdoor markets are frequent targets of car bombs, so shopping is very difficult. As I mentioned earlier, walking through the street -- a luxury that most people take for granted -- is dangerous, especially for a woman alone. But the biggest effect of the war on people's daily life might be the problems sleeping.

There are a few problems with sleeping in Baghdad. The first, and most common, is that it's often too hot to sleep at all without electricity. Even at night, the temperature in the summer hovers at or above 100 degrees. Making it worse, Baghdad residents are only getting about an hour of city-provided electricity a day, and for the vast majority of people who cannot afford to run generators (even an average-sized generator can only run for a few hours a day -- our house has three massive ones), the heat is unbearable at night.

Consequently, people flock to their roofs, hoping for some slightly cooler open air for long enough to get a few hours of sleep. But sleeping on the roof is a scary thing -- especially in some of the more dangerous neighborhoods, mortar rounds fly through the air regularly. Sleep can be difficult because of a more general fear of violence as well. Most Baghdad residents
have adapted to living with some degree of fear -- if you can't delude yourself that your bedroom is safe, you've got nothing left. But with helicopters flying low and loud every night and fairly regular sounds of gunshots and explosions in the distance, sleep doesn't always come easily.

This morning I mentioned in the newsroom that I was staring at my ceiling at about 4:30 in the morning, unable to sleep. "Me too," my American colleague said. "Me too," A added. "And me," D said. We realized that all four of us had been lying in adjacent rooms, wide awake in the pre-dawn hours. There was a pause, then all four of us laughed, slightly uneasily.

Stress

I officially committed to staying in Baghdad until Sept. 23 last night, which will bring my total time in country to 11 weeks (instead of the eight I initially committed to). If this decision had come just two hours earlier, I might have been mostly excited about it. As it was, this came an hour after gunmen had attacked the guards that man the entrance to our compound, so I wasn't feeling too thrilled about the whole Iraq concept.

Tensions have been running high around here since the incident last night. For a few of us, the stress was compounded by another scary incident this morning. On our way to a meeting at the Green Zone, we attempted to drive down the road that hundreds of Shiite pilgrims were using to return for an aborted religious festival in the southern city of Karbala. People were packed into buses and trucks, with many riding on the roofs of each vehicle because there was not enough room inside. There were lots of guns as well. At one point, somebody shot twice directly at our car. It would have been tough for them to figure out I was an American, since I was dressed like an Iraqi, so it was probably because they assumed our armored car was carrying a VIP. An AK-47 bullet won't go through armor, so we were never in any real danger, but combined with last night's violence it was too close for comfort.

By the time we made it past all the pilgrims, we heard that the road we needed to take was closed, so we turned around to head back. By then, they had also closed the road leading back to the office, so we were stuck in the middle of a scene that seems to have all the necessary characteristics to prompt a riot. We were contemplating leaving the cars and walking back to the office, but one of our drivers managed to bribe a soldier to let us through a barricade. Traffic jams are so, so scary in Baghdad because they are the perfect setting in which to set off a car bomb. We made it back to the office just fine, but the sequence of events has made me a bit uneasy.

Questioning my cynicism

Some small part of me has always thought about doing something to make the world better instead of just writing about the people who do. A friend that I deeply admire is starting law school this week after teaching in an innovative school for low-income boys for a year and then working as a paralegal for a homeless services organization for another year. Unlike many of the people who are going to his top-five law school, he isn't interested in the whopping $200,000 many first-year associates are now earning -- he wants to continue work for disadvantaged people and/or to teach. Being in Iraq, where literally everybody is suffering, makes me feel somewhat guilty that I'm not also making the world better, whether in New York or in Baghdad.

I know that storytellers have an important role in the world too, but to some extent it's that of a middleman -- get the information to the people who will actually do something about it. Supervisors have praised me for my critical eye toward happenings both in DC and Iraq, but there's a fine line between criticism and cynicism -- a line I find myself crossing fairly regularly. It sometimes scares me that I'm jaded at 23, that my mind ascribes political or self-aggrandizing motives to anyone who claims to be making progress in Iraq.

It's probably healthy that there's still part of me that wants to run away and join the Peace Corps or something, but I find it difficult to balance the two sides of my personality. I realize that dedicating my life to community service wouldn't put me in a position to solve the big problems of the world, but very often I feel powerless to fix even the small stuff. In the last three days, two close friends -- one in Iraq and one at home -- have, in different ways, lost people close to them, and it drives me crazy that I can't do anything about it. I realize that joining the Peace Corps wouldn't put me in a position to fix my friends' broken hearts, but wouldn't doing something for someone be a step in the right direction?

Okay, okay

So there are people reading. This is good to know. I got comments from everyone from my favorite NYC blogger (who should take her own sentiment to heart and post more often) to my high school physics teacher (who would like you to know that Berkeley High is amazing). And my mother, of course. I will keep posting on whatever happens in life, and at times when that's nothing I'll rail against bad media coverage and stupid politicians. Capiche?

I talked to a man this morning who has just sold his house in Baghdad. He moved to Syria when he started getting threatening letters at his home here, but it took him two years to sell the house. Even then, he sold it for less than one-third of its estimated value. In fact, he sold the nine-room home for just enough money to be able to afford the monthly rent on a two-room apartment in Damascus (his menial salary as a salesman pays for other life expenses). He is a Sunni whose neighborhood in Baghdad was taken over by the Mahdi Army, the major Shiite group. Fortunately for him, his Shiite next-door neighbor helped him sell the house and wired the money to him in Syria.

The man started crying when talking about his home, which his parents built a few years before he was born. He compared the feeling to losing a child -- not because he is materialistic (he clearly isn't), but because a lifetime's worth of memories were made there. He had planned to raise his children there, then pass the house to his oldest son, just as his father did. When I asked him to describe the house physically, he couldn't do it. He started to mention the backyard with the swing set and the bedroom with the secret crawl space, but he stopped and said he couldn't keep talking about it. He was in tears.

The people who have moved out of Baghdad have lost nearly everything -- family members and friends, their sense of security and freedom and the city they love. For this man, his home was the physical reminder of how much the last four years have taken. I nearly cried too.

Gun lessons

M, our security chief, informs me that every young woman needs to know how to use a gun. The perplexing part of this is that he realizes I will never own a gun, but just in case... just in case what? Just in case I find one on the street just as I'm being attacked? Just in case my nonexistent martial arts skills are enough to grab my attacker's weapon? It's unclear. But I figured it never hurts to learn, and now I'll be able to tell people I learned how to use a gun from a hard-core retured Iraqi Army captain. For some reason M is convinced that a 9 mm is more practical than an AK (in Iraq, it sure doesn't seem like it!)

Lesson one was all about safety (a good place to start). I practiced taking the magazine out, checking the chamber and aiming. It's not the sexiest stuff, but M promises he'll take me to a range at some point. Right now I'm mostly just aiming an unloaded gun at the clock in his office.

I've got some cousins back in Kentucky who would be pretty proud of me. I have a very distinct memory of sitting in a much-older cousin's truck a few years ago and being horrified when he pulled his handgun out of his waistband to rest it in the cupholder. Turns out Kentucky has slightly less restrictive rules than, say, Berkeley.

Tired

I don't have a good idea of something to blog about. I want to blog every day because I think some people read it, but recently there have been no comments, so maybe we're down to just my mother at this point. Can you folks tell me what you'd like to read here? Which posts are particularly interesting? What I haven't posted about that you keep wanting me to? Reassure me that I'm not talking to a brick wall here.

Love,
Briony

Al-Qaeda in Iraq: a true story

One of my co-workers, M, used to be a captain in the Iraqi Army. He had enlisted as a young man, gone to officers' school, received highly specialized training and served loyally for more than 20 years (well, he tried to run away once -- he made it as far as Fort Bragg, N.C. -- but that's tangential to this particular story). He was commanding several hundred guys when the Americans invaded in 2003. M was thrilled -- he hated Saddam, as did most of the officers he worked with.

Then Paul Bremer announced the entire Iraqi Army was being disbanded for fears they would be loyal to Saddam. Two million soldiers and officers, most of whom were eager to fight against any Baath party loyalists and patrol the borders, suddenly found themselves out of a job. There was no chance to audition to get their jobs back; if they had served under Saddam, they could never serve again.

Since then, M has received several offers from al-Qaeda in Iraq (which may or may not be connected to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, depending on who you listen to) to help train their fighters. Most recently, an old Army buddy proposed that he devote two hours a day to train insurgents how to fire mortars and RPGs in exchange for $500 a day. That's more than $180,000 a year. AQI has nearly unlimited financial resources, they know where to find the best people and they're willing to do what it takes to get those people on board. M said no; he had a good job already, and though it doesn't pay nearly that well he is making enough to feed his family. But dozens, maybe hundreds, of the guys he worked with in the Army took AQI up on the offer. Good jobs are very difficult to find in war-torn Iraq, and for many men the opportunity to make that kind of money was irresistible.

I say this because I believe that portraying this war as a purely ideological conflict (freedom vs. terrorism, democracy vs. tyranny, secularism vs. fundamentalism, etc.) is overly simplistic and historically inaccurate. I initially found M's story totally incredible, until I realized how common it is. I would wager that most of al-Qaeda in Iraq's members are people like M -- people whose steady wages from the Army were abruptly withdrawn in 2003 and who needed to replace them. Their old Army buddies came around presenting a new opportunity, and without even questioning the political or ideological platform they jumped at the chance. This is not to say that al-Qaeda's leaders do not have a fundamentalist ideology (driving out the U.S. military, establishing a caliphate, fighting Israel, etc.), but it's naive to think belief in that ideology is the only reason people join.

Walking

Tonight I walked over to the hotel across the street for a glass of wine with a bunch of other westerners. On the way over, one of our guards escorted me, brandishing his AK-47 the whole way. This hotel couldn't be more than 100 steps from our front door, but in order to go anywhere I need an escort.

Still, even our security guards aren't obsessive enough to sit and wait for me to come out, so I got to make the long walk home by myself. I didn't think anything of it when I set out, but while I was walking down the block I realized how nice it was to just walk at night by myself and look up at the sky. It was the most relaxing moment I've had since I've been here, and although it didn't last long it was fairly refreshing. Most people take for granted the ability to walk down a silent street late at night, but I think I had forgotten how wonderful those moments can be.

Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
oh Thunder Road

...

Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And I know you're lonely
For words that I ain't spoken
But tonight we'll be free
All the promises'll be broken

Scattershot

I don't have anything cohesive to say, so here are some tidbits:

--S, one of my Iraqi coworkers, is coming to DC in November, which should be fun. The company is paying for his flight and hotel stay to thank him for being a good employee, etc. The big boss is already planning lots of parties, tours and the like.
--I think I'm staying in Iraq an extra week. It's not official yet, but that looks like the plan. That will mean I will have been here for about 10 weeks.
--Somehow I just discovered that the people next door get large shipments of magazines from the States each week. Even better, the most recent Sports Illustrated, which they gave me, has an article about Jack Cust!
--People tend to get a little... creative when it comes to alcohol purchases in Iraq. The liquor store in the Green Zone just closed, so Americans haul in whatever they can carry from the duty-free shop in Amman. Still, though, I'm not sure that excuses the consumption of Skyy melon vodka. I can assure you it's disgusting even by our lowered standards.
--There's a possibility that Tuesday will be a big day -- Petraeus is holding a meeting to talk about the Sept. report... it could make headlines.
--Did anybody see this coming?

How the other half lives

Today I went to lunch at "Freedom Rest," the area near the Green Zone where many high-ranking generals live and where soldiers get to take breaks for a few days at a time. It was amazing. There was a gorgeous swimming pool, ping-pong tables everywhere, several cabinets full of the latest DVDs, a movie theater playing new releases, a sports bar (but no alcohol, since soldiers and officers aren't allowed to drink it), a bowling alley and more. I was with a bunch of people meeting with a general in a high-ceilinged, lavishly decorated conference room.

I knew it was going to be a good day when I walked in the conference room and saw a line of a dozen silver serving dishes. A crew of waiters pulled off the covers to reveal fresh vegetables, Chinese noodles, chicken and broccoli, egg drop soup and much more. I was in heaven. I ate orange chicken, noodles, rice, stir fried eggplant, soup and a chocolate chip cookie, which was all delightful. The reporters in the room were saying that it's very easy for the military to get good coverage in Iraq -- just give them good food. Everybody laughed, but there's a definite element of truth to it.

It was only a couple of hours later that I realized the food wasn't actually all that good -- it was comparable to the Chinese food you'd eat in a mall food court, which I would generally scoff at. But in Iraq, those gloppy noodles and cloyingly sweet chicken tasted pretty amazing.

Another great opinion piece

Two in three days! This is amazing. Jonathan Finer, a former Washington Post Baghdad correspondent wrote this one, about the trend of politicians and pundits spending a few days in the Green Zone and then proclaiming that it's either improving rapidly or going to hell in a handbasket. I don't mean to say that people who haven't been to Iraq can't comment on the merits of decisions being made here. Rather, my frustration lies with people who claim to have been totally enlightened by their three days in a heavily-fortified compound. As the author of the op/ed writes, "Prescient insights rarely emerge from a few days in-country behind the blast walls."

The most infamous example of this pattern was John McCain's trip to Iraq earlier this year, when he took a quick trip out of the Green Zone to an outdoor market, then announced that "there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today.” Of course, at the time McCain failed to mention that he was wearing body armor and walking with 100 American soldiers with M-4s with four air assault helicopters circling overhead.

More recently, two Brookings Institution scholars wrote an absolutely inane opinion piece in The New York Times making all sorts of claims about how safe Iraq is. Of course, they were in country for all of eight days, time almost entirely spent in the Green Zone. "It goes without saying that everyone can, and in this country should, have an opinion about the war, no matter how much time the person has spent in Iraq, if any," Finer writes. "But ... those who pass quickly through the war zone should stop ascribing their epiphanies to what are largely ceremonial visits."

Soldiers

I've met a lot of soldiers over the past several weeks, and I've realized that most of them are really, really good guys. Today I got to see a reenlistment ceremony, which I found more powerful than I expected. I was in a fairly dangerous area of Iraq, and these guys are voluntarily joining up for another several years knowing that the first part of that time will be spent in scary circumstances. Since I've never had any military connection and grew up in a fairly anti-military environment (oh Berkeley...), this probably surprised me more than it would an average American.

The other part of today that made an effect on my was a top general's interaction with a platoon leader. When generals visit combat outposts, they generally bring small commemorative coins to present to people doing an especially good job. In this case, Gen. Rick Lynch, who essentially commands everything south of Baghdad, was presenting coins to two specialists and their direct supervisor. While Lynch was giving the coins to the specialists, the platoon leader was just beaming. But then Lynch turned to give a coin to him, and he got extremely uncomfortable. He stammered something to the effect of "Oh, thank you sir, but I'd rather you just recognize my guys without me. They're the ones who carry the load." Of course, Lynch insisted on giving him one, and although he accepted it he was clearly uncomfortable with the recognition. He kept turning the coin over in his hands looking extremely distressed, torn between wanting to be respectful and being unhappy about being elevated in that way.

As the platoon leader was contemplating what to do with this coin, another one of his soldiers walked up just as Lynch was turning away. The platoon leader's eyes brightened, and he turned to the soldier. He handed him the coin, saying "Gen. Lynch wanted to give this to you, but I told him you were working too hard to come out." The soldier, who was probably 19 or 20, looked thrilled, and the platoon leader looked totally relieved that he had found a solution. It was refreshing to see someone who was so committed to recognizing the people below him rather than himself.

21st century barbarism

I never read editorials. I don't like that a group of people sitting in an office can shape the direction of the country by writing about places they've never been and people they've never spoken to. That said, I read today's Washington Post editorial about Iraq because it was the most-read story on the web site, and I felt compelled to link to it here.

I actually can't decide what I think about this piece on its merits. The only conclusion seems to be that the situation is bad in Baghdad, which anybody could have told you. But despite -- or maybe because of -- its lack of recommendations, I found it particularly powerful.

"ONE REASON the debate over Iraq can seem so perplexing at times is that the nature of the violence can be so horrendous as to be nearly unfathomable. The inexcusable killing of civilians by insurgents and militias is so common as to go almost unremarked upon. But four simultaneous truck-bomb explosions in one small community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night, all directed against defenseless civilians, provided a savage and jarring reminder."

Despite the fact that this writer has never been to Iraq, he managed to capture some pretty common sentiments among the people I interact with here. There's no difference other than scale between this attack and the ones that happen every day within a five-minute's drive of my office. But despite the fact that it's 250 miles away from here, this one feels particularly sobering.

In looking for the ways to solve Iraq, it always seems to be the people with the least information that have the loudest voices. My inbox is filling up again with e-mails from people saying everything from "that moron Bush needs to pull out right now!" to "stupid liberals need to stop supporting the enemy." And of course, those of us on the ground know that basically all of those people are wrong, because none of the answers here are simple. I'm glad an editorial acknowledged that for once.

The daily miracle

Journalists often refer to a published newspaper as "the daily miracle" -- meaning, of course, that it's a miracle the thing comes out every day. I got to see that concept epitomized last night at The Washington Post's office in Baghdad.

The Post had filed a story around 9:30 p.m. leading with a truck bomb attack on a bridge on the outskirts of Baghdad and also reporting four American soldiers killed in combat and the kidnapping of the country's deputy oil minister in Baghdad. At 11 p.m., they received an e-mail saying five additional troops had died in a helicopter crash in Anbar province. Nine soldiers dead in one day is pretty significant, so the reporter decided to update the story to lead with that information. Around the same time, a stringer up north called to say that 20 people had been killed in a series of car bomb attacks near the village of Sinjar, around the Syrian border. By Iraq standards, 20 is not that many, so the reporter chose to slip in two paragraphs near the middle of the article.

Then all hell broke loose. The first indication that more than 20 people had died in the car bombings came via a TV breaking news alert. Like I've said here before, Iraqi TV stations have a tendency to announce blatantly wrong information, so this wasn't necessarily true, but it was worth checking. But then the phone rang again: at least 175 dead. The reporters, totally unprepared for this, sprang into action.

The villages where these bombings took place, small enclaves of Yazidi people, do their best to be disconnected from the outside world. There is no internet access for 100 miles around and most of the people don't have phones. The nearest Post stringer was in Mosul, the closestlarge city, with no way of getting to the area. The reporters were starting to think they'd have to print a boring, "according to the Iraqi Army" story with no witness quotes. They were working on gathering context and updating death tolls, adrenaline pumping, holding out a glimmer of hope that the stringer might find someone to talk to.

I still don't totally understand how it happened, but around 3 a.m. the stringer called, saying he had gotten in touch with a man in his hospital bed in the nearest town. The man explained what had happened to him and said he didn't know where his family was. The stringer tracked down one other witness who added supporting details. The result was a string of heart-breaking quotes that created a dynamic front-page article. And although the lead byline (and thus most of the credit) went to the American reporter, it was the stringer and a translator who deserve it.

Making it even better, The New York Times, the Post's chief rival on Iraq stories (and everything else) managed to get only the official side of the story -- no witness quotes, no glimpse into what it was like to be there. The Post story is here; the Times' is here -- notice a difference? It prompted a Post editor to e-mail the reporters the following message:

"on a story of global importance you got the best story in the world... congrats. good feeling, huh?"

That, my friends, is the daily miracle. I could get into this whole journalism thing.

This American Life

This post has nothing to do in Iraq, except that this is a discovery I made when we were trapped in the house for four days last week because of a total vehicle curfew for a Shiite pilgrimage. I think I may be the last person I know to discover This American Life, and JFR/IVK/MHG/SEK/CPR have certainly done their fair share of telling me to start listening to it, but it took me until last week. Now, of course, I'm totally obsessed.

For the other people out there who live under a rock like me, This American Life is a public radio program that is produced in Chicago* every week. The basic structure is that they take a theme and record a series of "acts" about that theme. These are usually people talking about life experiences, but occasionally there's fiction involved (in my opinion, the non-fiction parts are so much better). All of the past episodes are available for free on their web site. It's a totally addicting way to spend an hour.

If you've never heard the show or just aren't a regular listener, here's a list of my favorites to start with. Most of them are about seemingly mundane themes, but they're fantastic. I've probably only heard about 15 episodes, so if you're a junkie too, tell me your favorites!

Notes on Camp: Stories about the kinds of camps that become a huge part of kids' identities. I went to a couple of different camps as a kid but never had the classic experience of going back year after year (and now I get jealous when OFH tells stories!), so I lived vicariously through this program.

Somewhere in the Arabian Sea: All about life in a war zone... sort of. Stories about people living on an aircraft carrier during the War on Terror. The first act is about the woman who stocks the ship's vending machines, who has only seen the outside world once in the several months she's been onboard. Plus, there's a totally hilarious interview with a guy who joined the military instead of going to jail.

Classifieds: Stories culled from one day's classified ads. Ever wondered about why somebody is selling their brand-new Mercedes or what that crazy personal ad means? Me too. Listen.

Recordings for Someone: A must-hear if you went to CU, it's the story about the most famous ROLM phone message ever! Totally hilarious, with some more serious but no less valuable stuff toward the end.

The Ten Commandments: A sometimes funny, often poignant look at the 10 Commandments, with a different story for each one. Everything from an examination of "Thou shall not kill" in a war zone to a tale of a 10-year-old boy who can't take his own name in vain.

*Update! IVK's mommy informs me that This American Life has moved to New York, which is tremendously sad because I have never been to Chicago and liked learning things about it from Ira. And let's be honest, as much as I love New York, it has a bratty tendency to hog all the good stuff. But I'm confused, because the TAL homepage still says "Chicago Public Radio Presents" in big blue letters at the top. Chicago people and Ira loyalists, explain please.

p.s. Is the tv show any good?

Halfway there

It's hard to believe, but my time in Iraq is slightly more than halfway over (I return to the States on Sept. 11). The frustrating part of that, of course, is that I feel like it's taken me this long to get comfortable here. It's not just that I know the difference between Mansour and Saydiya or that I can recite the entire family history of Moqtada al-Sadr, it's that I have Iraqi friends, that I have finally gotten used to the food at home, that I have a username and password for the internal al-Qaeda in Iraq web site. Although I don't plan to call Iraq home any time soon, I feel nearly as comfortable here as I do in Washington.

Of course, the biggest thing I miss about the U.S. is the people. The worst part of this experience is that it can feel a bit isolating at times because the people I'm closest to aren't here. And as much as I've tried to communicate the experience through this blog, I'm not nearly a good enough writer to express Iraq. It doesn't mean I'll stop trying, though.

Gen. Petraeus

I met David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, for the first time today. Actually, I spent a very long, very hot, very dusty day following him around Taji and the surrounding area. The already brutal day was made more so by a couple of particularly hellish helicopter landings. Most notably, our pilot noticed an IED on the road we were about to touch own onto, so we hit the ground for a split second and shot straight back up. It was especially unpleasant for those of us with weak stomachs.

I attended a briefing with Petraeus, who has pulled off the unbelievable feat of being wildly popular while being in charge of a wildly unpopular war. I have to admit, I see the appeal. He's relatively young and very charismatic -- the kind of guy who manages to convince everyone that he is their best friend. He's clearly pretty brilliant, too -- 10th in his class at West Point and a master's and Ph.D from Princeton, and it shows.

I watched Petraeus take questions from a handful of reporters, which was an interesting experience. Most military officials (or politicians, or CEOs) will assure reporters immediately that everything is rosy and any tiny little problems are far overshadowed by the successes. But like I say, Petraeus is brilliant, so he realizes cynical reporter types will see right through that. So instead, he starts with the problems. He says things like "I'm not going to tell you everything is perfect, because it's not. We've got problems x, y and z." By the end of his spiel today, he had still talked far more about the successes than the problems, but the reporters were less inclined to totally dismiss everything he said because he lured them in with a tiny bit of what they wanted to hear. Smart move.

All in all, a totally fascinating guy I would like to know more about. I can highly recommend this article about him, by a guy who ended up writing his biography.

Food, redux

I am pleased to say that the food has gotten considerably better, mainly because our night cook is on vacation and the woman filling in has less of a fondness for mystery meat. The hummus is back in full force, plus some real vegetables, chicken, etc. Not bad.

That being said, I plan to go on an eating tour of the Bay Area and New York when I get back. I am craving several things:

In the Bay Area
Gordo's burrito (perhaps I can convince them to open a location in DC to make up for the abysmal lack of good burritos)
Cheeseboard pizza
Yank Sing dim sum (Mom, plan for a trip...)
My mother's crab (are you taking notes?)
In 'n Out burger
some good beer

In New York
Max Soha pasta
Corner Bistro burger
EJ's grits
Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory vanilla
Pam Real Thai
more good beer


Yep, that should pretty much take care of it. Yum.

Helicopter photos

I can't turn down a request from my favorite photojournalist, so here are some photos from my helicopter ride to Baquba. The quality isn't great -- the combination of a point-and-shoot camera, a fast-moving helicopter, a fairly restrictive seatbelt and a non-photojournalist shooting -- but they're kind of fun to look at. There are also photos of me in my helmet and body armor, which I will not post here but will put on Facebook (and e-mail to my mother, who is banned from creating a Facebook profile).

Actually, the photo layout options in Blogger are terrible for multiple photos, so just go here.

Oh man

I didn't bring nearly enough Carmex to Baghdad. This is a problem of epic proportions for an admitted junkie. My lips may fall off.

The main reason for this sentiment at this particular moment in time is that today I had my first helicopter ride. When it is hot outside, troops leave the sliding doors on both sides of the helicopter open. For the person in the front row of back seats, this causes a constant blast of hot air directly in your face.

I had been warned about this before leaving on my trip to Baquba (zoom out for some context) and advised not to sit in the two seats by the doors. On the way in I successfully avoided it, landing in a (closed) window seat in the back row. On the way back to Baghdad, I got unlucky -- last person to the chopper gets the tornado seat! I think the dust is permanently embedded in my face (this is after a shower and a copious amount of moisturizer), and my lips... oh man.

On a related note, wearing 30 pounds of body armor and a five-pound helmet when it's 130 degrees outside is not so pleasant. I felt like I was about to fall over all day long.

All that being said, though, the helicopter ride was pretty cool. Maybe when I'm less tired I will post photos taken from the sky. They mostly show desert, which is kind of a boring thing to photograph, but I had fun doing it. There's a whole lot of open desert here.

What do we think are the chances of Baghdad-produced lip balm satisfying a Carmex addict?

Parliament's recess

The issue of the Iraqi parliament's August recess has become hugely controversial in the U.S. (much more so than in Iraq, it seems). Most recently, I came across this Mitch Albom column arguing that the month-long vacation is ridiculous as the war is going on. Tony Snow certainly didn't help the legislators' case with his glib comment that "it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August" since, um, there are American troops there with 80 pounds of gear on (and the rest of us are still working here too!). This seems to be the one Iraq-related topic that people across the political spectrum are riled up about. It seems to me that the outrage on the right is motivated by frustrations that there won't be any political progress made by the Sept. 15 deadline for a progress report -- and with waning Congressional support for the war, that report will be important for Bush. I tend to think that line of argument against the recess is more valid than the left's, which seems to me to be driven by some childish glee every time something goes wrong in Iraq.

All that said, I think all the criticism is misguided. First of all, as lawmakers have pointed out in numerous media accounts, the recess is constitutionally-mandated. Parliament is supposed to be in session for two four-month sessions each year, with a two-month break between each session. The two breaks can be shortened to one month at the request of the Prime Minister, but the way I read the constitution it can't be any shorter than a month.

Sure, critics say, but if they were really dedicated they would pass emergency legislation to change the statute and stick around. But let's keep in mind that many, if not most lawmakers have moved their families out of Baghdad because they could be targeted here. Without a break, parliament members would have the choice between leaving their families in Baghdad -- where members of the government and their families would be good targets for many insurgent groups -- or not seeing their spouses, children, etc. at all. Since it's not their fault that Baghdad is unsafe, punishing them like that seems unfair.

We should also remember that legislators generally work seven days a week when they are in session (and I mean holding sessions every day, not typing a few e-mails from home). The reason for the breaks is because they aren't getting time off during the rest of the year, which would seem slightly cruel.

A column (subscription only) in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago summed up one other important point nicely. I don't mean this as a political statement, or even as a criticism of Congress, just some context:

"It is also mildly bizarre to see our lawmakers castigate the Iraqis for taking a summer recess when they themselves have just taken a break (the ''spring district work period''), which occurred even as work on a bill to provide money for our troops went uncompleted. And that's not the end of it. They are also preparing to take another siesta in August (the ''summer district work period'').

Some have argued that it's far more important for the Iraqis to meet, because they're in the middle of a war. But lest we forget, there are American men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq right now. We're in the middle of a war, too."

Good reads today

Iraq coverage in the major dailies is good reading on Sundays. Most of the time I read only as much Iraq-related journalism as I have to (which, admittedly, is a lot), but some of the Sunday stuff is too good to miss. The Washington Post has two Iraq-related enterprise stories today. The first is about the GI Bill's inability to keep pace with college tuition, which is a major problem for people coming back from Iraq. Most of the soldiers I meet here are between 18 and 22, and although many of them don't have college plans the GI Bill allows them to keep their options open. The story is here.

The second Post story is more directly about Iraq itself -- a look at the dwindling artists' community in Baghdad. People used to consider Baghdad the Paris of the Arab world, but an estimated 90 percent of artists have left the country (or been killed). There are some interesting characters in the story, both people who have chosen to leave and those who have stayed. The story is here.

The New York Times has a big political story in the Sunday magazine, but I didn't make it past the first few paragraphs. The Post has an opinion piece written by an anonymous dentist in Iraq, but I already know that Baghdad can be a depressing place to live, so I skipped that one too. They're both linked if you're interested.

Iraqi media

Here's the thing about Iraqi television stations: they make things up. Some of you more cynical types might think that the U.S. media does the same, but you're wrong.

Today a member of our Iraqi staff saw on a breaking news ticker at the bottom of the newscast that there was a massive protest against the government downtown. We thought this was a bit strange, especially since it was after curfew. A friend of A's lives in that neighborhood, so we called him. He was in the middle of enjoying a nice, quiet dinner with his wife. There was no protest outside, he assured us.

Okay, but maybe it was on the next street over and he just couldn't hear it. We decided to call the police station in that neighborhood, which is centrally located. The desk clerk laughed when he heard the question. "You know it's past curfew, right?" he asked A. "Well, yes, but it was on al-Shariqiya, so we figured we should check," A replied.

The officer laughed. Loudly.

"You get your news from Shariqiya?" he said. "You know they make it all up, right?"

Violence

This is the stuff that many of you don't want to hear about. Maybe skip this post and assume I'll write about puppies and rainbows tomorrow?

My company has never had any of its people killed in Iraq--that's 90 people. That being said, there have been a number of close calls, several recently. One of our guys was with a troop unit yesterday when mortar shells began to fall on their camp. He kept hearing them explode, coming closer and closer to where he was sleeping, and then his window shattered. When the violence stopped and he looked out his window, he saw a shell less than 10 feet away. He walked away without a scratch.

A couple of weeks ago, another one of my colleagues got caught downtown as one of the soccer games was ending. Traffic stopped and hordes of shirtless young men with AK-47s descended on the cars. Because my colleague is male, he can't cover himself up and look more or less Iraqi, so if someone had noticed he was American he could have been killed on the spot. Eventually he and the driver had to park the car and walk home, through crowds of people shooting into the air and fighting each other (and this was after a win...).

Eight car bombs have detonated in our neighborhood in the past month, killing well over 200 people and giving our house a pretty good shake each time. One of them, earlier this week, exploded on the road I take to the Green Zone about 15 minutes before I left. One day last week, four car bombs went off--all at intersections or checkpoints I had been at around those times the day before. While on the way to an appointment, my driver suddenly swerved, then pointed to an oil can he had narrowly avoided. "IED," he said. "Hit it, it goes boom."

The nature of this war is lots of random violence, which makes it occasionally scary to be here. We take every possible precaution, but there's still some luck involved. So here's to a bit more of it.

Oh, what a day

It's been one of those days when working in Iraq is an incredibly frustrating experience. When I woke up this morning, I had exactly two items on my agenda: a noon meeting and a 2 p.m. meeting, both in the Green Zone. I didn't make it to either one.

About half an hour before I was scheduled to leave for the first meeting, an explosion shook our building. We soon learned that the cause was a car bomb a few blocks from our house. We left the house shortly afterward, but as soon as we turned from our little side street onto the main road we were greeted by a mass of cars at a complete standstill. Police had immediately begun blocking roads after the bomb, so we were stuck. We had left an hour to get to the Green Zone, about five miles away, but we quickly realized we'd never make it, so we turned around and went home.

At 1 p.m., I donned my abaya and hijab again and set out for the 2 p.m. meeting. We got onto the main road with relatively little trouble this time and thought we were in the clear. But when we turned onto Abu Nuwas Street, the once-thriving strip of restaurants and shops along the Tigris, we found another complete traffic jam. We inched along for 45 minutes or so, decided we wouldn't make it to the Green Zone anywhere near 2, and turned around. In an hour of driving, we made it precisely 2.2 miles round-trip. To make matters worse, the car was threatening to overheat, so we rode without air conditioning.

And then there is the cell phone problem. For one reason or another, the entire Iraqi cell network has been out of service all day long. It makes it a bit difficult to do my job.

Here's to a better day tomorrow.

E-mail

I get a lot of crazy e-mail about projects I've worked on. The crazies come from all sides of the political spectrum and seem to think I have a special pipeline to Bush, Maliki or the CEO of my company (none of these things are true). Here are some favorites:

=

(CCed to the CEO of my company, president@whitehouse.gove, vicepresident@whitehouse.gov)
Of course you hid the report on the devastating conditions in Iraq as a result of George Bush's war that you love and support. You don't want people to know how he and you murdered and maimed innocent people and destroyed a country for no good reason. George Bush, Dick Cheney and you make America sick. And that's nothing compared to what you've done to Iraq.

SD

Alexandria, VA

=
(in response to an Oxfam report about declining humanitarian conditions in Iraq)
Oh yes life in Iraq was much better before we came and screwed it up. The practice of towing a power tree shredder into a family yard and putting the wife and kids in feet first, while dad watched the goo spraying all over the side of the house, was much better than now .... don't ya think? Or how about the 500 person mass grave yards, where people were buried alive clutching their children? Or the village gas killings? Just harmless play ... right?

John

=
I'm not sure if you can help me but maybe you can send me in the right direction. I'm writing a screenplay involving international military operations both covert and public. Where do you go when you want to find specific details of international military operations for example ex-military personell.

Thanx,
Demetrius

=
(the CAPS are his, not mine)
You are now saying what I have tried to tell my political representatives since 2003 when I retired and started researching the Iraq debacle. Reference to Senator Durbin and O/Bama regarding letters attempting to get them to inquire within their own experience why the way out of Iraq has left completely the WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE out of consideration.

Second, another bump in the road that U.S. is constantly hounding the Parliament with is the Oil Project. This is very important to the Iraqi process of survival due to their income for operations and distribution - 95% of which comes from OIL. . The OIL PROJECT document as written by U.S. is an indicator of not serving good will with favor. Over 75% of the oil revenue would be distributed to U.S. and 4 large oil companies. Results: financial suicide if the Parliament permits this instrument to live. Thus the reason the Oil Project is shelved by the Parliament until adjustments are agreed to.

Which brings about another problem for Bush since he has his STAY THE COURSE mantra blaring but not considered by most WHY.. The WHY is the OIL PROJECT. Without this document being signed, there can be no representation of even perhaps exiting Iraq. This due to the promises at the inception of the invasion or prior. The PNAC handbook states that all will share richly in the protection of our assets - OIL. To those who had an inkling otherwise, the only reason for the invasion was OIL and is still OIL or the revenue of.

My hope is that you and other reporters can use the IRAQ CONDITION issue to awake those who only think military and political to attain another view more directly related to success in Iraq FOR ALL IRAQ.

WC

A must-read

I'm totally exhausted from the soccer madness today, so I'll let somebody else do the talking: Steve Fainaru, a Washington Post investigative reporter (and 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist), has a phenomenal in-depth look at a private security contractor that was working in Baghdad until last spring. Five guards were kidnapped last November, which Fainaru conclusively shows was the result of poor training, mismanagement and bad decision-making. Private security is a huge, multi-billion-dollar industry in Iraq, and I can't believe Crescent is the only company making these types of dumb choices. The full article is here; part two runs tomorrow.

Money quotes include:

"Schneider oversaw Crescent's security operations for more than two years, despite having pleaded guilty, according to court records, to misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering and domestic violence in Michigan in the mid-1990s."

"Crescent crafted its own military identification badges to enable its employees -- including unscreened Iraqis -- to gain admittance to U.S. bases."

"Reuben, the company medic, was a self-described alcoholic who was not certified as an emergency medical technician and had resigned as a suburban Minneapolis police officer in 2003 after a drunk-driving violation."

The trouble with love

In Iraq it can be the simplest things that cause all the trouble. I just spent an hour consoling D, who was in tears because of her boyfriend. The man in question lives next door, but they rarely see each other because another man in his office has connections to the Mahdi Army and has made threats toward them. They talk on the phone almost every day, but he regularly tells her that he is moving out of the country soon and won't take her with him. Today, she asked him to write down her parents' contact info in case something happens to her, and he didn't want the commitment (although he tells her all the time how much he loves her). D's parents live in Basra, a few hundred miles away, and most of her close friends from college have moved out of the country, so she's very lonely--and this boyfriend doesn't seem to be helping matters.

Dating and love are incredibly complicated matters around here. It makes me grateful for what I've got, even if it is 7,000 miles away. If you're in the same place as someone you love today, give them a hug, okay? For D and me.

Food

I like Middle Eastern food, I really do (Iraqi food isn't very different from that of any neighboring country). Hummus, babaganoush, lamb, bring it on. In general, I'll eat almost anything. But the food at our house is truly terrible.

The main problem is meat products I can't identify. Often I'll get a plate with a grayish, shiny piece of something. I try to avoid consuming any piece of meat whose animal of origin is unknown. Around here, that means I eat mostly vegetarian. Let me be clear in saying I don't think this is a problem common to all Iraqi food, but specifically created by our lousy cook (I feel bad about saying it, because she's very sweet, but...) I was surviving basically on flatbread and hummus for a while, but inexplicably we haven't been served hummus in a week. Consequently I think I'm a bit protein starved.

And oh, the oil. Everything is cooked in gallons of the stuff. It makes it fairly unappealing to look at, and it doesn't feel so good sitting in my stomach an hour later. Some of these dishes could be fairly tasty if not for the overpowering taste of canola oil.

Today for lunch I was served unrecognizable meat in a sauce that tasted like ketchup, rice and cucumber and tomato salad. I ate the salad and rice. For dinner it was the oiliest sausage patties ever, another unidentifiable cut of meat, bread and more cucumber and tomato salad. I ate bread and salad. We've got to bring back the hummus around here.

Art for art's sake

Today I visited an art gallery in northern Baghdad, where I got to spend an hour chatting (in English, no less) with several painters and sculptors. We talked about how art has changed since the war began, the difficulty in trying to sell art in Baghdad and the reasons they choose to remain in Iraq. One man estimated that 80 percent of Baghdad's artists either have been killed or have fled the country. He told me he hated Saddam, but that he has to admit life was easier for artists before the Americans overthrew the dictatorship. Art for art's sake is no longer respected, he said--now, Moqtada al-Sadr might hire an artist to paint his portrait, but nobody wants to buy a beautiful abstract painting.

Several artists also lamented the role religion has begun to play in artistic expression. Paintings that show women without their heads covered, for example, are frowned on in many circles. People tell artists that they're wasting their time, that they should be "doing something useful." Almost all of the galleries in Baghdad--once considered the cultural capital of the Middle East--have closed. Just three students graduated from Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts this year.

But despite the solemn tone of a lot of our discussion, I found the visit somewhat inspirational. In the outdoor cafe behind the gallery, two dozen artists and students sat around drinking coffee and talking about art. The women wore jeans or knee-length skirts and removed their hijabs.
They spoke passionately about the role of art in a troubled country, about their love for Iraq and their dedication to expressing that love through sculpture or painting. As I walked back to my armored car and retied my hijab around my head, I felt a little less confined.

Soccer

The Iraqi soccer team beat Vietnam 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the Asia Cup yesterday, setting off a wild celebration across Baghdad. Every television in the city would have been set to the game if it weren't for the lack of electricity, so instead people crowded around TVs in homes or businesses with private generators.

The significance of this team to the people of Iraq probably cannot be overstated. As we're often reminded, there are Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who play, and Iraqis love them all because they bring pride to the country. The celebratory gunfire after the big win yesterday lasted for more than an hour (12 people were accidentally killed, but we try not to let this diminish the celebration). On Wednesday, Iraq will play the winner of today's Iran-South Korea match in the semifinals.

In a soccer-crazed country, it's hard not to get excited about the team's success. Yesterday I found myself cheering a brilliant goal by Iraq's star striker along with all of the Iraqis in our office. I'll tell you one thing: thanks to our generator, we'll all be watching Wednesday!

The visa question

Today's Washington Post has an important article about an unusual memo from the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker. Crocker is asking the Bush administration to provide visas for all Iraqis working for the U.S. government, including everyone from translators to service workers. Crocker wrote that he fears the government will lose its entire Iraqi staff unless they have the promise of a U.S. visa at the end of their service. ""Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping. Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."

Crocker is certainly correct in his statement that Iraqis working for Americans risk their lives every day. As I've mentioned before, even those working for Americans unaffiliated with the government must lie about their employment even to their closest friends. Still, millions of Iraqis have been displaced--2.2 million to neighboring countries and another 2 million within Iraq, according to the U.N.--thousands of whom quit their American jobs out of fear that they would be killed. The promise of a one-way ticket to the U.S. would likely go a long way toward the ability to maintain a stable Iraqi workforce. But the article raises an important question: if you admit Iraq is unsafe for these people, what message does that send to everybody else? Shouldn't the goal be to make Iraq safe enough for Iraqis to live here?

The proposal has interesting ramifications for those of us working in the private sector, whose Iraqi coworkers would not be covered. Several staff members in our office are increasingly bitter that our company has not arranged for them to move to the U.S. By the time American security contractors, media companies, etc. leave Iraq, they will have to confront a difficult question about they level of responsibility they should take for the welfare of their staff members.

Argh

D and I were just told by our security chief that the main place we wanted to visit for a project we're working on is off-limits. M said that D could go, but it'd be too dangerous for an American.

We'll get the project done through other means, but it's still so frustrating to hear the list of things I'm not allowed to do. I'm clearly not going to fight M's decision--I'm not interested in risking my life more than necessary--but that doesn't make it any easier to accept. I came to Baghdad to see Baghdad, but without being in a military Humvee I get to see very little. I feel the same way I did when D and I left for their shopping trip the other day; like I'm a six-year-old who's not quite tall enough to ride the cool roller coaster or a 16-year-old who still has to sit at the kids' table. Rationally I get it, I really do--please don't post comments reassuring me that this is for the best. If you know me, you know I want to see and do everything for myself, and having that privilege taken away is difficult no matter what the circumstances.

Presumably I'll get used to this, but right now it sucks. And no, I don't really care that I sound like a petulant child.

Fun

Several friends and family members seem to think I'm working too hard and not having enough fun. Others have asked some variation of the question "What in the world do you do for fun in Baghdad?" The answer is not much, at least outside our tiny little neighborhood. But that's not to say we don't have any fun at all!

I've mentioned the swimming pool in the back yard, which feels pretty great when it's 115 degrees. Although everyone in our house is very liberal when it comes to social customs (I wear jeans and a t-shirt, not an abaya, in the house, which I wouldn't normally be able to do in a house full of Muslim men not related to me), a bathing suit would still be pushing the comfort limit for some of them. Consequently, I wear shorts and a t-shirt in the pool, which makes it difficult to swim laps but is fine for floating around. My friend and co-worker D had never been in a swimming pool before she started working here, so she asked me to teach her to swim. She's perfectly comfortable getting in the water, but the idea of actually swimming scares her a bit. I taught a few swim lessons back in my lifeguarding days, so I have some idea of how to do this, but D is going to be a challenge. I started by having her hold on to the side and kick her legs, but as soon as I let go, she stopped kicking. We've got some work to do.

Tonight the people in the hotel next door (who all work in "the industry") are throwing a party, which will be a rare chance for me to socialize with people who don't live here. They're almost all Americans, and almost all of them have been here for several months, so I'll be the new kid in the group. I don't think this will be a huge rager, but it should be fun.

Still, even though I'm having fun I realize there are so many things I don't get to do. Yesterday afternoon the two women in our office, D and I, went out shopping in the downtown neighborhood of Karrada. They very kindly asked me if they could bring me anything (and D ended up bringing me a very cool light-reflecting Iraq paperweight), but I didn't have anything else to do and wanted to go out with them. Of course I couldn't; it's too dangerous for an American to walk around out in the open, but it made me fiercely jealous.

The Republican Palace

Wow.

Today was my third trip to the Green Zone, but today was different. Today I got to see the Holy Grail of Americans in Iraq. The Republican Palace was the largest and most ornate of Saddam Hussein's many palaces until it became the American Embassy. I had heard stories about the miles of marble, the plush sofas, the intricate details in the architecture. Seeing it was a whole different story.

I went through 16 checkpoints to get from our front door into the palace, including close to a dozen full-body patdowns (in many cases, inexplicably, a privilege reserved only for women). Our car was searched three times, my ID was checked more than 20, and the whole process took nearly 90 minutes. Then, to get in the door, we were required to have an escort from one of the offices there (ours was a very lovely woman from State who was hosting us for lunch).

We didn't get much time to walk around inside, but I was in awe of what I did manage to see. Say what you will, Saddam had style. The place is obviously huge, with several great halls that were each 10 times the size of my apartment and many, many smaller rooms. Most of the space has been turned into offices now, but some of the larger rooms still have open space with fancy furniture. And the chandeliers... unlike anything I've ever seen.

We ate in the embassy's dining hall in the palace, which was set up college-style, but on a much larger scale. The options were plentiful, and all of it very American--hot dogs, hamburgers, subs, ribs, salads, etc. etc. Plus, there was a full Baskin-Robbins ice cream bar! It didn't seem to fit in with the grand display that was the rest of the building, but my pasta, salad and ice cream were delicious, thank you very much.

We passed by the (outdoor) palace pool on our way out, which was also gigantic and very elegant. A few embassy employees were swimming laps while a few others floated on inflatables. Apparently in the early days there was essentially a frat party going on there 24/7, but that doesn't seem to have lasted. Still, though, not a bad way of life.

Sadly, there are almost no photos of the palace online (probably because taking photos around the embassy is forbidden--more security restrictions). The one at the top is a view of the back of the palace with the pool in the foreground; the one further down is a lame shot of one of the giant ballrooms.