Welcome to the desert

If I were technologically savvy, I would insert some sort of little plug-in to this blog page that automatically displayed the current temperature in Baghdad (it occurs to me that I have friends, some of whom may even be reading this blog, who are technologically savvy. Just sayin'.) In layman's term's it's really freaking hot.

Now, I knew before I got into this that Iraq is a hot place. It's the desert, after all, and deserts are typically warm. But I guess I thought hot meant D.C.-in-August temperatures--100, maybe a little over on a bad day. And then I found this web site. There I learned that the average high temperature in July is 110 degrees. Yikes. A couple of weeks before I left, I looked at a huge worldwide weather map in USA Today and noticed that Baghdad was the hottest place in the entire world. This heat doesn't mess around.

Fortunately our house is air-conditioned, with the exception of the hallways and the bathrooms. I don't spend much time hanging out in the hall, but walking from the cool sanctuary of my bedroom to go take a shower is a rough transition. Even while taking a cold shower I can feel the hot air.

On Saturday, when I had to wait outside while the Green Zone's identification staff took an extended lunch break, I learned what 114 degrees feels like. People keep telling me that it's a dry heat, that it's so much more manageable than the humidity of D.C. Well, they're wrong. 114 is not manageable. 114 is brutal, cruel, inhumane. Especially in an abaya and hijab.

UPDATE: MMS wins the geeky friend prize, and I now have a weather display. Awesome.