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.