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.

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

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.

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.