However, there are still some old ruins and some relief walls with animals carved from them and grafiiti etched in the bricks that goes back as far as the second world war - stuff like "Johan, 1940" is clearly legible below the etched animals. As well, there is an old statue of a lion that has stood the test o f time, and still a small portion that has been left untouched and comes off as far more interesting than Saddam's rebuilt empty courtyards of Babylon, despite being far less visually impressive.
If any of you have access to French or Ukrainian television, watch for me on a news report regarding Babylon. The french guy was getting a lot of pictures of the 'crowd' wandering through the site, all eleven of us.
Out of their hair and onward north to Baghdad, we passed tanks and queued for fuel again. There was a massive fuel shortage in the country, and Mahar blamed the Iraqis, who had been tapping pipelines and damaging them in the process, thus destroying the infrastructure to transport gasoline effectively to the entire country. “They always think about themselves, can they not see a little in front of their eyes?”
The ride from Hillah to Baghdad was rife with activity: Polish soldiers had surrounded a bank in a small town along the highway; American soldiers were propped up against a dirt mound and aiming outward into the desert; Iraqi police had found bombs buried in the median on the freeway. One hour more, and Mahar uttered “I have not been back to Baghdad since the war.”
His face was filled with shock at the extent of damage. Every television tower had been destroyed, along with other buildings in his sight. He knew the city, but not entirely well, and was looking for an office he remembered where the GMCs went back to Baghdad. In circles a few times before he stopped to ask a well dressed man for directions, it was many turns and stops as he made no mistake to ask for guidance at every intersection. In a clean neighbourhood untouched by the invasion we found our office.
It was late afternoon. He asked the men inside if there was a vehicle heading back to Amman soon, and they said no – only in the morning, as the evening is far too dangerous. So another night in Baghdad for me – until a teenage boy ran from the office, yelling our way. “He says he knows someone going tonight.”
Over the bridge and back to Tahrir square, deep in the traffic, a Caprice filled with a few heavily smoking men. Bargaining hard for the price, making sure it would be no more than I paid to get here; though he was only going to Trebil, the border with Jordan, and from there it would be more to reach Amman. Fair enough, I said.
However, Mahar stood dumbfounded beside me, admitting he knew nothing of Baghdad. He knew how to get here, and a few of the roads, but he had no notion of hotels and restaurants, and meekly offered “it is too late to return to Nasiriyah, only one hour of sunlight left. And it's dangerous to be out at night.” I squared him away with nearly twenty dollars and the business card of the hotel I had stayed, and with that kissed him on both cheeks and entered the vehicle.
It would be a half hour of vicious combat to get out of Baghdad's city traffic. Even when the streetlights worked, people ignored them; this was a lawless society, a country without a government, a society that had been so used to order thrust down their throat that they could not handle so much freedom given to them so suddenly. Roaring back out onto the six lane highway, the driver was a lean man who needed a cigarette in his hand every moment. He browsed the radio stations, through clattering Arabesque and western pop to finally some old English classics. The sun was working its way downward, and Mick started wailing with his sympathy for the devil.
“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.” It was dark by then, though the horizon was still purple, and tires burned on the roadside, convoys of trucks inched along like broken neon lights, and we broke Ramadan's fast at a truck stop. “But what's troubling you, is the nature of my game……”
It was back on the highway with a cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding us, the heat of the day giving way to the cold of the night. Further on the freeway, past Ramadi and its palm trees, into the open flat expanse of the desert and the deep evening, a glut of stars hanging once again over our roof as we wound westward.
-November 2003
* A full account of my visit to this country is available in my yet to be published book, Means To An Exit. If you are an agent or publisher and would like to receive an outline and manuscript, please Contact Me.
