A picture of Baghdad
Brendan Montague
Monday, March 3, 2003
The Lincolnshire Echo
When you travel a to capital your country has promised to destroy you would expect hostility - to be spat at in the street.
You imagine a people cowed by the threat of a massive military machine pounding buildings, bridges and streets with devastating power.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Baghdad is vibrant and bright, the people welcome you with smiles.
As I spend my last night in Baghdad, joyous wedding celebrations are taking place across the city (pictured, above). Families gather on the pavements and in car parks, the bride in a white dress, the mother in black.
The men play drums and bugles in a loud, frantic fashion. And then the whole party packs into cars vans and chase each other through the streets. One of the vans contains the band, still playing enthusiastically.
This is an affirmation of life in a capital soon to be visited by killing and mayhem.
What strikes you immediately when walking around the streets is the amount of building work underway.
Monuments, homes and hotel shells are springing up on every street near the former tourist quarter. The materials are cheap and plentiful and the work is badly needed by the impoverished population.
The Arabic architecture is both impressive and welcoming. Decorative arches feature in almost every building and the skyline is punctuated with the occasional dome. sumptuous enamel tiles, a sea of blue with red, yellow and white specks are used on the roofs of the mosques.
The Al Mustansiriya School on the eastern bank of the Tigris River was built in 631 to teach philosophy, medicine and Islam . There have been a number of restoration projects since the 1960s.
The towering university, which is more than 100 metres in length, has now been opened as a museum, complete with a tourist shop.
Workmen add the finishing touches to the garden, laying yellow sandstone bricks around the flower beds.
Here father-of-ten Karam Abudi (50) was mixing cement ready for the garden walls in the open court yard in the centre. He laughs when I ask why so much building is taking place when bombs may destroy everything around us.
"I am very worried about this building - it is very beautiful," he says. "American government is not good. America's is not a good president - he would like to bomb the whole world. I am making again this building. We will never stop, we will try again and again every time."
Learning is very important in Iraq and the country has one of the highest postgraduate populations in the world, according to the peace campaigners now camped out in the city.
This is where language was invented - where the first words were written.
When Britain colonised much of Africa the Victorians argued that there was no history and no culture because - they thought - there were no history books or literature. By those standards Iraq is the birthplace of civilisation and learning.
The area is also where the Garden of Eden is said to have been located. For religious people this dusty country is where humanity itself began.
The city is ramshackle and there are empty buildings littered about. Household waste and vegetable peelings can be found under the trees in places.
The huge housing blocks and domineering hotels are reminiscent of Russia. The stone and concrete is weathered and dirty.
In the hospitals the plaster flakes from the walls and the paint is yellowing.
Everywhere there is chaos and disorder, made all the more intense bythe bright morning sunlight. Old men with wrinkled and heavily tanned skin sit outside coffee shops wearing Arabic head scarves.
Iraqi coffee is thick and muddy and fills the mouth with dust.
Most women wear western looking clothes and work and talk with confidence. Some peasant women with long black gowns beg on the streets, holding toddlers in their arms.
Children as young as three wander about the streets with a bravado and cheerfulness that seems odd as they wander around the city alone.
A tiny girl passes with a bag of shopping in one hand and her baby brother in the other. She looks and acts like a busy mother rushing to get home.
At about 10-years-old they are working. Some sell fruits and push carts at the market. Others offer to polish your boots. All of them are full of smiles and keen to test their few English phrases.
A teenage boy rides a knackered looking horse with a cart tugging behind. He does not look at the passers-by but is lost in the boredom of his work.
The marketplaces are full of life, but empty of tourists.
Every shop is stuffed full of stock. Near the ancient university there are dozens of stalls selling pens and paper. But many of the pens are thick with dust and the paper has turned yellow and black at the edges.
Nothing here is thrown away. Old books printed in Britain about archaeology, history and science, many of which were printed in the 60s and are years out of date.
These old books take pride of place on the shelves of shops and on the street stalls in the market. As you walk along the streets, the stall holders selling cigarettes, drinks and batteries say hello - in the hope that you will stop and buy something.
Every conversation starts in the same way:
"Hello. You American."
"No, British, from England."
"Youıre welcome in my country."
Even away from the smart hotels where the Human Shields stay everyone shows their curiosity, and generosity.
Every couple of hundred yards there will be a tea seller, with steel kettles and a puff of black smoke billowing out of the oil stove.
The tea is served in small shot-style glasses, half filled with sugar. The tealeaves are grown in Iraq and brought fresh into the city. It is strong and steaming hot.
Hundreds of cars roar around the streets sounding their horns constantly. The Iraqis do not use lanes or mirrors and only once have a seen a driver use his indicators.
If they do not hear a toot they assume itıs safe to pull out or brake to a halt. It is like watching dodgems driven by hyperactive children.
The large American-style cars are never scrapped and some of the taxis are little more than tin cans, battered and rusting.
Some have smashed windscreens, one had a bullet hole in the rear window. Most of the taxis are white but a large number are yellow.
The cacophony of beeping, the wide streets and streams of cars can only be compared to the streets of New York. An observation that seems unlikely, but one that has been confirmed by an American peace volunteer in the city.
On occasion the taxi driver will refuse payment, at least at first. Others will suggest that you decide how much to pay. Some will over-charge but all of them are willing to haggle over the price.
The hotel staff insist that you are not too generous to the drivers and will tell you each time what you should pay.
Everywhere the Iraqis will bend over backwards to help. In a country that has been on the Foreign Office list of dangerous places for more than a decade, the hotel workers, shopkeepers and even hospital staff are keen hosts.
This is only in part due to the fact that a visitor represents much needed income. The Iraqi Denar is hardly worth the paper itıs printed on. A dollar will buy 2,200 and the money comes in blue 250 notes, each with a picture of Saddam Hussein.
Protesters who have never had more than a few £5 notes to fold together are leaving exchange shops with carrier bags full of cash.
A small tip - just one note - and you have a friend for life. But this is not a country that has ground to a halt or buried its head in the sand, hoping the war will come and go without incident.
Hoping it is other people who will be affected. In the hospital the staff have grown used to seeing the casualties of war.
As recently as 1998 a bomb landed close by, killing eight staff and patients and blowing out every window.
They know that the next attack will be more devastating as medicines, equipment and even water are all in short supply. But still they smile and shrug their shoulders when you ask how and why they keep on working.
In the corridor the hospital deputy manager Edmad Tariq lights a cigarette. "I am only worried about the children," he says.
"The people in Iraq are not against the people in America or England. We are only against the governments in Washington and London."
"We expect them to bomb at any time and we have had many facilities on stand-by for this situation."
Ward nurse Ali Jabbar (23) was just a boy during the first Gulf War. "I feel tired and I feel angry with the situation and people dying in front of me.
"I feel humble that I can help and I feel sympathy for the population. Whatever happens I will continue to work here. I feel ready."
Life is precious here, especially the lives of children. But mortality is much more a fact of life in a city between bombardments.
Many have survived war several times over and they have learned not to expect too much but not to hope for too little.
Iraq used to boast the best hospitals and schools in the Middle East. The rich black oil provided billions of dollars made a population wealthy.
But after a protracted war with Iran, during which America gave support and aid to both sides, and of course the Gulf War of 1991 and subsequent sanctions, the place is dusty and poor.
A cab driver told me "I wish we did not have oil under the land so we could live in peace above the land."
This is an unedited version of an article submitted from Baghdad which appeared in the Lincolnshire Echo. (c) Lincolnshire Echo 2003