Tom and I set out yesterday for Bayt Baws, a former village now swallowed by Sanaa’s urban sprawl. We descended in the bus into Hada and began walking on the road towards the village. A few minutes passed before a jeep crawled up to us. “Hello Sadeeq! Where you from?” Something about the situation made…
“In brief and in clear words, don’t come to Iraq at this specific time. The way to Baghdad from the north is too dangerous. They can easily chase you and hurt you. Roads are extremely danger even for Iraqi people.” (Excerpt from an E-mail from an Iraqi friend in Baghdad, just before my trip –…
NORTH IRAQ Though polite, my host is guarded and visibly nervous. I wait with my translator in a room decorated with photos of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. We have just arrived in a refugee camp in Northern Iraq, unexpected. In another room, phone calls to Syria are being made, to confirm the name of…
Sabotaged oil pipelines have been burning for a few days, so there’s a brownish-grey haze over the horizon. South of Baghdad, on the way to Kufa, cars are stopped on one side of the highway. My cab driver, following many other cars, crosses the median and drives on the other side, against oncoming traffic. This…
Another day in Kirkuk. I go out in the morning to speak to people about their reactions to Saddam’s first television appearance since his dental exam. While watching the broadcast, there was no sense of celebration, but a silence that was hard to interpret. Saddam-era television was rife with controlled propaganda, using his image repeated…
June 27th 2004 I arrive at Attaturk International Airport in Istanbul. This is the fourth time I’ve flown into Attaturk from New York, but I’ve never seen such a high level of security, which is due to the NATO Summit being held here. TV monitors show mass demonstrations on the streets of Istanbul, protesting President…
