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Bagh Blog
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
  "This is the fate of all Americans who come to Falluja,'' said Mohammad Nafik, one of the crowd surrounding the bodies.

Missed me, you son of a bitch. 
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
  This morning I got an email from a guy with the ICDC informing me that no one at ICDC is giving interviews, a byproduct of the dicey security situation. This afternoon I was in an ICDC headquarters in Mahmudia talking to four officers (after being warmly greeted by the Marine public affairs officer at the base).

I am beginning to absolutely adore the bureaucracy over here. The folks who don't want me writing about certain topics seem to have almost as much trouble communicating as I do. That gives me the advantage because I (1) have nothing better to do than hop in a car and annoy people in person; and (2) will starve to death if I don't get in touch with people.

Our first stop this morning was Camp Muleskinner, the old police academy and now an ICDC training center. I suppose I was technically lying when I said we were referred there by the ICDC officers I'd met at the convention center yesterday; we'd actually been referred there by some cabbies Shamil chatted up in front of the Hamra. The Army got the last laugh, though; I thought I had a shot at an interview with the guy who actually trains the Iraqi security forces, but he radioed back to the front gate and referred me to the PAO. The PAO was at a base "about 15 or 20 minutes up the road." Driving around in Baghdad traffic to interview a PAO isn't my idea of a good time, so we drove down to Mahmudia (to which we actually had been referred by ICDC officers).

I had a good interview with those guys, and one of them turns out to be from Fallujah. He has a good friend who's an officer in the Fallujah ICDC, so we're going to drop by tomorrow and drop some names. That may or may not get us into the base; either way we'll follow up by hanging around Ali the driver's uncle's shop while Ali or his relatives bring citizens and security guys to talk with me.

Believe it or not, this is probably the safest way to go to Fallujah--I'll be traveling with a local and staying for the afternoon under the auspices of his family's hospitality. That kind of personal relationship with a family in Fallujah apparently goes a long way (even though the town was described to me yesterday as composed entirely of theives and smugglers). I know a British documentarian who escaped from a mob through the hospitality of shopkeepers he didn't know, but who told the crowd they knew him.

After we got back from ICDC headquarters I had the late afternoon free, and decided to check out a protest organized by Moqtadr Sadr, the kind of guy who accuses the US of bombing Ashura and called Sept. 11 "a miracle from God" last Friday. The CPA shut down his paper for inciting violence against coalition forces, a move that seems to have incited violence against coalition forces. If I were Paul Bremer my head would've exploded months ago.

I was driving to the protest with Shamil, Ali and a photographer named Rita when we got word from another photographer that the big protest was actually down in Najaf. We bagged the trip and did some grocery shopping in Karada instead. We stopped by the paper's office to see if protesters had gathered at all. They hadn't, but as we were getting ready to leave we saw some of Sadr's boys heading by in minibuses and vans--waving flags, chanting and holding Moqtadr's picture.

We caught up with them at the July 14 Bridge, which separates Jadriyah from the Green Zone. Some of the busses had apparently run the checkpoint by scooting through the entrance reserved for military traffic. Let me say this: I may complain about military public affairs, and I grant that the US Army isn't perfect, but I am absolutely floored that the guys in those busses weren't shot to death. Frankly, it wouldn't have been an inappropriate reaction--all kinds of generalized violence aside, a truck bomb murdered a couple dozen people outside a Green Zone checkpoint in January.

As the military tried to get the busses to back out onto the main road, I chatted with a couple protesters, who mostly provided the kind of pro forma blather you'd expect. One guy, though, made a fairly PR-savvy point about the US practicing what it preaches when it comes to press freedom.

That's about when I heard some shouting and saw a white-turbaned, black-robed older man, the center of a group of about six protesters, start scuffling with some soldiers. Then I heard POP POP POP and ran for cover as the Army fired warning shots to get the protesters to back off.

Safe behind a concrete barrier (not that I was ever unsafe, since the shots were fired skyward) I looked around and noticed that Rita the photographer had done here job, and run towards the action. I, on the other hand, had abandoned any obligation to my profession or my translator, and high-tailed it to cover as soon as possible. So score one for my mom.

A gun battle between soldiers and protesters failed to break out. People didn't really run away; they just ran for a few yards and then stopped to watch as some armored vehicles and soldiers fanned out into the street to let the protesters know they meant business. A group of Sadr's guys seemed even more pissed off than they'd been previously. I asked a protester a few questions and got some decent answers, and then saw Rita walking calmly but quickly away from the scene as a soldier yelled, "Grab her! She came in here and took fucking pictures!" (which I later suggested should be on Rita's business cards). She talked her way out of that by playing the "I'm a girl and I'm scared and I want to go home" card, and we set off for the real protest. About halfway there I realized I'd just seen the real story, and we turned around.

I got a barely-cordial no-comment when I asked the soldiers at the checkpoint what had happened, and talked to a couple cabbies who seemed to have mild disdain for both the US and Sadr. They do seem to admire Sadr's balls, though.

I wrote about 600 words and filed it to Cox News. I thought it was a decent story, but it was kind of a weird news-feature hybrid; lots of straight description at the top abruptly shifting in the middle to analysis of Sadr and the political situation. Cox's foreign editor rehabbed into something more straightforward and more appealing to Cox's client newspapers before sending it out (I don't know if anyone will actually run it, though).

The editor had some nice things to say about it, and suggested I might collaborate with Cox's regular Baghdad guy on something more feature-ish about Sadr and his followers. So that's a good sign. 
  This morning I got an email from a guy with the ICDC informing me that no one at ICDC is giving interviews, a byproduct of the dicey sucurity situation. This afternoon I was in an ICDC headquarters in Mahmudia talking to four officers (after being warmly greeted by the Marine public affairs officer at the base).

I am beginning to absolutely adore the bureaucracy over here. The folks who don't want me writing about certain topics seem to have almost as much trouble communicating as I do. That gives me the advantage because I (1) have nothing better to do than hop in a car and see annoy people in person; and (2) will starve to death if I don't get in touch with people.

Our first stop this morning was Camp Muleskinner, the old police academy and now an ICDC training center. I suppose I was technically lying when I said we were referred there by the ICDC officers I'd met at the convention center yesterday; we'd actually been referred there by some cabbies Shamil chatted up in front of the Hamra. They got the last laugh, though; I thought I had a shot at an interview with the guy who actually trains the Iraqi security forces, but he radioed back to the front gate and referred me to the PAO. The PAO was at a base "about 15 or 20 minutes up the road." Driving around in Baghdad traffic to interview a PAO isn't my idea of a good time, so we drove down to Mahmudia (to which we actually had been referred by ICDC officers).

I had a good interview with those guys, and one of them turns out to be from Fallujah. He has a good friend who's an officer in the Fallujah ICDC, so we're going to drop by tomorrow and drop some names. That may or may not get us into the base; either way we'll follow up by hanging around Ali the driver's uncle's shop while Ali or his relatives bring citizens and security guys to talk with me.

Believe it or not, this is probably the safest way to go to Fallujah--I'll be traveling with a local and staying for the afternoon under the auspices of his family's hospitality. That kind of personal relationship with a family in Fallujah apparently goes a long way (even though the town was described to me yesterday as composed entirely of theives and smugglers). I know a British documentarian who escaped from a mob through the hospitality of shopkeepers he didn't know, but who told the crowd they knew him.

After we got back from ICDC headquarters I had the late afternoon free, and decided to check out a protest organized by Moqtadr Sadr, the kind of guy who accuses the US of bombing Ashura and called Sept. 11 "a miracle from God" last Friday. The CPA shut down his paper for inciting violence against coalition forces, a move that seems to have incited violence against coalition forces. If I were Paul Bremer my head would've exploded months ago.

I was driving to the protest with Shamil, Ali and a photographer named Rita when we got word from another photographer that the big protest was actually down in Najaf. We bagged the trip and did some grocery shopping in Karada instead. We stopped by the paper's office to see if protesters had gathered at all. They hadn't, but as we were getting ready to leave we saw some of Sadr's boys heading by in minibuses and vans--waving flags, chanting and holding Moqtadr's picture.

We caught up with them at the July 14 Bridge, which separates Jadriyah from the Green Zone. Some of the busses had apparently run the checkpoint by scooting through the entrance reserved for military traffic. Let me say this: I may complain about military public affairs, and I grant that the US Army isn't perfect, but I am absolutely floored that the guys in those busses weren't shot to death. Frankly, it wouldn't have been an inappropriate reaction--all kinds of generalized violence aside, a truck bomb murdered a couple dozen people outside a Green Zone checkpoint in January.

As the military tried to get the busses to back out onto the main road, I chatted with a couple protesters, who mostly provided the kind of pro forma blather you'd expect. One guy, though, made a fairly PR-savvy point about the US practicing what it preaches when it comes to press freedom.

That's about when I heard some shouting and saw a white-turbaned, black-robed older man, the center of a group of about six protesters, start scuffling with some soldiers. Then I heard POP POP POP and ran for cover as the Army fired warning shots in the air to get the protesters to back off.

Safe behind a concrete barrier (not that I was ever unsafe, since the shots were fired skyward) I looked around and noticed that Rita the photographer had done here job, and run towards the action. I, on the other hand, had abandoned any obligation to my profession or my translator and his two kids, and high-tailed it to cover as soon as possible. So score one for my mom.

People didn't really run away; they just ran for a few yards and then stopped to watch as some armored vehicles and soldiers fanned out into the street to let the protesters know they meant business. I asked a protester a few questions and got some decent answers, and then saw Rita walking deliberately away from the scene as a soldier yelled, "Grab her! She came in here and took fucking pictures!" (which I later suggested should be on Rita's business cards). She smooth-talked her way out of that and we set off for the real protest; about halfway there I realized I'd just seen the real story, and we turned around.

I got a barely-cordial no-comment when I asked the soldiers at the checkpoint what had happened, and talked to a couple cabbies who seemed to have mild disdain for both the US and Sadr. They do seem to admire Sadr's balls, though. 
Monday, March 29, 2004
  When I'd been in town a couple weeks a reporter told me that the lack of reliable phone communication was actually a good thing--it gave you an excuse to show up and pester people face-to-face. Unfortunately I'm not sure that cost-benefit analysis holds up when your potential sources are in Fallujah, so I had a pretty amusing time today trying to get in touch with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

I went over to the convention center with Shamil and got a number from the military public relations people--they told me ICDC is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior. The guy at the Ministry of the Interior, to my surprise, was an American named Shane. Shane told me to check with the military public relations people, since ICDC is basically part of the military.

Oh, no it isn't, Shane.

Part of what interests me about this whole issue is the question of how closely what the military says about ICDC conforms to reality. I'd already been wary of going through the military to get in touch with these guys--the last thing I want is to waste a day talking to model recruits while an American PAO sits in on the interview.

I'd been planning to talk to Ali about his connections in Fallujah, but when I came down in the morning Ali had left--apparently he thought I'd asked him to show up in the morning, when I'd actually asked if he was going to be there in the morning. I left and came back; he'd been there while I was gone. He was supposed to be back at one, and a few minutes after the hour Shamil and I gave up and headed over to the convention center.

I got a few phone numbers from the civilian and military public relations folks, and tried, repeatedly and with no success, to call them. I was using my AT&T calling card to get through to a satellite phone registered to the US military's Central Command. An AT&T operator came on the line and asked,
"Are you trying to call the country 'CentCom'?"

As we were leaving we bumped into a couple ICDC guys in the flesh, and Shamil and I talked with them and got their address before their Marine companion came back. All I want is a phone number, and I may have to drive half an hour out of Baghdad to get it. But, it beats banging on the door of Fallujah's ICDC headquarters while curious onlookers gather.

Back at the hotel word had gotten around among the staff that the highway to Fallujah has been closed. Ali made an appearance, and said that his uncle's shop is across the street from the mayor's office; we could wait there while his uncle corralled officers for me to interview. Ali also said the highway hadn't been closed outside of town--it had been closed in town as part of a perimeter while the Marines did house searches. He said he'd be able to find his way around road closings if something similar were afoot when we go.

Ali said he'd call his uncle before we head out to ask if the roads were open and if anything was going on in town. It's a strange life over here. Fallujah's relationship to Baghdad, in a weird way, reminds me of Boulder and Denver--a city in its own right, but in the shadow of its larger neighbor. The distance seems about the same, as well. It's odd to imagine, say, Jessie and Keith checking in with Maggie and Richard before a visit to ask if the military was closing down the highway and fighting street battles with insurgents.

Of course, that analogy is a little silly--people here have spent several decades getting used to war and political violence. But while the Kurds and the Shia got used to having Saddam's army (as opposed to his secret police) crushing resistance in their cities, I don't think the Sunnis in Fallujah and Baghdad have much experience with this kind of military action. Ali, at least, seems to take it in stride. His colleague, also Ali, told Shamil that things won't settle down until the United States starts executing people.

It was good to have Shamil at the hotel to translate for me. I know quite a few non-English speakers at the Dulaimi--folks who seem very friendly and have helped me out in the past with rides, room malfunctions, and so-on. It was nice to sit with them and talk; I know these guys, but very rarely really speak with them. 
Sunday, March 28, 2004
  I spent yesterday hoping that nothing would explode in Baghdad before I'd hired a translator. I called Magdy, the sometime translator and sometime Dulaimi resident, and he agreed to work from today through Wednesday.

Last night there was a birthday party by the Hamra pool for one of the Boston Globe's reporters. The weather's been great lately, and it's now consistently warm enough to hang around outside at night. I'm starting to feel more and more connected to my colleagues over here, and less like a tourist.

I segued over from the Hamra to the Flowersland later in the evening and met up with Howard, Pat and some of their friends who work in private security. We indulged our taste for beer and our taste for live-band karaoke (Bob and I did a duet of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters," which worked out well--I sang the low parts and he sang the high ones).

Back at the Dulaimi one of the employees there informed me that Magdy wanted $150 to go to Fallujah. Per day. I'd been prepared to pay him $160 for four days (with part of one or two spent in Fallujah, and the rest of the time spent sitting around doing whatever he wanted, waiting for explosions).

I'm already going to pay through the nose for the driver who'll take me to Fallujah, so I'm not interested in getting ripped off for a translator. I realize Fallujah's a dangerous place, but it's more dangerous for me than it is for Magdy, and I'm going there for free (or, if I sell the story, for some very, very, low multiple of $150).

As luck would have it, Magdy never showed up for work this morning, so I didn't get a chance to bargain with him.

Late this afternoon, on maybe my sixth pass through the lobby since yesterday afternoon, the guy at the front desk remembered that my old translator, Shamil, had responded to my email by dropping by the hotel and offering to work for me. So I lost another 24 hours there. We tried calling Shamil from the lobby phone and got busy signals at both of his numbers.

This is the fast-paced world of journalism in Iraq. I'm hoping to find Shamil before he gets other work, and before Cox stops covering my costs on Wednesday.

My mood hasn't been improved by missing lunch, the result of my idiotic assumption that an Iraqi restaurant's "hours" are set in stone. I walked into the Sumerland restaurant and, weakended by hangover, leaned against the bar while two employees ignored me. Finally the manager emerged to grin apologetically and tell me the restaurant was closed. He thought, I guess, that I should have learned my lesson after missing lunch the day before, when I arrived at 2:10 only to be told that the kitchen closes at 2.

"I thought the restaurant closed at two."

"Yes."

"It's ten til."

"Yes."

"So the restaurant closes at 1:45."

"Yes."

"Shukran." 
Friday, March 26, 2004
  Nothing much happened today, but last night made up for it. I met up with some guys who have CPA badges and got into the Rashid disco. I was feeling pretty cool about being a journalist in a forbidden zone when I bumped into a bunch of my journalist friends. One of them, Christina, mentioned that Larry from Cox News was looking for a freelancer to cover for him for a few days, and that she'd given him my name. I also met a woman who was under 50 and not surgically attached to a date. The evening progressed well, with bureaucrats, off-duty soldiers and private security guys dancing to warmed-over dance hits and ironic classics like Born in the USA.

On the way out rival security forces had a bit of a disagreement, which ended with an AK-47 being fired into the air. The whole story is one of those things you tell your friends, not the internet. When I got back there was a message at my hotel from Larry asking me to call him at the Hamra; I walked over and called his room from the lobby. We went upstairs and he told me he'll be out of town til Wednesday. He said he'd looked at my Fallujah clips on Nexis and that they were good. I was momentarily stunned that I can be searched for on Nexis (especially considering my continuing byline confusion, which, unfortunately, was not settled by last month's Name-That-Journalist competition).

The bottom line is I'll be waiting for bad stuff to happen in Baghdad through Wednesday, so I can go write about it. It's odd to switch mentalities--for 10 weeks I've told myself that breaking news isn't my concern, since there's too much competition from journalists with, uh, jobs. Now I'm nervous that Bremer will be assassinated while I'm hitting the snooze button. But I've been close to breaking news twice in the last 10 days, and it's fun to cover. I just have to get over feeling like a vulture. I've been up in reporters' rooms in the Hamra a few times now, and it gives me a glimpse of what being a successful reporter here would be like--money to have Iraqi drivers and translators working for you full time, easy phone contact with editors, clean rooms, and all that jazz. The downside is that contact with editors--they have this tendency to want stuff from you.

The biggest plus is that Cox is paying my translator expenses through Wednesday, regardless of what I do with the translator. I'm trying to arrange a couple day trips to Fallujah to do interviews for a security story the Chronicle seems to like quite a bit. So things are looking good. 
Thursday, March 25, 2004
  I spent the day out and about in Baghdad with a couple of American businessmen who work, basically, as fixers--getting foreign companies real estate, vehicles, and whatever else they need to make a go of it over here.

The violence is a problem, but another issue is the clash of civilizations that occurs when Americans and Iraqis try to get something accomplished. This morning Howard and Pat had a couple Iraqi businessmen in their hotel room, and were negotiating to buy some bulletproof vests. The Iraqis hadn't brought the style of vest Howard and Pat were looking for.

Howard: You told me you would have a vest here this morning.

Iraqi businessman: The vest is here--in Baghdad.

Howard and Pat make their money by sparing American and European businesses these kinds of headaches, and by establishing the long-term personal relationships with Iraqis that make it easier to get things done.

Later in the morning we went to the airport, where Howard and Pat are trying to get a contract to sell advertising. Baghdad International Airport (BIAP, as the military calls it) is closed to most commercial traffic--flights come in from Amman and spiral out of the sky at high velocity to avoid surface-to-air missiles. The commercial terminals are gleaming, the result of a beautification effort set in motion by the guy who ran the place last fall.

Passengers from an Amman-to-Baghdad flight were gathered around a carousel waiting for their luggage, but other than that the terminal was mostly empty--there were security guards and a duty-free shop, but no ticket agents or customs officials (I assume the US Army man-handles your luggage at another location). The board listing departures is a trip down memory lane, to a time when you went out to Saddam International for flights to Barcelona, Athens and Havana.

Back in the heart of Mansour, one of Baghdad's ritziest neighborhood, we watched Arab satellite television and drank tea for two and a half hours while waiting for a guy to show up and sign a lease. Howard and Pat took the time to set deals in motion to buy more vests and bulletproof SUVs.

After that it was over to an undisclosable location to sell the vests that had been a topic of discussion that morning to a private security company. I'm being vague in deference to Howard and Pat, some of whose clients are very security conscious (or image-conscious, maybe, but whatever).

I'll probably be buying a replacement vest from Pat and Howard in the near future. It'll be much cheaper than the one I bought in the States and lost in Turkey, but unfortunately that'll benefit AllState, not me. 
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
  It's hard to know how much danger I was in Saturday night. I've probably been closer to death several times while driving through Baghdad traffic. The other day my cabbie pulled out to pass, and only reluctantly inched back into his lane as oncoming traffic narrowly missed us.

I've been more scared than I was Saturday. The emotion I felt was something closer to dread. The first impact gave me an adrenaline rush--I'd been leaning against a bookshelf in the little library, leafing through a paperback copy of Bonfire of the Vanities, when I heard a loud boom and the building shook. The sound of an explosion is unremarkable. Slam the glass door of a supermarket refrigerator to get the idea. What tells you you're close is the feeling--of the building shaking, or (if it's a huge explosion like last week's truck bomb) of the air pressure changing.

I hurried out into the main room, where dozens of guys were lined up for the internet cafe, and soldiers and Marines were making light of the close call. But the second impact was much, much closer, and everyone snapped into military mode--getting very serious, crouching down for cover, superiors directing their subordinates.

That, and not the impact itself, got my mind working. I ducked underneath a little wooden triangle that had been nailed into a corner to create a desk, and made eye contact with a Marine who was crouching a couple feet away. For a few moments I was overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness, of being small and exposed under a vast, dark sky. The fear was of a rocket crashing through the flimsy ceiling of the building I was in, but I wasn't thinking about that explicitly at the time. I'd imagine it would feel the same to be alone on the plains when lightning starts to strike.

But after a few moments nothing happened, and my old buddy Willis Moore from the Red Devils made fun of the Marines for taking "cover" in front of glass doors, and I stopped worrying. Another rush of adrenaline hit, and the whole thing started to seem almost like fun. I walked out with Moore, who said he'd seen the second rocket hit. He noticed my flashlight, and asked to borrow it as we walked over to where the rocket had landed.

The crater was small--because, I assume, rockets are designed to shatter upwards and outwards for maximum damage, not leave big holes in the ground. Moore and his sergeant, Chris Heugel, were analyzing where the rocket had come from and how big it was when they were approached by a profane Marine who ordered them away from the scene. Moore said he'd seen the rocket explode; the Marine was having none of it and ordered them away while he called in his Marines to make sure the shell wasn't still live.

Later, after I found the PAO again and we went over to wait for the bus, I heard that two people had been killed by the rocket I'd been staring at with Heugel and Moore. The rumor was that one guy was an Army surgeon, with two days to go in Iraq, who'd been outside talking to his wife on a satellite phone. 
Monday, March 22, 2004
  Still not in the mood to post much today; I pretty much gave myself a day off in advance of writing a final Fallujah story for Raleigh, finally finishing my women's story, and getting some information about my trip up on the blog. I'll probably post a narrative tomorrow; in the meantime I'm just going to ramble.

The military is PR conscious, and casualties and successful enemy attacks make for bad PR. After the attack in Fallujah on Thursday the colonel told me there were no serious injuries; a sergeant told me Saturday night that two guys were in critical condition. The morning after the rocket attack that killed two guys on the base the public affairs officer was annoyed at me for writing about it. He said he'd told me not to; I told him what he'd actually said was that the military wasn't putting out a press release. He said he'd told me it was a security issue; I said he'd told me that news of an effective attack would give the insurgents hope. He told me that was a security issue.

I'm not sure the military's official media policy states that stories reporting bad news for the Americans are unacceptable breaches of security. I suspect it's more a guilt trip they lay on reporters; have a 20 year old public affairs guy hang out with you for a few days, so that when the shit hits the fan he can earnestly tell you not to print bad news. I'm not sure what's more depressing: that the American military has such a Machiavellian press strategy, or that I almost fell for it and still feel bad about alienating the PAO.

There's a weasel factor here, because I could've asked the guy, explicitly, if he thought it was okay to write about it. I didn't because I knew he'd say no. It's a tough situation to be in, because I like most of the soldiers I meet in places like Fallujah, and want them to like me. It's a trap I shouldn't fall into; I'm a reporter, not their buddy.

I certainly don't want to put anybody in danger, but every soldier I've talked to about it says the insurgents couldn't hit the same thing twice if they tried; they can't zero in on targets and can never shoot from the same place twice. The security factor creates a dilemma. I can't think of any other situation where my instinct, in the presence of breaking news, would be to ask the people involved if I can write about what's going on. With rockets flying into the base and more to come in the future, my first concern was not writing anything (e.g., where the rocket hit, what was in the area) that might provide intelligence to the insurgents.

That's what's so disturbing about the way the PAO handled the situation. Now that I know the military uses an expansive definition of "security" to discourage the reporting of bad news, they've shot their credibility. I'm now inclined to use my own judgment about what I should include in my stories, which, in turn, makes an actual security breach more likely.

In any case, I'm not out here for my health. Two guys got killed 30 yards from where I was standing, and when that rocket hit I was in a room full of experienced soldiers who all hit the deck. Maybe being over here is stupid, but being near something like that and not writing about it would have taken things to a whole other level of idiocy. 
Sunday, March 21, 2004
  I'm back in Baghdad, too worn out to write much. I'll be putting up a lengthy post about my trip sometime tomorrow. 
Thursday, March 18, 2004
  I'm safe and sound in Fallujah. Not sure how much internet access I'll have out here, but I'll try to keep posting. It'll probably be pretty sparse until I get back to Baghdad, though. 
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
  I spent most of the day trying to crank out my women's story, with periodic breaks to hammer out the details of my trip to Fallujah. I borrowed a bulletproof vest from my friend Pat Lowry, tried unsuccessfully to call a phone number provided to me by Maj. Harper, and arranged with the manager of my hotel (whose family is prominent in Fallujah) to have one of his employees drive me out tomorrow morning.

My friend Ray emailed late in the afternoon, and we made a plan to grab dinner at seven. The best chicken in Baghdad costs 3,000 dinars (a little more than $2) at a restaurant just north of the square where they toppled Saddam's statue. Ray and I traded stories about our misadventures, talked about the possibility that Baghdad will get very dangerous as terrorists mark the outbreak of the war, and thought about taking a trip in Turkey or Israel right before I leave town in May.

After dinner we cabbed it over to Karrada to wait at a pharmacy for our friend Jeff (Ray's long-time traveling buddy and fellow CPA volunteer). The clerk was trying to sell Ray some Xanax, and Ray was eyeing a fairly cute young woman in an abaya. He said he'd give me $50 if I made a marriage proposal on his behalf. It was a little after eight, and Ray was starting to get impatient about Jeff's whereabouts.

The bomb was close enough to feel. I heard a sudden loud, low rumble, and my eardrums rippled as the pressure changed. It wasn't a violent feeling; my recollection, probably imagined, is of a sudden, light breeze passing by. Ray and I both went out into the street, walked up to the corner of Karrada-in, and watched with other bystanders as a cloud of white smoke billowed into the night sky from several blocks away. As we ventured a little further out we heard some automatic weapons fire--probably security guards shooting blindly in reaction to the attack--and scampered back around the corner.

Our curiosity got the better of us, though, and we jogged down the street--moving toward the walls when we heard some more shots--and crossed to the other side. We fell in with some young Iraqi guys heading towards the scene, and zigzagged through side streets using the white smoke as a beacon.

A crowd had already gathered, and Humvees were already blocking off the streets. The air was thick and acrid as we approached. A car leaving the scene caught figures in its headlights, casting spectral shadows in the white smoke. We rounded the last corner and saw bright orange flames rolling toward the sky.

The aftermath of the last Karrada bombing was odd because of the strange selectivity of the damage, but here the damage was total. Hundreds of people were milling around in the street, surging toward rescue workers as wounded were brought out, screaming at the soldiers trying to keep them away from the gutted building. I jumped and jerked my head around as an abaya-clad woman begain shreiking.

Ray used his CPA badge to get us past the soldiers, and we went closer to see what we could do to help. We passed a flaming car that I initially thought had contained the bomb. As we got closer we got a good look at the building. It was impossible to tell whether it was a hotel or a police station or an apartment. The facade had been ripped off, the interior gutted; flames were consuming its carcass.

Civilians were digging for survivors in the remains of a small building across the street, passing big white blocks of stone down the pile or just chucking them into the street. Next to that rubble another ruined building was ablaze. Iraqi firemen drove a truck in and civilians helped snake the hose through the crowd and around the remains of a stone wall. I didn't realize how hot the flames were until water from a leaky valve dampened my hair and face. One hose was battling a smaller fire on the other side of the street, and another sent an ineffectual stream into the upper floors of the main blaze.

We wandered in and out of the security perimeter, through crowds of distraught Iraqis and edgy American soldiers. Ray asked what we could do; a soldier yelled that we could tell the crowd to keep back. At one point I found myself standing next to a kid, maybe ten years old. I greeted him in Arabic and shook his hand, and realized he was more composed than I was--he had the affect of a 40-year old man. We heard from someone in the crowd that the building had been a hotel. I kept close to Ray, who knew how to talk to the soldiers and, unlike me, had a CPA badge to justify his presence. At one point he greeted a friend of his, a soldier standing in the open top of a Humvee.

As we stood near the burning building, I heard someone yell that they had found an American. A man was lying on a stretcher, conscious and in pain. His cuff was rolled up and a medic was asking him questions about his leg, which was crooked and bloody. Groans of pain indicated that the source of the injury had been found. They hustled him out of the carnage and we followed, helping to move back the crowd of Iraqis that gathered around any of the injured. They man was loaded into an ambulance, and it sped away.

A big Iraqi man was carried out by four men. As he passed he looked uninjured, but his clothes had been ripped off his body in strange patterns revealing the flesh of his thigh and his belly. The indignity of his plight struck me more, in that moment, than the plight of the dead I assumed were trapped beneath rubble or in the flames.

Soon the press was on the scene, and I felt an irrational hostility towards the TV cameras even though their impulse for being there was, in the end, no different than mine. As we climbed over rubble across the street I bumped into Max and Dan, photographers I'd hung out with the previous night. We greeted each other almost as if we'd bumped into each other while headed in opposite directions at the train station, and then they went back to work.

I found myself, a while later, gaping into a crater a few feet in front of the hotel. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere; we'd been milling around for maybe half an hour and hadn't seen it. It was maybe ten feet wide and eight feet deep, and the car that had made it was nowhere to be found, obliterated by the force of the explosion. The TV cameras were gathered round, peering into the hole and interviewing people as they stood on its edge.

It was becoming clear that we weren't going to be able to do much good. I'm not sure that was even my intention, though it might have been Ray's. I was drawn, mostly, for the same reason the media had been drawn, and many of the Iraqis had been drawn--by the urge to see the damage first-hand. As the adrenaline wore off I started to feel morbid, and when Ray suggested we split I agreed.

We walked up the road, which was now flooded with water from the firehoses, and doubled back behind the hotel. There was no apparent damage as we looked to our left, toward the bombed out hotel. But the blast had punched through the building; across the street on our right the windows of a hotel had been shattered, and debris thrown into the lobby. We walked back past the Humvees blocking access to the scene, over broken glass, and down a dark and empty side avenue.

We caught a cab and headed back towards the Hamra, and I realized my eyes were stinging and my cheeks were burning, like I'd spent too much time in the sun. I was still keyed up, but also exhausted; I felt as though I'd just run three miles. I was jumpy, too. When we reached the Hamra our cabbie objected to 1,000 dinars, and pulled out a 1,000 dinar note of his own to demonstrate how much more cash he wanted. When he reached across his body and behind his seat I felt certain he was about to pull a gun on me. We settled up for 1,250 and I rushed to catch up with Ray.

In front of the Hamra we bumped into a couple reporters, one of whom interviewed us about what we'd seen (he mostly interviewed Ray, who can be inserted into a story as "a CPA employee who was at the scene"). I understood why it's so easy for the press to get people to submit to interviews in the immediate aftermath of a disaster; I wanted to talk to someone about what I'd seen, and here was a friendly guy who wanted to listen. A while later we watched CNN and the BBC, and saw video of what we'd seen ourselves an hour earlier.

I'm getting up in five hours for my trip out to Fallujah. Things may be a little crazy in Baghdad for the anniversary, so I'll be glad to get out of town for a while. 
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
  Experience tells me this is too good to be true, but the 82nd got back to me this evening and it looks like I may be embedding in Fallujah Thursday morning to spend some time covering the hand-off to the Marines. That means a busy day tomorrow setting things up, and I'm not sure what kind of email access I'll have out there (probably very good, but you never know). So if I don't post for a while, it's no big deal.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post, in which I explain why everything fell apart and I never left Baghdad. 
  Last night I bumped into a big, gregarious guy named Magdy, who translates for western journalists and lives at the Dulaimi. He was sitting in the lobby, and I had stopped to check out what was on TV (I thought it was a Buffy re-run, but sadly I was mistaken).

Magdy was brandishing an issue of Esquire adorned with a half-naked Nicole Kidman (I think she was half-naked; after several months in Iraq I may be easier to shock than I used to be). He wasn't much interested in Nicole, and started laughing uncontrollably as he pointed to one of the headlines on the cover--"How to divorce her AND keep the house." Not a pressing concern in this part of the world.

Magdy is a Sunni, but offered to take me down to Karbala for the celebration marking the 40th day after the death of the Shi'ite martyr Hussein. He held forth for a while on what's wrong with Shi'ites (they were misled in the desert by someone who pitched them a perverted version of Islam; they like to beat themselves up; they think you can marry a girl for three days for sex and then divorce her), but also seems to have a few Shia friends.

This morning, for the third day straight, I missed a call from Hadil. She's a student at an arts college in Mansour, one of Baghdad's ritziest neighborhoods. I met her and her friends at the opening of the women's center, after a CPA translator approached me and told me I had a secret admirer. "She wants to know who you are and what you are doing." Sounded good to me, but after I got him to point her out, he told me she was too shy to talk to me. Then he told me to talk to her anyway, but said he couldn't go over with me.

A bit later I introduced myself and realized she and her friends spoke zero English. We went inside to look at the art they had on exhibit, which was a pleasantly and conveniently wordless experience. Things got more complicated when I asked how I could get in touch with them. It's the only time I've ever had to dragoon a translator to get a girl's phone number.

What with the prospect of humiliating their families and provoking honor killings, hitting on Iraqi women hasn't been high on my list of things to do. I didn't expect this woman to get back to me, but it had been so long since I flirted with anyone I felt I needed the practice. Baghdad is many things, but Paris on the Tigris it ain't. It's ugly, unromantic, and short on western women in their mid-twenties (but, uh, that doesn't mean you shouldn't come visit!).

Last Thursday I saw how the CPA parties. Bypassing CPA regulations (don't alert the military to this blog) I got into the Rashid despite not having a PAO escort. We were waiting in line for the Rashid disco when a soldier I'd interviewed came down the stairs to look for a friend. It took me a second to recognize her out of uniform, but as she stood half-way down the steps I called out, "Lieutenant," and waved. She waved back, found her friend, and then pointed at me and said, "And don't call me lieutenant!"

I wish I could tell some scandalous stories about what happens at the disco, but it's pretty tame by American standards. People drink beer, they dance to stale music (Shakira was a stand-out on that night, but I'm told the music's better a lot of the time), and generally blow off steam in a fairly casual way. Imagine a club that's not all that hip anymore, attracts a slightly older crowd, and where you have to go into the basement to buy alcohol, and you get the picture.

That being said, it's the first time in months I've been in a club filled with Americans, and I had a great time. I even danced, which may be a sign that I've been in Iraq too long.

Speaking of which, I'm still daydreaming, from time to time, about where in the world I'd like to spend a week when I'm out of Iraq (other than Chicago, where I'll be spending most of May and probably the first week of June). For a while it was tropical paradises, but now I'm considering Ireland. It's green, you can drink in public, and... well, that's enough, isn't it? (I've been told the Irish are friendly, but then again I'd been told the Iraqis are temperamentally similar to Germans, which has turned out to be absurdly off the mark.)

Journalism is a subsistence operation for me at this point (getting to and from Chicago will be an interesting financial adventure), but if I hit the jackpot with one of my articles maybe I'll make a pitstop on my way back to the Mideast in June. 
Monday, March 15, 2004
  As I was working in the press center this afternoon I overheard Jared explaining the rules of American football to some of the Iraqi journalists. I got out of my cubicle and we tossed his football around the press center a bit, and went over some basics with the Iraqis (cradle the ball to protect it, catch it against your body, and so on). A while later I was asked to come out behind the convention center and play some soccer. Apparently the American staff had been winning handily at football, and it was time for some soccer. The idea that I constituted the cavalry for a game of soccer was a bit troubling, but I went out anyway.

It was another perfect day in Baghdad, with a few clouds floating across the blue sky and a cool breeze blowing. It was late afternoon, and the sun had already gone behind the building. The soldiers at the entrance warned us we were in for a whipping. It turned out neither of the American women wanted to play, so we three American guys got an Iraqi on our team to even the odds. It was immediately clear we were overmatched, though not as badly as I'd figured we would be. I discovered, to my dismay, that I have no wind--losing weight by not eating apparently isn't the same ticket to fitness as losing weight by running.

I quickly realized that growing up outside the United States does not magically make you an amazing soccer player; they were good, but no better than folks I've played in IM soccer or pick-up games in the States. One of them, a lean guy who played in bare feet and seemed to be talking a little trash in Arabic, was a good athlete; fortunately his teammates were built more for journalism than soccer. The "field" was just the grass behind the convention center; the goals were a couple sandbags at one end and a briefcase and backpack at the other. We asked some passing soldiers and CPA folks to jump in on our side, with no luck.

They quickly went up one goal, and after we tied it up one of my teammates called game over. In true American tradition, one of the Iraqis yelled (in a spirit of good fun), "you are a loser!" I told them that was the first half, and that we'd play the second half another time.

Later that night, as I left the Green Zone, I saw a couple paratroopers leaning up against the Hesco barriers with their rifles out. With them was a guy I'd seen before, once while I was waiting in line and he was escorting some Iraqis through the front gate. He looks like the guy they send from Central Casting when they need a CIA agent--young enough to be quick on his feet, but old enough to have some experience; tall and good-looking; wearing bluejeans and a pistol.

When I see soldiers leaning against cover gazing out at the street, I think twice about walking by. They noticed me noticing them, and asked me if I was leaving. I said I was; the two soldiers looked at each other while the plainclothes guy seemed to hang back a little. One of the paratroopers told me I could go, but to do him a favor--avoid the flowerpots. He gestured with his hand, but it wasn't clear to me exactly where I wasn't supposed to walk. I asked him where I should go, and he told me again to avoid the flowerpots (they're strewn all across the blocked off street, and I couldn't tell, in the dark, where he was talking about).

"Those flowerpots?" I asked, gesturing to my left.

"The one with the landmine in it."

I glanced over and saw a black disk, about the diameter and height of a child's birthday cake, sitting in one of the concrete pots.

"Ahhh, okay."

As I walked out I looked over my shoulder at the three men looking at me.

"Good night," I said. "Stay safe."

I eyed the mine as I passed, out of curiosity and not fear. It looked like something that belonged under the hood of a car. A few steps later I was out on the street with the cabbies, who seemed unaware that anything was out of the ordinary. 
Saturday, March 13, 2004
  On the way to the barbershop for a shave, my cab passed a couple American Humvees blocking a sidestreet, and rolled over broken glass in the road. The cabbie shook his head and and said something about bad things happening, and I resisted my urge to have him stop to let me go check it out.

After my shave (2,000 dinars and relatively painless) and a cup of tea with the barber, I walked back the way I'd come looking for a place to change some money. After about ten minutes I was back at the scene of whatever bad thing had happened.

The Humvees were still there, and a loudspeaker was blaring in Arabic. It sounded like yelling, but one of my translators once told me that's just the style of speaking in this part of the world. It was hard to figure out the geometry of what had happened. Glass from a shattered storefront had been thrown across the sidewalk and into the main street, but all the police and most of the soldiers were around the corner and down the side street.

Around the corner a crowd had gathered to gawk at the wreckage and at the American soldiers lounging in and against their Humvees, cradling their rifles and looking uninterested. They weren't there to create a security perimeter; Arab journalists and curious civilians wandered around freely, trampling through the debris and crowding around a soldier and a translator who were asking witnesses what they'd seen. I heard the translator saying some men had gotten out of a white "Brazilian car" (I figure one of the ancient Brazilan-made Volkswagens that are all over the place), left something in a shop, and driven away before the explosion.

I wandered further down the side street, directly across from the bombed-out storefront. I spotted a young guy in a Shaquille O'Neal t-shirt at about the same time he spotted me. I greeted him in Arabic and the switched to English, which I figured he'd speak a little. Very little--we established that I was American, and that there'd been a bomb. I asked if anyone had been hurt. He held up one finger and made a vaguely violent motion toward his own head. "One man was killed?" I asked. He nodded. I asked about the motive, and he said a name I didn't recognize. I continued my mildly illuminating conversation with Shaq and a few of his friends as shopkeepers cleaned up in front of their stores.

Again, I was struck by the strange selectivity of the damage. Soda and juice had been knocked off a sidewalk stand; the ground was soaked and a bottle sputtered and fizzed as someone tried to pick it up. The stand itself was still standing, undamaged. The windows of the shop behind it had been blown out; the neighboring shops were undamaged.

I wandered back onto Karrada and spotted a currency exchange. As I changed my dollars into dinars I asked what had happened, and we once again established that there'd been a bomb. He spoke a little more English than my previous interlocutors, though, and he told me the bomb had gone off about 1 hour and 45 minutes earlier. He repeated the story about men leaving the bomb and driving off in a white car, and repeated the same name I'd heard earlier--Jaafari.

I crossed back over, this time walking directly in front of the bombed shop. Peering inside I saw that the shop was part of one of the little urban malls that are common in Karrada, with a bunch of shops facing an interior hallway accessed from the main street. Twisted metal hung off the building's facade, and the metal gate on the shop next door had buckled outward, as if it had been kicked by a giant boot.

Glass and fabric and metal littered the street, and I was wondering idly about the lack of blood when the crowd shifted and I saw that people were gathered around a puddle of the stuff, pooled beneath a shiny piece of metal and soaking into a piece of black fabric. It stood out bright red on a white piece of cloth, and looked thick and almost chunky. My stomach turned a little, but I stood there and stared like the people around me.

I stepped off to one side and said hello to one of the soldiers, who was leaning against his Humvee and resting a boot on the hood of a car. He and his comrade were crowd-watching, and nicknamed an old one-legged man Pegleg as he navigated through the twisted metal on wooden crutches.

Back across the street I was approached by a young-ish kid looking to practice his English. That's usually a good sign; unless you happen across an educated professional, young kids are more likely to speak good English than grown-ups. Like quite a few Iraqis, he was impressed or amused that I was from Chicago.

I asked what had happened, and he once again told the story about men leaving a bomb and driving off in a white car. He said the shop had been bombed because the owner, the dead man, was Ibrahim Jaafari's cousin. Jaafari, the boy said, was a member of the Dawa party, a Shi'ite Islamic party with a seat on the Governing Council. He said the bomb had been disguised as, or left in, a jar of honey. It was hard to believe he'd know something like that, but it seemed like an odd detail to make up.

The Humvees started to roll off, and I decided to split, too. As I walked away I saw Iraqis milling around with little posters requesting help and asking civilians to call in with tips (they were in Arabic, but I've seen them around enough to know what they say). In a sign that the US Army and the Iraqi police aren't the only place to turn for justice (or at least revenge), the local militia hit the street as the Humvees left the scene. A big guy in a nice suit seemed to take charge, his pistol hanging casually in his right hand. His more workaday colleagues carried the AK-47s. 
Thursday, March 11, 2004
  I got to the press center on the second floor of the convention center early Sunday afternoon. After several hours of procrastinating, leafing aimlessly through my notes, and trying to figure out how to distil a week's worth of reporting into a manageable story, I gave up and decided to call my relatives.

The press center is very swanky—cubicles reserved for international and Iraqi news organizations, each with its own phone and high-speed internet connection. The phones have American area codes, so I can use a US calling card to make affordable calls to folks in the States.

I spoke with my mother, and then called my sister and her fiancé. Jessie was at yoga, and I was chatting with Keith when I heard loud rumbles—very loud, one right after another, overlapping.

Idiot reporter that I am, my first reaction was to lean back in my chair and gaze over toward the windows. Soldiers have better reflexes and better training.

"DOWN! DOWN DOWN! LET'S GO! LET'S GO! LET'S GO!"

It quickly dawned on me that the situation might be, you know, dangerous, and as the bottom dropped out of my stomach I said to Keith, concisely if not particularly suavely, "Gotta go, there's bombs."

The civilians who run the press office weren't moving all that fast, but the military hurried things up. We trotted through a back room, past racks full of helmets and camouflage flack jackets, and down a spiral staircase into the basement.

I found myself leaning against a railing with Susan and Jared, who run the press center, on the outskirts of a crowd of about 15 soldiers. Soldiers in the convention center (unless they're guarding the place) don't normally wear helmets and vests, but these folks were in full kit and many were carrying weapons. Susan asked one woman how they managed to get all their stuff on so quickly.

"Practice."

The chain of command, often invisible in the convention center, reasserted itself. An officer called the roll, and subordinates accounted for missing personnel: he's at the Rashid, she's back at the palace, he's in Amman.

Jared, who'd almost been trampled by soldiers as he made his way down the stairs at a less-than-panicked pace, told me that we would've been fine just getting into a room with no windows. The convention center is a solid mass of concrete. The last time a mortar landed on the grounds hardly made a dent in the parking lot.

We discussed whether it was rockets or mortars or something else. Jared summed up what we knew for sure: whatever it was it had been "pretty numerous pretty loud and pretty close."

I told them I was writing about social issues so I didn't have to deal with rocket attacks. They asked what I was working on, and when I told them women's issues they asked if I knew what was going on tomorrow. It turns out I didn’t—I knew about the women's center opening, but I hadn't known that "a senior coalition official" would be meeting the staff and some local women at a breakfast.

"Is this senior coalition official a civilian?"

Yes.

"Would I recognize his name?"

Yes.

That made me pretty sure it was Bremer, since there aren't that many famous senior coalition officials. Rocket attacks, I guess, are a handy way to make contacts in Baghdad.

A soldier approached the officer and charge and told him he'd just gotten a call from Fox News asking what the ruckus was all about.

"We can confirm that not all of them were controlled explosions," he replied dryly.

Everyone sympathized with me over my idiotic parting words to Keith, but I was at least happy that I hadn't still been on the phone with my mother. Everybody else seemed to have a plan for getting off the phone when the shit hits the fan: blaming a bad connection and hanging up, saying "gotta go" and hanging up, just hanging up.

One guy had been on the phone with his wife this time.

"I heard one, and I said, 'I've gotta go,' and then before I could hang up I hear BOOM BOOM BOOM. I thought, couldn't they have waited another two seconds?" He shook his head. "'Gotta go, BOOM BOOM BOOM?'"

After standing around for a few more minutes we wandered into another part of the basement to take a look at what was billed as Saddam's convention center bomb shelter. Rumor has it he'd stored welding equipment there, in case he needed to cut himself out of the rubble. It was pretty spartan, but did have about half a dozen private toilets (maybe so the bigwigs didn't have to share with each other).

Soon after we got back from our shelter tour the all clear sounded, and we all went back upstairs. I called Keith to let him know I was fine, and to apologize for my clumsy exit. He'd taken it in stride (it's actually not the first time he's had a conversation called off on account of bombs).

I stuck around awhile to do some work, make some more phone calls, and watch CNN coverage. I found out the rockets had hit the Rashid, across the street, and that there was a truck on fire on a street outside the Green Zone.

When the press center closed I found myself stuck in the convention center with scores of other folks, most of them the building's Iraqi employees. I sat down next to a thin, bald, older gentleman who struck up a conversation with me.

He'd studied English at Baghdad University, and he spoke of how much he loved Hemingway. I told him I was reading Moby Dick. "Ah, yes, Melville—wonderful."

He'd fled the country after the 1991 war (I called it "the first Gulf War," and he corrected me that the war with Iran had been the first Gulf War). He told me that he had trouble remembering what he read these days, because of "an unfortunate occurrence that retarded my memory." I wanted to ask what had happened, and if it had prompted his escape to Iran, but didn't feel comfortable.

He'd spent ten years in Iran, writing religious propaganda he didn't agree with. He told me he left during a war and came back during a war, and thought the country would be in a civil war before long.

I asked if he knew someone who spoke English as well as he did who might want to translate for me at the women's center opening. He eventually offered, tentatively, to do it himself. The next day he didn't show up.

When the opened up the Green Zone at around 11 pm I walked out checkpoint 3 and saw American soldiers and Iraqi cops blocking off the street that runs parallel to the Green Zone, up past the Rashid. As I walked down the street looking for a cab an armada of white SUVs bombed down the street towards the Green Zone--presumably CPA folks who'd been stuck outside the gates when the rockets started flying.

Cabs weren't plentiful, but I came across three men standing around a car. They weren't cabbies, but they became my best friends anyway and offered me a ride home. I was a bit wary, but one of them showed me an ID identifying him as a manager at the Alwiya Club. It turns out he's a buddy of goofy American entrepreneur Andrew Robert Duke, and my friendship with Duke made me and Mohammad pals, apparently.

After putting gas in the car, figuring out what was going wrong under the hood, and squaring away the problem with the gas pedal, we were off. The streets were deserted except for a few cars, a few stray dogs, and an American checkpoint that made Mohammad very jumpy. The guys were very impressed with my terrible Arabic.

I got home a bit after midnight. I went out on the balcony to call my dad on my sat phone, and just as the call was going through I heard the loudest explosion since I've been here. Car alarms went off, and I figured someone had driven a car bomb into the checkpoint at the July 14th bridge, a mile or two away. I found out the next day it was just the Army detonating explosives in the truck that had launched rockets at the Rashid. 
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
  Because 1,000-odd words wasn't quite enough, I'll add one more thing to what I posted below.

When an Iraqi is quoted and sounds simplistic or literal-minded, it's probably a translation issue. Arabic is a very hard language to translate quickly and accurately, and many news organizations and reporters, even ones with a lot of money, use translators who are paraphrasing and simplifying a lot of the time. In my experience Iraqis are pretty sophisticated and well-informed. 
  I think I'm betraying the you-are-here, instant info ethos of blogging, but I'll probably wait until tomorrow to post about my experiences on Sunday night. I started writing on my laptop while I was locked down in the convention center, and haven't had a chance to finish it up.

In the meantime, I've been thinking quite a bit about Satter's question in the comments section about the accuracy of information coming out of Baghdad. I'm having a hard time coming up with a good answer. I read quite a bit of what's in the New York Times; my dad emails me articles from the online edition. I also listen to the BBC World Service on my shortwave radio, occasionally see some CNN International, and check out my usual array of news/opinion websites (Slate, The New Rebublic, etc.) when I have a chance.

I don't think the news I read is wrong in any serious way. Of course, being a small fish in a big pond means I'm getting a lot of my news from the Times just like the rest of America--unlike Dexter Filkins, I do not get pulled out of the press room for private chats with General Kimmitt. A lot of what's in the paper, though, is speculation, and the situation here changes fast.

I have enormous respect for a lot of the journalists here, but I'm not sure I'd trust anyone's predictions. There are a huge number of variables that are simply unknown. Is Sistani genuinely disinterested in direct political power, or is that just a game he's playing until the US hands control to Iraqis? Is corruption just a serious problem in some of the ministries, or is it a crippling problem? Will the insurgency in Fallujah die down when the Marines try new tactics this spring, or when the Americans leave the area, or not for years?

The details I see in the media are correct as far as I can tell (except for the crummy maps of the Green Zone they seem to show on TV whenever someone takes a potshot). But I think it'd be wise to get your information from a lot of different sources, and to avoid sources that are under a lot of time pressure. CNN.com had an article on their website for a while saying the constitution was being delayed over technicalities; it was actually being delayed because the Shi'ites were trying to greatly reduce Kurdish influence. That's what happens when your deadline is, "as soon as humanly possible."

What's often missing from the news I read is a sense of what life in this country is like. That cuts both ways. On the one hand, life is surprisingly normal in much of Baghdad, and seemed to be normal in the north. They're setting up a cell phone network (Iraqna), there's plenty of stuff to buy in the shops, and so on. But they still haven't figured out how to get the traffic under control. The traffic lights are usually out, and when the regime fell everyone embraced freedom by deciding to drive like a coked-up maniac.

What strikes me, being here, is the scale of things. I don't have to look out my window to know that an APC or a Bradley fighting vehicle is rolling down the street. I know them by sound they make--several tons rumbling over the pavement on metal treads. The sheer size of American soldiers and American equipment shocked me when I got here, and still does sometimes. And I'm an American who's supportive of what we're trying to accomplish here. Someone I know said the Americans might as well be from Mars as far as most Iraqis are concerned, and there's something to that.

There's also simply the scale of the undertaking. Millions of people live in squalor in Sadr city. It's full of illiterate war widows and young people who've grown up going to schools that got materially worse and politically more oppresive every year between 1990 and 2003. Ministries that have been absurdly mismanaged for years are now expected to take responsibility for huge sectors of society and the economy, while dealing with violence, sabotage and continuing efforts at de-Baathification.

I hear a lot of rumors that I'm not sure are true, and that I'm pretty sure don't get back to the States. Stuff about the ex-Saddam henchman who's now Baghdad's Al Capone, the swarms of Russian mobsters who've hit town since last summer, the high-profile member of the Governing Council who's institutionalizing corruption in the ministries for personal financial gain, and so on. I'd characterize that as local color, not stuff that I "know" and you don't.

There are little things as well, like the process of getting into the Green Zone. I've written a little about the physical layout, but the sheer repetition deserves a mention as well. Every time I go to the convention center I get frisked and have my bag searched by Iraqi guards in plainclothes; walk a bit and show my passport to a paratrooper; walk a bit and get frisked and have my bag searched by Iraqi guards in plainclothes; walk a bit and show my passport to a paratrooper; walk a bit and show my passport to a paratrooper, and get frisked and have my bag searched by Iraqi guards in plainclothes. I benefit in this process from being an American who can develop a rapport with the soldiers, but the hassle still gets to me when I'm having a bad day. And I imagine there are quite a few Iraqis who have more bad days than I do.

I'm not saying that multiple security checkpoints mean we should never have deposed a genocidal maniac, but I think a lot of the weird and unpleasant and inevitable realities of occupation are taken for granted by reporters here, and not relayed back to the States. There's not really anything wrong with that; it's not "news." But I'd recommend finding people who write good narrative journalism. There's some in the New Republic by Hassan Fattah (who also writes here), and some in the Times (mostly by John F. Burns, who I met today by way of giving him a tip on where to get good Chinese in Baghdad). I don't know if John Lee Anderson has had anything on Iraq in the New Yorker lately, but he has a great eye for these things. I don't always agree with the politics, but it's good to put the focus on some of the things people here see every day. There may be some good stuff on NPR, which I don't listen to here. Again, I'm not big on the politics, but they do the kinds of stories that might shed some light ("For generations, the people of Sulujquba have wrung their living from this harsh land by pushing dirt from one side of town to the other. American bulldozers offer the prospect of more leisure time, but some here wonder, 'At what price?'").

Of course, a lot of this stuff may be transitory--someone who "hates" the United States because it screwed up Baghdad traffic will probably get over it once all the roads are open again. I've met plenty of ordinary Iraqis who've told me they're happy the Americans are here (whether they were being honest with me is another story). I've seen and heard plenty of examples in daily life of how things are better than they used to be (markets filled with food, religious freedom for Shi'ites, the absence of secret policemen eavesdropping on conversations between Iraqis and foreigners).

So, the moral of this ramble is, things are complicated. Read as much as you can, and don't trust anyone who says what's going on over here vindicates everything he said before the war. 
Sunday, March 07, 2004
  Just wanted to let everyone who's seen any international news lately that I was at the convention center when the Green Zone got hit, but I'm fine. Close enough to be interesting, not close enough to be scary. They're closing up for the night here soon, so I'll write more when I get back to the hotel. 
Friday, March 05, 2004
  So much for that whole constitution thing. On the upside, I have a couple shots of myself sitting at King Faisil's desk making as if to sign something; I'll send that along when I get a chance.

I doubt, somehow, that the Shi'ites felt great about the constitution a few days ago and then changed their minds two hours before the signing. This must be a negotiating ploy. It embarrasses Bremer, and puts him under pressure to compromise quickly to avoid an even bigger debacle in front of the global media. It may also be an attempt to show the Kurds who's boss--the hold-up apparently relates to provisions that essentially grant autonomy to Kurdish provinces.

I can't claim to understand Iraqi factional politics, but my guess is the Shi'ites will get almost everything they want. They're a majority of the population, they seem relatively united behind Sistani, and they're determined. With the US and the UN both promising democracy, it's easy for them to make the Kurds look bad by asking, as they did today, why a small minority concentrated in the north of the country should have the right to veto national legislation.

I tend to agree with the Shi'ites in principle; allowing the Kurds to keep their militias and giving them a veto over oil policy and the status of Arabized Kurdish land is a recipe for civil war. On the other hand, the Kurds aren't too eager to put themselves back under the rule of Arabs, an arrangment that led to genocide in the 1980s and ended with a massive refugee crisis after the first Gulf War.

I'd make a glib suggestion about a possible compromise, but there may not be one. 
  Well, the internet seems to have eaten my previous post. I was at the press conference where the Governing Council denounced the Karbala and Baghdad bombings. I was struck by how openly angry they were--American politicians usually reserve that kind of undisguised emotion for accusing their domestic political opponents of, say, having the wrong idea about the tax code.

Bremer spoke after the GC (much, much, after--he was delayed by a rocket attack on the Green Zone). He had the more American public response to organized violence: expressions of sympathy with the victims and their families, declarations that terrorism will not shake the resolve of America and its allies, and a promise to bring the perpretrators to justice--all delivered, Terminator-style, in an ominous monotone. He failed to promise, as the GC reps had, that the victims are going to heaven and the perpetrators are going to hell (that might make people think this is a religious war!).

Once again, I was largely at the press conference to say I was there. I can report that John Burns and Dexter Filkins, in addition to being outstanding and highly-respected journalists, also have the fashion sensibility of 7th grade girls--apparently New York Times reporters in Iraq wear matching white shirts tucked in to matching jeans, distinguishing them as members of American print journalism's top clique (or maybe I'm generalizing too much from one incident).

I'm starting to feel like a part of the community of journalists here. I met a guy named Tom who writes for USA Today. He's staying in the Hamra. He's nervous about going out on his balcony--it's a hang-over from his time in Sarejevo, where one of the perils was snipers Serbian snipers who'd been members of the Yugoslav Olympic shooting team.

Today the new constitution was signed. At 11:30 this morning I heard, for the first time, a sound that was instantly recognizable as a nearby explosion. No one I've talked to today knows what it was.

I missed the ceremony (not because I didn't have credentials, but because I was pegged as a journalist after they'd stopped letting journalists in). The atmosphere was calm and creepy, just like the day of the bombings. It's Friday and there's a lot of security around, so most people seem to be staying home. There were Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees guarding the approaches to the convention center checkpoint, and private security with assault rifles stationed on the street.

On the way back to my hotel I saw Shia men in black shirts and black headbands driving down the highway in buses and pick-up trucks, with huge speakers in the flatbeds blaring religious music. American helicoptors buzzed in the distance.

At the traffic circle near my hotel I saw where these men were headed--to a demonstration where Shia men flogging themselves with chains as a crowd looked on. Black and green flags fluttered in the wind, and men in civilian clothes looked on and cradled their AK-47s. I had my cabbie let me out and walked slowly over to the other side of the circle. I guard in a camouflage uniform asked to search my bag; I told him I was a journalist and he seemed content to let me hang around and take some pictures.

I was uneasy about being there--an acquaintance of mine named Marco was beaten by distraught Shia pilgrims in the immediate aftermath of the Ashoura bombings (he's recovering, and before things went bad he took a picture that wound up on the front page of the New York Times). Obviously things have calmed down considerably since then, but there was still something weird in the air (either that or the whole thing was so foreign to me that I was getting the wrong impression).

A man with a black beard and a black shirt and a black headband and a black gun came up to me and tried to speak with me. I told him I was a journalist (by saying "sahafi" and pointing to my chest), and I couldn't tell if that made him happy or not. I tried to ask him if I should stay or go (by tapping my chest and then gesturing down the sidewalk while wearing a questioning look on my face). He continued to look at me warily, and I wandered away just to be on the safe side.

By this time tomorrow I'll have a much better idea what chance my story has of getting published in the near future. I've gotten to the point where I need to sell stories to stay over here--I'm set for this month, but April will have to be funded with journalism. 
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
  I've been having some good luck lately.

My ex-translator Shamil sent over a friend of his this morning who I'll use to finish up my reporting for the women's issues story. Shamil and I seemed to really hit it off, and I wish I could afford to use him full-time. But now that I have a sense of where the story is going I think his friend will get the job done. We'll be out interviewing Islamic political party functionaries tomorrow afternoon.

This afternoon I was wandering the convention center when I ran into Dan, the U of C alum and Getty photographer. Against my better judgment I opted to go out to lunch and the PX with him, instead of staying at the convention center and looking for sources for my story. We were on one of the Green Zone buses, waiting for it to leave, when a woman in a desert camouflage uniform got on board. I thought I recognized her and I was right--it was Lt. Coyne, who I've been trying, and failing, to track down for my story. By the time I reached my stop we'd arranged an interview for tomorrow morning, which was confirmed by the public affairs officer this evening.

I'm starting to feel like a part of the media crew over here. Dan and I seem to be kindred spirits, and if I get out to Fallujah later this month he may come along to take photos. This evening I covered the Governing Council press conference condemning yesterday's bombings and stuck around for Bremer and Sanchez's condemnation as well. I saw Dexter Filkins and John Burns from the New York Times; they're well-respected, but also took a little ribbing because there seems to be an NYT uniform over here--a white button-down shirt tucked into blue jeans.

I got to ask General Kimmitt, the military spokesman, a question (which he answered on background, meaning I can't tell you what he said now that I told you he's the one who said it). I got a bit of an in by mentioning I'm working for Raleigh, and I mostly asked the question just to say I talked to the guy.

Afterwards I rode back in NBC's SUV with one of their producers and a USA Today reporter who was in Sarajevo off and on for four years. He was on deadline tonight, but we'll grab a beer sometime and talk.

So much is going on professionally, personally and politically that I can't really sort it out on the blog. Once things calm down a little and I get this story in I'll be in a more reflective mood. 
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
  My translator Shamil and I parted ways amicably yesterday, when he got an offer of steadier work for more money. He came by early this afternoon to drop off a list of sources, and told me about the bombings. This morning he was 100 meters from one of the explosions, and had to defend his reporter from an angry group of Iraqis.

I've also bumped into several friends and reporters who've been covering the explosions or know someone who was there. I'm actually going to ask around about some of the photographers I know--they flock to stuff like Ashoura because the images are amazing.

As usual, I wasn't involved in the violence first-hand. I was struck, when I went out this afternoon, by how empty the streets were--I've never seen neighborhoods so completely shut down for a religious observance. Storefront after storefront was shut up behind a metal gate, and a few cabs cruised through streets that are usually snarled with nightmarish traffic all day. It was eerie to drive through such quiet streets knowing what was going on across town.

I got a shave and a haircut at a place in Karada. It was the first time I've had my hair cut by a barber smoking a cigarette, and the first time I've ever been offered a cigarette while I was getting my beard trimmed. I got my hair washed and cut, my beard shaved off, a Turkish coffee and a cigarette for $2 and 1,000 dinars (about 70 cents). I'm sure I overpaid, but it's still not a bad deal on my budget.

Late this afternoon I interviewed Maysoon Damlouji at the headquarters of the Iraqi Independent Democrats, Adnan Pachachi's political party. Pachachi is a moderate Sunni in his early 80s, and Damlouji is a long-time colleague who's very active in women's issues. She lived in exile for decades and, in some indescribable way (apart from her better clothes and blonde highlights), she reminded me more of a European than an Iraqi. She had a little more savvyy, a little more irony, than most of her countrywomen. Pachachi walked by in the middle of our interview, and I shook his hand. I saw him last night, too, surrounded by reporters asking him about the interim constitution. 
Monday, March 01, 2004
  Random thoughts before bedtime:

Anderson thinks I should shave my beard, and I'm inclined to agree. As it warms up it's starting to get uncomfortable, and it doesn't do me much good in terms of blending in. I get pegged as an American (or at least a westerner who might be an American) most of the time. And when I pass as something else, I'm probably not doing myself any favors. Iraqis have no particular affection for Turks, Saudis and Iranians, and being mistaken for a guy who might be in town to murder Iraqi cops is a less-than-brilliant "disguise."

I realized another downside today while standing in line at the Convention Center, where I had the following exchange with a member of the 82nd Airborne:

Soldier: Sir, you know you don't have to wait in that line, right?

Me: I do now.

Soldier: You guys crack me up. Just clear your weapon in the clearing barrel if you've got one, sir.

The moral of that story is that, with my hiking boots, my untrimmed beard and my Irish complexion I may be walking around town looking like a CIA agent or a member of the Special Forces. Now, the 12 year old boy in me thinks it's awesome that people might think I'm a secret agent. But then there's the whole getting shot thing to take into account.

On a completely different note:

The Shi'ite observance of the martyrdom of Hussein has been so ubiquitous I've been forgetting to mention it. Black flags fly all over town. Cabbies have memorial music on their radios (sample lyrics: "Hussein, Hussein, Hussein, Hussein" [repeat]); TVs in hotel lobbies broadcast live scenes from Karbala. Yesterday Shamil and I saw pilgrims making their way south.

A Shi'ite employee at the Musafir hotel invited me to watch with him, and then explained, with what little English he had, the event Shi'ites are commemorating. According to the story, Hussein, fighting one of the battles to determine who would succeed Mohammad, rode out with 70 comrades and was ambushed by 3,000 enemies at Karbala. He held out for ten days before being defeated and martyred. Shi'ites flock to Karbala and abase themselves to atone for their forefather's unwillingness to aid Hussein in his struggle (at least that's what I've picked up, in bits and pieces, from some locals).

At first I thought the disorienting element in all this is the focus on suffering and death. You don't have to be a Mel Gibson afficianado to find the flaw in that logic. I guess what's fascinating is that Shi'ite martyrs were fighting to win. No Christian would say the world would be a better place if the apostles had saved Jesus from the cross, but Hussein was fighting a battle for political control on earth, not for the salvation of souls in heaven. Shi'ites, if I understand their theology correctly, don't think his death was foreordained--they blame their ancestors for not helping him acheive victory. That may be why self-injury (floggings that draw blood, for example) is so much a part of Shi'ite observance. 
  Sunday night Sgt. Jensen and I swung by the Green Zone Cafe, a smoky tent where denizens of the Green Zone can smoke tobacco out of water pipes and eat something approximating Iraqi food (or, if they prefer, something resembling American food).

It's the kind of place where a blonde girl wearing a Harley t-shirt walks in with a SAW slung over her shoulder (you'd use a squad automatic weapon if you wanted to, say, shoot through a brick wall to kill the person on the other side, or punch holes in the engine block of a Mac truck). It's the kind of place where young CPA guys play Risk ("the classic board game of global domination") while drinking red wine and smoking Cuban cigars.

It's the kind of place guys like me get stranded if they don't have a ride out of the Green Zone--fortunately I bumped into some acquaintances who work for a security company and live near me. We rode back in their Toyota Land Cruiser listening to the Scorpions; my companion in the backseat casually noted the approach of people and vehicles while cradling a submachine gun as discreetly as possible.

This morning Shamil and I split up--he went off to track down some Iraqi sources and I headed over to the CPA. I made some progress (but not much) at the press information center before bumping in to folks from Newsday and the Washington Times. They were going to meet a Kurdish rep from the Governing Council. In a case of "good for me, bad for the story" I chucked my plans and decided to tag along with them. It actually worked out well--the Newsday reporter had better information about women's issues in Iraq than the CPA.

Over at his compound I got to ask Dr. Mahmoud Othman a few questions (after taking some ribbing from his security about the Wahabbian proportions of my beard). A few hours later I was at the press conference where GC representatives officially announced that, at four a.m. Monday morning, they'd reached an agreement on the Basic Law, Iraq's temporary constitution.

I suppose, in the interest of telling the whole story, I should admit that I fell asleep for part of the press conference. Quite a bit of it was in Arabic, and I didn't have one of the headsets to get a translation. I was tired, and the room was about 85 degrees.

I could tell the GC guys were elated, but I was in a melancholy mood. I want badly for these guys to succeed, and I hope their unity and willingness to compromise is both genuine and reflective of the mood of the country. On the other hand: the economy is recovering, but slowly; the insurgency is still dangerous; foreign jihadis are infiltrating; America and the international community have neither long attention spans nor bottomless pockets. It won't take a civil war to wreck this project--it'll just take enough infighting and disunity to scare off international help and keep Iraqis from finding common solutions to common problems.

The thrill was mostly in seeing a serious press conference first-hand for the first time in my life. I was surrounded by reporters working on deadline who were relying on the press conference for information they probably wouldn't get anywhere else--the text of the Law won't be released until Wednesday. The real fun was after the official press conference ended, and reporters swarmed members of the Governing Council and American and British officials. It turns out high-profile professional reporters in Baghdad are just like the rest of us wretches--they run around getting contradictory information from their sources, they worry about their deadlines, and and wonder if their story is going to fall apart (except John Burns of the New York Times--he looked like he didn't have a care in the world).

The difference is they're dealing with issues like whether 25 percent of seats in the legislature are required to go to women, or if the document just says that'd be a nice goal to shoot for. They're also dealing with folks who are as skilled at witholding information as anybody I've ever seen interviewed. Any hack can just ignore your question and respond with boilerplate; it takes a true professional to ignore your question while making you think, just for an instant, that he's providing you with useful information.

A few hours later folks from the CPA's press office for Arab media came over for dinner at the NPR house. I had a great conversation with a British guy named Gareth, part of whose job is fielding questions from the Arab press. He said the American style is to bull forward with pre-established talking points, while Brits are a bit more inclined to get into nuances. He and three colleagues who joined him for dinner all speak fluent Arabic (among other languages). Among other highlights, Gareth said his reading of the original Arabic of the Zarqawi memo indicates that it's either genuine or a fantastic forgery--it reads exactly like the kind of rambling, slightly psychotic manifesto favored by terrorists.

The NPR house is rapidly gentrifying. Freelance Swede Jens has been replaced by Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker. He told me my decision to come here means I'll get a good job in foreign correspondence at a big paper a lot quicker than I would have otherwise. Imagine Eric Clapton strolling by and telling a garage band guitarist to keep up the good work, and you get the idea.

Midway through the evening I found myself torn between Jon Anderson discussing Iraqi politics and American foreign policy on my right, and a beautiful foreign service officer who speaks French, Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic on my left.

I'm in the right city at the right time. 
Taxis without seatbelts, AK's without permits, and commentary without edits. A freelancer's life in Baghdad, by Charlie Crain

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