Biggles of 266
1st Level Red Feather
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2001
- Messages
- 1,126
- Points
- 36
No one in their right mind would take a holiday in Iraq right now, would they? Let Johann Hari surprise you.
The suburbs of Baghdad, the night after Saddam's referendum. At last you have managed to sneak away from your Ministry of Information heavies and wander the streets alone.
Baghdad used to make you think of the mystical East. Hah! The buildings of this Paris of Mesopotamia sag into the ground like elderly men on life-support machines. Pavements end inexplicably, petering out into haphazard piles of rubble. Shops operate out of shells that would not survive heavy rain.
It doesn't even look like a place that was once beautiful: its porridgy concrete buildings would be an eyesore even if they were brand new. The wind is blowing so fiercely that you realise that something must be wrong. You notice that the streets have emptied as you walk; everyone seems to have retreated into their homes.
The wind is really hurting you now; you realise it is a sandstorm. You decide to head back to your hotel. Now, was it that way at the roundabout?
A 1980 Oldsmobile pulls up and a bearded man in his 50s barks: "Meester. Get into the car." His car radio fills the street with the sound of referendum results nationally: 100 per cent, 100 . . .You remember that Baghdad is the city that finished off even Alexander the Great. The sand is burning your eyes. You have nowhere else to go. You cross your fingers, bid farewell to life and get in. It is at moments like this that you question the wisdom of taking a package holiday in Iraq. I was rather miffed that nobody tried very hard to talk me out of going, on a 6am flight from London to Damascus, the easiest place from which to drive to Iraq.
Twenty-two people had, it turns out, booked along with me to spend 18 days in sunny, relaxing Iraq. First I met Julie and Phil. They seemed an almost comically suburban
couple: polite, a little posh, all golf jumpers and florals. But then Phil mentioned his last holiday had been to North Korea.
"Yeah, I've been twice since they opened the borders to tourists. I'm a bit of a celebrity there now. People come up to me in the streets and say, 'Why have you come twice?' "
The group had a handful of risk-takers like Phil. Sean, a 36-year-old New York restaurateur and multi-millionaire, was clearly in this category. He lives a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero and witnessed the attack on the Twin Towers but he appeared to be America's biggest peacenik. "If I was going to Iraq to shoot a bunch of people, everyone back home would say I was a hero. But because I'm coming to hang out with the people and see what they're like, they think I'm a suspect character."
Then there were the hardcore archaeology fiends. The whole trip was ostensibly a tour of Iraq's archaeology sites, because they don't let you in if you say you are only interested in stocking up on Saddam memorabilia. One Christian couple wanted to check out ancient biblical sites; another was retracing the footsteps of an archaeologist grandfather.
Then there was Hannah - how to explain her? A frightfully well-spoken Englishwoman in her early 50s. When we first met, she dispensed with the small talk to say: "I think Saddam is a great man and the USA is a great big global bully. My theory is that he should be given Kuwait. It's perfectly logical if you look at the map.
"I think he's rather handsome, too," she went on. "Every woman does, really. I'd rather like to inspect his weapon of mass destruction myself."
As you near the Iraqi border from Syria, you begin to get a sense of the land you are hurtling so foolishly towards. One guidebook describes the Iraqi desert as "so desolate and uninviting that even a rattlesnake would feel lonely there". The scenery is so utterly barren for so long that a sighting of a telegraph pole in the distance seems like a big event.
The first thing you see as you cross into Iraq is Saddam Hussein, smiling and striding purposefully towards you. The entire party suddenly rises as one, terrified. How can he possibly be here in person to greet us? But then you see another Saddam standing next to him, and another, and then you realise that Saddam appears to be everywhere. It's a classic Middle East phenomenon: the men carefully craft themselves to look uncannily like the leader.
All the men under 60 are led off for an AIDS test. Suddenly I have a vision of the doctor returning to me saying, "Well, there's some bad news and some good news. The bad news is, you are HIV positive. The good news is, that means you can't come into Iraq."
But the clinic gives me my first taste of Iraq's administrative incompetence. The blokes enter in a random order and the doctor doesn't even ask our names. The blood samples aren't even marked. So we pass peacefully through the border - and the rubble begins.
Iraq is brimming over with rubble. For the first five minutes of driving, you assume that you are passing through a rubbish dump, but then you realise that two wars and endless poverty have turned the entire country into a rubbish dump. Even so, how many collapsed buildings can there be? I did not see a single patch of desert or a single street corner in two weeks that did not have its own potpourri of scattered brick, stone and dust. Where on earth has it all come from?
After another seemingly eternal drive, Baghdad finally appears as though rising by sheer force of will from the desert. It seems strange to see people hurrying about the streets carrying shopping, smoking water-pipes, laughing, dreaming - living life.
The novelist Amos Oz once said of the Middle East that "even on the side of a volcano, life goes on", and he is right. But it's not quite life as normal. There are cars on the road that have bits literally dropping off them. UN sanctions mean it is impossible to get new car parts, so people drive weird wrecks.
The street art towers over the regulation neo-Arab brutalist architecture. A whopping statue of Saddam dressed as the Muslim warrior Saladin seems a tad inappropriate because Saladin was a Kurd and Saddam has a problem with Kurds.
As we darted from museum to ancient monument, I snatched every moment I could with "real" Iraqi people. As we stocked up with petrol, I wandered into a shop selling confectionery. When I said I was from England, the shopkeeper - in his early 30s, at a guess - hugged me.
I think he thought our presence guaranteed that there would be no bombs that day. If only. I lied and said that his city is beautiful. "Ah, it was beautiful once. Before 1990 and sanctions. Now it is . . ." He looked around him and shrugged.
Saddam is a constant, everyday presence in Iraq. It is impossible to convey just how often you see his image, or the effect this has on your psychology - never mind the effect it must have on the relatives of the three million who have been murdered by the regime since Saddam's party came to power in 1964.
In the areas of the south that rose in a failed attempt to overthrow Saddam in the early 1990s, the images of the president become markedly more threatening. He stands stern-faced against an inferno-like red backdrop. Bullet holes remain ominously in buildings.
It is difficult to get Iraqis to express their feelings about all this. Only after blundering about with direct questions for the first few days - and a blunt telling-off from my minder, Ahmed - did I realise that I had to speak more obliquely. Talking politics in Iraq is like a magic-eye picture, where you have to let your brain go out of focus, not your eyes. One very distinguished old man in a Mosul souk welcomed me warmly and told me how much he had loved visiting London in the 1970s. After much oblique prodding, he said warmly: "I admire British democracy and freedom." He held my gaze. "I very much admire them." He added: "We do not know what is coming. The news we receive here is . . . unclear."
A group of students in a cafe in Mosul were eager to know - in hushed tones - if it was possible to "continue their studies" in Europe or America. Equally, many people asked quite genuinely "why your government hates the Arab world". Again and again, it was startling how little anger there was towards Westerners.
In Basra, one person asked nicely where Sean was from, and when he said the US, the man recoiled and said: "Goodbye, sir." That was the full extent of the aggression we received from the Iraqi people.
Except - I suddenly feared - now that I had clambered into an anonymous car, perhaps I was finally going to get the brunt of all that pent-up hatred. The driver was expressionless. Trees were falling like matchsticks across the town and the radio still blared on: 100 per cent . . . The driver lit up a fat cigar and offered it to me. "What hotel, meester? Where would you like to go?" He smiled sweetly.
My shoulders finally unclenching, I asked him just to drive around the town for a while. The sandstorm probably made that unsafe but - what the hell - I was in Iraq and figured that a little more risk wasn't going to hurt much.
The suburbs of Baghdad, the night after Saddam's referendum. At last you have managed to sneak away from your Ministry of Information heavies and wander the streets alone.
Baghdad used to make you think of the mystical East. Hah! The buildings of this Paris of Mesopotamia sag into the ground like elderly men on life-support machines. Pavements end inexplicably, petering out into haphazard piles of rubble. Shops operate out of shells that would not survive heavy rain.
It doesn't even look like a place that was once beautiful: its porridgy concrete buildings would be an eyesore even if they were brand new. The wind is blowing so fiercely that you realise that something must be wrong. You notice that the streets have emptied as you walk; everyone seems to have retreated into their homes.
The wind is really hurting you now; you realise it is a sandstorm. You decide to head back to your hotel. Now, was it that way at the roundabout?
A 1980 Oldsmobile pulls up and a bearded man in his 50s barks: "Meester. Get into the car." His car radio fills the street with the sound of referendum results nationally: 100 per cent, 100 . . .You remember that Baghdad is the city that finished off even Alexander the Great. The sand is burning your eyes. You have nowhere else to go. You cross your fingers, bid farewell to life and get in. It is at moments like this that you question the wisdom of taking a package holiday in Iraq. I was rather miffed that nobody tried very hard to talk me out of going, on a 6am flight from London to Damascus, the easiest place from which to drive to Iraq.
Twenty-two people had, it turns out, booked along with me to spend 18 days in sunny, relaxing Iraq. First I met Julie and Phil. They seemed an almost comically suburban
couple: polite, a little posh, all golf jumpers and florals. But then Phil mentioned his last holiday had been to North Korea.
"Yeah, I've been twice since they opened the borders to tourists. I'm a bit of a celebrity there now. People come up to me in the streets and say, 'Why have you come twice?' "
The group had a handful of risk-takers like Phil. Sean, a 36-year-old New York restaurateur and multi-millionaire, was clearly in this category. He lives a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero and witnessed the attack on the Twin Towers but he appeared to be America's biggest peacenik. "If I was going to Iraq to shoot a bunch of people, everyone back home would say I was a hero. But because I'm coming to hang out with the people and see what they're like, they think I'm a suspect character."
Then there were the hardcore archaeology fiends. The whole trip was ostensibly a tour of Iraq's archaeology sites, because they don't let you in if you say you are only interested in stocking up on Saddam memorabilia. One Christian couple wanted to check out ancient biblical sites; another was retracing the footsteps of an archaeologist grandfather.
Then there was Hannah - how to explain her? A frightfully well-spoken Englishwoman in her early 50s. When we first met, she dispensed with the small talk to say: "I think Saddam is a great man and the USA is a great big global bully. My theory is that he should be given Kuwait. It's perfectly logical if you look at the map.
"I think he's rather handsome, too," she went on. "Every woman does, really. I'd rather like to inspect his weapon of mass destruction myself."
As you near the Iraqi border from Syria, you begin to get a sense of the land you are hurtling so foolishly towards. One guidebook describes the Iraqi desert as "so desolate and uninviting that even a rattlesnake would feel lonely there". The scenery is so utterly barren for so long that a sighting of a telegraph pole in the distance seems like a big event.
The first thing you see as you cross into Iraq is Saddam Hussein, smiling and striding purposefully towards you. The entire party suddenly rises as one, terrified. How can he possibly be here in person to greet us? But then you see another Saddam standing next to him, and another, and then you realise that Saddam appears to be everywhere. It's a classic Middle East phenomenon: the men carefully craft themselves to look uncannily like the leader.
All the men under 60 are led off for an AIDS test. Suddenly I have a vision of the doctor returning to me saying, "Well, there's some bad news and some good news. The bad news is, you are HIV positive. The good news is, that means you can't come into Iraq."
But the clinic gives me my first taste of Iraq's administrative incompetence. The blokes enter in a random order and the doctor doesn't even ask our names. The blood samples aren't even marked. So we pass peacefully through the border - and the rubble begins.
Iraq is brimming over with rubble. For the first five minutes of driving, you assume that you are passing through a rubbish dump, but then you realise that two wars and endless poverty have turned the entire country into a rubbish dump. Even so, how many collapsed buildings can there be? I did not see a single patch of desert or a single street corner in two weeks that did not have its own potpourri of scattered brick, stone and dust. Where on earth has it all come from?
After another seemingly eternal drive, Baghdad finally appears as though rising by sheer force of will from the desert. It seems strange to see people hurrying about the streets carrying shopping, smoking water-pipes, laughing, dreaming - living life.
The novelist Amos Oz once said of the Middle East that "even on the side of a volcano, life goes on", and he is right. But it's not quite life as normal. There are cars on the road that have bits literally dropping off them. UN sanctions mean it is impossible to get new car parts, so people drive weird wrecks.
The street art towers over the regulation neo-Arab brutalist architecture. A whopping statue of Saddam dressed as the Muslim warrior Saladin seems a tad inappropriate because Saladin was a Kurd and Saddam has a problem with Kurds.
As we darted from museum to ancient monument, I snatched every moment I could with "real" Iraqi people. As we stocked up with petrol, I wandered into a shop selling confectionery. When I said I was from England, the shopkeeper - in his early 30s, at a guess - hugged me.
I think he thought our presence guaranteed that there would be no bombs that day. If only. I lied and said that his city is beautiful. "Ah, it was beautiful once. Before 1990 and sanctions. Now it is . . ." He looked around him and shrugged.
Saddam is a constant, everyday presence in Iraq. It is impossible to convey just how often you see his image, or the effect this has on your psychology - never mind the effect it must have on the relatives of the three million who have been murdered by the regime since Saddam's party came to power in 1964.
In the areas of the south that rose in a failed attempt to overthrow Saddam in the early 1990s, the images of the president become markedly more threatening. He stands stern-faced against an inferno-like red backdrop. Bullet holes remain ominously in buildings.
It is difficult to get Iraqis to express their feelings about all this. Only after blundering about with direct questions for the first few days - and a blunt telling-off from my minder, Ahmed - did I realise that I had to speak more obliquely. Talking politics in Iraq is like a magic-eye picture, where you have to let your brain go out of focus, not your eyes. One very distinguished old man in a Mosul souk welcomed me warmly and told me how much he had loved visiting London in the 1970s. After much oblique prodding, he said warmly: "I admire British democracy and freedom." He held my gaze. "I very much admire them." He added: "We do not know what is coming. The news we receive here is . . . unclear."
A group of students in a cafe in Mosul were eager to know - in hushed tones - if it was possible to "continue their studies" in Europe or America. Equally, many people asked quite genuinely "why your government hates the Arab world". Again and again, it was startling how little anger there was towards Westerners.
In Basra, one person asked nicely where Sean was from, and when he said the US, the man recoiled and said: "Goodbye, sir." That was the full extent of the aggression we received from the Iraqi people.
Except - I suddenly feared - now that I had clambered into an anonymous car, perhaps I was finally going to get the brunt of all that pent-up hatred. The driver was expressionless. Trees were falling like matchsticks across the town and the radio still blared on: 100 per cent . . . The driver lit up a fat cigar and offered it to me. "What hotel, meester? Where would you like to go?" He smiled sweetly.
My shoulders finally unclenching, I asked him just to drive around the town for a while. The sandstorm probably made that unsafe but - what the hell - I was in Iraq and figured that a little more risk wasn't going to hurt much.
