An Englishman in Baghdad

The last 5 days in Iraq have been tough and on the few occasions where I've had 15mins to blog I've felt overwhelmed and therefore wimped out. Apologies to friends who've been worried by the silence...

Would you believe I only managed to write that first paragraph when there were five heavy explosions so I quickly quit the hotel internet cafe (to avoid flying glass if a mortar rounds lands outside, and more importantly to avoid all the excited journalists scurrying around with a hungry look on their faces) and headed up to my room. It's quieted down now, so I'm going to have another go!

Iraq, as you may guess, is hot and chaotic. Until last night I was staying in a cheap hotel without air-conditioning (and often without any electricity most of the night) which meant I got no sleep but did get a little understanding of how exhausting and frustrating it is just trying to live a few nights in Baghdad at the moment - quite a few people have suggested that I'm brave coming here but I reply that what takes real courage is to live out here permanently and remain as friendly and self-giving as so many Iraqis are.

However the situation has changed considerably from my last trip in October 2003 when I used to travel alone around the city by foot and taxi, chatting with so many people along the way. Baghdadis whose opinions I respect have insisted that I can no longer do this. It is heartbreaking not to be able to interact so freely now, and my schedule is difficult to juggle as I am dependent on friends to pick me up and drive me around Baghdad's gridlocked streets. One change for the better is a reasonably functioning mobile network, although that results in another variable to juggle - keeping one's phone charged is not easy when the electricity supply is so hit and miss, and the stakes are much higher if the battery suddenly dies (as mine did yesterday evening when I was trying to arrange a pick up at night in a dodgy area).

But anyway, life here still goes on of course. And not just the daily chores and tasks. Love is in the air. I kid you not. One insightful friend pointed out that most of the foreigners who've spent more than a few months here have ended up getting hitched, either to each other or more often to locals. I don't gossip so I won't mention any names, but I've heard of almost a dozen examples. If I was staying much longer than the 9 days of this trip the chances are I'd likely be kidnapped, not by Al-Qaeda but by Abu Jamila or someone who'd walk me up the aisle (or mosque equivalent) with his daughter!

Actually I do have a kidnapping story: I was almost the first person kidnapped in Iraq. Last October one friend approached me with a proposition - he and some friends would dress up in mujahadeen clothes, hold a gun to my head and video my pleas for release. I would then head home to the UK and they would sell the tape to Al-Jazeria or someone, and split the profits with me. When the world media started probing and found me safe and sound I could explain how the whole affair was a big joke. Ha Ha. Needless to say, though to my Iraqi friend's deep surprise, I didn't agree and missed out on my 5 minutes of fame/infamy.

My main task out here has been to find someone to run Jubilee Iraq on the ground here. It's been hard going and I've had so many gloomy assessments from Iraqi friends that it will be impossible to find a good trustworthy person with the appropriate skills and in the short time I have available. I'm not so pessimistic, as I have a higher opinion of Iraqis than I think many do themselves. Of course its a tough situation, unemployment is so high that people will do and say anything to get work, and the long years of dictatorship have meant that most well qualified people had either been coopted or fled into exile. My other task here has been to investigate Iraqi NGOs and it has been depressing to hear how many of them are shams just after donor money - but at the same time I have found some which are decent, and I refuse to reject the grain just because there is so much chaff.

I've had some fun times here as well. Long hours chatting with a fiery Palastinian friend who is known across the country for going the extra mile to help anyone in need. Listening to an Italian and an Arab argue over which race has contributed most to the development of coffee. An evening with a former minister who encouraged me to embrace Islam (one of his interesting proofs was that if you take a scan of someone's lungs and turn it on its side, then within the network of tubes - I think they're called bronchi - you can read (in Arabic script) the Kalimath At-thawheedh "La Ilaha Illallah" which means "There is no god but Allah" - does anyone have any pictures to demonstrate this?). He also told me of the occassion his daughter innocently asked him "in what way is Saddam related to God" - an understandable question in a society forced to submit to a personality cult in which a list was even drawn up of the 99 names of Saddam. A guilty debate with a vegan activist who correctly guessed that I'm a veggie in the UK but lapse when I'm here in Iraq. Joking with iraqi friends about the tastleless formless green statue which has replaced the one of Saddam at the end of Saadoon Street. Crusing at night around "TeaTime" and other favorite haunts of the Iraqi upper class youth with a junior doctor who explained how he'd boldly demanded, and eventually received, an apology from an American soldier who had randomly and mistakenly arrested him while he was waiting in a fuel queue... Everyone one meets in Iraq has a story to tell, and most of them are worth hearing.