Leaving Baghdad

Generators, On the Airport Road Again,

and Families Trying to Get Out

         On my last day in Baghdad, I saw something that seemed to me a good illustration of the city in general.   I was on a street where, during previous trips, I saw hundreds of new home appliances and electronics stacked high on the sidewalk in front of bustling retail stores.   Crowds of shoppers compared prices while others moved their new purchases into cars double parked in beeping traffic.

         Now, there were almost no people, there were almost no cars, and only the only items for sale cluttering the sidewalk were generators.  

In America, generators aren't an essential home appliance because the power supply is reliable.   In Iraq's capital city, this is still not the case, and electricity is often available only four or five hours a day(for those who have it).   News reports used to make a big deal about guessing when the power supply would reach pre-war levels.   After more than three years of waiting, there's not much new to say about it anymore.   If there's a signature sound that one would associate with Baghdad(other than gunfire and explosions), it would have to be the collective roar of multiple diesel generators churning through the day and night.

Among the new ones laid out was a woman covered from head to toe in black, begging for alms from anyone she could find.   The owner of a generator shop gave her some dinars, but the other store owners had either gone out of business or weren't making enough money to pass any off to her.   Gunshots sounded and she scurried away, along with a potential customer.

Without commerce and electricity, and when people are afraid to go out, a city hasn't much of a chance for anything.   I was leaving the city much worse than I had first seen it, three years earlier.

The car I was in actually had car trouble on the Airport Road, something so ridiculous it's almost comical.   Forget the feared insurgents and IEDs, driving erratically and stopping by the side of this horribly dangerous highway makes it highly likely for soldiers' or mercenaries' rifles to be emptied into your vehicle.   There were many guns aimed at us and there was some yelling, but we made it through enough of the checkpoints that I was able to be switched to another car, pass security, and get to the entrance of Baghdad International Airport.

Though tense and hyper-militarized on the outside, the interior of the airport is surprisingly pleasant.   There are some stores that sell phone cards and Iraqi flags, and a cafeteria that is pretty good.   Iraqi Airways, though, doesn't get good reviews from any of its passengers.   It handles most of the nation's domestic flights, and almost every passage is overbooked, leaving angry passengers behind to wait for the next overbooked flight, whenever it may be.

This happened to me, and though spending the night there wasn't what I had in mind, it was a worthwhile experience.

At first glance, the airport looks like many others, where air travel is associated vacations and holidays.   A very high percentage of the passengers were families, and the familiar sight of parents trying to keep their children from running around too much was nice to see.   It was a little bit of humanity in the center of such a bleak city.

The families weren't going on vacation, though.   Everybody with means to do so is fleeing.   Death can come at any time, so people are desperate, and doing anything they can to get out.  

Some were granted temporary visas to Jordan where they'll do whatever they can to get residency papers within the three month limit, some were going to Syria, others to Lebanon, just in time for the Hezbollah/Israel war. (I'm reminded of a doctor I know from Baghdad who completed the monumental task of getting a visa for a fellowship at Tulane University in New Orleans, and arrived 2 days before Katrina hit).   They are leaving as fast as the planes can carry them to anywhere they can go.

I hung around a lot with Salaam, a likable young man in his twenties from Baghdad who until then, hadn't spent the night outside of his home since the war.   There was also a small boy named Muqtada, who followed me around, determined to teach me as many Arabic words as possible, and whose family kept bringing me sodas.  

There were many others, mostly families, who I spent over 30 hours with, and who continually went out of their way to be friendly.   They didn't act like frightened people, leaving and risking everything they had to go to unknown lands where the large numbers of Iraqi refugees are being treated with increasing hostility.