As Obama has speechified and people taken to the streets all over the world, appalled by the crackdown on Iranian protests, I have been puzzled by the absence of green-ribboned street marches here. Why don't Iraqis care about the events in Iran?
It's a tricky one to disentangle. I would have thought the Iraqis had every reason to be interested. Iran and Iraq share a long border and while Iran is overwhelmingly Shia Muslim, Iraq has a decided Shia majority. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian tourists visit Iraq every year, on pilgrimages to the tombs and golden mosques sacred to the Shia.
The Iranian government has its fingers in a lot of Iraqi pies, including allegedly funding groups as diverse as the Dawa political party headed by Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki, and Shia (and possibly also Sunni) militia groups including the one which kidnapped five Brits two years ago. Weapons and militants are still being smuggled across the Iranian border into the country. There was of course the brutal 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war whose wounds still linger. In love or in hate, few Iraqis are, when questioned, neutral on the issue of Iran and Ahmedinejad's government.
So, why no marches? The WSJ suggested that the Iraqi establishment is just too tied up with the Iranian one to make a squeak of protest, and Bobby Ghosh in Time pointed out some salient facts like the fact that Iraqis have some pretty big problems of their own to contend with.
What I found interesting, speaking to Iraqis, is that the calm does not spring from support for Ahmedinejad and they don't all believe the vote was not rigged. "I think they were truly rigged," said a college teacher. "A million per cent certain!" said a guy in a park.
And, surprisingly enough, the lack of public outrage doesn't spring from total indifference. "We say," said Bassam al Bayati, the gentleman in the park, "that the Iranian people have acted very well.
"The people who are quiet about injustice," he went on, "there is no good in them. {The demonstrators'] stance shows their high mind, their struggle and that they have chosen the right path."
And, said his pal Kamal Al Zubeidi, 35: "yes, I support the people in the streets. We are seeing these clashes between the forces and the people and I think the goal of the people is the better one."
Nor is it the case that Iraqis think the unrest won't change anything. Mr al Hashem, 27, a college teacher, noted that over the last couple of days, Iran has been testing out its air force in the Gulf. "When they receive pressure," he said, "they flex their muscles." He said that although "currently it is all political," should there be an real or perceived US incursion into Iran, "Iran could strike the US by striking US interests in the region, and in particular Iraq."
His friend Mr al Ameri said, "I have the biggest idea. I believe that this is the beginning of the fall of the Iranian regime because of the rule of the extremists, " before speculating that Iran could end up like Iraq, with the US leaving the country, post-intervention, to internal warfare to work out who should be in charge.
Imad Abbas, 45, another teacher, was on the other hand convinced that the election was not fraudulent and that Ahmedinejad's government had the support of the poor people. But he too said that instability in Iran could leave it like Iraq, with porous borders and security problems.
So, if they're interested and they think it could impact on them, why the torpor?
Like all tricky things to understand, it's a combination of things really. First, Iraqis aren't in the habit of being that interested in other countries. Most of them have never been to one. During the Saddam era, the country was brutally isolated not just by sanctions but by the laws against mobile phone and satellite TV. It takes time for outlook to broaden.
There is also the fact that the Iran-Iraq political ties are so strong. "Lots of political parties (in Iraq) are linked to Iran," said Mr al Hashem, "so they try to give a positive view about how the elections went on in Iran." And do people believe them? "The undereducated layer of society is affected by this," he said.
Some people just don't like the Iranians very much. Several cited the absence of Iranian help during the years of sectarian violence in post-invasion Iraq. Saadoon al Ganimi, 36, a civil servant, said that, "There is an Iraqi saying that a man whose hand is in fire is different from one whose hand is in ice. Then, ours was on fire and theirs was on ice. Now, it's the other way round."
But, as the country reels from a fresh round of violence, the main reason they can't get exercised about blood on the streets in Tehran is that they still have so much of their own to worry about. They are not, said Thikrayat, 38, a high school teacher, "very interested in it because we are more interested in Iraqi issues. The security situation in Iraq is our main concern."
Mr al Zubeidi, one of the men in the park said, "people here are suffering with their own problems and are tired. If we go out demonstrating, really we should use it [for an issue that affects Iraq]." His friend Mr al Bayati agreed, and there was something very sad in the how prosaic he was. "Even if we go out demonstrating," he said, "what would we gain? There is nothing in it for us.
"People here are tired and poor."
- Alice Fordham
 So, I made an apple crumble. A rudimentary apple crumble, it is true, and not fit for consumption by anyone but me (and certainly not by the baking guru who has challenged me to produce cake), but a crumble nonetheless. It took some persuasion of a microwave whose oven setting nearly burned down the hotel, and there's definitely something a bit odd about the consistency of the crumble. And yet, I felt that achieving crumble at all in the circumstances of a kitchen not designed for crumble, limited resources and a general emphasis around here on things that are not crumble (bombs, endemic political corruption and kebabs, for instance) was in some way a triumph of order over chaos.
Speaking of order over chaos, I have been allowing myself a nightly episode of the Fry and Laurie TV adaption of Jeeves and Wooster which is also quite the tonic. Without wishing to be a vile colonialist, one does notice cultural differences here, and a dose of exaggerated Britishness is somehow soothing. There's something about the way Stephen Fry (who is just genius as Jeeves) twitches his face ever so slightly to indicate deep inner pain at some hat that Bertie is wearing, which is the perfect antidote to the wild gesticulations of the Middle East. Moreover, I do sometimes end up thinking that a bit of Jeeves-ish resourcefulness is required around here to get things done. In one episode, set in the countryside, their cottage burns down, and Jeeves improvises a tea-strainer out of three twigs and a hanky.
If he can do that, my thinking goes, surely I can yet devise a way to get that tricky interview, find transport to this distant place...and maybe even produce a lemon drizzle cake that will assure my standing among Baghdad's baking community. Stay tuned for updates.
- Alice Fordham
 As reports come in that Iranian officials have arrested several members of the main exiled opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), their fellow Mujahadeen have been rallying in Iraq.
3,400 members of the PMOI, a group formed in the 1960s with the aim of overthrowing the Iranian shah, are now living in a camp called Ashraf here in Diyala province, Iraq. The group fled Iran in the 1980s.
Authorities in Tehran "identified and arrested a number of hypocrites who were trained in Ashraf camp in Iraq and entered Iran in order to carry out terrorist actions," the official Iranian news agency reported.
Officials from the PMOI said on Saturday that, "Simultaneous with...today's massive gathering of Iranians in Paris in solidarity with the Iranian people’s uprising and in support of the Camp Ashraf residents' rights, the residents in Ashraf staged their gathering to express support for the demands of the Iranian people's uprising which has been bloodily suppressed. The residents hailed the ongoing demonstrations inside Iran and the gathering of exiled Iranians in Paris." They issued pictures of the rally.
- Alice Fordham
 Oooh, Iraq's deputy PM Barham Salih is Twittering. He follows Barack Obama, John McCain and Oprah, seems unconcerned about security in revealing his upcoming locations and has an exuberant appetite for the exclamation mark: "Went, with family,to verify voter registration yesterday!" See for yourself at www.twitter.com/barhamsalih
- Alice Fordham
 Uck. The layer of dust lying over this particular corner of Diyala province is thicker than treacle and about as pleasant to inhale. This desert pea-souper has been squatting over this base like a toad for 36 hours and shows no sign of letting up. Last night, it was practically snowing dust. In the ten minutes it took me to walk from work-tent to bed-hut, my clothes and lungs were saturated. For your amusement I attach a picture of my face, complete with hair and eyelashes thickly covered in a layer of Iraq's finest, most penetrating, genuine, custard-coloured dust. I was assured by a colonel yesterday that you get to a point where you feel strange without it.
- Alice Fordham
Meet the Narcycist. He’s an Iraqi slice of the rich and varied world of Arabic hip hop and his new video is quite entertaining if only for its title of PHATWA, which the great man told The Times, “stands for Purposeful Hatred Attacking The Wrong Arabs OR Political Hip-Hop Attracting The World's Attention," addressing the woes of a young Arab going through airport security.
While he was born in the UAE and grew up in Canada, he maintains a strong national identity and is by no means the only Iraqi pop artist operating from overseas – there are artists in Lebanon and Syria, and another rapper in Jordan. The Narcycist says that, “music opened up that hole that was the loss of our motherland I think and filled it with representation; or the ability to represent my people in one way or another.” Western-style pop music is just beginning to filter into Baghdad, but most of the Iraqi pop music is listened to among the diaspora, according to the Narcycist.
Iraq has a long, rich history of art and poetry and it’s nice to know there is an Iraqi take on modern means of expression. “in every Iraqi I know,” says the Narcycist, “the channel of our communications are open through the arts.
“All we really have is each other,” he laments, “our country's leaders never represented and never will.”
- Alice Fordham
 ...are so American. Tipping into one on a Black Hawk from Baghdad, looking like I'd been microwaved, I stumbled into a world of cavernous dining halls hung with red-white-and-blue streamers, of concrete blast walls painted with logos of baseball teams and every flavour of Baskin Robbins available. It's a shock sometimes to step outside an air-conditioned reinforced tent or hangar and into a baking desert landscape rather than onto an, ahem, "regular sidewalk".
It's not a new observation, and my colleague Martin Fletcher wrote brilliantly about the supply chain required to keep the thousands of troops stationed here in popcorn and Froot Loops. But sometimes in Iraq an unexpected offer of marmalade or somesuch reminds me of the British colonial legacy here, and I wonder if, as the Americans withdraw, they will leave behind a taste for infintely variable ice cream and baseball.
Speaking of baseball, I type now as American soldiers in the Public Affairs Office, pictured above, take a little R and R at the end of a long day with pepperoni pizza and Mario Sluggers baseball game on the Wii. With a star-spangled backdrop, naturally.
- Alice Fordham
 Everyone needs a hobby. For myself, personally, when not reporting on hot, volatile countries, I like to bake. From fairy cakes to friands, from souffle to scones, the alchemy of flour, butter and eggs is a constant source of delight to me and, with a few exceptions, to the friends and colleagues who are obliged to eat the results.
Transferring these skills to the Middle East has met with confusion on occasion, where the taste is more for elaborate sweets. But, even with my very limited Arabic, an interest in cooking does give me something to talk to women (and it is usually women) about. How do you make this? Where do the ingredients come from? are generally questions which people are delighted to answer. Impromptu cooking lessons sometimes ensue.
So it was last week when an Iraqi colleague called in on his day off for a cup of tea and to introduce his charming wife, a young woman whose initial shyness, I suspect, hides a great deal of fun. The conversation turned to the wife's cooking, and to the excellence of her chocolate cakes. Oh, I said, I love cooking, I should make you all a cake. The promise was forgotten as we discussed what really is the optimum filling for a sponge cake and varieties of icing, until it was time for me to leave.
A couple of evenings later, the couple called by again. The little sweetheart had baked for me the cake pictured above, ablaze with coloured icing and inscribed with my name (not pictured is the S motif repeated around the side of the cake - to represent the second syllable of my name). After all concerned had exclaimed over the deliciousness of the cake, she explained that next time, I would make a cake, and she would try it.
Amid all the sweetness, I had a feeling a gauntlet had been cast down. So, consider this story Chapter One. Chapter Two to be written just as soon as I get the oven to work and prepare to host my first Baghdad tea party.
- Alice Fordham
 Saddam would have had a fit. Echoing through the vast marble entrance chamber of his Al Faw palace came the Star Spangled Banner, sung in harmony by Stephen Colbert - of Daily Show and Colbert Report fame - and Sergeant Adrienn Falk. They held the last note as long as they could before the crowd went wild, light thrown from a chandelier the size of Wisconsin playing over three hundred or so crew-cut heads.
Comedian and presenter Colbert was in Baghdad last night to entertain the troops at Camp Victory, the base by Baghdad airport which includes a vast Saddam-built palace complex and lake. The first of four shows was filmed in front of an audience drawn from the largely American Multinational Forces in Iraq, in an evening which featured everything from stars-and-stripes sandbags to faintly off-colour weapons of mass destruction jokes. The audience generally acknowledged it to have reached the zenith of humour possible in an ex-dictator's palace in roasting midsummer in a city where the air is full of sand.
Guest stars included John McCain, via video, reminding troops to clean their muskets, and a video message from Barack Obama himself, butting into an interview with General Ray Odierno, commander of the Multinational Forces, who was there in person.
He had overheard, said video-Obama, a conversation in which Odierno was informing Colbert that he ought to get a haircut. "Are your spy satellites really that good?" enquired Colbert. "No," said the commander-in-chief, "my ears are really that big." And with that, he ordered Odierno to shave the head of Colbert. The crew-cut crowd cheered all concerned to the rafters.
Colbert, who arrived in Baghdad on Friday last week, will be visiting troops in the field as well as filming the series of shows to be screened in the US this week. His trip, codenamed by him Operation Iraqi Stephen, was inspired, he has said, by a desire to keep the story of US soldiers and the Iraq War in the news. His audience declared themselves more than satisfied. "It was a very historic event," said audience member First Lieutenant Stephen Clements afterwards, "to watch a sitting US President order a four star general to shave the head of a TV anchor. History was made tonight."
Singer Sergeant Falks, meanwhile, when asked what Saddam would have thought of her singing the US national anthem in his hallway, grinned broadly, and said simply: "He might have thought: great acoustics."
- Alice Fordham
This is my last Iraq blog so I am feeling a little sentimental. After two years of manning The Times bureau in Baghdad, I have moved back to London, though I hope to return for the odd stint in the future. More importantly, the blog itself will continue to prosper as my replacement takes over.
Thank you for reading the various entries, which hopefully offered a slice of Iraqi life as well as serving up a few quirky observations and experiences.
As a final entry I would like to list the top five things about living in Baghdad that I will miss the most as well as the top five things I will not pine for at all.
Things I will miss:
1. The Baghdad bureau, with its two great drivers and a top interpreter. These three men became like brothers to me during the time we worked together;
2. Sunset over the Tigris River, stunning even on the bloodiest of days;
3. Iraqi bread (known as “samoon”), possibly the most delicious item of food to have ever passed my lips. I am suffering withdrawal systems already;
4. Eggcup-sized glasses of sugary, Iraqi “chai” (tea);
5. The Baghdad Press Corps, an inspiring group of foreign journalists.
Things I will be glad to leave behind:
1. The threat of violence and kidnap (endured by Iraqis every day);
2. Multiple power cuts (though I was lucky to have electricity);
3. Brushing teeth with bottled water because tap water is dirty (I was also fortunate even to have running water);
4. Numerous body searches to enter the green zone and any official building;
5. The TERRIBLE mobile phone network of crackles and disappearing reception.
[Picture 1: Me and my last samoon;
Picture 2: Me in the departures lounge at Baghdad International Airport.]
A newcomer writes....
Landing in Baghdad is like arriving anywhere you've heard a lot about. The real thing is always so different from the picture in your head. Pitching up in Iraq, even though security has improved so much, I was still expecting a war zone. And parts of it are, of course, but the most striking first impressions were far from the barbed wire and AK47 wasteland I was anticipating. Things no one had told me about Iraq include:
 1. Plastic flowers are an integral part of life. When I arrived in The Times' bureau, one of the Iraqi staff placed a vase full of plastic lilies on the table to welcome me. The Times' office itself looks like a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with plastic vines trained around the picture frames and an orange plastic shrub flourishing in the corner. The many, many checkpoints in Iraq have pots of plastic flowers balanced on the concrete barriers, restaurants are covered in them, and I saw one market stall entirely devoted to selling enough garlands to supply a hundred Hawaiian fancy dress parties.
2. The sandstorms close the airport and empty the streets. That in itself is known about, because it affects combat operations. What they don't tell you, though, is what sandstorms do to your look. After a "sand day" in Baghdad, my hair was so dry and frizzy that it would stay upright if I ran my hands through it. It felt like goat hair. Even my eyebrows went curly; I looked like Susan Boyle.
 3. There are tourists as well as terrorists here. Not Western tourists, sure, but tourists nonetheless. People are flooding into Iraq from the Gulf, Syria, Lebanon but most of all from Iran to visit mosques and shrines. Most of them are Shia and, in Kerbala, the holiest Shia place, there are thousands of foreigners and hundreds of market stalls selling candy-coloured prayer beads, Kerbala snow domes, kebabs and tea, and new hotels are opening. The death of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims this week in suicide bombings is a sad sign that there are now so many of them, they have become a target.
 4. Baghdad is really green. A river city, not a desert wasteland, its parks and public spaces are now being cared for again, but most impressive are the thousands of palm trees and other trees everywhere. From the roof of the hotel, Baghdad is a sea of palm leaves with buildings in between. Central Baghdad, anyway. I guess Sadr City probably isn't that lush.
5. There are people who seem untouched by the war, and pretty much everything else, too. Driving from Baghdad to Kirkuk, there were clusters of mud brick villages in the desert, where everything was the colour of bleached sand, and the houses didn't have satellite dishes. There were men in grey dishdashes and ancient keffiyehs herding sheep around the occasional palm tree. They looked like pictures of ancient Mesopotamia.
 6. They do a weird thing with fish. In the street, there are guys who split a fish and flatten it out, then put it in a metal device that looks like two tennis racquets and put it on the edge of a circular barbecue-type pit of coals. It's called mesgoof, and in Baghdad they do it with carp - James Hider says its full of tiny bones - but in Basra apparently they do it with a sea fish, like a flounder, and it has aphrodisiac qualities. The women make it on Thursday night, I've been told, to encourage their husbands to start the weekend with gusto.
7. Iraqis love disco. This may be an unfair extrapolation, but after a road trip punctuated with Abba medleys, and tales from a friend of the BeeGees on loop while spending time with Iraqi friends, I'm starting to associate Iraq with synths and falsetto.
 8. The world's third-largest mosque (after Mecca and Medina) looms on the Baghdad skyline. Started by Saddam, Al Rahman mosque was never finished and it's spooky and vast. It looks a bit like a spaceship, or rather like hundreds of R2D2s of different shapes and sizes clustered together. Cranes tower above it, and the Shia and Sunni militia have fought over it. If anyone ever finishes it, it's going to be magnificent and hideous in equal measure.
9. There are loads of shops selling furniture and homewares who have their merchandise out on the street. The best are the shops that only sell headboards. They specialise in huge, carved wooden things which look a bit like the brontosaurus ribs Fred Flintstone eats in the opening credits of The Flintstones.
10. It's so fattening. After a few days of eating sheep, rice, bread and chicken, I knew my descent into morbid obesity if I stayed here was sealed when we were in a traffic jam. A boy knocked on the window of the car selling not gum or tissues, as they do in so many places, but dozens of bags of candy floss which he was carrying on a stick. We had just eaten an epic lunch with five types of starch, and were all stuffed to the point of incapacity. But one of the guys bought two bags of candy floss anyway, and offered me some. I was so full I literally thought I might die if I ate it but I figured in war-raddled country of where they put plastic flowers on their checkpoints and disco on the stereo, dying of a surfeit of candy floss would be kind of a suitably kitsch way to go, so I took the risk. This time, I lived to bite another day.
- Alice Fordham
In the middle of the night my mobile phone rings. A strange number is calling. I pick up and say, in a sleepy voice: “Hello?” The anonymous caller utters a couple of guttural breaths and hangs up. Very annoying.
Prank calls like this are a common hazard for both women and men in Iraq. During the darkest days of sectarian conflict when it was too dangerous to step out on a date with someone you fancy, people used the mobile phone as their only form of contact. The habit has not faded as security improves.
 Often groups of men will sit together dialling phone numbers at random until one gets a friendly-sounding female voice on the other end. If she is game, a bit of flirting will ensue and possibly the fixing of a time to meet in person.
Similarly, lonely girls have been known to trawl the depths of the mobile phone matrix, punching arbitrary strings of numbers into their handset until a male voice answers and is willing to chat. There are even cases of marriages blossoming from these blind-date style phone encounters.
The majority of Iraqis do not participate in cold calling, though most have experienced the irritation of multiple calls at odd times from strangers.
One friend of mine only ever picks up her phone if she recognises the caller. “I get about five or six calls a day from numbers that I don’t know. It is very intrusive,” she said.
As a woman, another danger is giving out your mobile phone number on a business card in a work capacity to the people you meet. Normally the recipient files the card away with professional neutrality. Unfortunately sometimes (particularly in the case of young men) the person mistakenly sees the giving-of-business-card as an invitation to pester said unsuspecting female with countless lustful phone calls.
A couple of years ago, I was on an embed with the US military in a then hotspot area south of Baghdad called Arab Jabour. The US soldiers set up a temporary clinic in a rural village to offer medical help to local families. Among the crowd that gathered was a 19-year-old man and his poorly younger brother.
 I chatted to the pair through an interpreter. The little boy wanted a present but I had nothing on me other than a notepad and pen (which I was using) and a wodge of business cards. Without thinking of stalker potential, I handed the toddler a card to chew on. His brother, Marwan, also wanted one so I obliged.
The next day the calls started.
Me: Hello?
Caller: Deeeeborah.
Me: Er, he-llo-o?
Caller: Deeeeborah. It’s Marwan.
Me: Marwan?
Caller: Deeeeborah. It’s Marwan. I love you.
[I hang up phone fast.]
He must have called about five times the first day and then every day afterwards for a couple of weeks, making the same declarations of love. In the end I asked one of my Iraqi colleagues to call Marwan and let him down gently. That didn’t work. The calls kept coming, with greater urgency. My colleague phoned again, this time taking a tougher leave-her-alone-or-else stance. That failed to deter my suitor. In the end I had to block his number.
A month or so later, I returned to London for a break. Upon arrival at Heathrow Airport, I turned on my British mobile (which I typically leave off in Iraq). Within seconds, the phone rang. It was a strange number. I answered.
Caller: Deeeeborah. It’s Marwan. I love you…
[Picture 1: Me and one of my Iraqi mobile phones;
Picture 2: Marwan's younger brother, with a second boy behind him, and a US soldier at the makeshift clinic.]
The first whiff that something is amiss is when the Transport Ministry tells us the commuter train leaves at 8am – rather late in the morning for Baghdad’s only commuter service.
Knowing no different, we turn up at the main railway station in the centre of the capital, expecting to board an empty train bound for Dora, a neighbourhood in south Baghdad, to pick up commuters.
We are in for a surprise.
Scores of men, women and even the odd child pile onboard two pristine carriages, primed and ready to go from platform 6. Guards dressed immaculately in uniforms wave them through the doors.
 The picture-perfect scene looks too good to be true. There is also the mystery of why commuters are so eagerly commuting in reverse, from the centre of the city to the outskirts. Further fuelling our suspicion, a local television crew is conveniently on hand to film the hustle and bustle.
A press officer at the station tells us upon arrival that the train has been laid on especially for the media. He then changes his story, after seeing our crestfallen expressions, to explain it is a later service that sometimes follows the earlier train at 6.30am.
Sceptical but playing along, I board one of the carriages with my interpreter and start asking the well turned out passengers about their journey.
Me to passenger 1: Hello there. I am a journalist from England, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
Passenger 1 (looking a bit flustered): Um, no.
Me: Why are you on this train?
Passenger 1: Because I want to go to Basra.
Me: But this is a commuter train to Dora.
Passenger 1 (turning red): Um, er, sorry yes, I meant Dora…
I move on to another group and try again.
Me to passenger 2: Why are you on this train?
Passenger 2: I catch this service every day. It is much cheaper than a taxi.
Me: But why are you travelling out of the centre to Dora?
Passenger 2: Er because I need to go home.
Me: Come on, admit it. You work for the station.
Passenger 2 (looking embarrassed): Yes.
Adding to the snazzy show, a food and drinks trolley is on display, while a video about the Transport Ministry plays from a brand new television set hanging off one of the walls.
 I disembark, unsure whether we have been deliberately set up or whether there has been some confusion at the Transport Ministry, with them presuming we would prefer to see a fake busy train than a real empty one.
As the carriages chug off (depriving the station of many of its staff) I explain to the press officer that we want to experience the genuine item not this demonstration run. He tells us to return the next morning at 5.30am.
Bleary eyed, we try again. This time the station is practically deserted in keeping with Waterloo at the very start of the day. The train also stands empty, with just a couple of tired-looking police guards, a train manager, an engineer and the driver in sight.
We climb onboard and make ourselves comfortable. At 6.30am, with a solitary toot from its horn, the train pulls away from the station.
 After a few minutes one of the policemen strikes up a conversation, complaining that the commuter service is a failure and was stopped a few weeks ago because it was losing money.
“I don’t know who you talked to but now it has started again,” said Akeel Mreie, 40. He also claims that the carriages on show are nothing like the clapped out models previously used.
“Those broken coaches were bad for asthma because of the dust,” he said, adding that there had been no trolley service or even electricity onboard let alone a functioning television set.
Salim Jassim, the train manager, and Thafer Salem, the driver, also say the service has not been running for several weeks. They doubt there will be any passengers today because no one knows the train is back on.
Sure enough, no one is waiting when we pull into a market in Dora, where the train stops. There is also no obvious station, but at least a tea stand nearby offers refreshments.
Once again, I feel like we have been taken for a ride.
Back onboard, I sit with the driver who is similarly disillusioned.
“I used to love my job, riding around on the tracks. Now I am not happy because there is no business,” he said. The decrepit state of the line, which has not been repaired for years, means he has to crawl at walking pace along sections. Also, the junctions have to be operated manually with a handle by the side of the track because the electricity no longer flows.
“Our country is tired and suffering, it needs a lot of reconstruction work,” said Mr Salem, 39. “It hurts me to talk. When I tell you this I feel like crying.”
Suddenly the train comes to a halt to pick up its one and only passenger, Mariam Obeid, 39, who was alerted by her friend the police guard that the service was passing by. It is unclear whether she climbs onboard to catch up with him or because she genuinely needs a lift.
One and a half hours after leaving, we return to the main station in Baghdad to be met by Mohammad Hashem, the English-speaking station manager.
I ask him whether this train was also put on for our benefit, but he assures me that is not the case. He also denies the service was stopped for several weeks, insisting it was only suspended for a few days because of a lack of carriages. He admits, however, that the route is not very popular.
“We are thinking to stop (it),” Mr Hashem said, while hoping it keeps going. “Psychologically this train will be a comforting sight for the people.”
As we prepare to leave, the manager says the afternoon service will take commuters back to Dora at 2.30pm. Unconvinced, I send one of my staff to the station to scope it out. He arrives at 1.30pm and stands waiting. There is no train in sight. Thirty minutes later the station shuts for the day. An employee approaches to ask what he is doing.
My colleague: I am waiting for the commuter train to return home to Dora.
Employee: What train? There is no afternoon train…
[Photographs by Peter Nicholls of The Times.
Picture 1: "Commuters board the 8am train to Dora;
Picture 2: More "commuteres" climp onboard;
Picture 3: The 8am train pulls away from the station.]
SAS soldiers endure grueling initiations followed by countless hardcore missions to earn the right to live by the motto: ‘Who dares wins’. In Iraq, by contrast, it can be as simple as going to the market to pick up the right badge.
Check-out the sleeves of some Iraqi soldiers and they carry a circular Boy Scout-style logo bearing a sinister-looking human skull (like those worn by elite US commandoes) and the would-be intimidating words: ‘Special Forces’.
The give-away hitch, however, is that whoever mass-produces these badges is not a very good speller so the actual title reads: “Spaclel Forcas’, which does not have quite the same nerve-jangling effect.
Also, the badge-wearers pop up everywhere, including outside the general manager’s office at the Baghdad railway station where they have the extreme mission of guard duty.
I spotted another one hanging around an army base in Basra sipping tea inside the officers’ dining hall. When asked whether he was really Special Forces as his sleeve declared, the man (who was carrying a roll of extra flab) sheepishly said he had been during Saddam Hussein’s time but was now just a regular officer.
Wanting to find out how easy it is to pose, rightly or wrongly, as a member of the Special Forces, I popped into a shop in Baghdad that sells a range of military uniforms and badges, including the whole spectrum of ranks from private to general.
A brown “Troop - Special Forces” badge (spelt correctly for a change) was pinned on the wall, boasting a red-eyed skull and a gold-coloured trim.
Asked whether soldiers bought such badges for show, the shop-keeper admitted yes, sometimes, but said they would get into a lot of trouble if found to be pretending to be in the Special Forces. Unable to resist, I bought the badge as a souvenir for a couple of pounds. Bargain.
Britain and the United States are helping to rebuild a genuine Iraqi Special Forces branch after the old Armed Forces were disbanded. The best of the soldiers passing through recruitment are filtered in the SF direction for training by the SAS and members of Operational Detachment Alpha of the United States.
Not all training is so elite. I remember a couple of years ago visiting a British base in Basra built next to a large Iraqi camp. Regular British troopers were training what they described to be Iraqi Special Forces recruits and were rather scathing about the skill-set on show among those who bothered to turn up.
Thankfully, the men who make it into the real Iraqi SF are said to be very good. They also, presumably, prefer not to wear misspelt badges advertising their occupation, and are too busy daring and winning to hang around posing in public.
[Picture: Iraqi soldier with his 'Spaclel Forcas' badge. Photograph by Peter Nicholls]
It is jokingly dubbed ‘the most expensive B&B in the world’. Then again the trailer camp is the only ‘bed and breakfast’ that also provides lunch, dinner, a gym, 24-hour Internet access and a relatively secure place to stay in Basra.
Situated within the newly-acquired American military base in this southern-Iraqi province, the B&B provides private accommodation for anyone passing through the area who would prefer to avoid staying in Basra city.
For journalists, it offers a kind of halfway house in terms of having ready access to British and US forces on the base and also being free to drive into town for a taste of real-life Basra.
Such convenience comes at a price. It will set you back 135 dollars a night for a single trailer, rising to 150 dollars if you want Internet access. That compares with a free bed if embedded with British or US troops, or a hotel room for about 40 dollars a night in the city, a few miles’ drive away.
Still, the food is fairly good, including a wide choice of cereals for breakfast, along with a full-fry up (though bacon in rare), fruit salad and toast. Meals are all a serve-yourself buffet, with lunch and dinner consisting a variety of hot dishes, as well as salad and (my favourite) make-them-yourself cheese rolls.
The living trailers are small but practical, kitted out with a double bed, a desk and chair, a cupboard, satellite television, fridge and a reading lamp. There is a connecting shower room, which also contains a toilet and sink.
On the downside, outside noise, including military aircraft coming and going, are a bit of a distraction, particularly during the dead of night.
Access to the B&B is slightly tricky unless you have a car with the right badges to pass through the military checkpoint at the entrance of the Basra base. If not, an official escort is required to drive you to the B&B. You also need a military officer, diplomat or private contractor to act as a sponsor during your stay.
Rather than standing for bed and breakfast as I initially assumed, B&B is short for al-Bahar & Bardawil, a Kuwaiti company. It opened the camp in 2003, with enough space for 45 people. Six years on up to 170 people can stay at one time.
Most of the guests are long-termers contracted to provide security services to private companies working in Basra. Aid workers also live at the B&B as well as businessmen and women looking for opportunities in the oil-rich region.
[Pictures by Peter Nicholls.
Picture 1: Me outside one of the B&B trailers;
Picture 2: Inside the trailer-boudoir of Peter Nicholls of The Times;
Picture 3: Sneaky glimpse of Mr Nicholls's toilet and shower.]
The Iraqi service station, like motorway stops in Britain, offers refreshments, fuel and toilets for the weary traveller. The one we picked, halfway between Baghdad and Basra, however, also provided a welcome break for two truck-loads of policemen carting about five or six blindfolded prisoners.
Picture the scene: a gravel car park filled with dusty cars and large four-wheel drives. Families stroll in and out of a restaurant that offers chicken and lamb kebabs served with large discs of flat bread and plastic plates of mixed salad.
Suddenly the trucks pull in and park outside the eating area. The policemen, looking perfectly relaxed, step out and stretch. A few wander into the main building to order food, while the rest stay outside enjoying a cigarette.
The miserable-looking prisoners remain in the back seat, their wrists bound by a rag of material and their eyes masked. Two get permission to be escorted to the toilet.
Standing at the fringe of the car park to avoid detection (as a westerner it is best to keep as low a profile as possible), I watched in amazement as none of the regular customers batted an eyelid at this odd detention scene, choosing instead to continue with the business of filling up their stomachs and cars.
Random prisoners aside, the service station has much of the same amenities as its British equivalent but looks nothing like the sprawling complexes that, for example, dot the M1.
Located off to the side of the rutted highway that stretches between the capital and Iraq’s second city of Basra, the single-storey Janatal Janoob Restaurant comprises a place to eat, a selection of latrines and a small snack stall stocked with chewing gum, biscuits, fizzy drinks and crisps. Next door are two rows of petrol pumps for drivers to fill up their vehicle.
Instead of the carwash contraption that often stands in one corner of a British motorway stop, teenage boys, with scarves wrapped around their head to protect them from the dust, greet new arrivals at Iraqi service stations with the promise of a windscreen clean in return for cash.
The choice of food is also more limited in Iraq, with no sign of a Burger King, McDonalds or Starbucks. Instead the Janatal Janoob Restaurant serves up (as well as kebab) a selection of soup and rice dishes, accompanied by small pots of tomato-coated spaghetti and chunks of orange.
Unsurprisingly the toilets differ too. Iraqi toilets tend to be ceramic holes in the ground to squat over – I embarrassingly never know in which direction I should face when using one of these. A jug of water replaces toilet paper (at least I think that is its purpose) and also acts as the flush.
There also appears to be far fewer places to stop for a break on highways in Iraq, with the Janatal Janoob eatery one of only about three places I spotted during the 340-mile drive between Baghdad and Basra.
[Picture 1: The Janatal Janoob Restaurant, picture by Peter Nicholls;
Picture 2: Me tucking into some Iraqi bread, picture by Peter Nicholls;
Picture 3: Inside the female toilets.]
From fighting on the frontline to raising money for charity, soldiers from 5th Battalion The Rifles have kept themselves busy during multiple tours in Iraq.
Exactly six years ago, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Chamberlain, Commanding Officer of 5 RIFLES, was leading a company of soldiers across the Kuwaiti border into southern Iraq as part of the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
Now his servicemen and women are part of the final rotation of British troops deployed in Iraq, where their work is much less hostile.
Daily tasks include securing the British base at Basra airport, training elements of the Iraqi security forces and preparing to transport all their kit home -- a big change from battling enemy forces.
In their free time, soldiers have managed to collect more than 25,000 pounds for Project 65, which backs a number of long-standing military charities that support soldiers and their families.
Among various fund-raising events at the Basra base were a fun run and a ‘Premiership’ football tournament.
Twenty teams from the British and Iraqi Armed Forces staged the tournament earlier this month, with each team playing in a strip of a current Premiership squad. The final was between Wigan (Iraqi police) and Sunderland (Royal Air Force). 'Wigan' kicked its way to a 2-0 victory.
An auction was held after the match to sell the football kits, raising 4,300 pounds. The Premier League matched the sum to bring the total to 8,600 pounds for Project 65.
The 5 RIFLES are due to start returning to Britain in the coming months, hopefully in time for three teams of soldiers to take part in a 65-mile money-raising run organised by Project 65 from Dorset to Normandy, an event due to take place between June 4 to 6.
“The aim of the run is two fold: To replicate the Pegasus Bridge operation of D-Day 'man-for-man' and to raise 500,000 pounds for the care and support of wounded armed forces veterans,” according to the web site www.project65.net.
If you fancy sponsoring the 5 Rifles on their latest mission you can go to: http://www.justgiving.com/5rifles.
In addition to the run, wives will be jumping out of an aeroplane to represent the gliders who took part on June 6th 1944, by doing tandem freefall jumps.
[Picture by Peter Nicholls: Lieutenant Colonel Edward Chamberlain, Commanding Officer, 5th Battalion, The Rifles.]
Worried about your child being born with an unsightly mole on his or her body?
Pregnant women in Iraq think they have the answer: resist any urge to itch if you crave an item of food.
Iraqis believe that if a pregnant woman desires something to eat (anything from a chicken kebab to a chocolate bar) and then absent-mindedly itches a part of her body, her child will be born with a birthmark on the place that she itched.
Makia Ali, 55, is convinced her desire for a piece of barbequed liver 25 years ago caused the liver-shaped mole on the back of her adult son.
“While pregnant with one of my five sons, I went for a walk in the street with my husband,” she said, sitting with her family on a patch of grass in a park on the bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad.
“We passed a stall barbequing liver. I smelt the odour and craved liver. Without thinking, I scratched my back. The next day I ate liver but it was too late. My son was born with a small mark on his back.”
Sure enough, the son, Mohamed Tarik, sports an oval mole in the centre of his back, which he showed to The Times after a bit of friendly coaxing by his family.
Mr Tarik’s wife, Anwar Ahmed, 28, is now three months pregnant with their first child. She is trying hard not to itch despite strong cravings for pacha, a famous Iraqi dish made from the head of a sheep.
“If you crave for something and do not eat it but scratch your body, then the food item will appear on the child,” she said, with an earnest look on her face. The family plans to have a meal of pacha later this week to help satisfy the craving and protect the unborn child from any mysterious blemishes.
Fortunately the itch-curse only applies during the first four months of pregnancy.
“Afterwards, the child’s formation is complete so it does not matter if you crave food and itch,” said Mrs Ali, the grandmother-to-be.
Another rule taught to expectant mothers in Iraq, is not to have sex during the first three months of pregnancy.
“The fetus is so small, it is dangerous to have sexual intercourse,” said one mother, who declined to give her name.
Women are also told not to lie on their front at any stage of the pregnancy, even early on. “It is bad for the baby,” said Samar Abdel Itar, 28, who is five-and-a-half months pregnant with her fourth child.
In addition, some Iraqis believe that if a woman wants a beautiful baby and craves the face of a particular child her offspring will be born with similar good looks. “The only good craving to have while pregnant is the craving for a handsome face,” said another mother.
In Britain there are strict rules and recommendations on what to eat and what not to eat while pregnant, with certain cheeses and fish off the menu. Iraqi women, however, face no such restrictions.
Mrs Itar said: “We should eat a lot to make sure we are strong and healthy. I am not supposed to carry anything heavy and it is important to sleep well.”
[Photographs by Peter Nicholls of The Times.
Picture 1: Anwar Ahmed shows the mole on the back of her husband, Mohamed Tarik;
Picture 2: Anwar Ahmed (second from left), Makia Ali (second from right) giggle with other relatives in a Baghdad park;
Picture 3: Samar Abdel Itar and her family;
Picture 4: A woman in the park with two young girls.]
Continue reading "Why to avoid itching when pregnant" »
Students pouring out of Baghdad University yesterday largely applauded the shoe-throwing antics of Muntazer al-Zaidi and felt he should not spend time in jail. Some, however, said his attack on George Bush was inappropriate because the then US President had been a guest of their Prime Minister.
At the same time, all agreed that Mr Bush should be condemned for the suffering they say he inflicted on the Iraqi people following the invasion of Iraq six years ago to topple Saddam Hussein.
Ahmed Kereem said al-Zaidi’s decision to hurl his shoes at Mr Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last December did not warrant the three-year prison sentence handed out yesterday for assaulting a foreign leader.
"Shoe throwing was the very least thing Mr Bush deserved because he brought destruction to Iraq and severely tore it apart,” the 22-year-old said.
“He killed fathers and children. He was the reason for stealing the wealth of Iraq. He is a war criminal.”
Mr Kereem thinks al-Zaidi, a television journalist, should have been released. "He did not do anything except express his internal desires against this man, which is a small thing compared to what Mr Bush and his soldiers did in Iraq and to the Iraqis."
Nithal Mehsen, 22, also backs al-Zaidi.
"I believe that Iraqis agree with him because Mr Bush deserves nothing but to be treated with shoes,” she said. “This is a great act of bravery by brother Muntazer to hit Mr Bush with his shoes in front of everybody.”
The student said she also supports Iraq’s judiciary and believes that it was simply applying the law. However she wishes the penalty was shorter, “maybe five or six months”.
In contrast, a second female student, Najat Sadiq, disapproves of al-Zaidi’s protest because he chose to target Mr Bush while he was giving a press conference as a guest of the Prime Minister.
"He didn't respect the place he was in,” the 21-year-old said.
“This is not correct. On the other hand, I agree with him and I say yes because he expressed very bravely his opinion of the criminal Mr Bush.”
Ms Sadiq feels that al-Zaidi should serve his sentence because he committed a mistake. “Not all issues can be solved with anger and recklessness. For example, it was possible to express your opinion in another way. Like writing about Mr Bush and exposing his crimes in front of the whole world,” she said.
However, the student added: “Who will prosecute Mr Bush and his soldiers for what they did to the Iraqis? Who will answer this question for me?"
A poll by broadcasters the BBC, ABC and NHK released yesterday found that 62 percent of Iraqis surveyed considered al-Zaidi a hero for hurling his shoes at the former American President. Only 24 percent considered him a criminal.
Dhirgham Al-Zaidi, one of the 30-year-old journalist’s brothers, said his family is still recovering from the shock of learning of the sentence.
“This is not just about an innocent person going to jail; it is a ruling against the will of the Iraqi people,” he said.
The brother accused the Baghdad court that passed the judgement of being on the side of the US occupation.
“They claim to spread democracy but now they punish the person who represented the opinion of the Iraqi people,” the brother said. The trial “was a ridiculous play and not a court.”
As for George Bush, he regards the punishment as a “matter for the Iraqi judicial system”, a spokesman said.
Picture 1: Shoes are used as a sign of insult. In this demonstration against the US-led occupation last year Iraqi protesters hurl footwear at an effigy of George Bush;
Picture 2: Iraqis at the Baghdad zoo;
Picture 3: At the same demonstration as Picture 1, the effigy is burnt.
Iraq commentators go misty-eyed when they talk of the symbolic purple finger brandished by Iraqis after casting a ballot. But no one ever mentions the smelly orange nail.
Had such an abominable side-effect been better public knowledge, then I would never have enthusiastically jammed by right index finger into a pot of indelible ink at a polling station in Baghdad on election day.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. 
The polling station, a primary school in Adhamiya, was relatively quiet and there were no voters in the room where I was standing, speaking to election officials.
I asked whether it would be all right to put my finger in the pot just for fun.
Each voter dabs purple ink on an index finger after voting to prevent multiple ballot-casting.
A smiling woman in charge said of course, then added: “Be careful you don’t stick your nose in there too as it is so long.”
How cheeky.
Brushing off the slight, I joined in the ritual that 7.5 million Iraqis went through last Saturday, walking away with a dark purple finger.
Five minutes later the ghastly orange nailed by-product started to take effect.
“What the hell is happening to my nail?” I asked my interpreter.
“Oh it turns orange,” he said, casually. “It is because of all the chemicals in the ink.”
Four days and hours of scrubbing later, the purple ink on my finger has almost gone but the Orange Nail from Hell is still there, as colourful as the moment it first appeared. The nail has also started to smell rather foul, as if something nasty is rotting on the end of my finger.
A friend from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said the stain could be with me for up to three weeks, ruining any manicure plans.
All this made me wonder what Iraqis think about having to endure a purple finger and orange, stinking nail just to cast a ballot.
To my surprise (and shame, for being so vain) women and men were all too proud to be sporting a mark that showed they had taken part in the elections.
Sahar, a 20-year-old student at Baghdad University, said: "As a girl, I should try to look as beautiful as possible, but having to turn a finger purple because of the elections does not annoy me. On the contrary, I am glad because I cast my ballot, which is my duty and the duty of all Iraqis.”
Abu Anwer, a teacher at the university, was similarly proud of his purple digit.
"The day of the elections represents a day of joy and happiness because I took part in voting and choosing a candidate,” he said.
“I am not irritated at all by the colour of my finger. In contrast I feel proud of it."
[Picture 1: Me plunging finger into pot of indelible ink on election day;
Picture 2: My finger and orange nail four days later;
Picture 3: Tiba Majid, 25, and her husband Wathak Abdul Rahim, 40, after casting their ballots;
Picture 4: A voter dabs his finger in a pot of indelible ink.]
Inside Iraq
The Times' contributors in Baghdad bring you slices of life in Iraq as they cover the country's fragile recovery. They blog on the bits in between the car bombs and the corruption, telling stories of life in Iraq for Iraqis and for the correspondents trying to understand it.
The Times' Iraqi staff will also be contributing to this blog.
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