Author: Peter Meggyesy

Basra sits on the main highway to Kuwait, south of Baghdad. It was common news in the media as the staging force for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and then as a hard fought city in the US led coalition in 1991 to liberate Kuwait. It sits near to the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates and is effectively Iraq’s port city.

On the way we visit the marsh Arabs who live in the wetlands between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These people have eked out an existence in these wetlands for centuries. After the defeat of Saddam in 1991 after the gulf war, it was thought that many of the regimes opponents had sought refuge there. Taking rvenge Saddam built a series of dikes to divery water away and dry up the marshes. In a final act of bastardry he set fire to the marshes. It was only after Saddam’s defeat in 2003 that water flow was restored to the marshes and the community is thriving again.

Our final stop was Basra city itself which is a new and modern city. A cruise through the harbour area paints a different picture with half submerged ships in the middle of the harbour and rotting hulks everywhere, a veritable ship’s graveyard.

A short walk through Old Basra has a few old buildings being restored by UNESCO but the rubbish and sulphurous sewer smell make this a less than pleasant experience.

Yet another long day’s driving this time the checkpoints were kinder to us.Our overnight destination is Najaff again another pilgrimage site.On the way we visit the ancient Sumerian capitol of Ur. We struck gold here as the spritely elderly guide speaks excellent English and his knowledge really brings the place alive. Founded in 3800 BC it was finally dissolved in 500 AD. The site includes royal tombs and excavations of palaces but the best preserved is the ziggurat. This one is built in the dome and minaret dazzling at night under lights. The inside sparkles with a forest of chandeliers style of a stepped pyrimid and once had a temple at the summit. The heat is ennervating and it is definitely over 40C as we climb the stairs up to the top of the ziggurat for a view of the surrounding countryside.

It is after dark when we arrive at Najaf and visit the mosque there. This is smaller but even more beautiful than the Karbala complex. It is the burial place of Mohammed’s son in law and a muslim pilgrimage site second only to Mecca and Medina. The outside of the mosque featues the gold leaf dome and minaret dazzling at night under lights. The inside sparkles with a forest of chandeliers beneath a roof of beatiful coloured glass.

Thirty minutes into our checkpoint wait and our Iraqi guide comes back ashen faced. It’s not looking good. He mutters something about motherfuckers and heads back out to negotiate further with the militia. Ten minutes later he is back with our passports with the news that we have to turn back. My heart sinks, after 2 hours drive we are just at the threshold of entering Karbala and we are turned back. Disbelief is suspended when our bus makes a U turn and we drive back. He promises us that we will go to other mosques instead but to me that is like landing in Rome and being turned away from the Vatican with the promise that we can see some other churches instead!

Karbala is a muslim pilgrimage site especially for the Shiites. In the year 680 AD a dispute arose between descendants of the prophet Mohammed. War ensued at Karbala and Hossein Ali was killed. His followers venerate him as a martyr and the Shiite sect was born.

Ten minutes down the road the guide gets a call. Judging by his face he does not know the number and for a fleeting second I hope against hope that maybe we have been granted a reprieve. A couple of Iraqi sentences later he hangs up and announces that we have been granted permission. My hope is fulfilled and we let out a cheer.

The walk into the mosque is along roads lined with stalls selling anything from food to clothes and religious trinkets. Interestingly many sick pilgrims are brought in wheelchairs and on wooden trolleys. These are scenes reminiscent of my time in Lourdes. We reach the mosque and are frisked by security before entering. A service is in full flight with chanting and prayer and we walk around the congregation taking photos. This is a massive high ceilinged space coloured dark green but with intricate mirrors, murals and mosaics along the walls and the ceiling dripping with multiple chandeliers. The chanting by the imam produces a serene vibe as does the rhythmic movements of the people. Stunning! The devotion of the congregation is most on show with the inner sanctum which has the tomb of Hussain Ali and people drape themselves on the bars around it to get a touch of the martyr.

Next stop Babylon known in antiquity for having one of the 7 wonders, the hanging gardens. Sadly this place has been hijacked by he late dictator Saddam Hussein. This site was the capitol of the massive empire of Babylon between the 19^th century and the 16^th century BC. Some foundations of the original are still there but in a poor state and unreconstructed. All around is a garish poor quality reconstruction done by our old friend Saddam who wanted to have the site compare himself with one of the great empires of antiquity. One of the locals points to a slope behind a few date palms as the site for the Hanging Gardens but in fact noone knows where the gardens really were. High on the next hill is the massive, lavish palace of Saddam Hussein which has been looted and severely damaged. It is a graffiti ridden epitaph to one of histories nastiest dictators.

Finally I am in seventh heaven! I get blown away by antiquities and that is what the fertile valley betwen the Tigris and the Eurphrates is all about. This was a cradle of civilisation. Fossil remains show prehistoric remains that confirm that this was one of the centres where man evolved from apes.

Subsequent empires here include the Sumerians, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. These early rulers built massive cities developed the first written language (cuneiform) and the first code of laws governing socities and her I am revelling in it all at the Iraq museum. Tragically in between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the US forces taking full control some 15,000 pieces were looted most have never been recovered. Nonetheless this is an impressive collection af ancient treasures.

The newly sealed highway out of Baghdad offers a good run up to Samarra. The sky has a smoggy haze look probably dust storms and the thermometer tops 39C. The countryside is dead flat and scrubby fields are lined with date palm. Intermittent villages punctuate the desolation and are introduced with military gun turrets. The shanty towns have a few crumbling houses and mountains of litter and dead, rotting vehicles. Truly post apocalyptic.Every 20 minutes or so has us stopping for a security check which ranges from efficient through to outrageously long and tedious. Passports are checked and the driver and guides interrogated.

Samarra our destination this afternoon was the capitol of the Abbasid empire and the world’s biggest mosque at that time was built there. Today the walls of the mosque remain along with the 52 metre high minaret now known as the Ziggurat of Samarra. It is punishingly hot but we all climb around the corkscrew stairs without rails around the perimeter.

We arrive to to a high wire fence with a massive sign that this is a hard hat area. Almost 2 hours drive out of Baghdad our purpose was to see te archeological site of Ctesiphon, capitol city of the Parthians between 200BC and 600 AD. All we are seeing is recontruction work when we planned to see the best preserved and largest arch from antiquity. The solitary worker on site waves us away but suggest we may be able to drive around the side and get some sort of view. Eventually our driver did find a vantage point but about 1 km away and I was using my zoom lens to get some sort of a shot.

A police car pulls up and the two officers emerge. We start to back off expecting a rebuke but these guys latch onto the 2 young women in our group, especially our guide, Paris. She has blonde hair and a pretty face reminiscent of the actress Cameron Diaz and, especially when unveiled the local guys go for her like a moth to a flame. She of course knows it and plays it to perfection. In the blink of an eye we have free run of the place. We ascend the partially reconstructed building and take pictures. For the price of a kiss from Paris our bus is allowed to take us right to the arch. Paris and her accomplice Kathryn get driven there in the police car. Pictures taken, we leave the police and their phones filled with selfies with the girls to their own devices. Mission accomplished!

Friday is, of course, prayer day consequently there wasn’t much open. The morning sun was particularly fierce as we went to 37C. Fortunately the traffic was light as we started our day at the Firdos square. This site is famous following the world wide footage of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in 2003 after the US forces took Baghdad. Today it is a smally green leafy square with bare concrete where the statue was. There is no plaque nor signage there to recall the event.

Al Mutanabbi street is open on a Friday and it is a small bustling market place for all things literary and artistic. We battle the crowds and at one point lose our guide. Reunited we wander down to the statue celebrating the eponymous Iraqi poet. I wander ahead, back to a meeting point and wait in the heat. After 15 minutes they have not return so I double back to the statue. None of our group there!

I wait back at the meeting place and after half an hour I go back and fro along the crowded road. I decide I have to retrace my steps through the marketplace and across the bridge where our bus was supposedly parked. No sign of our group and after half an hour there made the call and flagged down a tuk tuk, negotiated a price and hoped that the boy driving it understood where I wanted to go despite the language barrier. Fifteen minutes later I was back at the hotel. Eventually I managed to get the reception staff to locate our local guide and I was back in business.

The afternoon had a real highlight in the Al Shaheed (martyr) monument, commissioned by Saddam to honour the fallen Iraqi soldiers from any wars. Completed in 1983 it consists of 2 x 132 domes like lotus petals encasing a water feature and a massive sculpture of a coffin draped in the Iraqi flag. It is massive, moving and truly beautiful, and like all the tourist sites here we have the place to ourselves.

The final stop was the pretty little sufi mosque with the unique feature of the minaret tower encased within the mosque. In the underground crypt we see the tomb of Chef Marouk Alkarhki.

Baghdad airport turns out to be a pleasant surprise. Modern, very few passengers and the visa, immigration and customs process a breeze. Within 20 minutes of landing on our way to our city hotel. I always take first impressions of a new country seriously and this place is a low rise capitol city. Security is high with police and military very visible at intersections. There is an assortment of jeeps, armoured personnel carriers and even tanks on the footpath. The main roads are lined with thick high vertical concrete slabs to be able to withstand the impact of a car bomb. On arrival at our hotel the boom gate is raised and the taxi trunk is open to allow the sniffer Alsation dog to check our baggage for explosives.

It was late afternoon but I always like to spend my first few hours in any city pounding the pavement and myself and 4 others on our tour head out to see the Freedom monument about 15 minutes from our hotel. Walking downtown we were surprised to see police had cordoned off the main road and bridge across the Tigris River.

They happily waved us through and we only later found out that the lockdown was in response to the 9 rockets that had been launched against the government area, the “green zone” which is off limits to any one other than government officials.

From the freedom monument we swung around to walk along the historically famous Tigris river.

What a disappointment, smelly and unkempt it is really just an open sewer and rubbish dump. Nonetheless we walked along the banks. Spying an alcohol shop, yes a grog shop in Iraq!

We bought a couple of cans of beer and consumed it while waching the sun go down.

Growing up in the 1960s and 70s Baghdad conjured up romantic and exotic images. Flying carpets, Ali Baba, Aladdin even Jeannie from the show “I dream of Jeannie”. It was the stereotypical Middle Eastern destination. Fast forward 50 years and the mention of Baghdad now evokes images of war, Saddam Hussein, terrorism and ISIS. How times change!

I was booked to go on this tour in 2019. I had bookended my time in Iraq with a week in Moldova in eastern Europe before and Jordan after. On my flight over my time in transit in Dubai had TV screens full of civil unrest and army retaliation in Baghdad with scores of casualties. The writing was on the wall and while in Moldova the email came from the tour company to say that the tour had been cancelled on security grounds. Ironically my change to go to Lebanon saw me immersed in their own violent demonstrations with road blocks, curfews, fire in the streets!

COVID and family illness means it is now a long 2 years and 9 months since I even set foot in an airport. The travel “muscle memory” has atrophied somewhat but I am now excited and ready to do what I do do best, travel! I can’t wait to hit the streets of Baghdad, the noisy cars, the smell of old car petrol fumes, wood fires, decepit buildings and people, strange, different people who despite their differences share the same common humanity with me.

Welcome back to those who have shared my travel journeys in the past. I know what you are all thinking, Iraq, WTF??? Nonetheless this is a fascinating country. The history goes back 6000 years and rivals Egypt! At times it was the most powerful empire in the world. It developed the first written language and spawne the Sumerians, Assyrians and great emperors such as Nebuchadnezzenar. One of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging gardens of Babylon is here. Moving forward it is the site if the battle that spawned the split in Islam between Sunni and Shia and one of the holiest pilgrimage sites for Shia Muslims Karbala is here.

Enough for now. I am sipping a port in the Emirates lounge and enjoying my last alcoholic drink for a while. Wherever I get wifi I will endeavour to keep you all updated and I hope that my pictures will not disappoint. Let the adventure begin!