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A Changing Iraq
An Online Report from Peter Breslow in Baghdad
This essay was filed for npr.org by Weekend Edition Saturday Senior Producer Peter Breslow, who is with the show's host, Scott Simon, reporting from Iraq.
NPR's Peter Breslow in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 2002.
Photo: Scott Simon, NPR News
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May 7, 2003 --
The outside world is arriving fast and furious in Baghdad. Each day more and more stores open up selling previously prohibited satellite dishes and each day the dishes seem to get larger and larger. Shop owners display their wares on the sidewalk. The systems are now the size of trampolines and seem headed towards something out of the movie Contact.
It can be dumbfounding sometimes to discover the extent to which the previous regime manipulated information in this society. For example, our translator, Thair -- a bright, open-minded, well educated young man -- had never heard of the Holocaust until we informed him.
In our hotel, the male employees are taking full advantage of their new freedom to learn about the world and to watch anything they want on satellite TV. There is BBC World and al Jazeera and The Sailing Channel. But their favorite seems to be the Italian porn station. Whatever they're watching in the lobby is what's transmitted to our rooms, so when they flip through the stations so do we. From our accommodations we can tell when a guest is walking through the lobby as the porn quickly switches to al Jazeera and back again. More than once we've tuned into the BBC at the top of the hour to catch the news and just as the headlines are coming on -- zap -- we're treated to heated foreplay.
Iraqis are also exercising their right to bear arms, although the U.S. military would argue the point. We checked out a curbside weapons market. There were young men hawking old handguns, boxes of ammo, battered and beaten AK-47s, and some kind of crude one-shot device that looked like something you might fashion in a prison shop. With the lawlessness and looting -- referred to here as Ali Baba -- that has followed the end of the regime, many Baghdad residents are looking into self-protection. As we were interviewing prospective purchasers, an Army patrol swept through and everyone scattered. The soldiers netted one AK that someone had tossed, but no suspects.
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The other day we drove up to Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, but we spent half the time just attempting to get out of Baghdad. The first bridge we tried to cross north over the Tigris had been hit by a bomb and had only one lane functioning, which brought traffic to standstill. We tried another bridge, but this one was blocked by commuters waiting in an endless line to buy gasoline.
Our driver, Ahmed, gets his gas for triple the price on the black market, but at least he doesn't have to waste an entire day in a queue. The black marketeers, with their five-gallon plastic jugs and rubber hoses, sell their gas on the side of the road. Last week there was a huge explosion and fire when one of them tossed his cigarette into the wrong puddle.
Finally on the highway north, we passed a couple dozen burned-out Iraqi tanks and abandoned gun emplacements. I tried to imagine the terror of looking out from one of these feeble sandbag positions and seeing a squadron of U.S. tanks churning up the road.
In Tikrit and nearby Oja (supposedly Saddam's actual birthplace, but much about his early life remains sketchy) we found many residents who'd made out pretty well under the dictator and still glorify him. Driving into town we were told to look for the Saddam posters hanging from every lamppost. But by the time we arrived, the metal frames had been emptied -- not, we suspect, out of hatred like the defaced and decapitated images of Saddam in Baghdad, but more probably to preserve the pictures.
We'd been cautioned to watch ourselves in Tikrit as many locals weren't happy with "the actions," as the war here is called. They resent Americans and journalists, we were warned. So it was with just a bit of trepidation that we followed some men after they had flagged us down (our car is marked with the ubiquitous duct tape TV journalists use here) and asked us to come with them to their house. They said they wanted to tell us the story of how U.S. troops had kicked down their doors in the middle of the night and killed one of their neighbors. As we followed them in our car Scott leaned over to me and whispered, "Danny Pearl."
We went with the men and reported their story. It all worked out fine and we were even invited for lunch. But I have to admit that as a horde of people ushered us into the house I had just the briefest flash of someone slamming the door behind us, shutting the blinds tight and screaming, "Now we've got you." Eighteen months ago a thought like that would never have crossed my mind. Of course, with Scott singing Sondheim most of the day our captors probably would have quickly booted us out.
In Depth
 May 1, 2003: NPR's Peter Breslow presents an essay on Baghdad.
May 5, 2003: NPR's Scott Simon reports on U.S. military raids against armed groups in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown.
April 24, 2003: NPR's Peter Breslow presents an essay on chaos and hope in postwar Iraq.
Hear NPR reports by Scott Simon.
Read more essays from NPR correspondents on the Iraq war and its aftermath.
Review NPR News coverage of the war in Iraq.
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