July from Al Baladiyat, Baghdad, Iraq
stories, reflections, and pictures
Preface:
This essay is not meant to represent Iraqi culture accurately, so do not treat it as such. It is my catalogue of experiences, which are subjective, prone to mistranslation, and biased to my limited perspective.
I. After thirty hours of airports and flights, we landed in Baghdad.
The first few days were a hot flash. Baghdad’s average temperature is sweltering: 46 degrees Celsius during the day and 29 at night. After a few days, we adjusted. As you may know, it’s not the heat that gets you—it’s the humidity, so the dry breeze became a welcome friend. Unfortunately, we learned it’s not the heat or the humidity; it’s the drinking water. My sisters and I were nearly instantly sick and remained bedridden for a day, symptomatic of our weak Canadian stomachs.
My mother, sisters, and I stayed at my Uncle Amar’s house, which was my Grandfather Muneer’s house before he passed. We lived with my grandmother, my aunt (visiting from London), my uncle, his wife, and their toddler, Muneer (or “Moonie,” as we called him). My father stayed with his siblings and their parents in his family’s house, a few minutes away.
These houses, like most houses in Iraq, are sand-coloured cubes from the exterior and ordinary family homes in the interior. Many of the bigger houses have front yards and date palms growing.
II. “You really should have come during the winter.”
The summer sun is unforgiving. Beyond the burn on our cheeks and sweat on our brows, our energy evaporated as we stood outside. After a morning out, we couldn’t do much but sleep until the evening. For Iraqi locals, heat is managed in a few ways. The first thing I picked up on is that anyone who can stays inside with the blinds shut; the afternoon is a time for rest. Accordingly, most businesses operate from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and some reopen after sundown.
Furthermore, for the most part, the air is conditioned. The common rooms and bedrooms in houses, small businesses, and even outdoor seating areas have AC units constantly struggling to keep temperatures down. Upper-class families can afford to keep their rooms and vehicles frigid. The bottleneck resource, however, is electricity.
The government provides free electricity in Iraq. However, this service is wildly inconsistent and cuts off randomly approximately a dozen times daily. Thus, most people invest in private electricity, which takes over during these outages. This private, public cat-and-mouse game creates a perverse incentive to crank the AC in any and every room while the government is providing it. This keeps the house cool enough to reduce private electricity costs during outages.
III. My father’s side of the family
I saw my grandparents, Tariq and Najiya, on the second day. Tariq recently suffered a stroke, and it’s hard to understand him sometimes, but he was happy to see his grandchildren. I caught up with my aunts, uncles, and two cousins, “Yz” (12) and “Yu” (10), whom I met when they were five and three, respectively. In my attempt to explore Iraqi life, I grilled them about pop culture and politics. The critical information is as follows: Their favourite things to do is play soccer and video games. Yu wants to be like Ronaldo someday. Yz doesn’t like America but likes China, and he added that he likes Japan (specifically because of One Piece).
Back to the adults. My grandfather was a farmer—or, more precisely, a farm owner. His grandfather, ‘Oda (ءودا), was “an aristocrat” who owned the lion’s share of land in his village (Al-Hauesh, forty minutes North of Baghdad), which he rented out to families and smallholder farmers. His son, my great-grandfather Aziz, did the same. Aziz passed down the farm to Tariq and sent the rest of his children to various universities around Europe and the Middle East.
When I asked Tariq about childhood games, he told me he played marbles and football, and sometimes his friends would flick walnuts at each other. Iraq was drawn less than a decade before his birth, so I asked him whether he identified first as an Arab or as an Iraqi, and he firmly stated, “Iraqi.” My father advised me not to ask him about China and the United States, so I left the conversation there.
My grandfather told me we had to see his farm—a two-acre fruit plantation hugging the Tigris River that grows dates, pomegranates, oranges, and more. We spent one morning there, a welcome break from the city. Elderly date trees buttressed the blue sky in every direction, and unripe fruit lined the bushes as we walked. The “Great Tigris” felt underwhelming, to be honest. I suppose Canada has already spoiled me for lakes and rivers.
IV. “Don’t be bad, or we will sell you to the flour man.”
Iraq gives away quite a bit to its citizens. Aside from electricity, every month, each Iraqi citizen receives rations of: three kilos of flour, two kilos of rice, a kilo of lentils, a 400-gram tin of tomato paste, one kilo of sugar (which used to be 2 kilos, my grandmother recalls), and one litre of cooking oil. Every week or so, the Tahin (flour) man drives around the neighbourhoods yelling, “Tahin, Tahin, Tahin! Timin, Sucar, Dihin! [Flour, Flour Flour! Rice, Sugar, Oil!],” offering to buy a portion of your rations. Most families don’t need 15 kilograms of flour per month, so they sell back a large chunk of their rations to the Tahin man—3 kilos of flour for approximately 5 dollars. My baby cousin Moonie fears the Tahin man because his parents threaten to sell him off whenever he is being bad.
V. I had a nice walk; my mom was catcalled
On the fifth day, my mother and I left the house at 5:40 a.m. for a stroll around Al-Balidayat looking for peanut butter (I got homesick and craved something familiar). We happened across a long line of men waiting at a window, which my mother informed me was a bread line. For 1 dollar, you can buy eight delicious and fresh buns. There are, in fact, two lines. One line is for men, and one line is for women. The women’s line was shorter, so my mom bought the bread. After three stores, we found peanut butter. It was not that good. Near the end, I left my mom for a moment to buy bananas, and she was yelled at by a group of boys driving by. I rate this walk a 6 out of 10.
VI. “If your friend or the love of your life dies—you get over that. But we can never forget Hussain.”
Ashoora is an Islamic holiday that Shiites consider as a Remembrance Day for Hussain ibn Ali. Hussain was the third Shiite imam and grandson of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh). As the story goes, he refused to pledge allegiance to the Sunni Umayyad Caliphate. Consequently, Hussain and many members of his family died fighting Sunnis in the battle of Karbala in 630 CE. To commemorate Hussain, Shiites mourn through crying and self-flagellation. However, the more fun and delicious form of commemoration began at breakfast.
On my seventh morning, a young boy named Kahel rang our doorbell. He informed me that Mehdi’s mother (Um Mehdi) was “serving.” I asked Kahel, “Serving what?” He looked at me like I was an idiot. She was serving Hareesa—a type of porridge. I went to Um Mehdi’s house with the biggest pot I could find. A man filled it up from a comically large cauldron and wished me and my family good blessings. Around 11 p.m., the neighbourhood started cooking cauldrons of lamb stew (Qeema) and rice. People pool their resources—my uncle, for example, provided a hose for water—but from what I understood, most of the ingredients came from Mosques and the government.
Every other block in the city was lined with pots of lamb stew and rice. Boys and men from the neighbourhood cooked and stirred the stew throughout the night to prevent it from sticking. I stirred for about an hour. Songs were played, and people distributed water, juice, and cake. The older men teased the younger boys: “Did you come here to talk, Youssef? Stir!”
When it came time for each family to claim their pot of stew and rice, the neighbourhood forgot about God or Hussain—every pot was surrounded by boys trying to scoop up boiling hot stew. People yelled to make room, that they were being burned, that they couldn’t breathe, to no avail. I did not participate in the crowding—but even after waiting my turn, somebody grabbed my arm, and I burned my hand on the stew.
VII. Beef, lamb, and chicken
My mother invited some of our extended family over—great aunts, second cousins, and such. We over-ordered and cooked excessively on purpose, with the idea that any leftovers would go to guests and neighbours. We had beef, lamb, chicken, bread, rice, stew, and stuffed vegetables. It was delicious—tender, well-spiced, and fresh—but gratuitous.
I greeted the guests as they arrived with three kisses on the cheek. After dinner, I interviewed a gaggle of cousins about their lives in Iraq. They spoke like ordinary early-twenty-somethings. Nobody really liked their college experience—they described it as an extension of high school rather than the coming-of-age foray into independence I’m familiar with. They love Western pop culture, though it appears they are a decade behind on every front. For example, they all love Friends, Eminem, and one cousin talked about Clint Eastwood movies. Anime was brought up—apparently, Japanese and South Korean media are pretty popular (worry not, they were up to date on the latest anime).
I pivoted my questions to politics. The United States government has a bad reputation for a) their history in Iraq, b) how they “make whatever policies they like no matter who it hurts,” and c) their support of Israel. One cousin quickly clarified that Americans themselves are not disliked—they have “met some and laughed with them.” I asked about China next. China is seen as operating under the same incentives but doing so in a fairer way. One cousin added that “the Chinese are smarter than the USA.” Overall, the youth quite like China (especially relative to the USA). Finally, the kids see themselves as Iraqi first and Arabic as a distant second. So much for my pan-Arabism dreams.
VIII. “Men shouldn’t be doing dishes, it’s disrespectful.”
Iraq is segregated by gender (and (very probably) by race as well, but I didn’t see enough to make any well-informed commentary. Immigrants work many caretaker and manual labour jobs). Women can’t leave the house and go about their day without a man by their side. Business is done between men. Iraq is, unfortunately, a firm patriarchy. When guests are over, it is the women who are expected to serve tea and clean up. For the record, I helped serve tea and cleaned up (until the aunties kicked me out of the kitchen) because I am based and westernized®.
My mom and grandma see all this as normal—a cultural difference, not a defect. I tried to explain to my grandma how she had clearly been indoctrinated into a sexist culture. “Bebe,” I pleaded, “you are a victim!” She responded with a chuckle and a warm grandmotherly smile—“Yes, Habibi, it’s okay, I am victim.” She seemed very amused by the conversation, and I don’t think I persuaded her one iota.
IX. “The Tuk-Tuks own these roads.”
My uncle let me drive his SUV around town. The roads are chaos. On most streets, there are no lanes, no traffic lights, and no stop signs. Drivers weave around each other while the Tuk-Tuks (little street-cars) fill any gaps. Drivers and bikers regularly move into opposing traffic to find shortcuts.
To illustrate, while driving home, I was directed to make a left turn. I was in a lane going north, and the turn was across a road with drivers coming south. The proper Baghdadi way to make this turn (through constant traffic and without stoplights!) is to inch into the lane of drivers moving south, slowly constricting the traffic flow until enough drivers yield that you can speed through the road.
Driving around town was a prime time to harvest interesting memories. Here are some tidbits: There were always security forces (police, army officers, etc.) standing around in random locations. They are always holding rifles and are sometimes accompanied by armoured vehicles. Why was the bakery armed by the military? I’m not sure. My father tells me that these security jobs are essentially a jobs program. Throughout our drives, I continued watching the flags of Hussain. Additionally, the city is filled with billboards of Qasim Soleimani accompanied by Abu Mehdi al Mohandas (an Iranian general and Iraqi commander assassinated in the Baghdad International Airport by the Trump administration). Apparently, their reputation ranges from mixed to good.
Also, the gas here costs 45 cents a litre.
X. My overall impression
I am on the plane home now, trying to understand how I feel.
Iraq is the least developed country I have ever visited (HDI 0.686 compared to Vietnam’s 0.726 or Canada’s 0.934). I am well versed in the Iraqi plight. Iraq is nestled between two major rivals in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iraq is a hotbed of sectarian rivalry; Sunnis and Shias resent each other, Kurds are joked about and live largely independently in the north, and the environment is tense—fingers are constantly pointed and the air reeks of blame. Further, Iraq is one of the worst victims of climate change. The Tigris and Euphrates are drying up, causing crop failures in the south. More immediately, however, are the summers that grow hotter and less bearable every year.
I talked to youth, elders, former government ministers, family, and friends—I was consistently met with hope. “Trust in God’s plan,” “Iraq has had it rough, but we are due for huge improvements,” evading my concerns ad nauseam. Far from inspired, I felt scared. The air conditioning and oil use scares me because it reminds me how Iraq can only become hotter. The religious festivals scare me because behind the friendly community activities lies the promise of needless internal fighting for years to come. Honestly, I hope my family leaves while they can.
I hypothesize that my views of Iraq have been skewed by years of pent-up teenage angst. You see, my parents’ “Because I said so” was more often a “This is our culture; this is how we did it in Iraq.” I had no choice but to resent Iraq for my strict upbringing. Coming to Iraq didn’t feel like a homecoming, but this trip brought me down to reality in many ways. Everything felt more normal than I had expected. Plus, looking like and communicating with all the locals was a good time. I learned and experienced a lot.
I wouldn’t call myself a family man. However, Arabic culture is decidedly family-focused. Multi-generational houses are standard, neighbourhoods are filled with extended families, and there is an expectation of maintaining strong family bonds. I have only met my dad’s side of the family in short bursts, but this visit was filled with intense feelings of love, comfort, and familiarity. Our goodbyes were tearful. I still feel melancholy.
Lastly, A massive shoutout to Moonie and the stray cats I befriended.
BIG FAN of this