Iraq News Now

“A tour of Baghdad may not be high on many bucket-lists, but just 50 years ago Western tourists flocked to the city’s riverside cafés and vibrant markets, and even today its hidden attractions are a thing of wonder.”

First of all, please don’t think that I’m suggesting you pack a suitcase and jump on a flight to Baghdad. Sadly, these days it a no-go zone for tourists. But in this time of lockdowns, grounded flights, and border restrictions, there’s no harm in dreaming about where we’d travel if the situation allowed.

So, consider this a trip back in time or, even better, a vision of a more peaceful future, when foreign tourists and locals alike can once again stroll along the sunny banks of the Tigris River.

Let’s start at the beginning. Back in 2002, I was a foreign correspondent reporting from the steamy metropolis of Bangkok, Thailand, when my husband received a job offer from UNICEF in Iraq. It might seem hard to believe, but back then we were assured the biggest danger we’d face in Baghdad was boredom. International sanctions had cut Iraq off from the rest of the world. There were no flights in and out, no bars, no internet, and no television except regime-run propaganda channels.

Saddam kept an iron grip and nothing happened without his say so.

That meant UN workers and their families could walk the streets of Baghdad with fewer worries than in many Western capitals. And I have to admit, I was intrigued by Baghdad, with its fabled history, and so often in the headlines, yet sealed off from the outside world. For a journalist like me, the rare chance to get an insider’s view was catnip.

Fast-forward three months. I’d discovered that while Saddam’s evil presence was everywhere, Baghdad also had an amazing art scene, and warm, good-humored people who liked to get together for barbecues and cocktails in the warm evenings. In carefully tended backyards, we’d dance until the wee hours.

They’d reminisce to me about the “golden years” of the 1950s to the ’70s. Back then, Baghdad was the most cosmopolitan city in the Middle East and a tourist mecca. One of my Iraqi friends told me about the time he water-skied on the Tigris, past visitors from the UK, Europe, and America seated at riverside cafés, feasting on hummus, fresh fish, and sesame-sprinkled flatbread crisp on the edges, but light as air.

The tourists would join Iraqis tapping their feet in smoky jazz clubs, then get up the next day and ride double-decker buses out of town to the magnificent ruins of Babylon or the 4000-year-old ziggurat of Ur.

The double-deckers still ply the streets, but unfortunately I never made it to Babylon. I was forbidden from leaving the city limits without a government permit, and obtaining that precious paper proved impossible. Instead, I focused on Baghdad’s attractions.

For me, the ideal weekend outing was a visit to the mind-blowing book market of Mutanabbi. There’s a saying that “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads.” Well, Mutanabbi market is proof of that.

Nestled in Baghdad’s atmospheric old quarter, off the busy thoroughfare of Rashid Street, the street market is hemmed by ornate Ottoman-era columns and shaded arcades. Books stretch as far as the eye can see, some stacked on low tables, some set out on cardboard on the ground. Every now and then, a gust of wind whistles in from the Tigris and flutters the pages of what seems like a million paperbacks, encyclopedias, and jewel-inked Korans.

The famous Shahbander café sits on one corner of Mutanabbi market. The clank and whistle of kettles drifts through the open windows. Inside, middle-aged men pass burbling nargilah pipes back and forth while nosily debating the merits of 18th-century novelists. Sometimes I’d spot young women in blue jeans inside the whitewashed café, perched on cushioned benches, sipping tiny glasses of sweet mint tea.

Despite crackdowns by the Saddam Hussein regime, and bombings after the Iraq war, Mutanabbi survives today, and continues to be a gathering place for Iraqi novelists, artists, and intellectuals. The market left a deep impression on me. In fact, I used Mutanabbi as one of the settings in my novel, When the Apricots Bloom, in a key scene where a diplomat’s wife meets a local artist.

One day, in better, safer times, I sincerely hope I can return in person, not just through the pages of a book or a magazine, and meet my friends to reminisce over a glass of sweet mint tea.

Perhaps if we’re all lucky, someone will be waterskiing on the Tigris, and the red double-decker buses will be full of tourists heading to Babylon.

Gina Wilkinson’s When the Apricots Bloom (Hachette Australia, $32.99) is out now.

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