BAGHDAD: The pictures of Saddam Hussein have been stripped from the yellowing walls of Baghdad's cafes where men still getting used to the idea of life without his regime sit and discuss the "New Iraq." One question comes up time and time again: Who was worse, Saddam or the Americans?
| My guess is, since the Arab attention span is actually shorter than the American attention span, that Sammy will look better the further he recedes into the past... |
The ancient cafes have become the pulse of political life in the city, and through a haze of smoke rising from cigarettes and water pipes, men pass the time with talk of the bad old days and what the future will bring. In the Al-Mustansirya cafe, built in 1587 on the banks of the Tigris River and restored in the 1960s, the walls are dotted with old photographs of poets and long-dead Iraqi singer Mohammed al-Qobbanji. Men play backgammon. Unemployed, like half of the city's population, they mull their future.
| I notice none of them seem to have gone into business for themselves... |
The cafe is now alive with political debate. Different corners are occupied by journalists, poets, artists and founders of the myriad political parties that have sprung up since the old regime was ousted.
| Ah! Innalekshuls! That explains why none of them have gone into business... |
Above the chatter, one of the poets picks up a snippet from one of the journalists' conversations and cuts in: "No, it was not the poets, but the journalists who glorified Saddam. You were supposed to tell the truth but you just misled people," he insists, visibly upsetting the press camp.
| "Wudn't me! It was you! You, I tell yez!" |
The waiter intervenes, bringing tea to cool the heated debate. "With no authority, things can rapidly get out of hand, and we don't want the chairs going flying," he explains. One of the clients, Mustafa al-Chujairi, describes how attention after the end of the war initially focused on former Iraqi dissidents who returned to the country after Saddam's fall. "Talk turned to their credibility and whether the Americans would accept those chosen by Iraqis" to lead the country, he says. "Today, the power cuts, the lack of security, unemployment and the general chaos are what people talk about. "Iraqis are trying to decide which is better: to be able to eat, even if not a lot, under Saddam, or to be able to talk, perhaps too much, under the Americans."
| See what I mean about attention span? |
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