Kindergarten

People, by nature, like to complain. I myself am guilty of this – just read my blog. People especially like to complain when faced with less than perfect, twisted lifestyle of an enclosed compound in Baghdad. Everything is bad – the food, the air, the work, the salary, the colleagues, the boss, the beer, the Iraqis, the Americans, al Jazeera TV network showing too much violence, Fox Network glossing over harsh realities, evil cats eating innocent rabbits, too many rabbits spreading disease, muezzin calls, Islam, Christianity, religion, lack of spirituality, anything, everything.

But nothing gets more stonewalled than the DEFAC. Naturally, our cafeteria is the only place where we get food consistently and, since the enlightened Western Man grew up in the land of plenty and is therefore used to choice, the sheer lack of it offends him to the very core. Every convenient excuse is used to point finger at something that the dining facility, again, screwed up. Never mind that we have a barbeque day (‘I’ve never eaten so much meat in my life!’), a Mexican day (‘Where did he learn to make salsa?’), a fish-n-chips day (‘Is this what he calls tartar sauce???’), a local dish every day (from ‘who eats this crappy Iraqi food anyway’ to ‘ha ha, we Arabs never knew that this dish was part of our cuisine’), at least six different dish choices at every meal, excellent curries and steaks, ice creams, pastries, fruit, and a salad bar – nothing can satisfy the eternally moody legion of world famous experts on agriculture, finance, and this and that.

The storm of accusations becomes most intense when it comes to something unpleasant that is a part of daily life in a developing country – an upset stomach. Our fragile refined Western bodies have a hard time dealing with local germs that penetrate our defenses with water we drink and brush our teeth with, with food we eat and, it seems, with the very air we breathe. Everyone who has traveled to a less developed place knows how terribly unsettling and derailing this can be. And no matter what we try, many still end up spending a good amount of time on a toilet.

This has become a constant tug-of-war between the consultants and the company that provides everything for us – from security to food to electricity. Aptly named ‘life support services’ department of that company gets a lot of, well, shit from us about our health situation. The Big Kahunas are certain that this is the result of poor hygiene in the kitchen but the evidence to this, of course, is anecdotal. The life support people become righteously outraged and declare that it is ourselves who need to be blamed because we are dirty nasty kids sucking on our thumbs. It’s a never-ending vicious circle of idiocy, really.

As a result, a series of drastic measures was undertaken. First and foremost, the DEFAC has been completely rearranged. One day, the morning zombies wandering in for breakfast were startled to find that drinks re-located closer to the door, ice cream away from the door, the pastry table changed the wall it was located next to for the opposite wall, the toaster was found on the other side of the salad bar, etc. The clock that used to hang next to the silent violence streaming from al Jazeera was suddenly located above the daily Arabic dish. The walls were painted green. The picture of a beautiful Bedouin woman in native dress went missing. It took a little getting used to but we understood that we had to be patient if noble goals of fighting diarrhea were to be achieved.

Second, health freaks were prohibited to come into the dining hall directly from the gym lest their sweaty faces drip salt-embalmed calories into the food. The connection between sweat and stomach problems is not at all clear to me but the rule is strictly enforced: we now have a special person who earns money by opening the door leading to the dining facility and banishing the red-faced heavy breathing culprits who try to occasionally sneak in for water or a quick bite. This person also came to play a crucial role at the DEFAC’s PR campaign aimed at winning hearts and minds of the compound’s disgruntled population. He smiles, welcomes people in and says good-byes, and recommends today’s specials. Amazingly, the place became transformed from a cafeteria to a restaurant overnight. Monsieur, voulez-vous essayer notre spécialité du jour?

Simultaneously, an education campaign has been launched promoting hand washing. Signs castigating those who do not use soap and lauding those who do, signs demonstrating in great detail what it really takes to wash one’s hands, signs explaining in which situations hand-washing is strongly recommended, signs prohibiting entry or exit with hands unwashed, signs reminding us of this important duty – all of these appeared in all bathrooms and in the dining hall. Seriously, we should really learn from our life support providers about re-branding, marketing, PR and capacity building as we try to teach the same to the Iraqi people.

The average age of our population is around fifty five-sixty. All these measures make us feel a little like we are being treated like children. And, yes, the measures are a little ridiculous and often go overboard. But they did an excellent job at eliminating every possible reason to blame our support staff for our health problems. And maybe being put back in kindergarten will teach us to finally look at ourselves first for the source of our troubles in this and any other situation. After all, no one can really support our lives and make life choices for us. One can extend this further to universal proportions and start asking global questions as to who it is to blame for this war, this attack, that misfortune, and learn the age-old wisdom that evil can be uprooted if one starts with oneself.

Although I somehow doubt that we will ever be capable of making this mental leap.

Occupation, R.I.P.

An Angolan is running toward me with a concerned expression on his face: “Sir, you cannot take photos! Please erase everything!”

It was my first dust storm ever: I was shocked to see the usual khaki wane several shades down, and everything suddenly became grayish-white as if a truckload of chlorine was dumped into a small swimming pool. The visibility got miserable and you could look straight into the sun. Of course I wanted to commemorate it! I forgot that one of the rules disallowed to take pictures on the compound, and was harassed by one of our Angolan guards to erase everything that showed any security infrastructure. Which was pretty much everything, because our compound IS security. Maybe I would post these photos on one of the social networking sites, and Osama bin Laden could accidentally stumble upon it and gain enough intelligence to derail our benevolent reconstruction effort. As a result, all that remained of the dust storm was the inoffensive sun photo and a generic picture of our garden.

I never took another compound photo again thinking that one day I would succeed at taking pictures elsewhere in Baghdad. Little did I know that the democratically elected, U.S. funded and supported, Bush/Cheney-fostered Iraqi government, the first such government in the region, with much trust, confidence and love placed upon it by the Hegemon – in short, OUR Iraqi government – would set us up with such cold-blooded cynicism.

One day, a rule was dropped on us: we cannot take any more pictures in the International Zone (IZ- formerly known as the Green Zone), and quite possibly anywhere in Baghdad and maybe even in the entire Mesopotamia. Turns out it was reported that two Americans were taking pictures of the famed Saddam’s hands holding swords monument – quite possibly the most famous Baghdad site and a standard photo opportunity for the great majority of foreigners here. The two unfortunates were approached by the Iraqi police and asked to proceed to the police station where they were requested to erase everything they photographed that day. The order was, the police explained, that now that the Iraqis are firmly in charge of their own security and with the U.S. Military sitting on useless behemoth bases outside of urban centers foreigners could not photograph anything anywhere in the International Zone without a press badge. To add insult to injury, the Iraqi police told the Americans on their way out that the order could begin applying to the entire country of Iraq. The two Americans promptly delivered this message to the Embassy, and, through the official channels, everyone was required to take note and to act accordingly.

This incident and our security’s response to it reminded me why I was writing this blog in the first place. But this was just the beginning.

Another alarming message came a couple of days ago: now we can’t under any circumstances travel to the IZ where a store, our post office, the Embassy and many important organizations we deal with are located. The vehicles we use for all movements, large armored SUVs, are not officially registered anywhere in Iraq and do not have license plates. Now the Iraqi police asked us, as well as any other private contractors who all use similar cars, to carry license plates to be able to go anywhere in the IZ. Theoretically, we might not be able to drive without registration anywhere in Baghdad at all as the police can stop us at any checkpoint.

This is truly an uncomfortable predicament because the documents required to register our armored cars simply do not exist, at least not in our possession. The thing is these vehicles, each costing a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars, came as part of the contract with the U.S. government and they already came to Iraq without proper or any documentation. I don’t want to jump to conclusion why this is the case leaving it to the imagination and research skills of whoever’s reading this blog. And I’m sure the issue will be resolved relatively quickly between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, well over our heads. We really don’t want to get caught in the fray: we will simply await the verdict.

All this, however, leads me to think about the big picture. What is going on here? Why have these incidents along with the recent stand-off between U.S. military and Iraqi security forces as well as the failure of the Iraqi Parliament to extend the mandate of the British army begun to occur so quickly after the U.S. military left Iraqi urban centers for large military bases. I can only conclude that they are squeezing us out.

When in March 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq, the then obscure outside of the Shi’a world Ayatollah Sistani based in the holiest Shi’a city of Najaf issued a fatwa urging the Iraqi Shi’a not to resist the U.S. forces in their push to Baghdad. The U.S. media quickly embraced the Shi’a naming them the ally and sang praises to the wisdom of their leaders pointing to them as to the evidence that all Iraqis craved for under Saddam’s yoke was democracy. Of course, democracy as we understood it – free market (read – hopefully willing to sweet-deal U.S. oil companies) and based on free and fair expression of Iraqis’ popular will (read – thanking the liberators by establishing a pro-U.S. government).

And so it generally seemed. The bad guys were nearly always Sunnis: the al-Qaeda and former Ba’athist types. The most notable exception was the young Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who used his rag-tag Mahdi army to attack Americans, but even he appeared to have understood the wisdom of joining the political process by 2005.

What was really happening under the watchful eye of Uncle Sam, however, was the creation of the first in history Arab Shi’a state. For ages the Shi’a were the underdog, the outsider of Islam. Sistani, largely respected throughout the Shi’a world, understood the importance of the U.S. invasion and decided not to resist and use his influence to establish the Shi’a not merely as a major force in mainstream Iraqi politics but as the only influential one. The Sunnis are badly outnumbered in Iraqi government now, as well as in the Iraqi police and the military who are now mostly Shi’a. The Shi’a state has been established and is ready to defend itself: the ‘shiafication’ of Iraq is nearly complete.

Of course, the enemy – the Sunni fundamentalists who will surely try to get back on top in this never-ending struggle within Islam – is still lurking out there waiting to show once again its ugly nature: car bombs, assassinations of Shi’a religious and political leaders, random sectarian violence. They are most likely waiting for the U.S. military (and no less their TV crews) to leave the country to unleash their revenge.

But the Shi’a state is also waiting for the moment to splinter the skulls of their enemies with the full hammer force of their U.S.-trained and funded police, security and military. Or maybe they expect to marginalize the Sunnis without violence. Still, they also need for the U.S. to leave. The Iraqi government is sending signals: now you gave us everything we needed. Thank you, keep sending us money but, really, you’ve overstayed your welcome. This is not your struggle any longer. In fact, it never has been.

They are telling us: Occupation, rest in piss!

(The picture is from http://www.polit.ru/bbs/2006/05/25/elkin_april06.html)

21 Rays of Sun

As the plane zooms past the mountains of Suleymaniyah, one of my memories from the Life Long Gone springs to mind. I’m on the bus surrounded by strange people, heaps of luggage, screaming children and the bus attendants spraying lemon-scented disinfectant into everyone’s welcoming hands. I am in Turkey and the bus is approaching Iranian border. This is Kurdistan, the land without a name, the country of Turkish military checkpoints, troop carriers and helicopters – as well as friendly hospitable people who genuinely treat you as their newly found best friend.

Today, my life is different, and the country I’m in is different, but, once again, I’m in Kurdistan. Stepping off the plane In Erbil, suddenly I can breathe again – it had been raining here, it smells of wet asphalt, and for the first time in two months my lungs love the complete lack of dust in the air. In a strange way, it feels similar to the Kurd land on the other side of Iraqi border: same facial features, same Persian accent in people’s English and the “thank you” that sounds similar to Russian – “Spas!”

And yet the otherness of this place is strikingly obvious. What makes people here different from their brothers in Turkey as well as from their fellow countrymen in Baghdad is how at ease they are here. The uniformed members of the Kurdish Peshmerga military having a pensive afternoon smoke, the sellers day-dreaming in their shops, the waiters in restaurants lazily gazing over sleepy guests – it just feels so … normal. Almost immediately I forget about security and even get irritated when I’m reminded that I do have to obey some rules: “Hey, you’re still in Iraq!”

What makes it so different is the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan is practically independent. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, both the Shiite majority in the country’s south and east and the Iraqi Kurds in the north have been relentless in their push for more political control, which for the Kurds meant the realization of their dream to have their own country. Officially, they are an autonomous region under control of Baghdad but it is hard to believe the façade when the Iraq’s President Talabani and the President of Kurdistan Barzani (both are Kurds) smile together in fron of the cameras and swear an undying friendship between the Kurdish and Arabic peoples. The fact that Kurdistan maintains its own military, as well as foreign relations with the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Israel (!!!) and Russia speaks tons. So does the flag of the Region – the only flag hoisted on the Erbil International Airport’s building.

The Kurds trace their genealogy back to the times of the pre-Islamic Sun-worshipping monotheistic religions of Mithraism and Zoroastrianism, and the Kurdish own religion of Yazdanism. Although some of these religions popular among Persian-speaking peoples ran currently or preceded the Roman Empire, there are still signs of the good ole Sun-worshipping times one can observe in today’s Kurdistan. For example, unlike the Gregorian or the traditional lunar Islamic calendars, what is used by the Kurds is a sun calendar with months designated according to the Zodiac: the same calendar is used in Afghanistan and in Iran, the other two Islamic Persian-speaking countries. Also, the flag, flown by various Kurdish Independence movements as well as the short-lived post-WWI Kurdish republics in Turkey and Iran, includes the Sun centerpiece that shines its 21 rays on the Kurds in Iraq. Of course, the re-worked temporary flag of Iraq is also displayed on the government buildings in Kurdistan, but the general feeling is that it is now the Kurds who want to have a say in the politics in Baghdad, and by no means the other way around.

In Iraq, Kurdistan Region is the best place to be. It’s the happening place. Due to large deposits of oil found in the region, and of course because of its relative lack of security problems, foreign businessmen flock to Kurdistan through Erbil International Airport. I was surprised to find that the airport is currently taking flights from such European capitals as Vienna, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. In fact, it is Erbil rather than Baghdad that hosts most business events focusing on Iraq, both domestic and international. Erbil is also becoming a regional transportation hub. Development here is so rapid that local residents complain about how expensive the housing has become, which is always the dark underbelly of economic recovery. Several neighborhoods are forests of cranes, and the quality of roads could be the envy of any European city.

Of course, the region has many problems. One of the issues that political parties will focus on in the elections next week is corruption: the two clans run by Presidents Talabani and Barzani have been battling over economic control of Kurdistan’s immense natural resources and other profitable businesses. And surely enough, the de-facto political independence of Iraqi Kurdistan has created a potentially powerful time bomb in the region with Turkey, Iran and Syria carefully monitoring the situation.

To me, however, Kurdistan will forever equal freedom. It’s deeply personal, and I cannot really understand why their struggle resonates with me. But when I think of Kurdistan, it will always be the memories of its freshness, the taste of its watermelons that made my dinners in East Turkey, the unique look of its crumpled mountains as if roughed up by a gigantic plough, the transparency of its air unpolluted by dust and overpopulation, and the relative freedom from rules, regulations and other official abuse.

The bus is creeping toward Mount Ararat. I’m thinking of the future and new adventures that life has in store for me. With this anticipation, I doze off.

Farewell to Arms

In the Universe, there are those who run it and those who think they run it. I belong to the second category, although I have no illusions about who’s the real daddy. We, who are jumping outside of our skins to make the Mesopotamia safe for democracy, are the clients – contractors, NGO workers, government workers – and we have the money, time and disposable people’s lives to spend on this activity. But we also ideally want to stay safe while doing so. To achieve this, we hire security firms staffed with friendly battle-hardened men. But their and our Big Bosses in Washington and London are the ones who come up with the Rules: they are the Real Masters of the Universe. The regular security personnel and the softer people like me are separated by job descriptions, but our bosses are in cahoots with each other. And they are sadistic and sick, I am almost certain about that.

As a part of the social experiment they run here, the real Masters make it extremely difficult to engage in most of the activities that are routine and normal in other places. It is impossible to go somewhere that’s not ‘mission critical’, that is, it has to have something to do with delivering the Mesopotamia into a happy rosy place where birds chirp like mad and deer eat from your hand. In addition, every ‘mission’ or, if it involves driving, ‘movement’ is deeply covered in security rules and regulations that don’t always make sense. For instance, if such mission critical movement involves going to the Baghdad Airport, then you have to always leave at 7 in the morning, even if your plane is scheduled to take off12 hours later, of course for ‘security reasons’. For 12 straight hours you are stuck in the airport, bored out your mind and your back is sore from sitting in a limited number of positions on these nice metal chairs. Oh, why have I never taken yoga?!? I can almost hear the Masters laugh ominously at every such unfortunate’s predicament.

Sometimes, you can go shopping to the PX. The best PX is a department store located near the airport at one of the big U.S. military bases; there you can find different goodies that one’s used to consuming in the U.S. To get to the PX, you have to be extremely lucky by justifying why you have run out of toothpaste and why can’t a local buy you the shower gel. To make the long story short, to get there you have to gather two ‘critical masses’: 1. Enough people who want to go to the PX, and 2. Enough personal items to buy. The PX trip involves the same routine of waking up at an ungodly hour when the store is still closed, putting on your body armor, driving slowly through the unwelcoming dusty streets of Baghdad, and waiting… waiting…. waiting……… at checkpoints. This would normally discourage me from going at all, which I think is the real purpose behind all these rules: ‘do you little shit wanna brush your teeth? Fuck you, here is a rule and a regulation on top of it!’ Do I really want my KIT KATs that bad?

But I have a friend who works on that base. She is a very nice girl who, on top of being a girl – a rarity here, is also a fellow Russian speaker. Which means we both have incorrectly constructed minds that, for some odd reason, find rules and regulations particularly nonsensical and therefore obnoxious. Such we are, irreverent rule non-abiding church-disregarding Slavs.

We plot our meeting as if it were a terrorist attack or (more accurately) an escape from prison. We conspire using electronic media (Skype). We lead other people astray by making them believe that the real purpose behind our PX meeting is a burning desire to buy a shaving cream (in my case) or a box of chocolates (in hers). Finally, we both get critical masses together and we move. My movement was scheduled for 3 hours only and with a rare strike of luck was to start at 10 AM, not 7.

You would not believe how fast time can fly. As we were getting close to the base, our convoy was re-routed to a different checkpoint, not the one that we normally use. After waiting for God knows how long at that other check point, we came in the direct vicinity of our final destination.

Normally, the road to the PX runs close to one of Saddam’s multiple palaces: the road winds through pastoral scenery dotted with artificial lakes, willow trees and gaudy Saddamist architecture that is a cross between Islamic, Babylonian and 18th century European chatteaus. Only peacefully grazing cows and blonde German babes with pigtails are missing from the idyllic landscape.

Not so the road from that other checkpoint. This is a functional road, never intended to be a part of the palace and is used heavily by the U.S. Military. The desolate dusty paralyzed landscape is punctuated by barbwire and signs advertising that excessive speed will lead to the use of deadly force. And there they were: mighty army vehicles parked in unbelievable numbers on both sides of the road under the burning Mesopotamian sun. For a moment, I felt I was in a zoo – such was a variety of shapes, sizes and equipment that adorned these monuments to human ingenuity. Humvees, MRAPs, Bradleys, Strykers and others pointed their grinning faces at me, and shot at the skies above with all kinds of crazy shaped and positioned antennae. Their sides contained extra sheets of armor, and on top of each animal was positioned a small tower with a long machine gun. The amount of extra shit added to a once lean body of each machine was unbelievable. What happened to the genuine design that went into building machines for earlier wars and made these killers look almost beautiful? The modern creatures looked like exotic insects proudly displaying their armor, with the exception that these were all khaki-colored and a lot deadlier.

Although, their extraterrestrial exterior was designed to look menacing to the bad freedom-haters, to me they spoke one word only: fear. The body armor, the antennae that would help a stranded unit call in for support through fast satellite connection, the small windows that made visibility worse, computers and electronic sensors – they all meant that the human beings inside were actually afraid of the turban-wearing insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs and RPGs. And the politicians who sent them to this war were also afraid of military losses because that would make them accountable for their decisions. Sure, in all wars the sides try to create as much difficulty as possible for the enemy to inflict harm. However, this made the modern warfare with all its drones and robots a particularly dehumanized business. I believe that this leads one side to rely on brute force more readily than on negotiation. Previously large mutual losses exhausted the fighting potential on both sides, and eventually led them to the negotiating table. Alternatively, the possibility of suffering large losses caused country leaders to think twice before even starting a war. This war is non-negotiable. The only serious limiting factor here is tax dollars.

To conclude the story: my friend was late for our meeting due to her company’s security procedures, and we only ended up spending 45 minutes in rapid-fire clock-watching conversation.

We will try to do it again. The desire for human contact is stronger than the security protocol and the dust-colored monsters of deadly force.

(The image is from www.warwheels.com as the regulation is that I cannot take pictures of anything at the base.)

The Universe

I am convinced that what I’m doing now is cliché, popular amidst a certain tribe convinced of their originality and the fact that they are living on the edge: I am blogging from Baghdad. I was not forced to do this, neither have I gone voluntarily insane. Rather, this is in response to ‘popular demand’. The cliché infiltrated the mainstream world of which we’re all a part of to such an extent that asking you to blog from Baghdad is an automatic reaction similar to the expectation that you will visit a cultivated spot when you go to some attractive location.

Like this: Peru = Machu Picchu; Paris = Eiffel Tower; Baghdad = blog.

And for a good reason: if a typical bourgeois traveler goes to Peru to hike the crazy Incan path, the same typical civilian western person who is unfortunate enough to find himself in Iraq is forced to spend most of his time sitting on his ass, and the only creative activity here is to blog.

So, here I am, blogging. My first entry is about the Universe I live in. Immediately, I have to say that my description will be vague, with lack of detail, lest the bad guys reading my blog will use it to lay out their sinister plans to undermine my work of bringing democracy and economic prosperity into the Mesopotamia.

The Universe is a street block, 400 meters in length and cordoned off by (censured). As one has no other way of forming an opinion within moments of acquaintance, I’m introduced to the Universe through my 5 senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste.

The airport greets you warmly. Immediately, it is apparent that great deal of money went into creating this modern structure whose baggage claim area is adorned with copper reliefs revoking Babylon times: bearded slanted-eyed men hunting lions and riding chariots. “Was it built by Americans?” I ask “It’s very modern”. “No, Saddam”. That pleasant-looking airport contrasts sharply with everything outside. And the reason is: dust.

The English word ‘khaki’ comes from the Persian work ‘khak’ meaning dust and was coined by British soldiers who fought in Pakistan, which in some parts also has plenty of that similar annoying fine-grain substance. The dust is pervasive; it colors everything – streets, trees, buildings, air – and is so fine that it infiltrates even the most carefully sealed areas. Leaves are always covered with a film of khak, and if something disturbs the motionless vegetation the dust rises up in small clouds like smoke from a chimney – pufffffff.

The Universe has two constant sounds - these of the generator and the air conditioner. The generator is unfortunately located next to the building I live in and is loud as fuck. It is so loud that the entrance to my building resonates with a sound of its own reminiscent of the horrific song of a very large dental machine – with its frequency tuned down about a hundred hertz. You get used to it and stop noticing it after a while, but the idea that it still might be psychologically affecting your subconscious is always in the back of your mind.

The air conditioners are as pervasive as dust and are of a small cheap variety. They have some sort of a perverted relationship with the generator. Whenever the generator shuts down, which is a couple of times per hour, everything blacks out and the air conditioner makes this intermittent beeping sound manifesting that it’s resting. Two-three seconds later it goes back to humming. Several weeks of hearing this pattern and you start thinking that the air conditioner does it on purpose, just to fuck with you.

Other sounds, which you hear fairly often, are helicopters patrolling Baghdad. You learn that the heavy fighter Apache makes the least noise and is therefore more effective in fighting the bad guys who usually rely on hearing in their primitive cowardly terrorist techniques. The black hawks make a lot of noise and therefore caused lots of casualties to the good guys (us). Chinooks are heavy elephants, and make a low-pitch loud sound. I haven’t figured out other helicopters but the experienced civilians here take certain pride in being able to tell one from another. I don’t know how they got to that point, though, because we mostly spend time indoors working on bringing economic prosperity to the Mesopotamia.

The Universe is hot to the touch, at least this time of year. It is around 45 degrees centigrade in May and gets progressively worse by mid-summer. In fact, it gets so disgusting that even ancient Abbasid poets writing shortly after Baghdad was founded in the 8th century described the city’s “dust is shit, and its heat is appalling”. Pretty accurate, in my opinion. It is said that when it gets in the hottest months, some people skip lunch just not to having to go to the cafeteria. Also, leaving books outside is not good because the glue that holds them together melts causing frustration in a form of dismembered books to many a reader.

There is a particular section of the street where the heat is the worst. Two gigantic concrete walls line that section creating sort of a valley of death where the walls bounce the heat off of each other and the radiated effect is multiplied. The walls stand jeering at unfortunate humans who have to pass this section. In fact, the valley leads to the cafeteria, which might explain why lunch food gets hardly ever touched in the peak summer weeks.

The smell of the Universe ranges from unpleasant to nauseating. Unpleasant is the dust that smells like, well, dust, and there is nothing else to be said. The worst, though, is the ashtray smell. Many of the inhabitants of the Universe smoke, which is understandable: not all are interested in creative blogging commiserating their pitiful existence in Baghdad. Some take it like men and turn to drinking and smoking incessantly. The location that is most foul is a small security building. The building is populated by nice and friendly security folk who unfortunately always smoke inside. Due to the fact that the building is so small, the smell permeated its walls so much that its molecular structure has likely been altered by including heavy CO2 doses to the whatever minerals make bricks. To a bystander, it is enough to simply touch the handle of the door leading to the brick-CO2 building: his hand will stink of ashtray all day long.

The taste of the Universe is actually quite good. It is the taste of our cafeteria, for reasons unknown called DFAC – which probably means the dining facility. The brave cook brigade has a menu that does not change week to week but is quite diverse nonetheless. The main cook is from Sri Lanka and he likes making vegetable curry dishes that I enjoy. The menu is dominated by meats and stews, which I really don’t mind but people who live here long enough bitch and moan about.

I look forward to becoming a chain smoking alcoholic unhappy with my diet!