Previous | Next :: Baghdad Blackouts : Baghdad : Iraq | February 24, 2013, 8:44 pm

Well I am back from Iraq........... I flew out of Baghdad on Saturday........ it was a very interesting but short trip ......... I cannot go into the details of the story I was shooting right now but I will direct you to the magazine that commissioned it as soon as it appears ..........

I will tell you tension was high in Baghdad especially after the massive blasts and slaughter of the weekend before ..........in a way things are coming together........ in a way ........ things are falling apart as ever......... one of the most surprising aspects of Baghdad to any first world visitor aside from the risk of violence and the constant security precautions against that violence............... well to be honest that is the most that dominate alien experience of being in Iraq.......... but aside from all that.......... one of the most surprising things is the experience of the constant power cuts .......... they are just constant ......... most last a minute or so before the generators cut in if you are lucky enough to be somewhere with a generator ......... some last a couple of hours .......... people are so used to the constant experience of being plunged into black out darkness they do not even stop the sentence they were speaking ......... they just carry on their conversations without even remarking on the fact that we are suddenly sitting in absolute pitch darkness ..........

I found it amazing......... at dinner when this happened ....... I had the overwhelming desire to silently move to another seat under cover of the sudden pitch darkness so when the lights came back I would be some where other than where I was......... while others at the dinner table would have found they were addressing an empty chair when the lights came back on .......... but in the end I managed to resist this slightly puerile joke.........

hehehehehe..........

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXX

PS ......... the picture above gives a slight hint of potential problems in infrastructure and power.......... although all these cables remind me of living in New York and Washington........... Brooklyn in particular had so many cables........... but Im not sure it quite adds up the mess of the cables in Baghdad. XXXXXXXXXX