شجابك؟

I'm back in Baghdad. Got here safely a couple of days ago. I still haven't left my neighbourhood. The electricity ain't too bad, but one would expect better considering the good weather. I'm experiencing a slight queasiness associated with the kebab I had for dinner and the nap I just woke up from. Maybe it's time to pour that my happy to be back drink. (Go to pour that drink).

The steep spiral landing into Baghdad wasn't at all as exciting as it's been made out to be. As soon as I got off the plane Nahida's sister (who works at the airport) was standing waiting for me. She took me aside from the herd handed my passport to some guy who took it to an office while the others got into the passport control queue. The man quickly brought it back stamped and I then picked up my bags. I didn't have to have my stuff checked by security either. I was out of the airport before some member of parliament who I knew looked familiar. Oh and there were no dogs. India told me not to bring any weed with me since he had heard there were dogs.

There isn't much traffic in the streets but there seem to be alot of checkpoints bottlenecking the traffic. Most of the streets coming off the main street, the ones that lead into the residential parts, were closed off with junk. To get to my house I had to take 3rd street before my own. When I had left the number of closed streets were quite few. Also maybe more than half of the shops on the street have closed down. Today the local baker got killed.

In the middle of the main street there was an intersection, but you can no longer u-turn there since they've extended the meridian barrier through the length of the street. A little further along there are two concrete checkpoints. I'm told that I should be back home before dark.

I was hoping to start college as soon as I arrived but nobody has started attending classes yet. And I'm not the going to be the one that's going to show up and wait for others to fall suit since I live the furthest away.

One rumour I've heard so far is that Al-Maliki is feeling powerless against the AlBadr Brigade and his ministers are ignoring him. So the deal is that some old leaders with troops specially trained near the Saudi border will pull off a coup d'etat. Well it sounds hopeful.

There's a traffic ban every Friday during mid-day. Friday is the big market day at Bab-alshargi, supposedly that day is now shifted to Saturday. I miss going there on a Friday. But I'll try to go there on Saturday to get myself some new Nintendo DS games for cheap. I'm praying that they have Tetris. Playing tetris online is great fun.