IRAQ: Scenes from a soggy checkpoint
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Some things are universal, like the way a rainy day slows down a city.
The cold drizzle that blanketed Baghdad on Wednesday made the gray city even grayer. It turned the dirty streets into muddy messes, including in the fortified Green Zone, one of the few places in the capital suitable for walking. That meant even longer waits at Green Zone checkpoints as would-be walkers opted to drive in.
These checkpoints are not luxurious to begin with, and they are downright wretched when it is cold and rainy. At the first of four search points I had to pass, a crowd waited in a bunker-like area while dogs sniffed their vehicles. They shuffled their feet and rubbed their hands to keep warm. They watched their breath as it formed little white puffs in the cold air.
A gray striped cat, a regular visitor to this checkpoint, was perched atop a pile of sandbags, his wet fur sitting up in spiky tufts. I imagined how fed up the cat must have felt, stuck at a soaking checkpoint populated by large dogs trained to pounce on trouble-makers.
It’s hard not to resent the soldiers and contractors who search the cars and people. But on this day, it was hard not to pity them. Even the female searchers, housed in small, unheated cabins to give women privacy while they are searched, seemed miserable.
In one cabin, water leaked through the poorly constructed wooden ceiling. As I entered, the searcher handed me an open umbrella that was protecting her from the wet. She could not do a proper frisk me while holding it, so she simply held it out and signaled that I should hold it over both our heads. She cheerfully searched me for bombs, weapons or other forbidden items.
Cleared to go, I passed back the umbrella. She smiled and thanked me. I smiled back and thanked her for helping me stay dry. Then I headed into the muddy outdoors, still chilly but suddenly in a lighter mood from that gesture, which stood out like a spot of blue sky on this otherwise gray day.
— Tina Susman in Baghdad
