Baghdad Journal

From the Safeway Cyber Tunnel

On our way to terminal A in Frankfurt Airport, Adam and I catch the news on an airport bar television: Saddam's sons have been slain. My first reaction is joy. I don't think I've ever been so lightheadedly happy upon hearing that someone has gone to meet his maker. But it is a huge comfort knowing those two playboy psychopaths won't be there when we get there, as silly as that sounds. The passengers -- who are mostly secular Arabs, as well as some Europeans and a couple of Americans planning to drive from Amman to Ramallah -- are discussing the killings. They don't share my enthusiasm. The Jordanian woman in the row behind us tells her German seat mate that Iraq is decidedly an American problem and nowhere near from being solved. He answers with a dour "Yah."
We head towards the dying light on the horizon, a beautiful band of orange and red dissolving into the indigo sky beyond. Banks of clouds roll past looking like immense waves that freeze solid the moment they crest. There is a lot of turbulence and some worry about the "slide armed" light going on next to the emergency exit window. I have an image of a huge orange slide self-inflating and getting tangled up with the wing, but a co-pilot soon comes, opens the panel on the exit door, plays with the emergency exit lever as our eyes widen, and then bangs the panel shut. The "slide armed" light goes off. Then after a second, the "slide armed" light comes back on. We all turn to the co-pilot nervously. He shrugs and with a fatalistic, what-can-you-do "Yah," walks off.
But, as usual, nothing happens. We are soon fast asleep and when I wake up, I look through our emergency exit window and see Amman rising from the murky night. A brilliant crescent moon above is the only other thing visible outside.

With all its serpentine streets and boulevards, the city looks like a nest of asps that has been set on fire. It is a beautiful, exciting vision. We land and queue up at the cambio for some Jordanian Dinar. The American dollar is weak everywhere it seems. It's .70 Dinars to the dollar and 10 JOD for a visa into Jordan. We are asked no questions at passport control. The nicely coiffed guard is more intent on stamping our passports with the right amount of desk rattling force, it seems, than knowing our business in Jordan. At the baggage claim, we are met by an army of red-jacketed boys who offer to get our luggage. I tell them no. They all agree but then one -- Mohammed -- shows up behind me with a cart and so much swaggering cheeriness that I break down. We end up giving him 6 JOD for getting us through customs ("The guard is my uncle," Mohammed says as we roll past) and arranging a taxi ride to the Shmeisani district where Lamis Andoni, my professor and mentor from UC Berkeley, arranged a hotel for us. The Lotus Hotel, it's called, and it is conveniently located across from the Shmeisani Safeway Shopping Center, complete with Internet cafes. As we finally lie down in our beds, we hear the cry of the muezzin. It must be 3:30 in the morning but again, I can't sleep. After so much planning and waiting, we are here at last.