You're going to Baghdad, right?

This blog will be spending the next few weeks in Iraq, pitching in temporarily in McClatchy's Baghdad bureau while Bureau Chief Leila Fadel is in the U.S. to accept the Polk Award for foreign reporting. It's been a year since my previous stint in Iraq, and I'm curious to see what's changed, what hasn't, and to work again with our warm, talented and courageous corps of Iraqi journalists.

I'm in Amman, Jordan, the main waystation into Iraq. Based on the reception I get here, you'd think that no one visits Amman apart from journalists, aid workers and contractors on their way to Baghdad. There were a few wealthy-looking tourists milling about the hotel this afternoon, but I clearly didn't look the part. The bellman said: "You're going to Baghdad, right? Um...good luck."

One thing that's certainly changed is the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, where I went to retrieve my visa. Last year the waiting room was cramped and crowded, with a few employees working behind a dingy window and little space for people to sit. In the past 12 months the embassy has been overhauled, and when I walked in this morning -- straight from the airport, a little groggy from having flown overnight from Nairobi -- I could have sworn I was in the wrong place.

There were clean stone countertops and crystal-clear plate-glass windows. Iraqis sat on cushioned chairs in a spacious and overly air-conditioned waiting area, where a flat-screen TV played Arabic music videos. Everyone smiled at me. One silver-haired man wearing a striped tie and Tom Selleck moustache told me he recognized me and half-shouted in English, "Welcome back. You are always welcome in Iraq!"

Hussein, a driver who accompanied me to the embassy, was amused by this. His 24-year-old nephew has spent the past year working as a translator for a Marine unit stationed inside the Green Zone, one of hundreds of Jordanians doing such work. It's not a bad job. Hussein said the kid earns 4,000 Jordanian dinars a month -- about $5,700, very good money here -- and although he's still single, he's saving to buy a house in Amman when he's done.

He just signed on for another year, Hussein went on, which has his mother going nuts. "As long as he remains inside the Green Zone," he said, but he quickly acknowledged that even that walled city-within-a-city isn't safe. The day of Condi Rice's recent visit, mortar shells struck inside the Green Zone and Rice had to wait for a military all-clear to leave.

"It's a job for a young man," Hussein said finally. "Not someplace you should go if you have a family."

Comments

[Sreemati]

I think you should make a deal with young Hussein: he'll drive you from Baghdad to Amman if some rather unpleasant people take a dislike to you, and you'll find him a nice waiting bride. For $5,700 a month, though, there must already be a line of girls all the way to the Syrian border.
Be safe.
S

[Laura]

Have a safe trip. And give those intrepid Iraqi journalists a big hello from me.