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DEL.ICIO.USCoffee in a familiar place
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — One of Baghdad’s landmarks is the al-Rasheed Hotel, the tall, drab concrete structure that gained notoriety after the Gulf war.
Saddam Hussein’s government liked to house foreign journalists at the Rasheed, where stories spread quickly that rooms on designated floors came fully equipped with amenities like hidden microphones and video cameras.
In 2002, I hardly slept a wink in my 6th floor room and felt especially uncomfortable in the bathroom. After Saddam’s fall, the commander of a 3rd Infantry Division company that we were covering took me back to the hotel so that I could see it under a new light.
Gone were the strange looking gentlemen who kept vigil in the cavernous lobby. Gone, too was George Bush the first, whose face was tiled into the lobby entrance so that every guest would have to step on it to enter.
Since then, I had not seen the Rasheed’s interior. Until today. A group of journalists went out to have a coffee in the hotel’s refurbished restaurant. I decided to join them. The hotel has a long way to go — Saddam’s touch still lingers in the sparse hallways. Despite the dreariness, a new shop sells carpets and souvenirs.
And the tables at the café were neat and clean. Iraqi men sat at other tables sipping Turkish coffee and smoking their hookahs.
A cup of chai will set you back $2 here, expensive considering the good stuff you can get at Baghdad stalls for a pittance.
But it was a cup of chai at the Rasheed. I never imagined I would be dining there again. Not after the congealed eggs and mushy toast I was served there for breakfast every day.
I sat there thinking. One day, perhaps, the Rasheed will entertain tourists again. One day, as a colleague joked, you’ll be able to book a room here on Expedia.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Moni Basu
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By Louise Brooks
March 2, 2007 9:53 AM | Link to this
Just absolutely smashing! Why I should very much enjoy some chai at the al- Rasheed some fine day…
Have they fine linen and china? Probably not due to this bloody awful mess of a war. I say. Never mind. But chai at the al-Rasheed! Of course…
After some fish along that fine river.
Moni thank you dear for such a splendid gem of a little story!
Louise B