Ehab Lotayef
Cairo

The fastest growing business in Egypt is - without doubt - mobile (cellular) telecommunications. It seems the case will be the same in the “new” Iraq. Two giant companies share the market in Egypt. Orascom, the holding company of one of the two, with operations in Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, and Tunisia, has won the tender for the first license to provide mobile telephony services in Iraq’s Central Region (the Iraqi Telecommunications Minister, Haidar El Ebadi announced in October). While I was in Iraq, shops were selling the mobile lines and the phones. Service is scheduled to start during this January for the public. The test phase had already become functional in Baghdad sometime during December, while I was there.

Ehab Lotayef
Baghdad

It was late in the evening in Al-Aadamia, just north of downtown Baghdad. There was no electricity, as is usually the case when raids happen. A mother was home with her three daughters, the youngest of whom is twelve. First there was a loud bang (that was the garden door being kicked open), then heavy banging on the house door. The mother screamed, “I’m coming, don’t break it.” But by the time she got to the door she was face to face with the American soldiers who had already smashed the door open.

The house search was quick, while a state of shock took over the four women, who spoke little English. They were then told that they had to go with the soldiers. Where to, and what for, are questions that were never answered. They were barely allowed a few seconds to grab shoes and jackets, but not all of them managed to get what they needed. The mother, for example, ended up leaving without her diabetes and blood pressure medications, which she needs regularly, and one of the girls only had time to grab a pair of sandals she usually wears in the garden.

Ehab Lotayef
Baghdad

I spent three days out of Baghdad, or maybe I should say, out of Iraq. Kurdistan, which has enjoyed self-rule for over ten years, is very different from the rest of the country, which remained under Saddam’s rule and was affected by the sanctions, embargo, and lately the war. The instability and danger that are felt in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbalaa (I made short, one-day trips to each of the two latter, south-western Shia’a cities), disappeared as soon as we crossed the Karkuk-Sulaimania border.