It’s a Small World

In spite of the noisy street and pillows of stone, we slept well. We were sitting in the lobby, munching on Buffalo cheese and bread at 6am while our driver, Hadaifa waited outside. Today we’re off to fulfill a long time dream and visit Babylon. From there we’ll head to Ur and spend night in the city of Nasiriyah.

There are quite a lot of soldiers and police along the road, and we had to stop twice at checkpoints to get our papers checked. Neither time took more than a minute or two.

I’m beginning to wonder if Iraqi’s don’t need the bathroom very often. Toilets are few and far between, and I’m limiting my intake to accommodate that. Even at the Museum yesterday they seemed almost puzzled by our bathroom request and led us to some rather out of the way toilets. Mostly they are fairly dirty squat pots, and there is almost never paper.

Babylon is extremely impressive! The site is surround by date palms and desert. I hadn’t done much research so was pleasantly surprised by the enormity, and the amount of original stuff still there. Saddam Hussein rebuilt a lot of it, so that’s sort of disappointing, but there was an absolutely epic street with walls that depicted images of animals. The Israelites would have seen those exact images, tho at that time they were coated with ceramic and very colorful.

Our guide spoke good English and knew his Bible, so that made it really neat. We saw the throne room, where Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall, and also on those walls were inscriptions by Nebuchadnezzar himself. So unbelievable to see it! I kept saying “Guy’s, we’re in Babylon! We’re actually in Babylon” cause it just hardly sunk in. We poked around in the ruins, visited a small museum with models and artifacts, then headed up to Saddam Husseins palace that sat on a man made hill overlooking Babylon.

I didn’t get the memo that the Palace is abandoned and basically just a free for all to explore! There were crowds of college age Iraqi’s have a grand time in there, singing, taking pictures and in general cutting loose. That’s about the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen or done, poked around in a palace. The stairs up were block with large rolls of barbed wire, but the main floor was a free for all. The furniture was all gone, but it looked like the owner had just walked out. The walls were covered with graffiti, windows were busted, but the ceiling was in pretty good shape.

We were constantly stopped and greeted and occasionally had to pose for photos. Actually we had to pose ALOT. I wrapped my arms around a wide variety of Arabic girls and in general experienced a not sought after moment of fame. But they were fun and sweet and so enthused to see foreign faces. Or maybe just hair. Seriously, I have seen a grand total of 2 uncovered women since coming. It’s slightly disconcerting.

From there we drove to Nasariyah and the ancient site of Ur, where Abraham was born. The police checks took a bit longer in this area, but they were friendly so it was no problem. There seemed to be quite a lot of checks, but then we noticed we were by the enormous Nasiriyah Central Prison, where many of the worst political prisoners and terrorists are held.

You can see the ziggurat of Ur rising above the desert for miles before you reach it. It’s a massive structure that, in Abraham’s time was a temple to the Moon God. The upper story where the actual temple was has collapsed, but you can climb the staircase to the second level where there are spectacular views of the countryside. The ancient city at the base has been partially excavated and some tombs and palaces were discovered. We pretty much had the sight to ourselves, except for a jolly older couple who could hardly walk, and two men who invited us for supper via google translate.

We were ready for our meal (singular these days) by the time we got to Nasariyah City, so we stopped at a shop selling schwarma and other Iraqi stuff. It was good, but not swoon worthy. The neatest part was the plate presented to us by our waiter.

We’re staying in a small hotel on a busy bazaar street. It has shared bathrooms and seems quite a bit cleaner than the last place. Currently there’s hectic sirens going on outside that totally drown out everything else. Our driver has donned a robe so I’m guessing he’s off to pray. We might go stroll streets for a bit. People here don’t speak much English at all, and when I told the Hotel receptionist Thank You, he replied with “hello”. I did not laugh.