Lonely and forsaken

Baghdad three years on, writes Torhan Al-Mufti, is haunted by the unthinkable

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Baghdad is a shadow of its former self. Following three years of US occupation, this city of unrivalled beauty and a glorious past has been reduced to a fate no better than the one it suffered at the hands of Mogul invaders. I wonder if Bush consulted annuls of history before he sent his troops to Baghdad to throw it into ruin and chaos. It might be a coincidence, but Hulagu invaded Baghdad on the seventh day of the month of Safar according to the Hijri -- the Islamic -- calendar. Bush's troops came to Baghdad on the same day, but eight centuries later. Hulagu ordered his men to slaughter the inhabitants, burn the libraries and raze the city, practically what the Americans did almost a millennium later. History books note that Khallani Square in central Baghdad was so named because Hulagu ordered his men to dump the bodies of tens of thousands in the area, which was then outside the city walls, and leave them to rot. The smell of the putrefying bodies reminded survivors of vinegar, or khall in Arabic, hence the name. These days, bodies are often dumped handcuffed and blindfolded in parts of Baghdad. Left to rot, they send the same vinegary scent into the air, the scent of death and doom.

Baghdad was a city among cities, a model of urbanity, a synonym for glamour. Not anymore. The Americans destroyed it in 1991, the Iraqis rebuilding it within a year. Then the Americans came again, and this time the city was never rebuilt -- despite the many conferences on reconstruction, despite profitable contracts granted to major corporations. The Baghdadis have lived side by side, refusing to be dragged into sectarian conflict, for centuries. Now the Americans are fuelling sectarian strife at every opportunity.

Baghdad was a safe city. People stayed up late, chatting and entertaining, congregating at riverside cafés from dusk to dawn. Now it is the most dangerous city in the world. It is a city divided by concrete barriers, haunted by death, tormented by gore. Baghdad, history tells us, is not a city that remains occupied for long. It always regained its freedom. It always bounced back. But the city is now hostage to the macabre. Gone are the poets and painters, gone are the filmmakers and actors. Baghdad has no friend. No one wants to visit it. It is forlorn and forsaken. It cannot blame the foreigners for staying away, for why should they care? But it wonders where the Arabs have gone. It wonders why it has been left alone, abandoned to its unbearable fate.