Saturday, January 19, 2008

No where to go


Yeah, I thought that should be "nowhere" too.

Folks, this is both a funny tale and a very sad one. Its something difficult to duplicate fictionally.
It's a lazy day here. There's a curfew and we can't go anywhere. The government put the curfew in place for the Ashura commemoration. The curfew is to stop car bombs from driving into crowds of pilgrims.

But it's a strange curfew. First the curfew banned all vehicles on the road, but upset pilgrims complained that they could not make it to the holy city of Karbala where Shiites converge to commemorate the slaying of Hussein, the Grandson of the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

So the government changed the curfew to allow cars with four or more people to travel. In essence buses and mini-buses can be on the roads today. Tomorrow the 10th day of the commemoration and the anniversary of the death of Hussein, his family and his followers no vehicles can be on the road.

It leads to desperation for little things. A woman who needed to run errands tried to bribe a family of three with ice cream. They would get in the car with her; she would shop, and then buy them ice cream.

I have a hankering for Falafel. But we don't have enough people willing to load up in the car to run out and buy food. So I'm sitting here, craving crispy fried chickpea patties, but there's no way to get there.

It's a lazy day here and I'm hungry.

Truth is I was gong to use this picture because I'm a fucking sucker for art photos, but then realized I could go with ice cream and cat blogging. A twofer! So, being lazy ass, I chose twofer.


Courtesy link because I purloined the whole post: Baghdad.

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