Abrupt Change

Every Thursday afternoon I walk to the nearest supermarket to get all the things I can't at surrounding local stores. It's a good 20-30 minute walk one way and when carrying groceries, not to be taken lightly. After figuring out a good route I started experimenting with taking different roads, purely for the sake of variety. Plus it's just about the only time I get contact with the world outside of a building during the week. My routes have become more and more circuitous over the months that I've been there and it was during these meanderings that I noticed something very interesting. Iraq has experienced some rather wrenching changes over the past decades, war, peace, war and now tentative peace. This tentative period of peace has allowed the immense wealth contained beneath the ground (ie oil) to be tapped again and the effect of that revenue can be seen everywhere. There is not one street that I walk down that isn't interrupted by renovation projects or new building. Piles of construction materials block sidewalks (when they exist) and roadways. It is also clear though that this new found wealth is decidedly unevenly spread. One of the streets that I frequent has three opulent houses right next to each other and cheek and jowl with them is a broken down concrete structure that looks like it was built during the height of the sanctions. The whole city is the same patchwork of dilapidation and extravagance. It looks decidedly odd to my North American view of neighborhood segregation. Interestingly enough, my boss was complaining about that the other day. His basic idea (paraphrased of course) "I can't get away from the riff raff! Where is my gated community?" I may find the idea of complete mixing odd, but kind of appealing. Forced interaction! Forced viewing of inequality! Forced mixing with riff raff! Could be good.

In other news completely, I made croissants. From scratch. And learned why one never needs to butter the buggers. Completely redundant! For 20 croissants I used three and 2/3 sticks of butter.

Also, my lunch today? Get a load of this sandwich. There is a standard sheet of paper right next to this enormous thing. It is stuffed with chicken (shwarma style), sumac, and tomatoes. Note: it was delicious and I ate it all.