Iraq: the candy trail ... Travel Images | Michael Robert Powell

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Backstreets of Baghdad

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Travels in SADDAM'S IRAQ, November 1989 - I hitch-hiked from Amman - Jordan, in two days the 1000km across the desert to Baghdad ... in the street there I met by chance an English guy called Gary - on his way to India, via Kuwait - and so he soon joined me for a tour of Iraq. It was crazy; constant police hassles - photos were difficult. After 3 weeks we were arrested by the Iraqi military in Rayat, North-West Kurdistan, accused of being Iranian spies and then journalists before being released after 30 hours to be kicked out ... of Iraq.

Rubah - first morning in Iraq was greeted by a pro-Saddam march in this small desert town; was soon hassled for taking this photo by an undercover cop but refused to hand-over my film and rapidly got into a shared-taxi bound for Ramadi ... bound for Baghdad.

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Backstreets of Basrah

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Town square of the Shia holy city of Kerbala

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cheap hotel room with a view - Baghdad at dusk

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Eldery couple on the backstreets of Basrah.

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Shiite family, Marsh Arabs, Narsariya area, southern Iraq

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Weekend in Samarra: the spiral minaret of the great mosque built in the 9th century AD, when the Islamic world was way more advanced than Dark-Age Europe. It was Friday - the Muslim holiday - and we had sat awhile at the very top and the as the family-crowds arrived we were departing when I took this shot.

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Babylon - as rebuilt by Saddam (one of the few places where I could freely take photos).

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Babylon

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Leaning minaret of Mosul, northern Iraq.

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Ruins of Hatra, central Iraq.

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Shia holy city of Kerbala

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Giant Saddam war memoral glorifying the brutal and pointless Iraq-Iran war of 1979 - 88, Barsah.

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Marsh Arabs, Narsariya area, southern Iraq.

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Marsh Arab household.

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Marsh Arab transport.

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Petrol tanker that I hitch-hiked with across the flat, empty amber desert, from Jordan to Baghad.

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Kurdistan: the only photo - taken with permission from our escort, on route from Rayat to Kirkuk, on route to another military base for more questions ...

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Sunset over the Shia holy city of Najaf.

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Gary - left, and me - MRP on the right, age 23, at Hatra looking to the desert (a few days before being arrested).

weekend in Samarra - Iraq 1989

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- This pictured mosque – or at least the visible Al-Malwiyah spiral minaret, or tower where the calls to pray are sang from – dates back to when the Islamic world was way-more advanced than Europe, around 960 A.D., when the Abbasid Islamic empire based in Iraq retained the ancient knowledge of Greece & Rome that would have otherwise been lost to us in the barbarian chaos of Dark-Age-Europe.

- A few days after this photo was taken, I was arrested by the Iraqi military in Ranya, north-eastern Kurdistan, and detained for 30 hours, accused of being an “Iranian spy” and then a “journalist” reporting on the “Kurdish problem” (Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds) but eventually they saw what I really was: a crazy, nonchalant, naïve, 23-year-old backpacker (long story: check my Travel Stories) and they released me.

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I never intended to go to Iraq. But I heard it was now possible (this was Nov 1989) ... I had no guidebook, no info and maps were impossible to get due to the recent Iran-Iraq war security measures so I copied this one from a hotel lobby book in Amman, Jordan, before setting off on my sudden and unexpected excursion into Iraq, after getting my tourist visa approved in Amman.