Donate Nowthe hotel restaurant is almost emptyrussian security guards, turkish beer and bottles of absolut.
baghdad is a warm monochrome yellow-brown - far from the rain-grayed stone of petersburg and the concrete of brooklyn.
regime members once used this place to meet their mistresses.rubenesque portraits of iraqi women and torn velvet curtains.past the snipers' nests you can see the gold domes of Uday's pleasure palace.
'we do most of our reporting by telephone now.''it's a fun story - so many human angles. . .'
about suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
they would understand the hennaed hair of the girls fleeing Taji,
the 100 songbirds above the roar of diesel generators,
the way 50 cals tear sheet metal like paperand safety-glass turns to piles of green tinted diamonds on the floorboards.and seat upholstery drinks in stains - deep, dark, brown
the feel of rosewater on sunburt skin,
the crackling kalashnikov fire - iraq 3, australia 1
. . .three journalists died today.the iraqi stringer called his mother before he died - 'hi mom. i've been shot.'
today is better than tomorrow.