Tidbits

What Does Iraq Think of America's Favorite Things?

By Shaggy

This month’s Tidbits guest-written by our Iraqi friend Shaggy. Check out his blog at baghdadbacon.blogspot.com

iPHONE
These will only be available in the States. We can’t get them here. Iraqis do love their mobiles though. They spend crazy money on them and over here the prices aren’t subsidized. I have a Sony Ericsson phone. Reception is good but employees are often killed for no reason. People just shoot people here for no reason. There’s crazy security.

BOOKS
We don’t have many bookstores, but there’s a book market. However, Western DVDs have been burnt at the DVD market for being indecent. (The market itself didn’t get destroyed and was back in business the next day.)

PUPPIES
There aren’t pet stores but there’s a pet market. There’s a market for everything. Ninety-nine percent of the people that get dogs get them for protection and then treat them like shit. They’re not really pets. If you keep a dog in your house you’re nasty.

SIX PACK OF BUD
Right after the invasion or the liberation or whatever (in Iraq we call those first days “the war”) there was beer available everywhere. Then the extremists started killing the vendors. Now you can only buy beer in one place, next to the green zone.

STILETTOS
In Baghdad, women have started wearing head scarves to cover their hair and as you go out into the countryside you even start seeing women wearing burkas. But the extremists don’t seem to care about shoes. All the girls at college wear high heels.

ONE HIT
Before the war my brother and I would smoke weed at the public pool. We never got caught because the authorities had no idea what weed is. They don’t recognize the smell. You could hand it to them and they’d have no idea. You get the death penalty for doing drugs. This has always been the case.

TOBY KEITH
“Justice will be served and the battle will rage/This old dog gets mad when you rattle his cage/You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A/We’ll put a boot in your ass it’s the American way.” We had nothing to do with 9/11 did we? This is a very narrow view of the world. Geez. However, there are people here that believe that they have to fight an occupation.

TANNING CREAM
We have this but it’s the opposite. The TV will advertise whitening cream where, over the course of a week, an Arabic woman will get happier and more confident as she gets whiter.


APPLE PIE I had apple pie in England once. You don’t see any apple pie here. Yesterday I was told a local shopkeeper who was selling cakes and stuff was shot and killed. Again, it was just killing for killing’s sake.


BLOW JOB MACHINE There are no sex shops in Iraq but my father told me that prostitution was legal back in the 40s and 50s. Women could drive back then too. Our country is moving backward.		PORN Before the war people would smuggle in VHS tapes of porn and we would dub them and show them to friends. Then the internet came along and DVDs. Nobody ever had magazines. The extremist guys would kill you if they caught you with pornography.


PARTYMOBILES The Iraqi army has Hummers now. I think they just got them from the Egyptian government. They’re crap vehicles though. Nobody wealthy would drive one around here because people are scared to show their wealth. Up in the Kurdish region it’s a different story.

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