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 Our roving reporter...
Today presenter Edward Stourton has travelled to Iraq to report on the progress of the elections. He sent this a personal account of his time in Baghdad.
On Tuesday morning a Baghdad newspaper editor of a certain age joined us at the BBC bureau for a discussion on the programme; with a "tweed jacket and tie" habit he presumably picked up during his years at university in London he was typical of a generation of middle class Iraqis who, in a thoroughly humbling manner, remained wedded to the Anglophilia of their youth.
After his interview on the programme - conducted live in near faultless English - he reminisced for a while about the area of the city where the BBC has made its home here; he knew it in the fifties and sixties and he spoke - in a somewhat misty eyed manner - about the bars and nightclubs he frequented hereabouts, the cafes and fish restaurants down by the river where he once lingered on cool evenings, and - this had clearly left a lasting impression - the European women in shorts who would exercise their horses in the fields of the nearby lettuce farm without anyone paying much heed to their scanty attire.
When I arrived off the RAF Hercules at the weekend my overwhelming impression was that ordinary life had been bombed - literally and metaphorically - into bunkers; the BBC house where I am lodging has its very own blast wall and concrete chicane at the entrance, three steel doors in addition to the huge and solid lump of oak which served as a front door in safer times, razor wire on every wall and sandbags at every window. My own room, which gives onto a balcony overlooking the street, is judged vulnerable so it has a bespoke steel plated door and similar plates across the windows too for good measure.
But after a while I began to discern the sensuous contours of old Baghdad behind the ugly lumps of concrete which its current misery have made necessary. My balcony looks down on the front garden of the French Embassy, and although the railings along the street are now hidden behind the obligatory and ubiquitous fifteen foot of concrete the fountains are still plashing by the path up to the front door, and the wide doors and airy windows evoke an age of elegant diplomats in white tie brandishing cigarette holders.
Possibly the most exciting news I have heard since arriving here is that our evacuation plan would involve being helicoptered out of the embassy carpark, which would in all likelihood mean spending some time in the legendary (and bomb proof) ambassadorial wine cellar.
The January climate can mean desert cold nights, but during the sunny Baghdad days at this time of year it feels like the kind of English spring that can make your spirits soar. I had some time to myself one afternoon, and because wandering the streets is forbidden by our security advisers in these dangerous times I took a book onto my balcony for a couple of hours. A wood pigeon was cooing away in a nearby garden and as the afternoon gently died the moon rose by the palm tree behind the Reuters building down the street.
Even in Saddam's days Iraqi social mores had something of 1950s Britain about them; proper deference and courtesy are highly prized. This afternoon we interviewed the vice-President and he sent an official down to meet us at the American military checkpoint outside the Al Rashid hotel. Our escort was a middle ranking civil servant, smartly dressed and quietly proud of his status; the twenty-something American marine lounging at the checkpoint instructed him to sign us in with such disdain and blunt rudeness it took my breath away. Today's producer, Matthew Grant, dealt with the situation by engaging the marine in conversation about the hip-hop blaring out of the transistor on his desk - he broke into a wide smile and chatted with Matthew like the nice young fellow he no doubt is back home.
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