Off The Grid - Our man in Iraq
“If there is any silver lining, it is this,” Ali said to me as we walked the streets of his neighbourhood, talking about how the city has changed. “Now you can come to Mosul and see who we really are.”
During the first seven or eight months of my time in Iraq, it was possible to travel by taxi to Baghdad, using just my Kurdish residency permit.
All the checkpoints were manned by Americans, and Westerners with the will were waved through on their missions south. I never made that trip: too nervous, too short-sighted, too convinced Iraq was a merely a months-long fling, not what has become the most lasting relationship of my life.
The Americans left early December 2011, and with that arrived the requirement for visas and whatnot, my chance to visit the capital significantly complicated. But even back then, expats could not just visit Mosul. Among the community the received wisdom was that Westerners could expect to be kidnapped within half an hour. After 2011, the city became even more dangerous.
I’ve visited areas on the east three times since liberation. The first was sketchy. The second was controlled.
The third, this week passed, was amazing. My companion was Ali, and I spent a couple of hours walking around interviewing him about his life under ISIS, and the future for the city and his employer, the English literature department of Mosul University. No doubt about it, the city felt safe, and welcoming.
The excising of ISIS may just be the best thing to have happened to it in decades. The videos can be seen at twitter.com/Yalla_EN