The scent of apple tobacco swirled out of the nargilas and around the men sprawled on the tapestry cushions of the Babylon cafe. They were whiling away the hours with a new pastime last night: setting odds on the chances of war.
Raed Saleh (24) was gloomier than the rest, reacting with a visible start to the news that the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, had given Iraq a barely passing grade for its cooperation with the scores of weapons inspectors who have been scouring the country for prohibited arsenals. Although Iraq had opened its doors to monitors, he said, it had failed to come completely clean on programmes to develop long-range missiles, its chemical artillery shells and its stocks of anthrax and other deadly agents.
Saleh, a translator, said he knew right away what that meant. ”This is the stick they are going to fight us with,” he said. ”I say it’s 99% there will be a war, and I will keep only 1% for God that he can prevent this.”
Beside him, his friend had given up all hope. ”It’s 100% for war,” he said.
Saleh says he thinks America could attack Iraq as soon as the Eid festival is over, in the middle of next month. ”Personally, I will take my gun and defend myself and my house,” he said — the stock reply of most Iraqi males.
But then he admitted that the most lethal weapon in his possession was a knife. ”Actually, I was speaking metaphorically,” he added.
The crowd last night was entirely male and overwhelmingly young — in their late teens and early 20s — but several said they considered themselves veterans of international crises.
They were born in the throes of the Iran-Iraq conflict, or even later, and were children at the time of the last Gulf war.
Saleh remembers the missiles exploding around his football field, and blowing the locks off the doors of his house.
”We are a generation of war. We were born during the war, and we will face this all our life,” said Mutasum al-Sadoon, a 23-year-old geography student, who occupied a nearby bench.
Nonetheless, he said: ”Today is really a historic day. This war will be a point of transformation. If Iraq is destroyed there will be bloodshed not only in the Arab world but in all of the Muslim world.”
Like several others in the cafe, Sadoon had little faith in the independence of the inspectors or Hans Blix, but was convinced that they, like the entire United Nations, were really puppets of the US.
Other Babylon customers were hazy about the details of the inspections regime, or the divide between the governments of Europe and America over the prospect of a war. But they knew about the peace protests in the US and Britain, and were waiting for the next lot of western volunteer human shields to descend on Baghdad.
Maazeh Khairi (17) a high school student, had come out with a gang of his friends, looking to sneak a few puffs of the nargila. ”Nobody knows anything for sure because the news keeps changing from time to time,” he said.
”I’ve almost stopped caring about the issue, where we are hit or not, because there is nothing we can do. To be more clear, they will find any pretext to find some gap in our implementation.”
”It will be a disaster,” said Mohammed al-Hassani, a 25-year-old junior doctor. ”This war is different from the others because many countries will be involved.” – Guardian Unlimited Â