In Revolution City

摘要

After Three weeks of war, Saddam City looked to me like an Arab version of "Blade Runner." Donkey carts and rattletrap taxis trundled through the vast Baghdad slum last week, crammed with anything that could be removed from the capital's abandoned ministries. My car inched past trash-choked alleys, burned-out vehicles and barricades thrown up by hard-eyed local vigilantes guarding their own neighborhoods from pillaging mobs. Even at the height of Saddam Hussein's power, his underlings seldom dared venture into the district that had been renamed for the dictator. Long before the U.S. invasion, this place was a revolution just waiting for a final provocation.