The Baghdad Country Club.
This little animation is a preview for a much larger story on The Baghdad Country Club, a bar set up in the middle of Baghdad sometime in 2006. Below are some excerpts from a longer piece at The Atlantic.
“Iraqis have a word, barra, which means “out there,” and for those lucky enough to be inside the Green Zone came to mean the rest of Baghdad, the bedlam beyond the T-walls… The Baghdad Country Club, the only authentic bar and restaurant in Baghdad’s Green Zone, was one place where people could forget about barra for a moment. Anyone — mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and Iraqis — could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of Bordeaux, and light a cigar from the humidor to go with it.”
“To cross hostile roads in vehicles laden with liquor, James would trade his suit for overalls and body armor, his Glock tucked into his ops vest, an M-4 in the passenger seat, a bag of cash stashed in the back. Fatalism came easy in a place with so many fatalities — if today’s your day, it’s your day, James thought whenever he eased behind the wheel.”
You can buy the full story over at The Atavist. Although I kinda wish the entire thing had been an animation…
