Letter to Iraq
Iraq is different from what we think
I cannot say Iraq is the best or the most beautiful country, nor that the Iraqi people are the most hospitable because I have not been to many places yet. What I can say is that there is a high concentration of honestly helpful and friendly people in this country that I have never experienced before. Thanks to the Iraqi Travellers Cafe Facebook group that brings together tourists and locals, I received help even before setting foot in the country and made lasting friendships upon departure.
Even if we all heard from our school studies about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the biblical Eden, The Tower of Babel, the Code of Hammurabi, the earliest flourishing civilizations in the world in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, we forget that almost all that is connected to today’s Iraq. This country made countless undisputable contributions to the world. It gave writing to the world, invented the wheel, planted the first cereal crops, introduced zero to mathematics, and even the tales of the Thousand and One Night were first told here.
There are tens of thousands of archeological sites in Iraq, most of them still waiting to be excavated. I was deeply touched by the ruins of the 5000-year-old ancient Sumerian city, Uruk, in a deserted, remote area, imagining this was where writing started. I watched the Tigris and…
