When I was coming back into the US from my trip to Afghanistan & Pakistan the month before, I’d been flagged in the US Homeland Security system as “Definitely a terrorist.” This is not something you really want to have happen. After spending a half-hour with both of a TSA guy’s hands down my pants and then watching them individually remove and bomb-residue test every single item inside my carry-on bag, I just baaaarely made my connecting flight.

Leaving the US again for Baghdad a few weeks later, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that I was still on the shit list. So this wasn’t just a one-time thing! I was still definitely a terrorist in the eyes of my own government. When the airline counter agent handed me my boarding pass, I immediately sighed when I noticed the SSSS of death printed on the bottom of the pass in bold black letters. I had been “randomly” selected for “enhanced screening,” yet again, just like I had on every flight I’d flown since I left Pakistan. Even flying internally within the US. 

I haven’t spent this time much with somebody’s hands down my pants since Sunday school.

I was immediately glad that I had decided to make it hard for the authorities to know I was going to Baghdad in the first place. Iraq had just opened up to US travelers a few days before, offering a visa on arrival after years of this being an extremely difficult visa for Americans to get, which had involved months of pure bullshit. But Iraq being Iraq, basically none of the airlines or foreign governments had been notified about this change at all. I was anticipating having trouble boarding my flight to Baghdad, since as far as the airline knew, I needed a visa in advance and that wasn’t happening. I got around this hassle by booking a flight from Minneapolis to Istanbul instead. In Istanbul I would meet up with my friend Mike and then fly on a completely separate flight booking from Istanbul to Baghdad on a regional airline. I was betting on my hunch that airline people in Istanbul would be more aware of what was going on in that neck of the woods than some rando in Minneapolis.

This hunch would ultimately prove correct.

Now I was glad I had done this for an extra reason: The US would have no record of me going to Iraq at all. And as long as I flew back into the US from somewhere relatively innocuous (in this case it was Moldova, whatevs) I wouldn’t get flagged again as “OMG definitely a terrorist you guys.” Which, also proved to be correct. 

My sketchiest country entry yet having been pulled off successfully, we were met at the Baghdad airport by our driver Mohsen, a lovely man who did nothing to deserve me referring to him as "Motion Lotion" in my own head so I could remember his name. Before we knew it or had any time to adjust at all, we were quickly navigating endless crazy Baghdad police checkpoints in the middle of the night. Our driver was attempting multiple different routes and angles of attack to get to our hotel, and was repeatedly being turned away by humorless soldiers at every checkpoint as we circled the city.

After the eighth or twelfth stop where the soldiers ordered us out of the car to open the trunk and inspect our bags, a half-asleep and deliriously tired Mike mumbled something like “No, fuck you” and refused to get out of the car. Uhm, dude?? I hopped out of the car and made nice with the soldiers so that we might one day leave Iraq.

Eventually we did find the Narnia closet portal into the city and slept a well-deserved sleep. In the morning we found ourselves wandering around Baghdad like that was just something people did.

W... wait, what?

Bees love flowers. Joanie loves Chachi. Iraq loves Mr Bean. Just roll with it, I guess.

Some kind of monument in the center of town was decorated with mug-shot posters of traitors of some sort. I'm not sure what the red Xes mean but it's probably not good.

Nearly every building was pock-marked with bullet holes. Are these from... when ISIS invaded? Or when ISIS was kicked out? Or when the US invaded? Or the other time the US invad... you know what, these bullet holes could have been from any time in the last 25 years.

One of our running jokes was Mike's obsession with the song "W.A.P." and I sang softly as we walked down the street...

"There's some holes in this house..."

A visit to a Madrasa of some kind offered a glimpse of the really old in the midst of the pretty old all around us.

We wandered through a maybe-open, maybe-not bazaar...

Pssssst. Down this alley if you want some snuggles.

If anyone out there has any information about how one joins the World Gentlemen Club, please stop what you are doing and contact me right now.

I was working while we were in Iraq, and on one of the days we had a fun "Guess that Desk" game at work where everyone submitted a photo of their WFH workspace and we had to guess who each one belonged to. I sent in a photo I took of a box on fire in the middle of the street in Baghdad.

There was a long silent pause after my photo flashed on the screen.

"OK so that's Sean's."

Dude, that is literally the thing you're not supposed to cry over!

I stepped out into the street to take a photo of this amazing car as they drove by, and the guys looked at me cautiously and suspiciously until I pointed at their car and gave them a thumb's up. At which point their faces lit up and they cheered, gunning the car and immediately stalling it as they passed by.

At some point we stepped into a cafe for some falafel in a pita and there was a commercial on TV that was all cows singing in Arabic. I'm still not sure I haven't died because what in the hell was that?

Baghdad is charmingly filled with monuments from One Thousand and One Nights and other middle-eastern tales, and we attempted to get photos of all of them.

There was a nice park not far from our hotel, which featured an excessive amount of playground equipment and small stalls selling funny snacks.

I called into an important work meeting from this park, trying very hard to sound like I wasn't calling in from Iraq, and of course the second I unmuted my microphone the call to prayer erupted all around us, just barely drowning out the two guys arguing in Arabic two feet away from me.

At night, when our fixer and driver definitely thought we were locked up safe at the hotel, Mike and I would wander the streets of Baghdad, buying ice cream and flat bread, marveling in how safe and normal it felt, and with Mike occasionally spilling hummus all over his himself in a way that in no way looked exactly like someone had jizzed all over his pants.

Damn Marco, brag much?

Well, that's what happens when you go on so many dates I guess.

There is a chance, ever so slight but perhaps still worth mentioning, that your pants may be too tight, broseph.

Babylon! The tower of Babel! The legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon! It's all still there! Well, sort of. God smote the ancient folks for having the gall to build a really tall tower and cursed them all to speak different languages and for Sean to never really get a handle on Spanish. And he turned the tower into a Tower Records. So that's out. The Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world? It's an Olive Garden now. But!

The ruins of ancient Babylon are still here! Well, not the gate, that's in a museum in Germany, but there's a replica!

But who needs a gate? People with goats, probably. Those guys get into everything. We'll be fine as long as we have a map, like at the mall.

Oh thank God. OK.

OK, so... wow. We're in ancient Babylon. From the Bible. Alexander the Great died here.

I mean, sort of. We're in a recreation of Ancient Babylon built by Saddam Hussein. Well, I doubt he built any of it with his own hands, he probably paid some dudes or electrocuted them by the testicles until they built it for him.

Our guide to Babylon was an amazing local man named Meky who had grown up in a village called Qawarish, which was bulldozed in the 1980s to make way for Saddam's recreation of Babylon. In the early 80's, Iraq had launched an ill-fated invasion of Iran that dragged on for years, and Saddam sought to placate a restless public with visions of Iraq's greatness. He saw himself as the reincarnation of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, who conquered the lands that are today Iran around 3,000 years ago. And so Hussein spent millions recreating Babylon on its original foundations, the remaining ancient bricks topped with new ones, all bearing inscriptions of Hussein's name and his deeds. Our guide pointed out the line on the walls indicating the transition between the real Babylon and Saddam's version.

Hanging from the trees nearby, rope-like spider webs hung so preposterously thick that I genuinely did not want to see the spiders that had made them.

Perched up above the mazes of current Babylon, atop an artificial hill that stands where Meky's village once did, there sits Saddam's palace, a sprawling mansion covered in ancient-looking art that all somehow has Saddam Hussein's face in it. Once a crown jewel reminding everyone who rebuilt Babylon, it became a command post for the invading American army and now... something of a fascinating historical toilet.

Birds flew around eerily inside what had once been one of the most revered spaces in the country. The mix of opulence and ruin was striking.

Down one hallway the space opened up into Saddam's throne room. Now empty.

Have a seat on the non-existent throne. Saddam won't mind.

Marble stairwells piled with trash and barbed wire left the upper floors just a tantalizing mystery.

Graffiti from locals, American and Polish soldiers commingled on the walls.

Outside the hot sun beat down, slowly baking away Saddam's memory. Maybe one day some future despot looking for a PR boost will rebuild this palace on a hill overlooking the maybe-not-archaeologically-accurate recreation of the region's former glory.

In central Iraq sit the city of Karbala, one of the holiest sites in all of Shia Islam, second only to Mecca and Medina worldwide in the number of Muslim pilgrims who visit. It is home to the most breathtaking religious shrine I've ever seen in the world, and is my first answer when people ask "Why in the world would you want to go to Iraq?" It's not all dirt and bombs, guys. There are also brain-melting portals into the heavens.

In Karbala, the Al Imam Ali-Hussain Holy Shrine is the burial site of Muhammad's grandson Husayn.

The mind boggled as you entered the innermost shrines. Every inch of the room was covered in fragments of mirror, causing a dazzling spectacle of light and reflection. Are we... are we even allowed to be in here?

The one thing we definitely weren't allowed to be doing was taking photos. But come on, Iraq. What kind of asshole builds something like this and then forbids anyone from taking photos?

Mike and I quickly and spontaneously developed an ingenious strategy for getting photos in spite of the ban. I would be tall and obviously not-Muslim and would get in trouble immediately for taking photos, and while the minders were busy yelling at me, Mike would run around and get photos unmolested. It worked perfectly.

My favorite aspect of the no-photos rule was the way it was enforced. Minders standing around the shrine held big feathers on long sticks, which they would photobomb into your pictures to ruin them before telling you off. This was worth getting yelled at just to experience.

The areas between the shrines were a decidedly unholy melange of commerce and people just trying to not be so unbelievably hot all the time, as the searing May sun scorched down.

Mike and I were both enraptured by the bizarre wonders on display in a local toy store, a fact our driver found amusing until he realized neither of us has any kids.

As usual, I was fascinated by inexplicable shirts.

I... Aaaaaaah! AAAAAAAAAAHH!

I had been fascinated by the giant hat police booths all over Iraq, from the shade of which cops would keep an eye on things. Spying an unoccupied hat, I decided to see what the fuss was all about.

This is the life.

On our way out of town, an inflatable pizza chef waved goodbye and warned us to never, ever come back.

Not far from Karbala lies Najaf, an equally-important site for Shia Muslims.

Compared to the shrine in Karbala, the The Imam Ali Holy Shrine was no less spectacular, and marks the burial site of Muhammad's cousin, Ali ibn Abi Talib, or just Ali if you're nasty. As if that wasn't enough, Shia muslims believe that Adam and Noah are buried next to Ali as sort of a 3-for-1 free bonus for visiting.

Ali is the central figure in Shia Islam, and the main difference between the Shia and Sunni branches of the faith. After the prophet Muhammead's death, Sunni Muslims followed his companion Abu Bakr and focused on following the Prophet's example, while Shia Muslims followed Ali (literally meaning "the party of Ali"), being led by a series of Imams directly descending from Ali.

So this shrine's a big deal.

And it was no less hot in Najaf

The scene outside the shrine in Najaf was a no less interesting mix of the sacred and the profane.

We toured around Najaf's series of various shrines, and I wasn't sure in every one of them whose uncle was buried here, but they were all beautiful.

Najaf is also home to the Wadi-us-Salaam cemetery, the largest cemetery in the world at over 8 million graves (pictured in the panorama at the top of this page). Here the faithful are buried near Ali in hopes of being resurrected on Judgment Day.

Najaf was our fixer's Mousa's home town, so we had his adult son along with us for the day, which was both nice and very beneficial for his superior English. He also knew a lot about US culture and had seen a lot of movies.

I was trying to explain to him where Minnesota was, when I suddenly had an idea.

“Have you seen Fargo?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, really? Okay then. That movie was mostly set in Minnesota.”

“Where Ben Affleck was trying to get those people out of Iran?”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“...oh, no, ha ha, you’re thinking of Argo.”

He seemed baffled that there could be two completely different movies with such similar names.

Regardless, we got a great experience of Najaf the city, beyond the shrines.

I must admit to being very curious about Dr Kentucky and his ravenous murder chicken.

Mickey has fallen on hard times since losing his job opening that restaurant door in Kabul.

Another jaunt took us outside Najaf to visit some family friends, who, inexplicably, owned a wolf.

And a peacock.

And the meanest goddamned bird in the entire world. I swear to God, this thing flew all the way across its huge pen just to come over and bite me on the finger. Look at that photo! Let's hope this guy never gets out of jail.

I'm going back there with this photo just to scare that asshole.

We spent a lot of time in Iraq driving through baking hot desert, the temperature topping 115F every day we were there. The side of the car that wasn't in the sun became prime real-estate. The long drives through nothingness were broken up by fun stops at odd little roadside shacks for bizarre snacks.

Chewing gum flavored water, anyone?

The local drivers knew what they were doing, hiding in the shade underneath buses to cool off and smoke a hookah with their friends until things cooled down.

One such trek took us to the Great Ziggurat of Ur, a massive Sumerian pyramid built in the 21st century BC. It was part of the temple complex of the city of Ur, an ancient Mesopotamian population center that at the time was located on the mouth of the Euphrates, the coastline shifting dramatically enough over time to leave Ur stranded by now in the middle of the desert.

This was all just a prelude though, on our journey to the southern city of Basra.

We quickly hopped on a boat to see the city from the water.

On land, the city charmed us with its weird stores.

Hey look, it's the Happiest Pharmacy on Earth!

But all of this was really just marking time until our minders went to bed and assumed we had as well. Instead we stuck out and headed straight for the fun fair we'd spotted from the water.

After the Ferris wheel, we took turns choosing rides, and Mike's first choice was the Bumper Car Happy Land.

Waiting in line to get in the cars, we were soon penned in by about 40,000 Iraqi kids who had no concept of lines whatsoever. I was crushed in-between kids on all sides, and even at that more kids were trying to crawl between my legs to get ahead of me in line. We were claustrophobically squeezed in like this so long and so intensely that Mike eventually let out a loud, guttural scream of frustration at the top of his lungs. Rather than being scared away, the Iraqi kids momentarily looked at each other quizzically, then back at Mike, and then collectively decided that this was fine.

After at least an hour we managed to hold back the flood of children long enough to get into bumper cars ourselves and take sweet revenge on small people who haven't learned how to drive yet.

Now it was my turn and I chose this strange bell-shaped ride, which looked sketchy and terrifying.

It was both. The entire time we were on the ride, swooping back and forth and looping upside down, there was a piece of the ride that had come loose and was rattling back and forth in the gap behind our seats. Oh man. I hope they don't need that.

We were waiting in line for the swing carousel as our last ride of the night, confused at why the line wasn't moving at all. Then we observed that every turn of the ride, all of the swings were being filled up by kids who were just squeezing past all the big people in line. They'd get off the ride, run around, squeeze back through the line, and fill the ride up again. After a few rounds of this it became clear that we were never, ever going to get to ride this thing in spite of having paid, no matter how long we waited.

So the next time the kids got off, I stood sideways and blocked all the kid-sized holes in our body wall with my legs. The kids behind us looked at me, confused.

"You guys can wait your turn," I explained helpfully, in spite of none of them speaking a single word of English.

One little girl climbed up on top of the short wall to my right and attempted to squeeze past me this way. I held onto the fence so she couldn't get past. She looked at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes and began to cry, loudly.

"Nice job! You made a little Iraqi girl cry!" Mike laughed out loud, thrilled.

The ride filled up with a mix of mostly line-waiting people and a few kids who'd somehow managed to find holes in our defenses. The girl next to me cried out to them tragically like she was missing the last airlift out of Saigon.

So yeah. If in 30 years Iraq has a female leader who really hates America, that one's on me, guys. But the swings were fun.

We traveled onward, to the Mesopotamian Marshes. Yes, the South of Iraq also features marshlands which are, absolutely, not what you picture when you imagine Iraq.

We visited farming families in the marshes and their friendly cows.

We traveled further, through small towns and villages, in search of their surprises.

My favorite was the minaret at the Great Mosque of Samarra. Getting here was no small deed, as we were stopped for what seemed like hours at a military checkpoint while our fixer worked his magic and talked the Army into letting us in. Apparently there was some ISIS presence in the area, and nobody wanted to be responsible for the only two tourists in Iraq getting shot in the ass. Eventually they decided our asses were our own problem and let us in.

The minaret is ringed by a dizzying spiral staircase that was a blast to climb up.

The top was completely flat and without any lip or railing at all, which was utterly dizzying. Several young Iraqis were sitting on the top, unexpectedly. I struck up a conversation with them while Mike took panoramic photos and constantly looked like he was about to fall off the tower.

Most of the young Iraqi guys were cool but they had clearly been required to take their idiot cousin along with them.

"Say 'Hi honey!'," he insisted, clearly having learned one phrase in English.

"Nope," I replied.

"How old are you?" another asked.

"44."

“You look very old.”

“Shukran, habibi.”

The entire group burst out laughing in surprise that I knew the Arabic for "Thanks, my love."

One of them spoke English well and was a bit more thoughtful, and we talked for a good long while on top of the minaret, eventually exchanging WhatsApp numbers so he could ask me questions about American movies. I thought a lot about what it would be like to grow up in Iraq right now and what his prospects were for something more in life.

Winding our way back to Baghdad, near the infamous prison of Abu Ghraib we visited the Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu, a 3,400 year old sandstone temple that was once the center of a large city before it fell to the Elamites in ancient times. Like most of Iraq, the site was looted and heavily damaged after going unguarded following the American invasion in 2003.

Getting through all the checkpoints to the Ziggurat took some time, as it's not far from the town of Fallujah, an area which is still not, as they say, real tourist-friendly.

One of our stops was at the Arch of Ctesiphon, famous for being the first long single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the ancient world. A fact I mostly remember because there was a local news crew there and our guides nervously instructed us to tell anyone we met that we were from Turkey, since the US is not real popular there. I found this amusing because Mike and I are possibly the two least Turkish-looking people on Earth.

"It's okay. They've never been to Turkey," our fixer comforted us.

"I think it'd be more believable if I said I was an actual turkey."

One of the things I was most excited to see in Iraq was the Al-Shaheed Monument, a controversial onion-shaped structure built by Saddam Hussein to honor the Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq war. A old photo I found from the 80s of an Iraqi family taking a vacation photo in front of the Al-Shaheed Monument was my desktop wallpaper for a month leading up to the Iraq trip.

Sadly the monument was closed the entire time we were there due to the holidays, but our fixer was able to at least talk us to within photo distance, which I appreciated.

Another thing I was looking forward to was- wait, what the hell? A Minnesota license plate in Baghdad?

You weird, life.

Back in Baghdad we had more fun clandestine nighttime wanders, and I completed the feat of eating nothing but falafel for an entire long visit to a country, something I in no way intended or wanted to do, but that was Iraq's vegan option. I also officially never want to eat falafel again, thank you very much.

We made a visit to the zoo, which was a sad, sad zoo, but was livened up by a statue of a bunch of people pissing on a horse and a sign warning us that whatever we do, do NOT take a photo of the deadly pond. I mean jeez.

My favorite thing, however, from our return to Baghdad was our visit to Alzawraa Amusement Park. From the top of the Ferris wheel you could see into the forbidden Green Zone and spy the famous Victory Arch, a huge sculpture of two crossed swords commemorating the Iran-Iraq War, which was begun two years before the war ended in a stalemate. So... go Iraq? I guess?

Anyway, the park was a lovely break and featured a real rollercoaster! It was a poorly-maintained Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster and they're the dirt worst but you don't complain about the rollercoaster you get when you're in Iraq! They wouldn't run the coaster with just two paying riders so I paid for a bunch of kids to ride with us and that was big fun.

When we were waiting to get into the amusement park a nearby soldier who didn't speak any English gestured toward my white sunglasses and asked a question in Arabic. After several repetitions I assumed he wanted to take a photo with my sunglasses on, which happens occasionally. After he had them on our fixer explained that he wanted to keep the sunglasses, and that I should really say yes. I didn't really want to spend the rest of our trip in the desert having my eyeballs fried out of my head so I had to sheepishly ask for them back, but the dude was cool about it. I mean, I assume he was, it's not like I could understand anything he was saying.

And so ended our time in Iraq, which was lovely and extra so because nothing blew up. It's not a place I'd classify as ready for regular tourism, but everyone we encountered was lovely to us and happy to meet us, even though we were Americans and our history in that country is, uhm, complicated. I wish more people could see the mind-blowing shrines of Karbala and Najaf and meet Iraqi people, as it would change the opinion most hold of the country as a sandy hellhole. Every single person I've shown photos of those shrines to has said "Wait... that's IRAQ????" Yes. Much like Afghanistan, there's more to these places than tragedy and war, and I hope one day more people get to experience that like we did.

And where the hell else are you going to see a giant naked guy with five arms trying to prop up a huge, wobbly roll of store-brand paper towels, right?

Thanks Iraq.