The Dust of a Capital

The air in Baghdad on April 9th carried a specific, gritty taste. It was the taste of pulverized concrete from airstrikes, of burnt rubber from tires set ablaze as makeshift barricades, of desert sand stirred up by endless armored vehicle tracks. The sound was not a clean narrative of victory or defeat, but a cacophony: the sporadic crack of distant small-arms fire, the low rumble of Abrams tanks grinding down the avenues, the chaotic shouts of crowds around Firdos Square. To be there was to feel the texture of sudden, ambiguous change. The statue of Saddam Hussein, a focal point for the world’s cameras, did not topple in a heroic heave. It was pulled down by a Marine tank recovery vehicle, a chain clumsily looped around its neck, the act more mechanical than symbolic for the soldiers involved. The smell of sweat and diesel fuel mixed with the scent of looted perfume from nearby shops. People moved through the streets with a frantic energy—some in fear, some in opportunistic frenzy, most in a state of profound dislocation. The grand political and military pronouncements made in Washington and Central Command were irrelevant here. Here, it was about the weight of a stolen office chair, the heat of the sun on a tank’s hull, the uncertain silence that settled in a government building whose guards had simply vanished.