El-Basrah

I don’t think I have mentioned that I was born and lived my early life in Basrah.

Basrah was a mistake, by that I mean the location of the current city, it was built in the early days of the Islamic conquest as a fort city, this location had seen many bad days since the Battle of the Camel (look it up) and the Revolution of the Zing, It has seen since 1978 continuous disruptions starting with the massacres against the Dawa Party members (up to 1982), the execution of any students of Basrah University called “abdul Zahra” in 1980 and of course eight years of war 1980-1988, this includes the continuous artillery shelling by the Iranians from Abadan between 1982 and 1988. this of course didn’t end there, Basrah also suffered from Saddams invasion of Kuwait 1989 and the uprisings of the people of Basrah against Saddam in 1990 & 1999.

The “Bu-sar-was” have suffered a lot, the major problem has always been and still is the lack of potable water, most people, who can afford to by RO water from the water tanker lorries suffer from lack of minerals and some people suffer from radiation from the depleted Uranium used by the coalition forces in 1990.

Looking back, I remember the nice things in Basrah, the Sinbad Island with its Summer Cafeterias and Restaurants under the Palm trees and the stepping stones on the small lakes.

The old Port Club which was located in Maqal near the old Maqal port, the lovely Cornesh looking over Shatt-al-Arab.

Basrah had dozens of night Clubs located in the Wattani Street, and a decent amusement park, Kuwaitis and Saudi Arabians used to come over during the summer holidays to enjoy Basrah and its facilities and of course meet their extended Families.

Basrah also has some strange neighborhood names like the slum of “khamsa meel” which translate to Five miles, and “Khamseen Hoowsh” which translates to fifty houses. Basrah also has a small village called “abu al khaseeb” which is mainly a large plantation of Date palms and theres a Old man there who sales the Original Halawat Nahar Khoz which is a lovely sesame type of sweet goo that you could get addicted to.

Basrah used to be one lovely City, the people are very polite and kind however nothing remains the same.