Imperial Life in the Emerald City Imperial Life in the Emerald City Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Author:Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, History
ISBN: 9780307265920
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Published: 2006-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

Shattered Dreams

9

Let This Be Over

THE AL-RASHEED HOTEL WAS a concrete-and-glass monstrosity built by the Oberoi Group of India in the 1980s, before Saddam’s manic spending spree on weapons to defeat Iran, and before the invasion of Kuwait made Iraq an international pariah. When the al-Rasheed opened, its 428 guest rooms had buttery leather chairs, color televisions, touch-tone phones, wall-to-wall carpeting, and marble-floored bathrooms. Downstairs, the Sheherezade Bar poured Johnnie Walker Black Label, the 1,001 Nights Disco teemed with dolled-up call girls, and a shopping arcade stocked French perfume. A medical clinic staffed with a European doctor tended to guests’ aches and pains.

After the Kuwait war, United Nations sanctions forced the Oberoi Group to leave the country. Saddam’s government took over the al-Rasheed and every other foreign hotel in the country, including the Ishtar Sheraton and Le Méridien, which was renamed the Palestine Hotel. The cash-strapped Finance Ministry eliminated the al-Rasheed’s maintenance budget. For a few years, nobody noticed. Then the elevators broke, the linens frayed, and the toilets began to leak. By the time I paid my first visit to the hotel in 2002, the leather chairs had faded and cracked, the mattresses sagged, and I had to bribe the cleaning man for a roll of toilet paper. Most of the phones didn’t work, and the televisions displayed only a half dozen channels, all of which were run by the government. Saddam’s regime didn’t allow CNN or the BBC in the hotel. My fellow guests and I suspected that Saddam’s secret police had hidden bugs in the televisions.

A week before the war, the Pentagon warned American news organizations to vacate the al-Rasheed. A big bunker underneath the hotel put it on the target list. But those of us on the ground knew better. As decrepit as it had become, it still was the best place to sleep in town. The Americans would want to stay there when they came.

The first wave of American civilians—Jay Garner and ORHA—moved into the Republican Palace instead. Their security advisers said that the fourteen-story al-Rasheed, which soared over neighboring buildings, was too vulnerable to an attack. But as the palace began overflowing with people, the threat assessment changed: the CPA’s security officers deemed the hotel safe enough to bed hundreds of employees who had been sleeping on cots in the palace, waiting for the housing trailers Halliburton was supposed to bring to Baghdad.

The job of running the al-Rasheed fell to Halliburton, which promptly rehired dozens of the hotel’s prewar employees, including several I suspected were former intelligence agents. Little was done to renovate the rooms, but the company did reopen the disco and set up a sports bar in the basement bunker. The hotel became the place to party in the Emerald City.

Colonel Elias Nimmer yawned and rolled over. He had opened his eyes ten minutes earlier, at six o’clock, as the first sliver of the sun edged above the horizon and transformed the desert sky from deep indigo to light blue. His roommate was away, and Nimmer hadn’t bothered to close the curtains before going to sleep.

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