Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Beirut, The Guardian, 21 March 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday March 21 2008 on p30 of the International section.
Muntaser, a young Iraqi refugee, washes his clothes in a shared toilet in the area of Sad el-Bousharya, Beirut. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty
Rabi’a, an Iraqi refugee, is cooking in the narrow, filthy corridor that doubles as a makeshift kitchen in his tiny apartment in eastern Beirut. There is a gas burner, a sink, a cupboard and a small plastic bucket overflowing with garbage and potato peelings. At one end of the room a door leads to a reeking toilet. The heavy smell of urine mixes with that of the months-old oil he is pushing round the frying pan.
“I fry the best tomatoes in the world, the most delicious dish,” he tells me. “You must have some with us.”
In Iraq they used to call this dish the “dinner of the sanctions”, after the decade-long economic blockade imposed on the country in the 1990s.
View Baghdad: City of walls
A series of films done by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in collaboration with ITV News to provide a view of the current reality in Iraq on the five-year anniversary of the US-British led invasion of Iraq.