My Long War

BY DEXTER FILKINS
NYT Magazine

I.

I pulled on my running shoes and stepped into the sweltering streets. It was a Thursday in July 2003, twilight, and well over 100 degrees. I was feeling a little reckless. If this ended badly, the only thing anyone would remember was how stupid I was.

We had set up the New York Times office on Abu Nawas Street. We lived and worked there: an Ottoman-style house with a gated yard and a veranda on the second floor that looked out on a boulevard that tracked the eastern bank of the Tigris River. In those first days, we didn’t fortify the place; no razor wire or blast walls, no watchtowers or machine guns mounted on the roof. Cars motored past our front yard on their way to the Jumhuriya Bridge a couple of miles up the road.

In the beginning, Baghdad wasn’t that threatening. The other houses around us were either abandoned or rented by foreigners: the French Embassy and the BBC were around the corner. And the Iraqis in the neighborhood were friendly, waving whenever we passed. Running at night seemed reckless, but given the otherworldy heat, running during the day was impossible.

So I set off. The reaction of my neighbors was immediate. I felt like a revelation, like a prophet. Men looked up and waved; they held up bottles of water as I ran by. “Good, good!” one man said in English. “America good!” Abu Nawas was lined with fish restaurants that overlooked the Tigris; as I passed, men held up chunks of masgouf, their beloved bony fish, and asked me to join. Children stopped their soccer games and ran after me; even the stray dogs gave pursuit. I felt I was living the scene in the movie “Rocky II,” when the character played by Sylvester Stallone goes for a training run in his Philadelphia neighborhood and all the children clamor after him.

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