Friday is the weekend in Iraq, meaning our Thursday night is like your Friday night. (Except for college kids, for whom every night is Friday night). Tonight I met up with some of my friends from the Embassy and we went out for pizza at our favorite Green Zone pizza joint. It also happens to be the only Green Zone pizza joint. After wolfing down two pizzas, we retired to the hookah room for smoke and chai.
This is the "chai" part. Chai is tea, which Iraqis love. Americans drink cold tea by the gallon, but Iraqis drink hot tea by the milliliter. And they dump an amazing amount of sugar into it.
Here's one of our hookahs. Many of us of a certain age would call it a "bong". However, there's no wacky tobacky in here. Iraqi hookahs use a highly flavored tobacco in which the tobacco taste is almost obscured. Part of the enjoyment of the hookah bar is picking out which flavor to try. I went with watermelon.
Flavor or no, I am not a smoker. And this stuff is, indeed, tobacco. Cough, cough.
The owners of the pizza joint/hookah bar have a prized pigeon. That stuff on his back is feathers. The little guy strutted around, showing off his amazing feathers to all ("I have these beautiful feathers ... you infidels do not!") before deciding we were beneath him, and then returning to his little palace.
Not quite as much fun as a rockin' night in Georgetown, but it will do.
