February 22, 2006
Neither War Nor Bombs Stay These Iraq Couriers
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 21 — In a country where the power is usually out, the police may rob you and few traffic lights actually work, it is perhaps surprising that Iraqis still get mail.
The territory is demonstrably hostile: the train that carries the letters north is frequently attacked. Bright orange American vans had to be painted black for safe passage through dangerous areas south of Baghdad. Postmen on mopeds brave gun battles to deliver letters in Dora, a Baghdad neighborhood so paralyzed by violence that corpses lie in the street for hours. And there are no mailboxes, so postmen deliver to the addressee, not to the address — a task that has become far more complicated in the upheaval of the past three years.
But still, six days a week, mail carriers at 349 post offices across Iraq hand-deliver thousands of letters, to greetings so warm that they often include dances and high-pitched warbles of sheer joy.
"It's something wonderful to get a letter," said Ibrahim Ismail Zaiden, a postman in Dora. "The paper, the stamp, the envelope. It is not just a piece of paper. It is something sacred."
The 181,507 letters delivered last month amount to a slice of normal life in a place where the bizarre regularly scrambles daily routines. On a sunny morning last month in Baghdad's central post office, sorters sifted through small piles of mail on long tables. Deliverymen dragged brightly colored mail sacks to vans parked outside. Iraqis lined up with their packages and letters.
The Saddam Hussein stamps are a thing of the past. Now, sheets of new stamps depict, colorfully if unimaginatively, various means of Iraqi transportation, including a raft, a horse and carriage, and a canoe piled high with grasses.
In the Karrada post office — one small room with a cement floor, a giant poster of a Shiite saint and a few desks and chairs — Abdel Hadi Mahsin Hadi sorted through the incoming mail: a few bank statements, a letter from Cyprus in a nondescript envelope.
After the American invasion, postmen received motorbikes to make deliveries, a coveted perk. Now, every day but Friday, they load up with letters — packages must be picked up at the post office — and fan out through the city, steering through the streets and dodging potholes and explosions.
"I talk to him sometimes," Mr. Hadi said of his motorbike.
The mail also offers evidence of recovery. In 2001, before the American invasion, Iraqis sent 148 tons of mail. (Their relatives in other countries were better letter writers, sending Iraqis 231 tons that year.) In 2003, the year of the invasion, the figure plummeted to 37 tons. But it has been rising ever since, with Iraqis sending 43 tons in 2004 and 54 tons last year, according to post office statistics.
But this is Iraq, and of course there are problems. During the 2003 invasion, some branch offices were destroyed. Immediately after the invasion, when looters swept the country, many branches were picked clean. Mail trucks, bookshelves, even windows were stolen.
Postal officials consolidated locations to keep functioning. In the Baab Maathem district, for example, a branch limps along in two hospital rooms. In Adhamiya, in northern Baghdad, another operates out of a Ministry of Interior office.
"It's a strange place for the post," said Ibrahim Hussein Ali, the postmaster general and a 40-year veteran of the postal service. "But we must accomplish our duty."
One of the most common post-invasion problems is finding the addressees. Baghdad has experienced an enormous population shift: Wealthier families have moved out and poorer Iraqis from the countryside have flocked to the capital.
In Karrada, Khaleel Ibrahim said he had spent days trying to find one recipient. He asks neighbors, ducks into nearby shops. Because of power failures, doorbells rarely work, and he carries a small metal rod to rap on doors. The sound sometimes frightens recipients.
"My duty demands that I am patient," said Mr. Ibrahim, his thin frame hunched on a chair.
The roads are treacherous. Kathem Saed Alwan, a tall Shiite from southern Iraq and the director of Baghdad's central post office, said he personally drove mail down a dangerous road south to Babel. A portion of the large battalion of shiny bright yellow American vans have been painted black for safer passage.
"Any color but this yellow," Mr. Alwan said, shrugging and smiling.
Highway jihadists once stopped an Iraqi mail truck coming from Jordan, assuming it was bound for the Defense Ministry, a favored target.
"The driver was begging, saying it was just letters for the people," Mr. Alwan said.
In Dora, deliveries are a daily battle. Abbas Mikayel, a mail carrier in the neighborhood, said he had seen four bodies on the streets, and has had to dodge clashes between the police and insurgents. A group of gunmen once attacked a colleague, who spent six weeks in the hospital with a broken shoulder.
"I'm the jihad driver!" he said, grinning widely at stealing the reference to holy war from insurgents.
The closest call came when he was stuck in traffic and a group of gunmen walked up to the car in front of him to drag out the driver, kicking and screaming. He watched silently, hoping the gunmen would not take him, too.
"I cried when I got back to the office," Mr. Mikayel said, pushing his large-lensed glasses farther up along his nose.
But humor, however black, seems to have remained intact among the postmen.
"If the terrorists heard he made an interview with the foreign press, they'd behead him!" Mr. Alwan said of Mr. Mikayel. Both men laughed.
The post office for years was heavily Baathist, and many of its top managers have been replaced since the invasion. Bitterness among midlevel workers sometimes seems palpable, along with resentment that they have not been promoted. Still, Mr. Alwan, who began in Baghdad in 2003, said he had never had a problem as a Shiite newcomer among former Baathists.
As increasing numbers of Iraqis turn to the Internet to communicate with loved ones, it may be that mail volumes may be damped even as the economy improves.
But for now, chaos prevails and Iraqis still use the mail.
Sahar Nageeb contributed reporting for this article.
From today's NY Times.