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One traditions that I really respect in the older generations is their borderline obsession with hot tea or more specifically, Iraqi Chai. It's 50 fucking Celsius in the summer, but you'll always find an old dude sitting outside downing "istakans" of blazing hot tea with like a ton of sugar. This tradition is slowly getting carried over to zoomers, because the largest growing chain in Iraq now is Ridha Alwan, an old style coffee and tea house where the menu is an old style newspaper.

I watched all the political shows possible before the 2018 election, because her dad is one of those old newspaper dudes who loves arguing about an obscure Arabist party that died out in 1967 or something. So I remember a much younger me sitting with him one day and I was almost an expert on Muqtada Al Sadr's alliance with the communists and the rebranding of the Supreme Islamic Council to Al Hikma. I kept rambling on about seat totals and possible government formations, after a few mins he looked at me and basically said "how do you know this you Lebanese freak", which confirmed that he respected me.

Religious shia young man who attends all the rituals, but is kinda openly gay and styles himself in a way that signals that. Very poor always.

The old man who goes "damn I wish that Saddam is still alive"

What is the secret? Tape yourself to the chair? Start out on the ground?

I get their perspective and think it's true to some degree, but it's not the whole truth either imo. Yes, the American NGO-industrial complex is very visible in the country and many young people get dragged into liberal brainworms via these organisations. They undisputedly helped fund the 2019 protests and I'm sure that a lot of the "liberal" influencers in the country are paid off. At the same time, I feel like a lot of Shia Iraq, especially the PMU-aligned people, minimise their own role in the creation of the pro-American youth movements in the country. Iran despite our very important support for them right now is a power that projects religious fundamentalism in the regions that it's influential in. All the restrictive laws, all the anti-personal freedom movements, all the sectarian undertones comes from pro-Iran parties and politicians. This is not sustainable inside Iran itself, let alone outside of Iran. Like right now the PMU party are gathering signatures for a law that guts a woman's rights within marriage and restricts marriage to archaic religious laws, despite Iraq having some pretty progressive laws about marriage right now. They wanted to kill and imprison homosexuals a few months ago. They can't be surprised that a generation of atheist liberals grows up under these conditions.

Main dish: grilled iraqi shish kebab with a fuck load of tandoor bread

Side dish: I love those iraqi "muqabillat" plates that have like 6 sections and are filled with random side dishes. You'll find everything there and every place you go to are different

Dessert: the Kurdish areas produce something that Iraqis call "minn al simma". I have no idea what it's called in English, but it's some sort of paste with pistachios in it. Heavenly sweet

Most would be quite positive actually. Communists have an incredible reputation in Iraq as the most educated well-read people in the country. Older communists have the "drunkard" reputation, but younger communists have a good reputation and the most common response is "damn this nerd reads books"

I can't be the only one who pictured Hakim in my head for this scene

"بايسّد"

In many ways, both positively and negatively. The first impression is that it's really ugly and dirty with all due respect, Syria despite the absolute destruction looks better and is cleaner. At the same time it's really alive, Baghdad just oozes life everywhere you go. The people are amazing, but that wasn't really a surprise. There's this strange sense of optimism that I didn't feel at all in Syria and Lebanon, there's so much construction going on and I could really feel the standard rise between visits there.

Critical Hexbear Gossip Question; how do I impress Iraqi dads?

It's true lmao, all the private enterprises just bribe the tax man. When it comes to government workers, the government just started cutting a part of their salary because no one would voluntarily pay

The tribal clout brainworms is pretty unique to especially southern Iraq. You have a bunch of 40 year old dudes who wear exclusively tribal clothing while starting beef with other tribes because one guy from tribe B ran over a chicken or a lamb that a guy from tribe A owns. So these self-appointed tribal leaders from tribe A go and basically extort money from tribe B. These guys pretend that they're some type of fucking medieval princes or something.

Another type of brainworms is Kurdish nationalism in the style of "there are too many Arabs in Erbil we need to kick them out". This one is really funny, like how the fuck are you guys complaining about people from another city in the same country living in a slightly wealthier place. The even funnier component of this are the ones complaining about Arab tourists ruining Kurdistan. Yeah it's Ahmed and his three friends from Hilla visiting for three days that drove prices up in Erbil, not systematic corruption and monopolistic policies by the Barzani crime family.

Iraq also has the "one more lane" brainworms of course, they're more visible these days as Baghdad prepares for a Metro megaproject.