At least Saddam Hussein made the trains run on time:
“It reminds me of the old days of Iraq, when it was safe.... Even the Sunnis feel comfortable going to Basra.”
"A train ride from Iraq’s past into an uncertain future" by Tim Arango | New York Times October 19, 2014
BAGHDAD — Saad al-Tammimi is in his fourth decade working for Iraq’s railroads, a career that has taken him all around his country, and around the Middle East. Nowadays, though, he can go only from Baghdad to Basra, across the relatively calm Shi-ite-dominated south of this war-torn country.
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With so much violence, neglect, and political dysfunction here, it has been years since passenger trains leaving Baghdad went anywhere other than Basra.
In recent years, however, plans to link the country by railroad had begun taking shape. Freight trains shuttled goods around Iraq, and a few years ago there were test runs of a new train service between Mosul and Turkey. But as the militants of the Islamic State have advanced around the country, those efforts have halted.
At least Tammimi has a new train to drive, a sleek and shiny one built in China that glides out of the station at dusk and through the closed-in thicket of this city....
Inside are the luxuries of first-class rail travel, including flat-screen TVs and refrigerators in the sleeper cabins. Rowdy young army recruits, answering the call to arms from their Shi’ite religious leaders and on their way to basic training, crowd the brightly lit cafe car.
The food is second-rate — cold fried chicken and soggy french fries — but there is a good falafel joint in Hillah, a town on the way; if you call in advance, sandwiches will be waiting at the station.
The new train is a small but noticeable sign of progress — of oil money spent in the interests of the public — in a country consumed by violence and corruption that is quickly coming apart in the face of an onslaught by the Sunni militants of the Islamic State.
It is also a reminder of what has been lost in Iraq and in the broader Middle East. Once, the region was connected by trains; building rail lines was central to the imperial ambitions of European powers — the Germans, the British, and the French — to exert influence in the Middle East in the years before World War I, when the region was part of the Ottoman Empire.
In more recent times, sectarian violence has torn apart diverse societies, especially in Iraq and Syria, that, for better or worse, were once held together by dictators. The areas reachable by trains have steadily shrunk, the diversity of the passengers that rode them a long-lost memory.
“Before was different,” said Ahmed Ali, who for 31 years has held various jobs for Iraqi Republic Railways, the state rail authority, and now works as a cashier in the cafe car. “I used to meet the educated people, the uneducated, the actors, the poets, the poor man. Many different groups.”
He adds, “Now, everything is gone.”
Ali recalled trips to Mosul, where on layovers he would visit the city’s famous tombs and shrines, and buy candy and pistachios and clothes to bring back to his family in Baghdad.
For months now, Mosul, which is the second-largest city in Iraq, has been under control of the militants, and many of those historical sites have been destroyed.
On alternate evenings at dusk, the new train, which was introduced in recent months and would operate at high speed if it were not for the woeful condition of Iraq’s tracks, leaves for Basra.
On the other nights, an older train, built by the French and in operation for almost three decades, makes the same 12-hour trip. That train may lack amenities, but it has an abundance of charm with its wood floors and paneling and green velvet seats in the cafe.
Riding the trains feels like an act of nostalgia — and, in some ways, an act of defiance, for the train represents connection in a place where people and communities are increasingly becoming detached from one another.
For those who have spent their lives working on Iraq’s railroads — jobs that have been passed down through generations, from father to son — each train journey is like a journey to the Iraq of their memories....
I'll leave you at the station with this final thought:
“It reminds me of the old days of Iraq, when it was safe.”
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