Volume 50, Number 11 · July 3, 2003
Bohemia in Baghdad
By Max Rodenbeck
The scene at the deserted National Library in Baghdad looks almost too staged to be true. Ignoring the occasional tock-tock-tock of nearby gunplay, a tethered donkey lunches on flowers in the garden. A statue of Saddam is still standing out front, but someone has looped a noose around its neck. A hot gust of wind sends singed catalog cards scudding across the tiled terrace of the four-story building, along with curls of half-melted microfiche that turn out to be pages from The New York Times of November 1979. Through smashed windows one can see blackened corridors and heaps of sooty debris. On the iron grill of the entrance, locked now to the pillagers who stripped the library clean before torching it, hangs this neatly lettered cardboard sign:
Feature, 4066 words
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