Welcome to Basrastan

Jul 1, 2015 | Peter Schwartzstein
View Original

This port city in southern Iraq is not an easy place to love. Once the handsome backstop of the Persian Gulf, its famous canals are now choked with trash and reek of sewage in the brutal summer sun.

Its fine 19th-century mansions have given way to sagging low-rise apartment blocks, many of which lean menacingly over potholed roads. Even the Shatt al-Arab, the muddy waterway on whose back the city’s fortunes were built, has changed beyond all recognition. Ships sunk or scuttled over the course of recent wars obstruct the strait, while local fishing trawlers have mostly ditched their nets in favor of smuggling oil and various illicit goods from nearby Iran.