Baghdad blogger

Salam Pax (not his real name, surely) writes a weblog from Baghdad. It’s a gripping account of daily life in a city waiting for the onslaught.

The other day he posted a link to a high-res satellite image of part of the city, and provided a colour-coded key:

The feature most people would recognize when not seen from the top is the grand festival square (which is not a square at all. It is a semi-circle) it is in light blue. This is the one which has two huge intersecting swords at its en­trance. The building below the semi-circle is the grand stand; this is the place that saw the big army marches last winter. The road to the right of it is called the Zaitoon (olive tree) Street, it has lots of olive trees obviously. On the green side of that street (the green area is a residential area called Harthiya) live many big wigs, don’t bother you CIA types reading the blog, they are empty now. The yellow area is the Zawra public garden, you see it here during the renovation period. They have just finished working on the garden. The brown longish thing down the left of the image is the clock tower of Baghdad, a very very hideous building and it houses the museum of Saddam’s presents (the ones he got from every­body, there was an article about a couple of months ago in the guardian I think). The blue square is a building that has been hit twice (desert storm and desert fox) after desert fox they decided to do a redesign since it was hit really bad. It is still unfinished but it does look nice. The red area is some­thing I see with you for the first time. This is off boundaries to Iraqis, the whole area is a “pres­id­en­tial Palace”. The Sijood palace can be seen from the other side of the river and it is one of the most beautiful palaces, I really hope it does not get its “havoc recked”. I see it as a museum or some sort of academy in the future, I really like it.