More The Trib in Iraq

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RAMADI, Iraq — I came to Iraq with the very limited Arabic vocabulary I picked up traveling in Lebanon and Syria a few years ago. I knew a couple ways to say hello and I knew how to say cheers (Saha! . . . Not so useful here.) I also knew how to say, "I'm Irish," a good phrase after you've gotten tired of facing angry questions about President Bush. ("Clinton, OK. Bush, why? Why Bush?!")

Never got a lot of "Why Bertie Ahearn?!"

Anyway, to this rudimentary vocabulary I very quickly added another word after I arrived in Ramadi: "Shura." Photograph.

Whether I was sitting around with Iraqi soldiers or police officers or walking the street in the middle of an armed patrol, the moment I pulled out my camera people flocked to my side as if I were about to perform a miracle.

"Mister, shura," they'd say, young or old, soldier or urchin. "Shura. Shura."

If I obliged, they immediately made a gesture as if cutting off one hand with the other, which I came to understand as a request that I print out the picture I'd taken. Apparently the Marines had broken out some Polaroids at some point.

If there were dangers in Ramadi, the camera would have been a problem. Every member of a patrol, including myself, was supposed to maintain an interval between the Marine ahead and behind. This was difficult when surrounded by a dozen children begging to have their pictures taken.

Which brings me to my point: Covering Ramadi did not seem like covering a war. No one in Ramadi seemed hostile. I don't think a single person I saw even failed to return a wave or a salaam aleikum.

But while I didn't feel any sense of danger coming from those streets, I certainly did feel a sense of expectation, and the needs were obvious. Out on patrols, people often approached me, pointing to their broken cars, broken houses or spindly children, saying things I couldn't understand, evidently mistaking me for someone capable of actually fixing something.

Put simply, the poverty in Ramadi was striking. Sewage was running down the middle of a lot of the streets in the downtown area where I spent the first part of my week. Trash was everywhere. Buildings were falling apart. "It's so much better than when we got here," every Marine would say, no doubt truthfully, but it was still a mess.

One of the Iraqi interpreters who worked for the Marines (code named "Bob" - all the Iraqi interpreters, who have faced immense danger as a result of their work with the United States, seem to take common American names) told me that central Ramadi was a poor area long before we invaded.

American officers working on infrastructure say Ramadi was designed for a city with half it's population of 400,000. As the city grew, there had been no comprehensive upgrades. Extensions had just been grafted on pell-mell. In other words, we came to a jerry-rigged city, kicked it hard a few times and the whole thing fell apart.

However much of it we actually broke, people still are clearly expecting us to fix Ramadi, but there's a danger in that sort of relationship, not to mention considerable awkwardness. Those sorts of expectations, when unmet or met too slowly, can easily slide into anger on both sides.

Many of the soldiers and Marines I talked to already see the Iraqis here basically as "moochers," a term I heard more than once. And that went both for the poor people on the streets and the considerably better off tribal sheiks with whom the U.S. is now doing business. One officer said he'd had to specifically instruct a sheik contracted to paint several apartment buildings to paint all four sides of the buildings. Another who had contracted with a sheik to clean a road said he'd paid only as the work was accomplished, but still watched as new drapes and furniture went in at the sheik's house.

It's fair to point out that many of America's greatest cities were built by thoroughly corrupt political institutions, from Boss Tweed on. And hey - how about Metro Court?

As I reported earlier, the brigade that oversees Ramadi has spent $60 million this year on reconstruction projects, a considerable sum. More than enough, I'd imagine, to fix the semi-annual sewer explosions in the Barelas and Martineztown neighborhoods, for example.

There's another side of that coin, though. A year or so ago, you still heard U.S. politicians talking about our responsibility to Iraq. You don't hear much of that anymore, but as I look at the pictures I took walking through downtown Ramadi, it's hard not to think about it.