Montrealer Ehab Lotayef writes from in Baghdad about the devastating deterioration of the famous school he attended in Baghdad in 1970 - sanctions, wars, and the occupation have taken their toll.

Baghdad, December 22, 2003. The taxi driver said, "I know exactly where it is." He told me that during his last year as an undergraduate, working towards his B.Sc. in Education, he trained there. He drove across the Tigris river to the west bank to avoid traffic (the Western or 'Gharbia' school is, strangely enough, on the east side of the river, the part of Baghdad which is called Ar-Rasafah), drove parallel to the river and then crossed back via the bridge closest to Bab Al-Mua'zam. The part on the west bank, Al-Karkh, is the side where Al-Mansour, the second Abbasid Caliph, built his round city in the 8th century C.E.

Leaving the taxi, I walked through the school gates, which I hadn't walked through for thirty-three years. Al-Gharbia, where I spent one school year before moving back to Cairo, used to be an exemplary and very famous school with a great reputation. Although a public school, it had a very firm discipline system and, unheard of in most public schools, it had a compulsory uniform. The school I walked into today was nothing like the school I left thirty-three years ago.

I looked for the impressive door of the office which the principle used to occupy, and found nothing but damaged doors and broken windows. When I finally saw the sign that read "Principal', it was beside a door that had no locking mechanism, and was locked by a padlock. I asked around and was told that I can find the principle in the teachers' room.

I introduced myself and showed him some photos I was carrying from 1970 and listened to his recount of the deterioration of the school, and the Iraqi education system in general over the past 12 years. He told me that the few teachers who I remembered by name, and the principle of 1970 had all passed away. The only thing left to ask was if I could walk around the school and take some photos.

It was recess time and many students were so exited to see me take photos of their school so I quickly became very popular (I can easily admit that I was never that popular during the earlier days there). Even after recess a few students whose teacher was absent continued the school tour with me. What I saw during the tour only confirmed what I had already seen and heard. The school was in a pitiful state, which I am sure is no different than most schools in Iraq today, except of course the ones the Americans painted the fronts of, to look superficially better.

The best though, was left for last. As I was leaving I saw a room with broken windows and smog marks. I was told that this used to be the computer lab and the arts room and that it was looted right after the war and then torched.

With schools in such a bad shape, no arts lessons and no computer training, can we still hope that the upcoming generation of Iraqis will be able to rebuild the country they will, by all expectations, inherit in quite a bad condition? Am I too optimistic?

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Ehab Lotayef, a Montreal poet and a computer engineer at McGill University was in Iraq with the Iraq Solidarity Project during the month of December. The Iraq Solidarity Project (ISP) is a Montreal-based grassroots initiative to help provide international monitoring of occupation forces and the corporate reconstruction of Iraq and protective accompaniment to Iraqis under the occupation. To join ISP listserv, send a blank email to psi-...@lists.riseup.net. For more about ISP, p...@riseup.net.