Or, if not nostalgia, how about just a raucous yarn about Baghdad's one true watering hole during the height of the insurgency? Yes? Good. Because that's the story I recently wrote, and which appears today, in The Atavist, a new online publication of literary and technological note that is one of the few places that would be able to publish 10,000 words about the Rick's Cafe Americain of the Green Zone.
In the midst of that disastrous war, one soldier-turned-contractor realized that, like everything else in Iraq, the military planners had forgotten about the logistics of leisure. Which meant that, like everything else in Iraq, even R&R was ripe for enterprise. When James (that same soldier-turned contractor) happened into a lead on booze supply, he found himself leaping head first into the warzone hospitality business.
The Baghdad Country Club was the result, and while it lasted, it was the one place were anyone — mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and Iraqis — could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of Bordeaux, and light a cigar from the humidor to go with it. Patrons would check their weapons in a safe, like coats in a coatroom, and leave the war behind as they wandered past a sign that read:
BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB
NO GUNS, NO AMMUNITION, NO GRENADES, NO FLASH BANGS, NO KNIVES—
NO EXCEPTIONS!
Is that enough enticement to read the story? I hope so. If not, how about this quite elaborate trailer made by The Atavist's excellent audiovisual brigade:
Also: The Atlantic has a small excerpt!
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