My siblings and I used to be able to walk to school in our neighborhood on Palestine Street, which was less than 700 meters from our house, entirely on the sidewalk. My mother could advise us to “stay on the sidewalk,” but today, she wouldn’t be able to offer the same advice to her grandson. Perhaps she couldn’t even give that advice to my youngest brother. The first sidewalks to be encroached upon were just two houses away from ours. Most of the sidewalk space was taken over by a patch of grass, which served no purpose—no one could sit there, for instance—leaving less than 50 centimeters of usable sidewalk space for pedestrians. I remember my mother slipping once into the gap between the sidewalk and the street, highlighting another difference between London and Baghdad’s streets.
Up until around 2001, the sidewalks in our Baghdad neighborhood were intact. Then people began encroaching on them—extending garages, parking cars, carving out spaces for gardening, planting trees, date palms, displaying shop merchandise, storing building materials, and even putting up barbed wire or additional fences for no apparent reason other than to claim more sidewalk space. In London, however, aside from garbage collection mornings, when people place their bins out for municipal trucks to collect, there’s no way to encroach on the sidewalk. The sidewalk remains a dedicated and safe space for pedestrians on both sides of the road.
I also mentioned the gap between the sidewalk and the street. Before 2001 (before the Iraqi government had some money in its pockets at the end of the sanctions), streets were level with the sidewalk edge. Then, in 2001, I noticed for the first time that asphalt was laid on the street, leaving a recessed gap between the sidewalk and the road. These gaps initially filled with dirt, which was the least of the problems. Often, they accumulated stagnant water from washing garages, excess runoff, or even sewage. I’ve also seen weeds grow in these spaces. Needless to say, such gaps don’t exist in London. However, I saw something even worse when viewing photos of Accra, the capital of Ghana, where such spaces between sidewalks and roads serve as open sewers. I read about incidents where unsuspecting foreigners fell into these open drains.
The sidewalk disappeared, the gap between it and the road filled with dirt or water, and then came another phenomenon shared by many Arab cities (at least Tunis, Cairo, Mecca, and Jeddah, the other Arab cities I’ve visited), which we can’t blame people for: dust. In any Iraqi (or Arab) street, there’s a layer of dust blown in by winds from the nearest desert. Trying to clean or sweep it away is a futile effort. It either ends with overly obsessive individuals scrubbing the street in a heightened state of anxiety or, more often, streets covered in dust. This, of course, is a matter of nature, and I won’t compare Baghdad to London in this regard.
However, the negative effect of this dust is that, according to the laws of physics, cars push it toward the side of the road. The first meter or half-meter of the street (here, I mean the car lanes) becomes covered in a thick layer of dust. Naturally, people either wear open-toe sandals suited to the summer inferno or, if they’re among the more obsessive category, wear shiny black leather shoes, hoping to reach their destination with their footwear spotless. Both groups inevitably encroach on the last remaining clean portion of the street, leading to pedestrians sharing the road with cars.
This shared use of the road creates: accidents, near-accidents leading to arguments, arguments escalating into fights or resolved through patriotic intervention by good-natured citizens, and reconciliations or fights causing traffic jams. But the story doesn’t end there, as the issue of overlapping rights hasn’t even touched on the subject of parking!
To this moment, fortunately, there remains one final rule that people in Baghdad adhere to when parking their cars (although it too may eventually be broken): do not park in front of a door. Perhaps this adherence stems from fear of the door’s owner, who might retaliate against the car or its owner. Beyond that rule, however, everything is permissible: cars park alongside the curb, next to cars already parked there, and sometimes even in a third row. Someone might park on the sidewalk, while another blocks an exit for cars that are already obstructing others’ exits with a quick “just five minutes.” These “five minutes” seem to operate on a spacetime continuum unique to the speaker’s perception and beyond any scientific explanation.
Here is where London offers a contrast. In London, you’ll find a man (usually Bengali) wearing a special uniform and happily photographing license plates of cars parked under his jurisdiction. This “ticket man” either confirms the car’s right to park there or issues a fine. The fine is placed in a yellow bag and stuck onto the vehicle.
Back to pedestrian walkways: as the sidewalks disappeared, walking on car lanes became the norm. Walking is now chaotic and serpentine. You might walk two meters on the road, then a car suddenly parks in front of you. You change your path only to find a pothole and have to cross the street entirely.
Potholes? Ah, potholes are another difference between London and Baghdad. They come in many types. Some are man-made, like the deep trenches dug by municipal workers, which may take weeks or years to fill and often cause partial or complete road closures. Others are caused by erosion, such as water running on asphalt for extended periods (though most of this water originates from human activity, like washing cars or sidewalks or setting up unofficial drainage systems). London is not entirely free of potholes, but they are shallow—just a few centimeters deep—and do not significantly disrupt drivers or force pedestrians to change their paths.
In Baghdad, humans didn’t just create rivers and gorges in the streets but also hills and mountains. These come in the form of “speed bumps” or “humps,” with which people have a peculiar relationship. Drivers hate them, slowing their cars to a near halt when crossing them, yet homeowners assert their right to extend their authority from their house, onto the sidewalk, and into the road by installing speed bumps to force passersby to slow to a crawl.
There are various methods for constructing these bumps, some of which collapse on their own due to their excessive height, while others endure until time eventually erodes them. Their purposes vary: security, traffic control, or sheer arbitrariness—just to claim what is perceived as a right. For comparison, speed bumps in developed countries are designed so that drivers must slow to 20 mph (or slightly less), causing discomfort only if exceeded. In Iraq, these bumps nearly bring cars to a full stop. If you’re in pain while crossing one at speed, the jolt can be as painful as a moderate slap. Sometimes, you feel the slap even without being in pain.
Another major difference between streets in the two cities is speeding. It’s rare to find a car violating speed limits in narrow London streets, but in Baghdad, a driver might speed recklessly simply because they can.
Children’s playgrounds are another point of divergence. Makeshift goals are placed on both ends of a street, and the game halts temporarily whenever a car passes through. Players take a moment to pause, let the car pass, and then resume the game. I won’t be hypocritical here—I played in the street myself in 2004 and 2005 with many others, despite a large playground being nearby. This phenomenon, however, is nonexistent in the UK. For British drivers, the idea of pedestrians crossing the street is a “red line,” let alone an entire street doubling as a playground.
Streets are also meeting places, and in some streets and at certain times, the street becomes a permanent gathering spot, where the number of people sitting there ranges from two to ten, depending on the time of day. It’s as if these groups of Bedouins and semi-Bedouins have found their own “Dar Al-Nadwa” or small tribal council chamber in these streets.
Amid all these phenomena, checkpoints are perhaps a marginal one—at least, in theory (only hypothetically), they are supposed to serve a logical purpose. However, they are numerous, diverse in function, and often placed in locations that utterly cripple traffic, sometimes for no apparent reason. It’s as if the state, too, wants to claim its vast share of rights, just as every other citizen does—but the state is larger, and its rights are greater.
When I first arrived in Britain, particularly during the early days, I used to carry my ID card whenever I ventured a relatively long distance. But this habit gradually faded, as I never encountered a single checkpoint in over three years. I recall passing by a checkpoint in Cambridge, but it didn’t obstruct the path of pedestrians. Instead, the police stood at a distance, signaling for the chosen vehicles to stop safely within the next 50 or 100 meters.
There are many other observations to note. In London, for instance, there are no overhead wires obstructing the skyline, whereas in Baghdad, wires dominate the horizon. Houses in London are built in similar styles, creating a consistent, albeit monotonous and orderly, appearance for the streets. In Baghdad, on the other hand, you find surreal, modern designs standing beside traditional-looking houses, right next to completely ordinary ones. There’s no sense of cohesion.
There may be beautiful houses in a street, but the street itself is not beautiful. In Baghdad, there are also violations that are too severe to ignore. For example, a warlord once built part of his house directly over the street.
As much as we might imagine Iraqi society to be inherently Eastern, cooperative, and tightly knit, this is not entirely accurate. Iraqis form small, tightly connected groups—like families linked with other families in the traditional sense—where there is a lot of solidarity and mutual support. This extends slightly further to include tribes. However, there isn’t much solidarity or cohesion among the broader community.
There is significant mistrust, readiness for conflict, hostility, and constant vigilance in the city. Fences over two meters high (which weren’t common in my neighborhood before the 1990s) are now prevalent. Windows are fortified with opaque, armored glass and thick iron bars that make even cutting through them impossible. Doors are wrapped with chains, neighbors are separated by barbed wire, and surveillance cameras are everywhere. Homes have weapons, screens for conversing with those knocking on the door, double doors, or extremely thick doors.
The community lives in a perpetual state of fear from one another, and this fear is justified—horrifying stories abound, and thefts, even of the most trivial items, are countless. In poorer neighborhoods where such fortifications are absent, you find what could be called “streets that never sleep.” Here, groups of young people take the street as a permanent hangout, and the high population density in these alleys makes stealing a house difficult. Additionally, the low value of possessions in these areas—due to the widespread poverty—reduces the appeal of theft. Kidnappings and assassinations in these areas can also sometimes prove more challenging.
In British cities, by contrast, you might be surprised by how easily you can see inside people’s windows. Some houses don’t even close their curtains at night. In our Iraqi terminology, we’d call them “gamkhana” (naive or careless). Generally, there are no window fortifications; while there are often cameras and alarm systems, there are no fences or barbed wire encircling homes. Privacy between houses is minimal, and sound insulation is poor.
One house we lived in outside London could easily have been entered at night from the outside into our bedroom if the window was open—and nobody would care. Most windows remain open. The high cost of living far outweighs the value of what one might steal from such a house, making the risk of stealing a TV or a tablet, and then attempting to sell it, not worth it (although such cases do exist).
The scene I forgot to add to the street, which connects to the fortified homes and antagonistic human groups, is the presence of garbage piles. It’s difficult to take a specific walking route in Baghdad without encountering a garbage collection point. At best, such a point might be spontaneous—created by the wind gathering trash in a particular spot. The only deterrent to dumping garbage in the street is fear of being discovered by someone who might consider it a threat to their sphere of influence and rights (which, as previously mentioned, often extend to consuming the sidewalk and street), or the realization that the accumulation of trash will bring unpleasant odors to their own home.
Iraqis carry myths about clean and dirty areas, as well as about “clean” and “dirty” groups within society. Yet in reality, I have seen many individuals from the so-called “cultured” classes, as described in Iraqi terms, throw garbage into public spaces within their “elite” neighborhoods. Sometimes, people justify this behavior by saying that municipal garbage trucks haven’t come for a long time. Other times, garbage disposal is used as a means of defiance, which I will elaborate on later. In general, however, trash is an integral part of the scene, whether by human action or natural forces.
Such a phenomenon is difficult to find in Britain. While littering in the street is not entirely absent, it occurs at less than 10% of the rate in Baghdad and is more common in areas where cultural patterns similar to ours prevail.
You might also encounter funeral gatherings, weddings, or tribal court sessions (fasil) taking place in the street. Here, the street plays the role of a space that can be expanded and appropriated in a culture that lacks the concept of refinement in the sense of respecting boundaries and demonstrating excellence through beauty and art. Instead, the prevailing cultural concern is the extent of space one occupies—customarily, legally, temporarily, or permanently.
As the Iraqi song goes: “My uncles are many, and they block the street,” where the singer boasts of having so many uncles that they can close off a road. If you have a house, take over the sidewalk, build a speed bump, open a shop, construct a third and fourth floor, fill the property with extensions, and then claim the sidewalk and park your car on the street. If there’s an empty space next to you, take it—someone else might if you don’t—unless its owner comes and erects a fence. Turn it into a garden if you can, even if the owner doesn’t complain. Take over the space across from you as well. Block the street if you can. Set up barriers to prevent others from parking in front of your house. Let the kids play outside. Sit yourself in the street. Hold your funerals, weddings, and social events in the street. Close the street. Assert your power and control over the street. Ultimately, if you don’t, someone else will. Live as an oppressor rather than as one oppressed. Live as a trespasser rather than as one trespassed against.
When we put all this in a comparative balance, it’s not truly comparable. It’s impossible to fully grasp the mindset of an English person. Certainly, they don’t think this way—but it’s also that they cannot act this way, as the law prevents them. The most significant transgression I witnessed in my street was when someone raised their low wooden fence with a hand-crafted wooden extension. I later found out this wasn’t allowed, as a neighbor complained, prompting the council to require the person to lower the fence back to under one meter. In response, the man protested by putting up a polite yet pointed sign, which, in our language, was mild and tactful but clearly expressed his discontent.
In a neighboring area with a higher density of Arab, African, and Latin populations (a place I call “the crossroads of civilizations”), people discovered a hole in the door of a closed shop. Residents of this “crossroads of civilizations” began inserting garbage bags through the hole. One day, the shop owner came and was greeted with a stench that brought back memories of home. The area was eventually cleaned, and the door was securely sealed. The sign “Whoever throws garbage here is illegitimate” is replaced in this crossroads of civilizations by a camera and a warning of a fine.
Encroachment on space in Iraq is often accompanied by a deliberate intention to trespass—akin to the Arabic poet’s words: “Whoever doesn’t oppress others does so only because they cannot.” While issues such as speed bumps and sidewalk use often pertain to public rights, many instances of trespassing are intentional, such as dumping trash at someone’s doorstep. This behavior is governed by hierarchies and power dynamics among neighbors and residents. One such stage is the concept of “yijir busha” (loosely translated as “to provoke intentionally”), which we use here as an example of acts of transgression designed to establish control and boundaries with others. This term, originally mechanical, refers to an attempt to intimidate or preemptively trespass against someone to deter them from encroaching later.
In many cases, the life cycle of a street ends with complete closure. This happens when a higher authority—such as the government, security companies, or an official—decides to block the street entirely, turning it into a courtyard between the houses facing it, rendering it no longer a pathway for pedestrians or vehicles. In other cases, streets may return to life partially but never regain what they lost. Generally, however, sidewalks and their margins remain elusive in Iraq.
The reason for writing this is solely for memory. Gradually, I’m drifting further from Iraq and forgetting some details and changes. As for the comparison, its purpose is psychological. While I won’t reach any promising conclusions through such a broad comparison, it at least outlines some key thoughts for me. It doesn’t rise to the level of forming conclusions or results. One day, I might revisit and update this to document a new phase of the evolving boundaries and relationships between people and customary laws governing the streets.
Another reason for writing this is that we live with many issues we fail to notice because we see them so frequently that they feel like givens. Yet, in truth, they are very peculiar and represent unique rules of our world.
Translated from Arabic by ChatGPT