So this is Baghdad

After planning this trip for about three weeks and cooling my heels in Jordan for three days waiting on an Iraqi visa (who thought it would be so hard to get into a country so many people are trying to get out of) I braced for what I'd been told would be a landing that would test my stomach. I'd avoided breakfast for just this reason.

Because there is a danger of planes getting shot at -- curse Kansas City International, if you must, but I'll take the long ride to economy parking over the threat of mid-air immolation any day -- planes come in relatively high and then circle down quickly over the Baghdad airport. The landing disappointed. We banked a little more coming down, but I could have stood up through the whole thing.

I ducked out of the Royal Jordian Airlines flight and inhaled a bit of hot Baghdad air. (It's true what they say. It's hot, but it's a dry heat -- like a pizza oven.)

We seemed to be about the only flight coming in this morning, a collection mostly of Westerners -- a few journalists and government contractors. Nearly all men.

The customs officer had some questions about my hard-earned visa that I could neither undertand nor help him solve. In the end, it didn't matter and I was waved toward the nearly vacant baggage claim where I found my two duffels unmolested.

There a McClatchy body guard and driver waited for me, all smiles and warmth.

I'd learned before that the drive from the airport to downtown Baghdad was one of the dicier routines I'd encounter here. This, too, blissfully was more mild than I'd expected. Traffic was light (the looming worry is getting stuck in one place, and thus a target for bombers or snipers) and we passed through the few half-hearted checkpoints quickly.

Some things were what I'd expected. Miles of blast walls and razor wire. People sitting in half-mile long lines for gasoline. Regular sightings of damage from car bombs. More guns than an NRA convention.

But the city was greener than I'd imagined. Los Angeles could learn something about palm trees from these folks. And people were walking the streets, shopping, working construction. I saw more than a few families battling the mid-day heat by going out together for ice cream.
(That might be because they can only run their air conditioners an hour or so a day. To get a good idea of what it's like for even the middle class here, look at the Inside Iraq blog to read some of the stories of the Iraqis I work with here.)

A few blocks from our destination traffic clogged. About three cars ahead of us a police patrol was moving slowly while two officers on the back of vehicle, one of them manning a mounted machine gun, were waving angrily. There had been rumors of a car bomb attack in the neighborhood this week -- one had killed several people nearby a week earlier --and the cops were panicked to see parked cars on the opposite side of the thoroughfare. But again, it passed without incident.

And soon, I was sitting down for lunch.