Patience runs low in Basra

By Hugh Sykes
BBC correspondent in Basra, southern Iraq

In the power-cut darkness of a Basra evening, there is a pool of light along one street, a babble of voices and a throng of figures along a canal leading down to the great Shatt-al-Arab waterway.

Many Iraqis object to US and British occupation

Walk toward the light carefully - wary of rubbish piles, open drain hatches and broken paving - and you will hear the throb of generators supplying power to a short bright strip of shops, small restaurants and a coffee house.

Take more care as you approach and walk along the canal. Some of the balustrade is missing and you could fall into the water, filthy with oil, scum, rubble and empty cans. No one might notice.

Cross the road with great care - for the real weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are cars without lights, travelling on the wrong side of roads with no street lights.

But the walk is worth it.

British very good, very good. Saddam very bad. Restaurant customers

The shops are lit with buzzing strip lights; the sweetshops laden with cakes and biscuits piled high in pyramids.

You have a choice of restaurants. There are charcoal barbeques on the pavement flaring high orange flames from the oil of shish and tikka kebabs.

Next door there are gas-cooked doner kebabs and the tables are outside, right by the road.

You share your table with whoever is sitting there and with anyone who comes.

Bush and Blair 'thieves'

I sat with a man busy with his meal and said "Massa' al-Kheir" - good evening. "Massa' al-Nur", he replied politely, but unsmiling.

I told him my name and he told me his, Abbas.

I was served two shish kebabs on a bed of fresh mint, a plate of rice, tomato and cucumber salad, hot flat fresh bread and a mug of iced Laban, yoghurt with water and salt.

Refreshing and essentially nutritious, after a day of 50C heat. Even now, at 8pm it is 42C.

Liberation has brought insecurity and crime to Basra Farid, coffee shop owner

We ate in silence.

Five more men sit down - one of them a Sheikh in white robes and a headdress - with warm smiles and a "welcome, welcome" for me.

"British very good, very good. Saddam very bad. We are happy, very happy," they say.

Abbas looks up, still unsmiling. "No," he says, "Tony Blair and George Bush are Ali Baba, thieves. Saddam was good."

He is vehement and passionate, but not hostile. So I pluck up courage and out loud count my companions round the table.

"Five against Saddam, happy with the British," I say. "One in favour of Saddam - that's democracy."

The others laugh and joke with each other and Abbas says a stern goodbye and walks slowly away.

Pay rises

Further along this bright pool in the dark is Farid's coffee shop. There is the loud clack of dominos, the roll of dice on backgammon boards and the gurgle of hubble-bubble nargile pipes.

I ask for apple flavour - apple and molasses tobacco, heated with small, red, hot lumps of charcoal on pierced tinfoil on the summit of the shining silver nargile.

Some say things have improved since the fall of Saddam

As I exhale a long plume of water cooled smoke, two men come to sit with me - Aboudi Jassem and Hamid.

They are sailors and want to tell me how happy they are with their liberation.

They show me their payslips - from the Saddam days and from now.

Before, they were only paid $150 a month, regardless of how much overtime they put in, scrubbing the decks of their oil tankers as they roamed the world from Brazil to the United States. Now, with overtime, they can earn up to $500 a month.

Aboudi Jassem and Hamid had warm words of welcome for Bush and Blair, as well as the coalition administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer.

When they left - and the dominos had stopped, the backgammon packed away and the lights turned down for closing - the coffee shop owner Farid came to sit with me.

"Those men are only thinking of themselves," he said. "Liberation has brought insecurity and crime to Basra - robbers, mugging, kidnappings for ransom. And they can't even provide us with reliable electricity.

"The Americans and the British do not bring safety, they are here only for oil, not for the people."

I say goodnight. The coffee shops, restaurants and cake shops are closed down and dark.

As I walk home I wonder if my sailor friends and dinner companions are a lucky few in this land of oil, where every day a hundred car drivers queue for hours at petrol stations to fill their tanks.

The patience of people doing that under the dangerous sun is remarkable. How long will that patience last? If the coalition did come here for oil, the Iraqi people are not getting their share.