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believe in their economy. Anyone who gambles now might stand to gain many times over later. - Unless the war is long and bloody, Muhammed predicts. He lived in London for fourteen years, where he got a PhD in economics. - London is my second home, he says while all the time boasting about Iraqi stamina. - A quarter of a million soldiers threaten our borders. Instead of fleeing the country, people are investing in the stock market. It’s impressive, isn’t it? Let the Americans come. They just want our goodies, he says in his polished British accent.
     
    Someone who was led astray by the threat of war stands gloomily in the corner watching the hive of activity. Yasser is a retired policeman who put his savings into a cycle factory. Certain that war would devalue his shares he sold them off some months ago. - When I sold, the shares were worth eleven dinar. Now they are up to eighteen, he says dejectedly. - I come three times a week to check. When they have fallen to fifteen I’ll buy them back. Of course I’ll end up with fewer than I had. Oh well, we can only hope they’ll drop.
     
    Beside him is an elderly lady in a white head-scarf and thick glasses. She owns one million shares in Baghdad Bank and signals continuously to the brokers. While the living standard of the man in the street has been drastically reduced during the last decade, Suham has grown richer. - I have more money now than when sanctions first began. But I don’t take it seriously, this is just my hobby, she smiles apologetically. She is a doctor and owner of a clinic specialising in gynaecology.
     
    - Most people are worse off, she admits. - They come to me with the most terrible afflictions; many of them cannot afford the treatment. This country is seeing a lot of horror.
     
    - Goodbye Doktora, one of the brokers calls as the Stock Exchange is about to close.
     
    - See you, says Suham, before disappearing out through the door and back into real life - to patients who cannot pay for her services. She is one of the winners; a dinar millionaire - on the board at least.
     
     
    The press centre lies on the first floor of the Ministry of Information, an eight-storey monstrosity. Minister Muhammed Said al-Sahhaf sits at the top, the man who later, much later, is nicknamed Comical Ali. Now he’s just ‘the man at the top’, ‘the minister’ and not at all comical. He’s someone we never see, but who ultimately decides our destiny - how long we can stay, what we can see, where we can travel. On the ground floor is INA, the Iraqi News Agency. All Saddam’s decrees and laws are broadcast from here - via television and the three major newspapers, which are confusingly similar, despite their different names and possibly different archive photos of the president on the front pages. News never originates here. It is written in the Presidential palace and phoned in to INA, where a number of secretaries and so-called journalists take dictation and pass it on to the newspapers.
     
    Every morning a cheek by jowl stream of people rounds the corner and hastens in the door of the Ministry of Information. They are men in suits and women in high heels. Some with flowing locks, others with hair hidden under shawls and bodies under loose folds. Everyone appears to be heading for something important. Like worker ants they carry heavy bags and briefcases into and along the anthill’s corridors, offices, nooks and crannies. At lunch time the building teems with people on their way out. They stop and talk by the entrance before ascending once again. In the evening they stream out once more, not quite as determined, but just as fast.
     
    The Ministry of Information is divided into storeys according to a strict hierarchical pattern. The eighth floor commands the seventh, the seventh commands the sixth, and so on, right down to the second floor and the conference rooms where al-Sahhaf and his colleagues conduct their everlasting briefings. Anybody unlucky enough to