Babylon, Iraq "Restored in the reign of our Great Leader Saddam Hussein" Often, in the long weekends of early March, we would gather a convoy of jeeps, and set off south along the Hilla Highway towards the cool blue waters of Razzazeh Lake, which lay on the western outskirts of the holy city of Kerbala. Somewhere along that route, where the green road signs still pointed alluring close to the ancient city of Babylon, we would leave the highway and enter a fertile plain rippling with green cornfields that stretched to the far horizon. Then, near the town of Ukhaider, the landscape changed again and the cornfields merged into a haze of desert scrubland where wandering herds of sheep and goats grazed by the roadside. Here, barefoot boys who tended the livestock, waved their sticks in salute as we passed through their sand coloured mud-brick villages. Everybody looked forward to these trips because they allowed us to escape from the restraints of the city and meet other westerners living in Baghdad