In a Tour for Visitors, Baghdad’s Past Is Present

BAGHDAD — A group of foreign visitors went on a tour of Baghdad recently. Such an event, almost anywhere else, would have passed unnoticed. But this is Baghdad, where the rumblings of a passing thunderstorm recently had people convinced that insurgents had unleashed a string of synchronized bombings.

Indeed, only a week or so after the visitors had left, a series of bombings in the capital, including at least seven on Tuesday, killed more than 100 people and wounded several hundred others, lending substance to the fears.

And so to ensure that peace would prevail for a few hours and ghastly headlines avoided, the authorities deployed an entire Iraqi Army battalion, hundreds of police officers, a group of special forces commandos from the Interior Ministry and took the extraordinary step of closing much of Baghdad’s historic old quarter.

The occasion was an excursion by about 75 architects and city planners from the United States, France, Iran, Italy, Japan and elsewhere, who were attending a six-day conference on the “Preservation of Iraqi City Centers.”

After a welcome speech by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, they spent days listening to redevelopment experts. On the fourth day, they piled into three minibuses with heavily armed police officers and intelligence service agents riding in armored vehicles in front, back and in between for a tour of architectural and cultural wonders that most foreigners have not had access to for decades and that Iraqis are often too frightened to visit.

The convoy crept through traffic, past the Baghdad Provincial Council building and the Justice Ministry, where bombs killed 155 people last October. A guide pointed out the damaged structure without emotion. The planners and architects took photos.

As the buses were whisked through checkpoints on otherwise gridlocked streets, people stuck their heads out of car windows and pointed, as if that act might make the remarkable sight more real. The odds of seeing a foreigner here not wearing a uniform or carrying a weapons are vanishingly small. Many do both.

“Who are you?” a taxi driver shouted before a tour guide asked that windows be rolled up so the air-conditioner could be switched on.

Like just about everyone else on the tour, Marc Santos, a 49-year-old architect who works for the municipality of Barcelona, said he had been worried about Baghdad’s dangers but decided the risk to see what is essentially a forbidden city was worthwhile.

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“Everything is very controlled,” he said. “But I guess that’s logical.”

The first stop was Mustansiriya University, opened in 1233 during the Islamic Golden Age. The city was sacked 25 years later by Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis and brother of Kublai.

The tour group climbed several sets of steps up to the roof. One young woman pretended to fall off, which would have been a novel way to die in Iraq.

The police, armed with AK-47s, but unaccustomed to dealing with such behavior, did not quite know how to react.

“Should we go up upstairs?” one asked another.

“I don’t know,” was the response.

“No, we have to go,” said the first.

On the roof, the soldiers pulled out their own cameras and took photos of themselves, exhibiting rare smiles.

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The first stop on the tour for the nearly 75 architects and city planners from around the world was Mustansiriya University.Credit...Timothy Williams/The New York Times

The next stop was a market where carpets, books, fabric and copper — items that have long been part of Baghdad’s identity — are among the items sold.

As the tourists walked on a street that had been cleared of traffic, people gathered on sidewalks and gawked, but were kept away by police officers and troops who kept the visitors in a protective cordon.

“It’s like we’re the circus,” one tourist said.

At the antiques and copper market, the sound of hammers striking metal echoed through the building, but the place had been emptied of shoppers and, by extension, much of its character.

Merchants in their stalls peered out at the visitors. Usually voluble, the men said nothing.

“We love visitors,” one vendor said finally. “We need more of them.”

Back outside, Mutanabbi Street, named for a 10th-century poet, is home to Baghdad’s book market. Books were on tables, laid on the sidewalk and only sometimes in bookshops. Titles ranged from the Koran to cookbooks, and in some cases they had been placed next to one another. The market was bombed in 2007, killing 26 people.

“The energy is much more positive than I’d imagined,” said Nadya Nilina, an architect from Rotterdam.

Did she feel safe here?

“We are always with heavily armed security — come on,” she said as a police officer nudged by.

At the Qushla, the administrative headquarters of the Ottoman government in Baghdad a century ago, the tourists snapped photos. Off to the side, a guard placed himself strategically in front of a plaque that noted the buildings had been rehabilitated during the Saddam Hussein era.

As the tour neared its end, Michael Pearson, a 77-year-old architect from a family of three generations of London architects, was wilting in the heat. He wore a blue pinstripe suit with a red handkerchief in the pocket, a red gingham shirt and red tie.

Unlike most of the others on the tour, Mr. Pearson had been to Baghdad before — but that had been 30 years ago.

“It’s looking very tired after three wars,” he said. “It’s very sad.”

At the Shahbandar Cafe, a venerable hangout for intellectuals, men sipped sweet tea and smoked hookahs. The walls were lined with black-and-white photos of a glorious looking, unrecognizable city. A bulbul bird hopped around in a cage.

Gary L. Russell, a staff architect from the Boston Landmarks Commission, said what had surprised him most about Baghdad was the city’s quiet at night. Much of that, of course, is due to Baghdad’s nighttime curfew.

“The damage is not as extensive as I’d thought,” Mr. Russell said. “You don’t get this sense that it is a dangerous place like it was two or three years ago.”

At the Baghdadi Museum, there is a saying by a blind, 11th-century philosopher and poet, Abu Ala al-Ma’ari, posted on a wall: “One who lived and died in Baghdad, as if he has moved from heaven to heaven.”

Inside, the architects and city planners ate lunch, perhaps dreaming up ways to make the poem a reality. Outside, a clutch of policemen and soldiers kept people away.

A version of this article appears in print on April 8, 2010, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: In a Tour for Visitors, Iraq’s Past Is Present