Birthday in Basra

My 50th birthday last year was a noteworthy one and I wanted to mark the occasion by celebrating with family and friends. This year it was not a big deal so I didn’t mind being here. Nonetheless my birthday turned out to be one of the best days I’ve had in Iraq, including the time I was here last year; the day turned out to be something special.

We were scheduled to meet our host for the day, Sayed Al-Moosawi, at his farmhouse for breakfast. Our team has had many occasions to enjoy sumptuous mid-day feasts but this was the first time I had the opportunity to experience an Iraqi breakfast. After customary greetings and handshakes all around, we were led to a table laid out with food, set in the shade outside the farmhouse. The table was set with platters of flatbread, different soft white cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, black olives, walnuts, tomato and cucumber, mixed greens, jam, hot milk, and tea. We sat and ate and talked and swatted flies. Very relaxing.

Our host is a very interesting, influential, and obviously powerful man. I have met many sheiks in Iraq but this was the first time that I had occasion to meet a cleric. He had an appearance that many Americans would consider stereotypical: bearded with glasses, rather portly, wearing a black turban, a collarless white shirt buttoned to his neck, with a long flowing gray robe that he would gather around him, and matching gray shoes. Clerics, of course, are religious leaders, but Mr. Moosawi is so much more than this. He is also a very successful businessman, with interests in a private hospital, oil services, telecommunications, trading, transportation, and security services among many others.

As we soon learned, he is also an innovator with respect to agriculture. The innovations we saw that day included large sprinkler irrigation systems, tissue culture of dates, artificial insemination of cattle using cryopreserved sperm, drip irrigation of date trees, and using manufactured feed in his fish ponds. He owns a date factory. He has emus and Thompson’s gazelles. He owns a couple of beautiful Arabian horses.

I was so impressed with his hospitality and his leadership that I let slip at breakfast that this day was my birthday and that I was very happy to be spending this day with him. He was very excited to be hosting me on my birthday. After spending about an hour at his fish ponds, we climbed back into the Humvee’s for a drive to the next stop, a riverboat moored in the Shatt al-Arab waterway right in downtown Basra. It is Mr. Moosawi’s intention to use this boat to offer two-hour river cruises. We sat in an air-conditioned lounge on the top deck for a mid-morning snack of soft drinks, fruit, dates, and cappuccinos prepared at the snack bar on board. Life is good!

Our next stop was the tissue culture laboratory and date factory. The date factory was not very busy because this is the slow time of year. During the height of the season, the factory employs about 60 people, nearly all women, some of whom are war widows, others with some disability. This was another characteristic of our host that emerged as a theme: social responsibility. Like many of the sheiks we have met, Mr. Moosawi acknowledges that true leadership means being generous and compassionate. He provides not only religious leadership but also provides for the material welfare of the people who follow him. He was very explicit in saying this.

After our tour of the date factory it was time for lunch. Once again, an elaborate feast was prepared in our honor. There was the usual huge platter of aromatic rice with lamb, but there were also several kinds of wonderfully prepared fish, including pomfret and some kind of sea bream. I’ve become a big fan of Iraqi pickles. My favorites at this meal were the pickled eggplant stuffed with walnuts and the mango with chiles. There were a couple of soups, including a sublime okra and tomato soup. We ate all this at a long table set in the shade outside with fans serving only to push the hot air around. After eating our fill and continuing our conversations, Mr. Moosawi invited us inside to the relief of his air-conditioned office. Tea was ordered and then a large cake was brought into the room. Apparently after I mentioned my birthday to him in the morning, he had sent for a cake! Mr. Moosawi himself took a small knife and trimmed some of a red frosting rose on the cake and painted the number “51” on the white frosting. I was extremely moved. Of course at this point I was filled to bursting, as we had seemingly been eating all day, so I could only eat a token piece of cake.

You may be trying to read between the lines and ask “What is he after?” or “What is he trying to get out of you?” These are fair questions and I’m not sure I know the answer but I have no doubt that his friendliness and generosity are genuine. I think he is cultivating his friendships, especially with the lieutenant colonel who has been accompanying us on our missions and who is in a position to make strategic investments that may benefit Mr. Moosawi. But we look at people like Mr. Moosawi as being in a position to influence other farmers to adopt new technologies and practices, which can make better use of increasingly precious resources like water. Thus, investing in projects with Mr. Moosawi, especially simple, low-cost field demonstrations, can accelerate the diffusion of innovations to other farmers because Mr. Moosawi has their respect. These have the potential to increase agricultural output and raise the standard of living for the many Iraqis who continue to struggle to better their lives.