Friday, January 11, 2008

When Hell Freezes Over

The cliche above is often meant for one person to use a certain type of sarcasm against another, implying that something will never happen. Well to be fair, nothing froze in Baghdad, but it did snow in the Iraqi capital today. No one can really recall anything like this happening for decades. Is it just a freak and bizarre occurrence, or a sign from up above?

From Yahoo News:

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings — delight.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

It snows up in the north in the Kurdish areas, but never down in the desert. For once, the snow actually brought calm to the city. No violence was reported late into the afternoon. Isn't it amazing that little water crystals falling from the sky can bring peace where the U.S. military and Iraqi government has miserably failed.

I only wish it snowed more often there.