I mean this quite literally. (Sorry to all who thought I was going to finally make some sort of commentary on the political situation here. It would be impossible as I don't understand the conflicting views of what Allawi stands for - or the goals of any of the other candidates for that matter). Anyway, back to my point: the roads immediately following the election were dangerous... at least for those of us who don't know them well. The photo above left was stolen from a news site and depicts Baghdad. However, in Kurdistan, the election campaign posters were adhered to street signs, including those over highways. Over Newruz, a number of us Erbil-based expats went to Turkey overland. On the way back, on those dark roads from the North, we were rather nervous about accidentally ending up in Mosul given that we couldn't read any of the signs! Although the posters have been stripped down, big streaks of glue and paper remain. A small thing to note here, but for whatever reason, we found it at the same time both surprising and unsurprising.
Later this year (with students' permission), I hope to share with you some of our students' conflicted emotions as they struggled with their own views on whether or not they really needed to vote, their trust (or lack thereof) in the system and their opinions of what their vote really meant.(Some of them are currently writing essays on surrounding topics).
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