basra
the southernmost city in iraq and once
referred to as the venice of the middle
east
the city was once an important part of
international trade routes
with many canals zigzagging their way
across the city and it is still the
economic capital of iraq
sadly years of conflict as well as
simple neglect and lack of basic
services
has meant that basra is no longer the
beautiful city it once was
while i plan to show you some of the
hard truths in this video
and the problem this once great city
faces
i also want to show you the incredible
people we met here
their kindness and generosity their
smiles and laughter
because even if a city or a country has
suffered great loss
it's the people who will slowly bring it
back to its former glory
[Music]
we're going to spend the rest of the
morning exploring old basra and i just
want to tell you guys that this used to
be a very important and very beautiful
city here in the south of iraq people
used to come from all over the middle
east to come here on holidays in the 60s
and 70s but sadly it quite deteriorated
after the 80s and after basra was used
as the main place to invade kuwait the
conflict against kuwait started here
a lot of basra got bombed a lot of
people died here we were even just told
that many of these canals that you see
in the city many of these rivers blood
turned these rivers and canals red and
there was just dirty blood water going
through the city i'm giving you this
information to let you know
why maybe it's so run down today because
it definitely is one of the
dirtiest and most run-down cities we've
been to here in iraq and i'm not trying
to speak badly of it i'm just trying to
be honest and when i show you this canal
that used to be the main canal here in
basra one of the most beautiful canals
with historic ancient beautiful
architectural buildings running the
whole way along that you will soon see
and now it's just a thick
green color and there is trash
absolutely everywhere
[Music]
even though this beautiful street that
we're walking down well what was once a
very beautiful street with old ottoman
architecture buildings um it would have
been at once a very beautiful place to
visit but apparently the government has
done literally no work here no work to
restore the building since the 1960s and
i also just heard that they haven't put
up a single new street sign here in the
city of basra since the 1960s so there
are really no state services here and
anything that is growing or new like
shopping malls
is probably in the private sector so for
example this morning we went to a pretty
nice cafe we had our coffee we saw many
clothing stores and small malls but that
is all the private sector so the
government hasn't really done anything
to rehab rehabilitate this city you know
to beautify it to what it once was so i
think we're just going to walk down here
by one of the main canals next to all of
these beautiful ottoman style buildings
hopefully speak to the locals and see
what the city used to be like
[Music]
okay so like i was saying most of the
houses in this area have not been
restored but there apparently are five
main buildings that did get restored in
the 1990s this is one of them that has
been protected and is now sort of like a
cultural center that they want to
preserve the architecture of this
building and it is so so beautiful
[Music]
okay guys so what a lot of this city is
indeed deteriorating and has seen a lot
of neglect and not a lot of love sadly
from the government or the people there
are areas that are getting revived so
this entire area here with the help of
unesco and the european union is
actually getting revived getting
restored and protected so they are
starting to restore some of these
beautiful old ottoman era buildings and
the only problem really is like the
drainage the sewage and all of the trash
in the rivers but honestly if they were
able to clean up this river a bit more
it would be so so beautiful you can
definitely see the beauty of the past
and why so many people would have come
here on their holidays in the 60s and
70s from all over the middle east
i think we are going to go into this
building and it is one of the buildings
that has been restored and the sign says
iraqi plastics plastic artists
association one of the buildings that
has been restored is an art gallery and
the resident artist told us stories of
old basra before
uh
is saying that the cities is completely
have changed the worst words
i remember russian workers they used to
work here and then at night they go to
the river having like coffees and
hanging out and
even women
here they used to have like more
fancy clothes clothes and you know like
it was a really modern city at that time
we've just come into one more building
which is also like perfectly preserved
you could say this used to be belonging
to a jewish family here in basra and
then they sold it to the greek embassy
like i said basra is the hottest city in
iraq
and today i think it's like 48 degrees
celsius
okay i lied i said how hot it was and uh
dog has just checked apparently it's
like 51 degrees
51 degrees celsius
[Music]
so we are trying two different types of
fish here that are quite famous in basra
this one is called zuri fish
and the second one is called
so as always good bread as well
[Music]
really good
really crispy
let's put it in some bread
guys this fish is so tasty so i'm adding
the fish and some onion and some of this
sort of um
hummus in this
some sort of lentil soup lentils
the food here is unbelievable
[Music]
oh another amazing lunch here in iraq uh
trying traditional fish from basra they
actually told us that the fish is caught
down in the marshes where we've just
come from which is pretty cool
so we tried two different types of fish
and uh yeah the whole whole table is now
gone empty of food we just ate
everything it was incredible
obviously every single meal you have in
iraq you have this absolutely delicious
bread um this is the kind of one that we
had for breakfast and for lunch but
anyone they put falafel inside
and we're
as the sun is about to set we've just
come here to
the banks of the river here in basra
just to have a little walk it seems to
be a theme park behind us as well
[Music]
let's go we're going to go on a boat
ride at sunset in basra the very last
thing we're going to do excited
i'm so excited
i think this is going to be amazing i
can't believe iran it's just
20 minutes away as you grant that's how
far sides we are
[Music]
i'm going to end the vlog here uh it's
been an amazing day here in basra i hope
you enjoyed this video and you got a
little taste of what it's like to visit
basra in 2021 um we are now going to be
driving five hours back to baghdad and
this is actually the end of the seven
day tour that we've been doing around
iraq but not the end of our time in iraq
we'll still be traveling to a few other
places but officially the end of our
tour i really hope you enjoyed the
series so far if you did don't forget to
give it a thumbs up and think about
subscribing to my channel down below see
you guys back in baghdad