BAGHDAD AT NIGHT ALONE : STREET ENCOUNTERS (KARRADA) اسكتلندية بمفردها في بغداد
good evening from baghdad [Applause] listen to that it's i love that sound i'm just i'm i just left the hotel and i'm just going for a walk across the street to get some food and a cup of tea but i want more so i just want to show you because i'm going to probably be out for a couple of hours i want to show you i never wear my hair down normally because i don't like it i hate wearing my hair down i'm wearing it down on purpose it will stand out more and i know people are afraid to come here and i just want to show you that it's perfectly fine to walk along the streets looking as obvious as i am [Music] everybody thinks i want a taxi i don't this is how you cross the road here no no it's okay you basically just walk and i hate doing this but everybody else does it thank you okay you just walk and everybody stops i know it seems a bit weird right but that's how it is that's how that's how you cross the road here in baghdad i think i'm going to have a cup of tea before i start my walk because i'm going to walk all the way down this way hi how are you i'm going to have a cup of tea here hello hello hello how are you how are you i'm just coming for some chai chicken chives yes [Music] thank thank you all right lovely how much oh thank you oh that was nice i have a nice cup of tea this guy that works here lived in germany so he's i'm gonna walk up that way and then i'm gonna walk back just just so you can see like the last few days i've been traveling all over so i went to babylon i went to uruk i went to ur and i went to the marshes so i've been all over the place i got back last night and i'm knackered i was knackered hello hello oh he's coming back he asked to be videoed so he wants and he's asking when i'm going to upload it so bless him french fries tomatoes and always always put a bit of the fat in on the top if you like it that's the shawarma man so this place has been for 50 years no no no no no we have another one oh you do all right okay but no this is good like five or six years behind the scenes here so photo session all right quick in front of photo session there okay guys so i had my cup of tea and i said i would go back they offered me food they wanted to do photo photos in the kitchen so so i was saying you know yesterday not yesterday hello a couple of days that's that's the taylor from the last time when we did this that thing when they were filming for this tourism thing project i really don't know what what it is or anything like that they wanted to do a social experiment hello it's another falafel place here so the social experiment involved me going into a store and i had to pretend that i had lost my wallet my passport my money my phone like that i'd left my purse my bag in the car in the taxi oh my god it was awful i felt so bad doing it you know they had hidden cameras and i had a microphone on and it the whole point of it was to see how people would help me and everybody helped me it was so i felt so bad like literally and i'm saying at the end somebody you know they brought me some water it was a fruit and vegetable place some guy gave me an orange told me to sit down everything was going to be okay the other guy asked if i wanted water did i want tea did i want anything not to worry i don't speak arabic either so it was me going in there quite a few people spoke enough english to understand me anyway so i had to get my friends to step in in the end when this guy got on the phone to the british embassy um he asked what embassy it was and i'm like oh he's calling the embassy you need to come step in so they stepped in and told them it was like a social experiment uh the guy didn't want to be on television anyway so that it's okay so i don't think i'm giving away any secrets but that's what um that was the social experiment to see how people would treat a poor foreigner that was in distress and i i was literally look how pretty the musk is i just got stuck talking to the traffic policeman for ages and i have no idea what the hell he was talking about and i think i've crossed the road in the wrong place all right i've managed to cross two roads now it's quite like i said it's so funny crossing the roads it's it looks like it's dangerous but it's not because people stop am i lost i don't think so but i don't recognize this garage i just hope i've come the right way i know kind of where i'm going but i'm following where i'm i'm following the bright lights i think i probably feel safer walking around baghdad streets that i do in other major cities i've been to like new york london other countries you get nothing but positive attention i just wish more people would come here hello how are you what's your name emma and you okay what's your name becca becker ah nice to meet you nice to meet you ah thank you thank you take care america uh no i go this way okay thank you um i'm good i'm good no no that's okay i'm okay thank you thank you i don't know what you would say i think he was offering to walk ask if i needed him to walk with me i think i'm coming to i recognize this place from the other night over here i made it i've come the right direction um here we go bright light and on this street there's so many like men's clothes shops and barbers but i don't see any women hairdressers there's so many barbers and stuff oh wow and i can't remember the name of the street corrada oh i wanted to show you something also it's my passport for those of you who do not believe i'm british you know like people think about americans are not welcome here but the number of times i swear the number of times i've walked people have asked me if i'm an american it's crazy so many people have asked if i'm an american but in a nice way like they're really like oh excited like you're from america and some of them are almost disappointed um that i'm not so there's no bitterness there's no all these food places all over there's no bitterness or anything americans don't need to be afraid to come here i mean it's so easy to travel here now you know you just got the visa you get visa on arrival so it's it's super easy to get here and now tourism is starting up there's there's more tour companies starting up and tonight i'm on my own okay i don't hi thank you tonight i don't have anyone with me i don't have anyone to translate so yep i'm walking the bad streets that everybody thinks in baghdad alone at night with long blonde hair and everybody's being nothing but friendly they have these like travel warnings for so many countries but this this might be the worst but it's the best so here's a tea place [Music] where everybody sits and has a tea and shisha or nargila as they call it here this is where i came the other day i've been up and down this place several times they have um oh you find these kind of places well you find these places all over the place all all different kinds of olives and everything are really really common it's so popular here and i've had it in so many different places uh i guess this is a fish like i had at the marshes and they put it in these baskets and they'll cook it on the side of the streets so many places hello yes women do come out some of them wear are more western clothes than i wear sometimes uh here's the sunflower thing going [Music] they have like the fire in there so that's how they make and they have chips everything all sorts of stuff what's this what's this what's this some sunflower seed oh yeah right yes bye thank you i think he was tess i think he was testing me let's see if i knew what they were this is a really cool um coffee place i've had it been here before and it has books i think this might be coffee in a book i'm not sure but it's really busy inside you can read a book the first time i went there i was sitting outside talking to an old guy i didn't vlog it obviously otherwise i would have you would have seen it he was so friendly he was old like he was probably about 80 or something so he was and he spoke really good english so he was telling me his life story and everything like that it was um it was really interesting yeah making sure i didn't have the no no camera because um some of the things he was saying lots of interesting people to meet hello are you a job yes of course i'm from scotland oh really yeah in iraq thank you thank you britannia britannia russia oh you're strategic [Laughter] i meet lots of people they speak different languages like that that other guys spoke spanish very well and that guy just spoke russian and i only speak english i'm very like unintelligent compared to some of the people here everybody speaks more than one language it seems the guy down there they don't even though they don't speak english i can order food there because i've been twice before and he knows what i the menu's in arabic but he knows what i like hello hello baby good how are you hello hello hello see all the barbers it's not just like you don't just get a haircut when you have it for your guy here good how are you hi good how are you you don't just get a haircut when you come to the barbers here you get it's a big major thing they take it very seriously it comes with shisha and tea it's a whole performance how are you i'm good how are you very good okay nice thank you very much very good orchestral [Music] fine to walk around yes very good and nice nice on very good in days of the ills and nice good called without mauritania britannia british british [Music] oh i don't know what he was saying half of it but it was all nice i think he was very just very happy to see somebody walking down the street i don't know lots of tea places i am really hungry now so all the guys come out and play their dominoes and stuff dominoes backgammon chess all that kind of stuff i think this is where i eat in here i'm gonna go and eat in here if you know me in here all right i'll show you this place here i can go in here even though the menu is arabic they unders they understand salaam alaikum hello i'm gonna go i wanna sit here yes okay this is my usual place not really my usual place but i've been here a few times and the menu is um like this it's all arabic i can use google i can use google translate but i'm not gonna because i'm just gonna say chicken so when you come to most places to eat um you'll get so many appetizers and the food comes out like in record breaking time i don't really know what is on the menu all i know is that they have chicken and kebabs so i'm gonna have chicken but they get loads of it has loads of sight loads of side stuff but sometimes i'll use google trends if i wanted if this is it if i wanted to can you see that when in doubt google translate chicken chicken chicken now tomorrow chicken they know what i like here oh it's too complicated they have a whole bunch of stuff on the menu but it just gets too complicated and i'm fine with chicken because it's a lot and you get loads okay so first off we get this is normal you'll get soup i don't even know what kind of soup it is i don't know one's like a veg vegetable broth quite bitter and the other one's just regular and then all the side dishes that come and it's actually really cheap so here here we go [Applause] oh look at this this is typical so you'll get you know hazard salads um hummus pickles pickled vegetables so i'm gonna turn this off for a bit while i eat so no sooner did i turn that off so i've only been in here maybe less than five minutes so my food came chicken beans and all this so now i ate i'm just heading back to the hotel i'm good how are you [Laughter] hello people are so funny [Music] i'm from scotland nice everyone's so friendly nice everybody's everybody's been nice it's good yeah it's very good it's my second time here it's a good time here i was here in november and now i come back i like it very much do you like it i like iraq really yeah everybody the people birthday in the greece you know greece yes yeah my president oh really yeah my mother agrees with my father in europe ah that's nice my job now in the greek embassy in four months old oh you're working oh yeah okay okay before uh but you've always lived in here yeah my lady by living here yeah yeah it was nice to meet you all right take care bye bye so nice i got i literally i can't believe how many barbers there are there's like one after another such a different atmosphere in the daytime as a night time so it gets really quite busy at night here i'm gonna it's very nice here so guys as you can see it's pretty very safe to walk along the streets on your own [Applause] that's a chickpeas you are welcome thank you something you need oh no thank you thank you so much [Music] thank you have fun here oh yes i'm having fun here yeah how are you i'm from scotland nice to meet to meet you we're happy to have fun here yes i'm having lots of fun here yes i'm happy to see you good yeah i'm happy to be here you need something i'll be helpful oh thank you very much everybody's so friendly thank you you're welcome thank you all right i'm going to have a cup of tea here so i was just walking past as you saw before and um hello and david david hello everybody they invited me to have a cup of tea to join them for a cup of tea so i'm having a cup of tea here sitting outside the tea shop having a cup of tea and a bladder shooting the breeze watching the world go by the city yes let me see who bishop who luis luis who's that this is me oh that's you yeah i'm a cop oh you're a cop yeah i'm a cop this is my friend this is a louis sacco the cardinal oh yeah i've never heard of him of the catholic people iraqi bishop an iraqi bishop in charge of the yeah foreign all right okay thank you so much that was so nice and when that's that happens a lot when you're walking by yourself people will just ask you to sit and have tea with them hi good morning good how are you and i know people make comments like you know all these tea places people ask like where are the women well there are women on the streets but they just don't go to the tea places uh they go they there was quite a lot in the coffee place they just don't go to these tea places not many actually i've seen a few we'll go to some of the tea places and drink smoked shisha also but it's and all kinds like some have their head covered some don't it's just such it's ever it's so different it's very diverse very diverse city and i just feel sorry for people i really do and i can't imagine what they've been through over the years how hard a life must have been um for them with all the wars and everything i mean jesus has been through years and years and years and years and years of crap basically thank thanks with not my with hello with western interference whatever you want to call it and yeah not one person holds a grudge to a tourist you know i'm welcomed regardless of what my country did so that's why i don't want americans to be afraid to come here because there's no need so i'm gonna i'm gonna follow this guy across the road let's have it hello i'm i'm just following him best tip when you're in another when you're in a foreign country and you don't know how to cross the road or you don't um just stick next to a local stand right beside them and follow them across the road that works yeah i'm i was a little lost for a second i always stick like glue to a local and then and then i have no problem getting across the road can i come this way [Applause] this does not look familiar i'm lost i went the wrong way it's okay i'm going the right direction don't worry the traffic is also always a problem here in baghdad you passed so many police why i don't feel unsafe at all look at the mosque [Music] oh it's so pretty it's a bit scared of crossing over here so this is for those square here it's so pretty at night it's all lit up lovely the water the fountains weren't on before but they're on now but it looks so nice okay i've got to face it this um traffic policeman i wonder if it's the same one that was there before so i'm back there's a hotel palace sign over there which is not my hotel mine's not far from it oh oh my god [Music] hello on here shortness yeah i'm not giving you my personal facebook yeah instagram okay i'll be back tomorrow tomorrow okay jesus christ oh my god i couldn't get away from him i don't know what he was saying i'm sure some people know oh i need toothpaste uh maybe the self toothpaste in here is okay no i did this yeah yeah yeah perfect yes what are you laughing at it's funny thank you very much i'm from scotland thank you thank you very much bye bye now i'm going back to brush my teeth hello hello oh i'm coming to my my hood now this is my familiar territory that was so nice i couldn't record that but the police car behind i got picture like the guy with his heavy-duty police gear on like they asked me to if they could take my picture and i said sure i said if i can take a picture with you and they said yeah as long as i didn't get the police car um badge on a number on it or whatever and they i told them where i was staying and he just went like that their watch for me walking home not that i need it but but they said that they're watching my back while i walk home hello [Music] so there's three bars on this street wow [Music] wow i think they've been in the bar okay guys that's me i've done my walking i'm gonna call it a day good night
2022-02-05 06:19
