An American tank unit that was guarding the hotel eventually pulled out, leaving security in the hands of Iraqi civilians. In October, 2005, a suicide bomber driving a cement mixer had triggered an explosion that nearly brought down the hotel’s eighteen-story tower. But even the Palestine made them nervous. Entering and leaving the Green Zone, the fortified heart of the American presence, had become too risky. They lived in violent neighborhoods that were surrounded by militia checkpoints. The two Iraqis, Othman and Laith, had asked to meet me at the Palestine because it was the only place left in Baghdad where they were willing to be seen with an American. The management.” The management consisted of a desk clerk and a few men in black leather jackets slouched in armchairs and holding two-way radios. At the business center on the first floor. A sign from another era read, “We have great pleasure in announcing the opening of the Internet café 24 hour a day. In the lobby, a bucket collected drips of rainwater at the gift shop, which was closed, a shelf displayed film, batteries, and sheathed daggers covered in dust.

A few Arabic television studios had rooms on the upper floors of the building, but the hotel was otherwise vacant. On a cold, wet night in January, I met two young Iraqi men in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, in central Baghdad.

Sniper tower state of decay 2