Nuns move through the crowd at National park ahead of the papal mass on April 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate Catholic Mass for an audience of 45,000 at the ballpark. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

With skyscrapers reaching into the sky like the spires of a secular cathedral, I dropped to a knee on 5^th Avenue as the nun lowered her head and gently kissed her prayer book. I held my breath and released the shutter. She closed the book after praying and singing with her sisters and turned her eyes back to the street in hopes of catching a glimpse of the holiest man she knows. Like tens of thousands of other Catholics, both everyday faithful and clergy alike, they had come to New York to experience and pray with Pope Benedict XVI.

When my editors offered me the opportunity to cover the pope in both Washington, DC, and New York City I gladly accepted. I knew that covering Pope Benedict XVI would be just like covering any head-of-state. There would be layers and layers of security, bureaucracy, public affairs people and hours of boredom punctuated with that one fleeting moment. All the opportunities where the press and the people were able to see the pope were staged, packaged and predictable. The pope would arrive on time, move with steady purpose from pre-marked spot to pre-marked spot. He would cruise along in the back of the Popemobile waving like an animatronic holy man behind bullet-proof glass. The uniformity of vestments and religious procedure, combined with the scale of the events, would make it all a predictable pageant. Knowing that, I decided to put energy in finding people who hoped this visit would be a holy experience. I wanted to find photographs that spoke to a beautiful combination of the personal and the public: the spiritual privacy within the public religious pageantry.

WASHINGTON - APRIL 17: Catholic priests line up in the concourse to give the faithful communion as Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at the new Nationals Park April 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. This is the first of two Masses that the pope will say during his five-day trip to the United States including one in New York’s Yankee Stadium on Sunday, April 20. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

So, meeting the nuns from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity from Seattle, Washington, was a blessing. They were friendly, offering me food and conversation; and humorous, snapping my photo while I took theirs. One moment the nuns circled together under Manhattan’s hovering towers and prayed. The next moment, as Pope Benedict XVI rolled by, they were screaming and hopping like 1950s Beatles fans, shouting “We love you Holy Father!” and “Viva el Papa!”

More experiences like that helped me pull back the pomp from the papal visit. In a stadium filled with 45,000 worshipers in Washington, I sought out a woman with hands clasped, head bowed in prayer. As pilgrims from around the world poured into the nation’s capitol ahead of the Pope’s arrival, I found a light moment where a boy high-fives a life-size photo of the Pope. After 60,000 people filed into the Yankee Stadium, I photographed the woman locked outside the gates, shouting for the pope to save and bless her. And, with a little luck and fleet feet, I found the subway car carrying a dozen nuns, their joyful voices singing “We are praying for Pope Benedict!”

NEW YORK - APRIL 19: A nun from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity from Seattle, Washington, kisses her prayer book after prayer with her sisters while waiting for Pope Benedict XVI along 5th Avenue April 19, 2008 in New York City. The pope will make a historic visit to the former site of the World Trade Center and celebrate Mass in Yankee Stadium before departing New York April 20. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The “official” coverage was not without its logistical challenges, either. Call times for security sweeps were amazingly early. Buses would leave from the “media hotel” in the wee hours of the morning to carry groggy journalists to Nationals Park, Yankee Stadium, and Ground Zero. Because I cover heads-of-state in DC every day, I’m used to invasive screening applied to our bodies and our gear. Shooters not accustomed to this got a real lesson in what is public and what is private at the hands of the Secret Service. All pockets were turned out and metal removed, bags emptied, laptops had to be pulled from bags and booted up, lens caps removed, cameras turned on and shutters tripped. And, finally, a clumsy, wet-nosed K-9 stepped all over our gear, sniffing for bomb-making material and leaving a mess behind.

There was also the constant pressure of deadline. The New York Police Department informed us that no stepladders or backpacks were going to be allowed along 5^th Avenue as the pope moved up the street past thousands of adoring fans. To satisfy the 24-second news cycle and instant deadline world, Getty Images reserved a hotel room near the Pope’s route from which we could transmit images quickly. But, as with all massive and ever-shifting events on the streets of New York, I saw plenty of backpacks and more than a handful of ladders on the avenue. However, I did talk to a photographer who was threatened with arrest for opening his laptop on the street even after the pontiff had long passed.

The prayer service at Ground Zero posed a real challenge because our preset shooting position changed several times. Our original position in the pit was two stories up, 100 yards away and behind the Pope. Secret service didn’t like us there and moved us closer and in a position to see the Pope in profile. “Great!” we thought until we realized that the ceremony’s attendant would block us from seeing the Pope during most of the ceremony.

At the end of the visit, I felt my best images were of the least fortunate and most faithful. These included images of the worshippers who didn’t score the much-coveted tickets to see the Pope’s Mass, milling around outside the stadium, buying bootleg buttons and Bibles with the Pope’s image not because it was the officially sanctioned memorabilia, but because they love him. My cameras focused on the crowd that stood for hours for a chance to see the Popemobile from half a mile away simply because it carried a man, though small in stature, who carried the hope and faith of millions of people.

NEW YORK - APRIL 20: Rosa Rodriguez of Queens, New York, wears a flag with the image of Pope Benedict XVI on her head while singing and praying across the street from Yankee Stadium April 20, 2008 in the Bronx, New York. The pontiff is scheduled to celebrate Mass for about 55,000 people at the stadium. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Gay Pride March - Thousands marched from Zoo Lake in Rosebank in Johannesburg to show their pride and celebrate diversity. Photo by: Shepherd Tozvireva 

A woman carries the one piece of furniture she has left - a chair- after she was evicted from her apartment building in Johannesburg. Photo by Sechaba Nhlapo

As the second class of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program (PDP) is about to graduate and the first class graduates are proving their skills in their new jobs, it’s time to display and acknowledge the work done by the students.

PDP is a year-long photography course which provides aspiring photojournalists in South Africa the practical support of leading professionals and necessary skills to enter this highly competitive field. It culminates in a three month internship for each emerging photographer at a local newspaper.

To view some of the images from the newest generation of Africa’s photojournalists, don’t miss Portfolio 07 - an exhibition of work from the latest PDP graduates. The exhibition will run through February 6, 2008 at the Photo Workshop Gallery at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg.

This course was launched in 2005 with significant support from Getty Images. After two cycles, seven students have graduated and 8 more will earn their certificates by the end 2007. Not one week passes in Johannesburg without PDP students’ images on the front pages and inside local publications.

A man is arrested by police for public violence while protesting against poor service delivery. Photo by Sechaba Nhlapo.

Sister Bernadette Boulle (pictured above) is the only one of her five siblings still alive. She worked as an office clerk for nine years before entering the faith as a nun. Picture by Samantha Simmons.

Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

I have been documenting the AIDS pandemic in Sub-Sahara Africa for about five years. Nearly 9,000 Africans die from the disease everyday, leaving millions of children orphaned. By the time you have finished watching the short, yet powerful film below, around 30 people will have died from AIDS.

You can’t escape AIDS in Africa - you are either infected or affected.

 

 Tom Stoddart video [4:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Kabul, Afghanistan: I came to the Malalai hospital to shoot a story on surviving childbirth. The maternity facility delivers an average of 60-100 babies a day. In Afghanistan, one in nine Afghan women die during or shortly after pregnancy, which remains one of the highest mortality rates in the world for maternal mortality. In many cases, Afghan conservative cultural sensibilities put the health of the Afghan mother at risk.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Ziajan, 35, was waiting on the operation table; she was almost full term and had a ruptured placenta along with heavy vaginal bleeding - every minute counted. The problem was her husband was not there to sign the consent form so the nurses just waited and started on another emergency case. In the mean time, Ziajan was in extreme pain. She was getting some blood to stabilize her until the cesarean operation could begin.

Ziajan’s case was truly heart breaking, the baby inside her womb was dead. He was to be her first son after having nine girls. Out of the nine, two had already died. In Afghan culture, having a male is extremely important and many women don’t have the choice but to keep trying until they are finally successful. Given Ziajan’s age and her health condition, this would have to be her last try. Knowing the Afghan culture like I do, I now understand why her husband was absent.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

About 45 minutes went by until the nurses could get going, I was told they got a signature from her brother. They started the c-section, the incision was made into her belly to bring out the fetus as I continued to photograph. All of a sudden the power went out and the room went dark. A few minutes passed but it seemed like ages. It was the second day of the big EID holiday, just after the end of the holy month of Ramadan so who knew how long it would take for someone to turn on the generator.

The surgeon was getting anxious and I knew this case was critical. I said to one nurse in Dari that I would be right back. I made the quick decision to go and grab a small key light I had in my photo bag. It was only a tiny light that I used to find things at night but it was all I had. I scrambled to find it in the dark but finally managed. I ran back and held the light over the pregnant woman’s belly. Immediately the operation team started up again using only my light. It was hard to keep it on since it was just one of those purse size ones that was made for short-time usage, once or twice it went off and the nurses started to please with me to try harder to keep it on.

Photographing was over for certain as I watched them bring out the lifeless baby boy. Finally the generator was cranked up and the lights came back on. Ziajan’s condition was still serious but the surgeon smiled a bit and turned to me saying, “tasha kor.” This means thank you in Dari.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Iraq, many people might be surprised to learn, has a functioning court system. Well, “functioning” might be too strong of a word, but it does have an array of non-religious criminal courts run by the Iraqi government. A few days ago I had chance to see a small one operate, up close.

The chance came up suddenly. I was on the ground at an Iraqi-run jail, photographing the conditions there, when one of the Iraqi guards called out a series of names. One by one prisoners hopped up from their spots on the floor to assemble in the courtyard outside. An Iraqi translator working with the US Army was with me; he keeps his real name secret, like all the Iraqis working for the Americans, though his nickname was emblazoned on his US-style fatigues: Slim. I asked Slim what was going on.

“They are calling them to appear in court,” he said.

“Well, I better go with them and see what it’s all about,” I said, after a pause.

“Why not?” Slim said.

The ten or so prisoners all seemed to know what to do: they grabbed orange jumpsuits and blindfolds from a pile in the corner, and started to don them over their clothes. Then they silently lined up for the trip. They were surprisingly docile, with the vacant stare of prisoners resigned to their lot.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

The prisoners were loaded onto the back of a truck to head to the court building nearby. They removed their blindfolds themselves long enough to scramble down from the truck when they arrived, then put them back on. Each prisoner laid a hand on the one in front and they were led in a long file into the court building.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

This court building clearly wasn’t designed as such; it was a just simple small structure, the size of a small house.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

The prisoners were brought into a room in the back, and then one by one brought into a makeshift courtroom. Two judges, balding men in ties, sat behind small desks, with a stack of prisoner dossiers by their elbows. A middle-aged woman in black sat intermittently in a chair across from them; she, it turns out, was an Iraqi lawyer and acted as a sort of public defender. A TV was on in the corner, quietly playing Lebanese music videos.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

A prisoner was brought in before the judges; I asked Slim to translate what was going on.

“The judge is telling him that he is accused of being in a kidnapping ring,” he said.

“What is the prisoner saying?” The young man in orange was rambling in Arabic and gesturing wildly.

“He says, ‘No, I am not.’”

“That’s all he’s saying? Look, he’s still talking.”

Slim cocked his head toward the prisoner.

“Okay, he’s saying: ‘No, I don’t know any kidnappers, I am innocent, I just own a simple shop in Ameriyah,’ things like that.”

The judge nodded, took a few notes, and then sent the prisoner off. Once he left I talked to the judge.

“So the guy says he’s innocent?” I asked.

“Yes, he says he is not a kidnapper,” the judge said, still writing. “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“How many people admit to guilt here? Does anyone come here and say ‘Yes, I did what you say?’ “

The judge thought a few seconds. “It happens sometimes. Maybe five percent of the time.”

“What’s going to happen to this guy?”

“He will go back to jail, until he has a trial.”

“When will that be?”

The judge smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Sometime.”

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Each of the prisoners was seen in this way, most of them accused of either kidnapping-related crimes or of insurgent activity. One was allegedly found with a bomb in his trunk; he was the most quiet. Most of the others animatedly engaged the judges; some of the prisoners seemed relaxed and smiled a lot, like they were giving a sales pitch.

By lunchtime all the hearings were finished, and I headed back to the US portion of the base, which was so close I walked there. I wasn’t sure if what I’d just seen was an example of justice, or a perversion of it. I’m still not sure. Like any photographer I strive to get to the center of what’s happening, but sometimes even when you get there it’s difficult to ascertain the truth behind what you see. Especially in Iraq.

Picture by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Hatchfest

First of all, Montana — who knew? “How do you feel about flying up to Bozeman in October?” my editor asked. “Ummm, where’s that?” I am pretty sure was my answer. It wasn’t until I actually landed and was greeted by a trio of impossibly friendly HATCHfest volunteers that the stereotypes started to subside. Yes, there was that taxidermy-ed Grizzly Bear by the baggage claim but the minute I was handed a schedule of events I knew I was in for a real treat.

Bozeman is quite possibly like no other place I have ever visited. Home to Montana State University and countless Hollywood escapees, the city has a thriving arts scene. With its Emerson Cultural Center, Ellen Theatre and Thirsty Ear Hi Fi all within walking distance along or near Main Street, downtown Bozeman is nothing short of a feast for the senses.

Picture by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Hatchfest

HATCHfest has been linked with Getty Images since its inception 4 years ago. This year marked my second HATCH and my job was to document the various discussion panels and participate in the photography section of the CNBC journalism lab. What this essentially entailed was acting as a mentor for journalism/photography students from MSU and Bozeman High School. The students were given a brief to capture the essence of HATCH either with a single portrait of one of the visiting Groundbreakers or with a behind- the-scenes, reportage-style photo essay. As in the proverbial real world, a deadline was set and the students were eventually subjected to what I hope was constructive criticism.

Picture by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Hatchfest

Picture by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Hatchfest

What sets the HATCH experience apart from the reality of my world as a professional photographer is just how genuinely friendly and approachable everyone is. While I am blessed to work with an outstanding team at the Getty Images Los Angeles office, I still can’t help but get caught up in the magic that is HATCH. The festival has an integrity that I have personally never experienced before. Most notably, there is none of the pretense I associate with larger arts festivals. Students are actually encouraged to contact their mentors and ask for any advice they might need. In turn, the mentors are just as prepared to drop everything and meet with their students. Perhaps I’ve grown a bit jaded, but I just can’t see that happening at other festivals where gift lounges abound and schmoozing reigns supreme.

But don’t let the lack of hype fool you. HATCH puts on an amazing party. The difference is that HATCH does it completely with heart. And quite a few bottles of Stella…!

From February 2007 through July 2007 I worked with CNN’s Planet in Peril crew running around the globe to survey the state of Earth’s health. We experienced just about every possible climate, every weather condition. I enjoyed the pleasure of a parasite’s company for close to three months after our shoot in Brazil. One of the cameramen was bitten by a spider and had to have his knee lanced to relieve the swelling. Working with Anderson Cooper, Jeff Corwin and Sanjay Gupta we flew, drove, boated, and walked thousands of miles on almost every continent. We slept on more than our fair share of concrete floors. And no, hammocks are not conducive to a good nights sleep. Occasionally our meals of Pringles and Powerbars were punctuated by buffets. Exhaustion and elation create an interesting combination. By the end we were tanked. But we knew it was worth it. Here are some pictures from the journey:

Phnom Penh, Cambodia – March 2007
Releasing birds

Cambodia is a fascinating place. The specter of the Khmer Rouge regime hangs over the country. It’s a predominantly young population. Exceedingly poor. On the streets vendors release a handful of birds for a handful of coins. People walk up, make a prayer and the birds fly free. Environmental activists are doing their best to stop illegal poaching and wildlife trading, but they have their work cut out for them.

Kaktovik, Alaska, USA – April 2007
Polar Bear

He’s not dead. Just sleeping. Sawing logs in the article circle— white on white. We were working with scientists from United States Geological Survey (USGS) doing aerial and on the ground studies of the polar bear population outside of Kaktovik, Alaska, USA. Had to be one of the most remote “towns” I’ve ever seen— at least in the States. Seriously out in the middle of nowhere— cold as all get out— harsh place. But you wouldn’t suspect it from the sleeping bear— conked out on a tranquilizer cocktail— dreaming of a seal buffet. I wanted to shoot something graphic, something clean— and believe me— that far north in Alaska, there are few things to clutter a frame. The white is endless. In 360 degrees it’s endless. Polar bears are not currently on the endangered species list, but there’s a growing movement to put them on preemptively. Protection rather than reaction. That’s the issue we were looking at, and that’s why this one is sleeping. Kicking out a few ZZZZZ’s so USGS can safely gather the data it needs to measure the health of the population. He’ll wake up about an hour later. But by that time we’re on our way— helicopter blades warming up, in search of another bear.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA – July 2007
Tree and sky

A tree trunk leans over the mid-morning sky’s reflection in a small lake. I’m drawn towards abstractions— and the contrast of the jagged branches against gossamer clouds.

Lake Chad, Chad – June 2007
Donkeys

Ribs. The ribs were the first thing that jumped out at me when we stopped the convoy of Land Cruisers at this watering hole. If the health of livestock is any indication the overall health of the people who tend to them, then I knew this was a bad sign. I don’t think anyone has ever described a donkey as a charismatic animal, but these animals were so emaciated they stumbled about purely on the strength of their skeletal systems. All muscle and fat long ago left their bodies.

Lake Chad, Chad – June 2007
Fabric in front of well

With heat easily cresting 115 degrees Fahrenheit, water is an absolute necessity in central Africa. And with Lake Chad seemingly shrinking, an already scare resource is becoming all the more vital. There is water in Africa, but so much of it is dirty, polluted by chemicals or livestock, or other people. Filling up their jerry cans women from a local village gathered around a single spigot, their water lifeline.

Lake Chad, Chad – June 2007
Fish

This one really is dead. A fish washed up on the banks of Lake Chad. We’ve heard the lake is shrinking, fish populations dwindling, and overall size of the remaining fish diminishing. This guy was about the size of my palm. Dead for who knows how long. The water startled the flies every time the waves lapped at the fish’s decaying body. While there are many dead fish in many lakes in many parts of the world, I felt like this one hinted at the relative health of Lake Chad, and the direction it’s heading.

Bangkok, Thailand – March 2007
Woman in boat

The floating market outside of Bangkok, early morning, weird light, weird shadows. There are bridges that pass over the water as vendors paddle up and down hawking produce. It’s pretty touristy. That’s probably the main reason it still exists. But I showed up early and wanted to look for colorful photos as a backdrop to Thai culture. The mangoes looked fantastic— they’re great in Asia. I like the odd, dark shapes angled down the middle of the frame. It’s shadows dancing on the rippling water. It’s motion frozen at 1/125 of a second; the pause button hit on a liquid tango.

Kraho Village, Brazil – February 2007
Kraho boy

The thupp-thupp sound of the helicopter brought the whole village out from their mud huts as we landed in a grass field in the Kraho village on the outskirts of the Amazon. We spent two days there, overnight in sleeping bags on a concrete floor under a straw roof. When it wasn’t drizzling, it was full on raining. We had a bit of sun, but even when it disappeared it was still warm. Most of the Kraho, men and women, wore little more than shorts. And they gathered around us as we gathered footage. After we had been in the village for a couple hours, the village chief decided we all needed to be inducted into the tribe. That meant receiving tribal names and markings on our arms with a blue dye. For some reason, not one of us in the whole crew thought to ask how long it would take for the dye to wash off. And so began the next two weeks of weird looks after we left the Kraho village and went back into the Brazilian cities— I’m sure we were mistaken for a motley band of rabid sports fans or something, blue rings and lines up and down our arms. As the Kraho gave us the tribal markings, they also gave us tribal names. Mine was “dead fish”, which I thought was a joke until our translator admonished me not to laugh. Hmm. I’m still hoping that’s not a reflection of my personality. At least I avoided the “White Pig” moniker applied to another member of the crew. Bullet dodged…sort of.

I’ve probably been to the Ground Zero site 60 or so times since 9/11/01 and visiting each new time is like watching an old photograph age and fade away. Of course I’ll never forget those first horrific days, but returning to the site now leaves very little context of what went on that Tuesday morning. There is still a giant hole in the ground but it is now just a construction site.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Greenwich Street, which I sprinted down trying to outrun the tornado of dust and debris as the South Tower fell, now is just like any other Manhattan avenue, with shops, taxis, parking garages and Wall Street types hustling past on the sidewalk. I shot a ceremony outside a firehouse this morning where the firefighters observed moments of silence at the times the planes struck the towers.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The paradox of the cleanup and recovery is that there are very few symbols remaining of what happened that day. I spent last week down at the site shooting for a multimedia piece on what Ground Zero looks and feels like now. I recall as a kid being taken to a Civil War battlefield by my father one day and complaining to him that there was nothing to see. I’m pretty sure most visitors to Ground Zero now feel like I did that day at Antietam.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: A street in the Green Zone is seen through a U.S. military Humvee window March 8, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq.

I won’t be running in the Green Zone anymore, though it made perfect sense last week. I was stuck there (I had planned to be there for one day working for Newsweek) after the shrine in Samarra had been bombed and a 24-hour lock down had been enforced on Baghdad.

Without much else to do, I jogged every morning around the Green Zone, down its wide boulevards lined with trash, concrete blast walls and empty fields. Newsweek employs a South African security man, I asked him if running there was safe and he gave his reluctant approval.

“Just watch for mortars,” he said with a sigh. I nodded, we both knew that wasn’t possible.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: The Iraqi flag flies over an Iraqi government building in the Green Zone, on June 28, 2004 in Baghdad, Iraq.

The runs were tense. I’d stretch at the front gate at the Newsweek house, then head out onto the main streets. The Green Zone was the neighborhood that held Saddam’s palaces and housed his cornies; so the streets are broad, as wide as an interstate freeway, and yet are lined by only the occasional opulent house or tacky monument. There are no real sidewalks, so I ran on the side of the road, passed by dusty American Humvee convoys or pickup trucks bolted with ad hoc armor and filled with Iraqi “police,” brandishing weapons. Sometimes a convoy of some VIP or another would go by, a long string of anonymous, armored SUVs, brand new and clean.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: The Hands of Victory monument, erected by Saddam Hussein, is shown February 21, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq.

I ran by the famous monument of the crossed swords everyday. The third day, I noticed a familiar blast pattern scored into the sidewalk that wasn’t there the morning before. A mortar must have hit and exploded in the night. I wondered if it got anyone.

Finally, on Saturday, I was able to leave. I took off to be embedded with the military. When I arrived at the Army base, I checked my email and had one from a friend staying with Newsweek. A few hours after I’d left, a huge and unprecedented fusillade of daytime mortars had crashed around the Green Zone, and one had landed at the front gate of the Newsweek house. Everyone in the house was shaken but fine, though their generator had been destroyed and an Iraqi man who’d worked across the street was killed. “It’s pretty bad when you feel safer out on the streets of Baghdad than in the Green Zone,” she wrote me.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - JUNE 14: The streets just outside the Green Zone sit empty June 14, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq.

So that’s it for the Green Zone jogging for now. Good riddance. I’ve seen some grim places but the Green Zone has got to be one of the most strangely depressing four square miles on Earth.

It’s easy to fly to Iraq. There are three flights a day from Amman, Jordan on the country’s national carrier, Royal Jordanian Airlines; it’s about a 90 minute trip, soaring over the saffron sands of Anbar province en route to Baghdad.

Incredibly, up until a few months ago you didn’t even need to secure an Iraqi visa first: it was possible, if you knew what you were doing, to simply show up and get an “emergency visa” in a small office in Baghdad airport, filling out a form while surrounded by dozens of diminutive Sri Lankan manual laborers flown in by Halliburton and other US government contractors. I’d been doing that for a few years; but for my latest trip the government of Iraq (such as it is) has started to crack down, necessitating a trip to an Iraqi embassy in another country first to pick up a visa before arriving. There’s an Iraqi embassy in Amman, so I spent an extra day there to get the visa.

The nightstand in my hotel in Amman - it points the the way to Mecca.

I walked down from my hotel to the embassy Sunday morning to get it (Sunday, of course, being a regular workday in a Muslim country).

The embassy, a single floor building with several rooms and offices, was packed. Mostly it seemed to be Iraqis getting various paperwork related to their stays in Jordan. Though it’s hard to say; Jordanians and Iraqis don’t look or act much different, at least from a foreigner’s perspective. It wasn’t that long ago that they were all one land, of course: both part of the Ottoman Empire. Only in the 1920s, picking through the remains of the once-mighty caliphate that dissolved after WWI, did the British famously (and arbitrarily) draw borders and create all these new countries. Iraq was specifically formed to encompass the northern and southern petroleum fields; in a way, Iraq has been about oil from the very beginning.

Several attractive Iraqi women in Western dress were working behind the glass in the visa section of the embassy, set up almost like tellers in a bank. One, a dyed blonde with features like the actress Cameron Diaz, told me that they normally stop handing out visas at 11 am; I was half an hour late.

“Please?” I asked, waving my passport around. “I have to fly out tomorrow morning.”

“Well, leave it here, and we’ll see what we can do. Come back in an hour.”

I went across the street, found a coffee kiosk and ordered a strong Turkish coffee, boiled by hand in a small steel decanter by a Jordanian teenager with a hip haircut and skinny jeans. An hour later, back at the embassy, Cameron Diaz smilingly handed over my passport, the ink still drying on the visa. I thanked her and headed out.

The view of Amman from the back of a cab.

I tried to hail a cab but they were all full, so I walked up the hill, back to my hotel, not terribly far away.

As I walked, I thought about how easy it is for a society to come unglued. Amman and Baghdad, very similar cities, in a lot of ways, populated by the same kind of people. And there I was, casually doing things in Amman that would get me killed in an instant in today’s Baghdad - walking the streets alone, speaking in English, waving an American passport around. Twenty years ago, Baghdad was the cosmopolitan capital where you went to get a whiskey and do business; Amman was the backwater. Four years of a power vacuum has utterly transformed Baghdad, once one of the Middle East’s safest cities, into a nightmare of blast walls, bombings, organized crime and deadly insurgent checkpoints.