IrqThe alliterative concept seems fanciful: beautiful Baghdad. Iraq's capital is famous for violence, degradation, occupation and blackouts, not aesthetic appeal.
Everywhere there are concrete blast barriers, sandbags and razor wire. Rubbish lines streets which are sometimes ankle-deep in sewage. Bombed buildings remain in ruins.
April 9th, 2003, was the day American troops took the city and toppled the dictator's statue in Firdos square. Two years later debate over the war still rages, but one point Baghdadis agree on is that today marks the anniversary of when their city became an eyesore.
"The place looks awful," said Hussein Abd Emir (52), a cafe-owner in Karrada, a district for the well heeled. "It's like a military base. A dirty military base. My God, it's ugly." But in big and small ways, things are changing.
Municipal workers have planted thousands of bushes and trees along thoroughfares and intersections. It is easy to miss them now, but within six months some species will be waist-high foliage, said Mustafa al-Ubadi (35), pointing to freshly planted rows of leafless saplings opposite his fish restaurant on Abu Nawas Street. Emboldened by better security and business, he plans to return paintings he stored at home for safety to the bare walls of his restaurant.
This week trucks unloaded tonnes of soil on to the east bank of the Tigris, which is to be laid with grass, dotted with benches and linked to a new park due to open later this year.
This weekend the city will regain a favourite playground: Jadriya lake, formerly known as Saddam lake. Built on farmland a year before his fall, the 36-hectare (90-acre) expanse of water with kiosks along its banks was popular with families and couples.
But American tanks smashed the paving, and when looters stole electric cables and pumps the lake drained into the Tigris, leaving the site dry and desolate.
Six months ago the tourist board funded its restoration, and the lake is back."It's like a lung for the city," said Abdul Razaq Ali, a supervisor. He looked forward to the return of foreigners.
Hilal Shawkat, head of the Iraqi investment firm which restored the lake, said he would build restaurants and amusement parks around the shore. "This will revive the nightlife of Baghdad," he said. "Iraq will be back to normal in two years," said Mr Shawkat, ignoring a burst of gunfire and sirens in the distance.
But the city is far removed from its glorious heritage. Said by some historians to be the site of the Garden of Eden, it was founded in AD762 by Caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansour and became the heart of medieval Muslim civilisation, a political capital as well as an architectural wonder immortalised in stories such as The 1001 Nights.
The Mongols, among others, razed it several times, but Baghdad recovered, and 19th-century visitors proclaimed it the most beautiful city in the East.
In the 1970s it began to deteriorate. Saddam Hussein erected brutalist apartment blocks and kitsch monuments, and uprooted trees lest they provide cover for assassins. War with Iran and the first Gulf war drained resources, while economic sanctions and a population explosion crippled the infrastructure.
Six months ago Bradt Travel Guides published what was probably the first postwar guidebook for Baghdad. If you do not enjoy Iraq's capital, at least appreciate the residents, it said. "They are a justifiably proud people, whose city was the capital of the world when London was an overgrown village and Columbus several centuries away from America.
"War has not destroyed this, and western condescension is met with the scorn it deserves."