IRAQ: Do not pass “Go”

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Ever since I arrived in Baghdad, I’ve been amazed at how readily accessible American culture is here. ‘Oprah,’ ‘Dr. Phil’ and even ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ are all broadcast regularly on satellite television.

One day, I was channel surfing and one of our interpreters said, ‘Oooh! ‘Seinfeld!’ I love that show!’

On the street, vendors peddle pirated DVDs for as little as $1, with current films such as ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’ already available here. Maybe it’s because the interpreters are penned in with nowhere to go, but they’ve seen more current American movies than I have.

So it should have been no surprise to me when staffer Saif Hameed started talking to me about Monopoly. We were quibbling over the rules, which he knew better than I did. I never knew, for example, that if you don’t buy a property when you land on it, it gets put up for auction. Of course, as a kid, he saved up and bought the official Parker Brothers edition for $75, so I guess it makes sense that he memorized the official rules.

In Iraq, they have their own version in Arabic with Boardwalk replaced by Baghdad’s formerly-ritzy Arasat Street, but he said the American game should be easy to find.

He had thrown down the gauntlet. We would have a Monopoly match.

A few hours later, when the drivers came back with the game in hand, there was just one problem.

Our ‘Monopolio’ was entirely in Spanish: ‘Go! (Adelante!) Cobrense $200 de sueldo al pasar.’

‘Welcome to Iraq,’ Mohammed Rasheed, our staff writer and technical whiz, told me. ‘Nothing makes sense here!’

— Kimi Yoshino in Baghdad