Word: basra
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...wasn't your typical road trip. We left Baghdad at 5 a.m. Destination: Basra, Iraq's second largest city and only major port, 340 miles (550 km) to the southeast. The nighttime curfew had just ended when we--eight bodyguards, two interpreters, four journalists and four drivers--piled into our cars as the sun was coming...
...barriers and sleeping soldiers at checkpoints. By day, these streets would be clogged with traffic, and we'd be tense over the risk of explosions. Instead, we were unbridled, free, giddy. TIME photographer Yuri Kozyrev has been covering Iraq since before the U.S. invasion. He had already been to Basra three times, but the last time he had driven like this, in a "soft"--unarmored--car and without the protection of the U.S. military, was in late 2003. Earlier this year, the route we were traveling was so rife with violence that the trip would have been impossible...
...days later, we entered Basra. Tanks and Iraqi soldiers have come to occupy nearly permanent spaces at intersections and on sidewalks. On the road that runs along the Shatt al-Arab waterway--the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers--where seven months ago Basra residents feared kidnappings and abuse, young people and families now crowd outdoor cafés and recreational boat decks late into the evening. Children jostle one another at popcorn and juice vendors, and photographers snap customers' portraits next to an outdoor display of fake flowers and stuffed animals...
...stop in Amarah, capital of the restless border province of Maysan--the trip at times was undeniably tense. Our nerves frayed when traffic jams caused by U.S. military convoys brought us to hour-long standstills, and when an anonymous group of men pulled up to the gates of our Basra hotel late at night--journalists have been kidnapped from hotels in Basra...
Iraq Journal For a video of TIME's Basra road trip, visit time.com/roadtrip