Abu Nour, the silver-haired Iraqi manager of the hotel where our Baghdad bureau is located, made a confession over dinner tonight.

Deep down, Abu Nour said, he's an Obama man.

He admires the presidential candidate's temperament, youth and intellectualism, though he conceded that Hillary is mounting a good challenge with her tough exterior and political experience. Still, if Abu Nour were a betting man, his money would be on McCain.

"McCain is kind of rigid, and he's old," Abu Nour, 61, said between swigs of beer topped with cumin, which he swears by as a home remedy for his finicky insides. "But I don't believe that Americans would elect Hillary because she's a woman. And they won't elect Obama because he's, uh, well, because of his African heritage."

"So, the Americans will elect McCain, and that's OK with me because at least that means they'll finish what they started here in Iraq," Abu Nour concluded with a laugh. His two sons, who accuse their father of being too pro-Western, exchanged amused glances. It seemed that, unlike their dad, they favored the candidate who could deliver the speediest end to the 5-year-old U.S. military occupation of their country.

All this political talk was prompted by McCain's surprise visit to Baghdad today. Writing about the candidate's arrival had made us late for the sumptuous dinner Abu Nour had laid out downstairs in the hotel's fancy restaurant, which has been shuttered for at least two years. Before the war, it had been one of the swankiest places in town, Abu Nour recalled, boasting that even foreign diplomats had to call days in advance for reservations. There were wedding parties every week and it was a popular meeting point for senior members of the former regime.

Tonight, the restaurant was open only for this private dinner and it had the feel of an abandoned movie set. The long banquet tables were coated with layers of dust, there was no atmospheric background music and piles of the good silverware sat unused in a corner. Abu Nour said the hotel's wealthy owners had taken the pricey artwork off the walls and stashed it, leaving only a few framed tapestries and some uninspiring still-life paintings.

If the venue was depressing, the spread more than made up for it. Abu Nour had ordered the cook, his 18-year-old nephew, to prepare a smorgasbord of Iraqi grilled fish called mazgouf, tasty kebabs, several kinds of salads and tart Iraqi pickles. Perhaps as a nod to his American guests, Abu Nour also served a platter of fried chicken. As far as I know, there's never been a KFC in Baghdad, yet Iraqi menus always label fried chicken as simply "Kentucky."

As it happens, my colleague Steve Lannen of McClatchy's Lexington, Ky., paper is here on his first Baghdad rotation and joined us for dinner. Abu Nour perked up when he heard where Steve works and asked a question that appeared to have been on his mind for some time.

"So tell me, Steve," Abu Nour said in Arabic, speaking slowly so our Iraqi colleagues could translate. "That old man on the Kentucky Fried Chicken signs. Is his last name Kentucky or is that just where he's from?"

Earlier this week, the Bloomberg news service ran a commentary by George Walden, a British former diplomat who's involved in international literary circles, about a new $50,000 prize that supports fiction-writing in the Arab world.

Walden likened the International Prize for Arab Fiction, which is sponsored by the Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi, to the Man Booker Prize coveted by Western writers. This development is significant, Walden writes, because Arabs have translated only "about 100,000 books over the past millennium; that's almost the average that Spain translate in a year, according to one United Nations report by Arab scholars."

Further, the writer describes the number of non-religious works published in Arabic as "tragically low." Little data are available to support Walden's claim, but I doubt many in the Middle Eastern publishing realm would disagree. On a visit this year to Cairo's popular annual book fair, I noticed that religious titles hogged the limelight and the crowd was dominated by Islamists, with the men sporting bushy beards and cropped galabiyas and the women in flowing black veils that left only their eyes exposed.

This literary void is depressing for a part of the world renowned for the elegance and precision of its language, and volumes of poetry so melodic in Arabic that no translation does them justice. In fairness, many of today's would-be writers are so stifled by their authoritarian governments (think Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, ok, think pretty much the entire region) that their pens are stilled by actual or anticipated censorship.

Societal ills that make for searing, enlightening and engaging novels in the West are taboo topics for many Arab writers, unless they flee and publish in exile. Arab writers who dare to stay in their homelands often face a backlash from religious extremists or state authorities.

In Egypt, for example, Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was stabbed in the neck by an Islamist zealot in 1994. (He survived, and lived under the protection of bodyguards until his death in 2006.) More recently, there's Alaa al Aswany, Egyptian author of the blockbuster "Yacoubian Building," who told an interviewer that he would "worry about the government much more than extremists." His debut novel, along with his sophomore book "Chicago," have been translated into English.

On the more lowbrow end of the spectrum is the Saudi chick-lit writer Rajaa al Sanea, who in 2005 published  "Girls of Riyadh," a light-as-air romp through the scandalous underground lives of four affluent young Saudi women. (It's available in English.) Saudi Arabia immediately banned her novel, which only helped to propel it to regional bestseller lists. And where is al Sanea now? Chicago.

Abu Dhabi's new fiction prize could help encourage the Middle East's browbeaten authors and draw the kind of international attention that comes in handy when writers are locked up for fiction that edges just a little too close to reality for Arab regimes and fundamentalists.

The contest's first winner was announced this month:  Baha Taher, an Egyptian, for "Sunset Oasis." Part of his prize is the translation and release of his book in English. Finalists included another Egyptian, Mekkaoui Said, for "Swan Song," Jordanian Elias Farkouh for "The Land of Purgatory," Syrian Khaled Khalifa for "In Praise of Hatred," and two Lebanese, Jabbour Douaihy for "June Rain" and May Menassa for "Walking in the Dust." Finalists each receive $10,000.

Good news, yes, but as Walden wrote in his commentary:

"No doubt squalls lie ahead, as this or that mullah or authoritarian regime proscribes this or that winning novel. Yet if stable and open societies are ever to emerge in the Middle East, the key battles must be fought with ideas, and by Arabs themselves. If ever there were a role for the right kind of socially engaged novel, it is here."

Iraq is so all-consuming -- this week alone brought us gruesome hostage news, the death of an archbishop, a spate of suicide bombings, a spike in U.S. troop casualties -- that I thought it might be time to check in on what's happening in the rest of the Middle East.

Here are some of the regional non-Iraq headlines that caught my eye from the past week or so:

IRAN: Iran's 44 million eligible voters can head to the polls Friday for parliamentary elections in which many reformist candidates have been sidelined, bolstering chances for two rival conservative factions. Check out the Web sites mentioned on this earlier blog post to learn more about the candidates and to follow results.

EGYPT: Al Jazeera, along with Western wire services, have reported on violent riots near government-subsidized bakeries where bread is in short supply due to shortages of basic food commodities and rising food prices. Al Jazeera says at least 10 people have died over the past two weeks in the crisis. Chilling images of the unrest is airing on the Arabic-language satellite channels and angry Egyptians are calling for the military to intervene.

SAUDI ARABIA: A YouTube video of a Saudi women's activist behind the wheel of her car in defiance of the kingdom's ban on women drivers has received thousands of hits. Check it out here. Wajeha Huwaider "talks of the injustices of the ban and calls for its abolition as she drives calmly along a highway," according to a BBC report. Back in 1990, Saudi authorities arrested dozens of women who staged a protest by circling Riyadh in cars.

JORDAN: Jordan freed a former mentor to the late leader of al Qaida in Iraq on Wednesday after several years in custody without a trial, the AP and other agencies reported. Isam Mohammed Taher al Barqawi, aka Sheikh Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi, was arrested in 2005. He'd been a cellmate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who led al Qaida in Iraq until he was killed in a U.S. air strike in 2006.

LIBYA: Authorities released a prominent dissident, Fathi al-Jahmi, after his nearly four-year imprisonment without trial drew condemnation from rights groups and the U.S. government, according to this AP story. Al Jahmi, a former governor, was first arrested after criticizing the government and its authoritarian leader Moammar al Gadhafi.

LEBANON/SYRIA: The Syrian government officially invited Lebanon to the Arab Summit, to be held in Damascus on March 29-30, after other Arab leaders hinted they'd boycott the annual meeting if Lebanon was excluded. No word on whether Lebanon would accept the invitation. The hostile relationship between the neighboring countries has been exacerbated by what many Lebanese view as Syria's meddling in the ongoing struggle to name a president for Lebanon.

Someone in Iraq must be doing all right because the shops are still stocked with expensive imported goods that aren't exactly part of the traditional Iraqi household. Among the items seen at B-Town grocery store in Baghdad this week:

Kikoman soy sauce

Black & Mild cigars

Fruit & Fiber cereal

Pantene

Bugles

Pringles

Red, green and yellow food coloring

Glade scented candles

Zig Zag rolling papers

Perrier

Ziploc bags

Tabasco

Microwave popcorn

Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce

Baghdad is different now, my colleagues here told me before I arrived this week.

Just take a ride through the neighborhoods you couldn't visit six months ago, they urged, always with the disclaimer that Baghdad is only better in a don't-get-too-used-to-it sort of way. The consensus among veteran Iraqi and Western reporters is that this place will blow again at the right provocation, so soak up the sights and sounds while you can.

Taking their advice, I took a tour of several districts today, stopping in on a couple of Iraqi families and navigating the new checkpoints and tall blast walls that seal off entire neighborhoods like prisons. Make no mistake, there is still a vicious war going on and just this week more than 60 people perished in a devastating bombing not too far from our hotel. Some of the areas we visited today -- Saidiyah, Shohada, Bayaa -- were still incredibly tense, just not completely off-limits like before.

At a main intersection in Saidiyah, the site of some of the worst sectarian cleansing in the city, four separate forces manned checkpoints to keep Sunnis and Shiites from killing one another: the U.S. military, the Iraqi army, Shiite-dominated police commandos, and the U.S.-allied Sunni militias that the Americans like to call the Sons of Iraq. At this dangerous stretch of road, my driver picked up speed, turned off his Shiite religious music and rolled down the window to listen for gunfire.

We cruised past deserted shops, bullet-pocked villas, newly landscaped roundabouts, a mosque with the minaret blown nearly off and forbidding blast walls decorated with fanciful murals by local artists. At one stop, I asked to take some photos of the artwork; the guards grew alarmed and called for their superiors. We left in a hurry. Iraq is still not a place where you can employ that old photographer's adage about it being better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.

Not too long ago, the Iraqi government tweaked the national flag, removing stars that were associated with Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. Many Sunnis balked at the change, calling it yet another erosion of Iraq's national identity by parties loyal to outside forces, especially Iran.

I didn't realize just how deeply the flag change had cut until the drive today. We spotted two checkpoints on the same street, just a few yards from each other. One was a police checkpoint where portraits of Shiite saints hung under a huge new Iraqi flag, minus the stars. Right across the median sat gunmen from one of the U.S.-allied Sunni militias, inspecting cars from underneath a fluttering old Iraqi flag, the one with the stars. What was the mysterious glue holding the peace between these two warring forces, I wondered, and how long would it stick until those guns were trained across the unguarded median instead of at suspicious-looking passersby?

On the way to Bayaa, we passed through a Mahdi Army stronghold where I noticed something I had never seen in Baghdad: macabre "martyr posters" just like the ones that dot Hezbollah-controlled areas in Beirut and southern Lebanon. Not the ancient martyrs, but local Shiite boys who'd been killed while fighting Sunni guerrillas in recent months. As it was explained to me, simply dying in a car bombing didn't get you a poster; you had to go out with guns blazing.

Rows of baby faces, some too young to even sprout the requisite beards, stared out from the posters. No doubt many of them had met unimaginably awful deaths -- did laminating their faces and posting them at traffic lights lessen the sting for their families? Did their classmates covet the same glory, did it make them more willing to join the Mahdi Army's efforts to "purify" their neighborhoods?

The Iraqi families we'd arranged to meet shuttled us into their homes before neighbors could get a good glimpse and figure out we were not from the 'hood. You'll read about their lives in a story later this week, I hope, but none of them expressed optimism that this fragile peace could endure. When asked about the future, one sweet housewife let out a deep sigh and rose from her seat, saying she needed to get her "tools" before answering. She returned with a fresh pack of cigarettes and chain-smoked her way through a list of reasons why Iraq is lost.

There is great wariness even within the sects. As we prepared to leave a Shiite family's home in Shohada, a formerly mixed district where only a handful of Sunnis remain, my Shiite driver fretted that Shiite militiamen had spotted us and we decided to switch cars for the drive home. The only problem was, the second car was outside the family's gate and required a short walk in the exposed street. Watching the drivers weigh the options made me think that perhaps it was still premature and stupid to have ventured out like this.

But one moment on the drive today restored a glimmer of hope. We'd been driving across the busy Jadiriyah Bridge, where not too long ago gunmen at illegal checkpoints sometimes stopped cars and executed drivers depending on their sect. Today we coasted right along until, suddenly, traffic slowed and then halted.

I stiffened and nervously asked my driver what the problem was.

"Maybe just a clash," he responded nonchalantly in his halting English.

"A clash! Well, don't you think we should get out of here?" I demanded, already sliding lower in my seat like the old days, even though I still didn't hear the bullets. Our guys are tough, but I couldn't figure out why clashes a few yards in front of us didn't unsettle him.

"Oh, I mean a crash, a car crash, not clash," the driver corrected with an embarrassed laugh.

I was even more relieved when I saw the real source of the bottleneck: a road crew was hard at work, patching up this bridge that once carried so many to their deaths.

Today is International Women's Day, an observance that began in the early 1900s with the suffrage movement in the United States. American feminists now work in partnership with women across the globe to "inspire women and celebrate their achievements," according to the holiday's official Web site.

There were Women's Day events even here in Baghdad, where female folkloric dancers performed at the Alwiya Club, a once-upscale country club in the heart of the capital. A local TV channel carried the event live, airing interviews in which women described what it means to be a mother, wife or daughter in a war zone.

Iraq's minister for women's affairs also spoke on TV, calling for the full constitutional and Islamic rights for Iraqi women, as well as for an end to workplace discrimination in the fields of security and education. The power vacuum caused by Saddam Hussein's removal has ushered in a new crop of ultraconservative religious leaders -- clerics from both sects -- who have done their best to roll back the rights of women in matters of divorce, inheritance, even the ability to travel without the permission of a male relative.

This morning I got an email from Oxfam, the international charitable organization, that described the plight of Iraqi women and asked readers to remember them on this day. You can read the whole Oxfam tribute here; below are some excerpts from the group's interviews with Iraqi women struggling against wartime obstacles to protect their families. Fittingly, the project is called, "Extraordinary Lives."

The Oxfam introduction asks: What are you doing today? What would you be doing if you lost your home... your family... your income? This is the daily reality facing a huge number of women living in today's Iraq.

Around 82 per cent of the 2.4 million people displaced inside Iraq are women, or young children under the age of 12. The following stories, collected by women’s organisations in Iraq, give a rare insight into how Iraqi women are trying to help their families to survive and to retain their dignity in times of extreme suffering.

There's Shukriya, 50, who sells soda-pop cans to make ends meet. With her own hands, she built a makeshift roof of gypsum and palm leaves to protect her earthen home from the elements. She has six children.

There's Huda, who lives with two other Iraqi widows and their total of seven children. The roof of the home has a gaping hole created by a stray mortar round; raw sewage flows right outside the dwelling. Huda bakes bread at home and trades her fresh products for flour. Huda lost her husband and two sons to the war.

There's Basima, a grandmother in her 60s who cares for her orphaned grandchildren in a mud-brick house just outside of Baghdad. Sometimes, she borrows a neighbor's donkey to cart water to the home, but most days she lugs the heavy canisters herself. She also bakes the daily bread, collects wood for fire and does her own repairs to the house. Here's what Basima told a visiting researcher:

"Sometimes, I wish God would take my soul but my grandchildren, who would take care of them if I were not here? I am a woman taking sole responsibility of my two grandchildren. I have counted the days for which I have lived like this – I've been here for two years, five months and four days."

The Oxfam site has a feature that allows visitors to email messages of support and solidarity to the Iraqi women.

(The photo of Huda is courtesy of Oxfam's Web site)

A couple of years ago, some small charter airlines began direct Cairo-Baghdad flights. I was overjoyed, imagining quick jaunts to Iraq for reporting -- the ability to trade the Nile for the Tigris in practically no time at all.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. "Unreliable" doesn't begin to describe the performances of these start-up airlines. I lost days and days to security, managerial and technical mishaps on previously unknown carriers with names such as Flying Carpet, Tigris Air, Jupiter. Finally, I gave up on the idea of a direct flight and switched back to the old-school Baghdad-via-Amman route on Royal Jordanian.

Nowadays, the only remaining direct Cairo-Baghdad  flight is on Iraqi Airways, the national carrier known for its stark green-and-white logo and an abysmal track record for delivering passengers to their destinations on time, if at all. The fleet was grounded for several years under Saddam Hussein and, when the airline reopened after the U.S. invasion, the aging flight attendants always looked to me as if they had simply blown the dust off their faded green uniforms and reported for work as if scarcely a day had passed.

At first, Iraqi Airways was a novelty. There was a surge of pride when an Arabic-accented voice sounded from the cockpit instead of the distinct dialect of the South African bush pilots who flew other carriers into Baghdad. It was soothing to hear the Iraqi Airways flight attendants, nearly all of them ladies of a certain age who favored bright red hair dye, address passengers as, "my darling," or "my eye." A colleague swears to me that a flight attendant actually lit a cigarette for a passenger during one flight.

But the novelty quickly wore off when you didn't actually get from A to B. Perhaps I was in a sentimental mood this week or maybe I just  didn't want to overnight in Amman, but I decided to give the direct Cairo-Baghdad flight another chance. I went to a Cairo travel agency and asked for the flight. The travel agent said it didn't exist.

Our Baghdad bureau chief told me there was indeed still a direct flight, so I took a cab to downtown Cairo, where the Iraqi Airways "headquarters" is located near the AirFrance storefront. The office is small, shabby and mostly empty. Other countries have tourism posters in their national airline offices, urging customers to see Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower. Iraqi Airways had only maps of the country and a model plane in the window. It'll probably be awhile before "Visit the canals of Basra, the Venice of the Middle East!" shows up on Iraqi promotional posters.

Another major difference is that the airline -- or at least its Cairo office -- accepts no credit cards. Only cash, and only in Egyptian pounds. The fare for a first-class ticket wasn't very much higher than an economy seat, so I decided to book the more expensive reservation in hopes that my luggage would be returned intact and I would have priority for rebooking when the inevitable cancellation occurred. But there were no first-class seats available for days, the ticketing agent told me.

"Just go economy. There's really no difference on our planes, anyway," she said wearily. I plunked down the equivalent of $440 in cash and received a handwritten ticket.

This morning I showed up to Cairo Airport at dawn for my 7 a.m. flight, mentally prepared to spend an entire day in the airport in case the flight was delayed as usual. But, no, we were called for boarding promptly at 6:15 a.m. and rode a bus from the terminal to the runway. My heart sank as the bus deposited us in front of a 737 marked with a Lebanese flag and the words, "Flying Carpet."

No! Where was the green-and-white Iraqi plane like the one in the window of the ticketing office? I felt bamboozled. This was the same old unreliable charter flight of the old days.

Lebanese flight attendants welcomed passengers on board. I suddenly understood the smirk the check-in guy had given me when I asked for a window seat -- there are no assigned seats on Iraqi Airways. It's a dog-eat-dog fight to avoid that awful middle row. There's no in-flight magazine, no pillows or blankets, no soft drinks and the seats don't recline. You get a boxed lunch stamped with "EgyptAir." Apart from me, not a single Westerner was on board, though the Lebanese pilot made his welcoming remarks in Arabic, English and, inexplicably, French.

Thank goodness, the flight went without a hitch. The pilot pointed out the Suez Canal from the left window as we flew over Egypt. Passengers picked at their croissants and triangles of processed cheese, then nodded off to sleep. We touched down at Baghdad International Airport at precisely 10:30 a.m. -- right on time.

A fluke? Progress? Who knows. But there you go -- it is possible to fly Iraqi Airways directly from Cairo to Baghdad, albeit on a Lebanese plane with a French-speaking crew passing out Egyptian boxed lunches.

The convenience was a welcome surprise, but a part of me still missed those red-haired ladies in their green uniforms, fussing over passengers like mother hens, their very presence a balm for the wounds of Iraq.

Below is the second letter home from J, my best friend and college roommate who is being deployed to Iraq soon as part of the National Guard. Right now, her medical unit (which is going to be attached to a military police unit in Baghdad) is training at a U.S. base where soldiers learn some Arabic, undergo combat training and simulate the conditions of a base in Iraq.

In this letter, J describes what it's like to be away from her home, husband and baby daughter. She also tells what life is like in the "Fake Iraq" where even going to the bathroom is a hardship because of the heavy gear soldiers are required to wear. There is very little editing; only small changes for curse words or identifying details. Enjoy.