Home win as Baghdad sits back and enjoys the game

Working in news these days seems futile. Pumping out stories about bombings, politics or economics is rather like writing in a vacuum. No one seems to be paying attention ? Go online and the headlines are all about the only thing the world is interested in - the Fifa World Cup 2010. There are stories about vuvuzelas and football stars, and YouTube videos of babies cheering for their favourite team. The world has gone quite mad over football.

And Iraq is no different. The Iraqi national side has had a decent run since the 1970s. It reached the 1986 World Cup and Olympic Games in Moscow, Los Angeles and Seoul, and won the Asian Games in 1982. Against a background of sanctions, and the US-led invasion of their land, the players have suffered emotionally and financially but have still had their moments, such as winning gold at the West Asian Games in 2005.

Like most countries in the Arab world, the people go ga-ga for the game, sneaking away from work and daily duties to catch a glimpse of their favourite team in action. And as a journalist, whatever your beat, you will be roped in to write a World Cup story. This time around, Iraqis say they have been feeling safer on the streets and much freer to move around. I was surprised to see how many more restaurants were open and how late some people, usually young men, would stay out smoking shisha and drinking tea at cafes.

Four years ago, when the last World Cup was staged, Iraqis wouldn't have dreamt of meeting up with a bunch of friends and, for example, watching the late night Brazil-North Korea game, which didn't kick off until 9.30pm. But this year is different. Sitting outside the cafe, about 50 men are lounging on plastic chairs intently watching a TV screen suspended overhead. The generators are deafening, adding to the whirr of the electrical fans that spout a cool mist of water to protect customers from the stifling heat. It's almost 10pm and about 36°C.

The cafe owner orders his waiters to quickly serve up the little cups of multi-coloured ice cream as they melt all over their customers' fingers and tables. Old men keep one eye on the football match and the other on a tense game of dominoes, slapping the pieces noisily on the table and coughing after taking a gasp from the shisha. During half-time, some of the younger men tell me they had chosen to come to the cafe to escape the heat and lack of electricity at home. Power has been hit and miss for eight years since the invasion and, with water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates low, hydro power plants have been working at less than half capacity. As a result, many houses are restricted to about three hours of government-provided electricity each day and are then forced to pay out a lot of money to power their homes using generators.

The cafe is a good escape, but also a luxury that Iraqis were denied four years ago. Its owner tells me what a pleasure it is to see Iraqis enjoying a night out with their friends, doing something as normal as watching a football match. Four years ago Iraq, and especially Baghdad, was being torn apart by sectarian warfare that forced families to impose their own curfew and avoid leaving their home after sundown.

One fan said he was happy his fellow Iraqis felt safe enough to venture out but that the situation was still not totally safe and that he feared what would happen when the Americans left this summer. Still for tonight, despite the army pick-up with armed soldiers keeping guard over the street and the real risk of a roadside bomb on the way home, the people of Baghdad could cheer on their favoured players, just like all the other football fans around the world.

Hadeel al Shalchi is a writer for the Associated Press, based in Cairo