At a wedding I attended a few days later in the Palestine Hotel an imposing, modernist tower surrounded by American tanks and barbed wire a potent version of “Besame Mucho” pulsed through the night air. In the courtyard, tired-looking bridesmaids in lacy green and pink outfits and young girls in white starched pinafores danced a lively Iraqi folk dance called the chobi. Occasionally, the D.J. would play a Céline Dion track. Militia men and feral cats wandered in and out of the scene.
Inevitably, the electricity went off, but the bridesmaids continued to dance, their hips and arms swaying in serpentine movements. As they moved in the dark, they looked as though they might be auditioning for a pop music video. But perhaps they, too, were just rehearsing for a normal life.
