OUTSIDE HATRA, IRAQ

In an oil-rich land, gas pumps are on empty

By David Filipov, Globe Staff, 4/16/2003

he ancient city of Hatra once rivaled Rome. Iraq used to have functioning gas stations. Things change.

The widespread looting that has followed the fighting has left pumps dry across the nation that sits atop the world's second largest oil reserves.

Now, the truck stops along the Mosul-Baghdad highway are as abandoned as the stunning but uninhabited ruins in Hatra, 180 miles north of the Iraqi capital.

This explained the general dismay in Hemin Hashem's four-wheel-drive vehicle on Sunday, when its five occupants discovered that they were out of gas.

Hassem Jebouri, who runs the restaurant at the Hatra truck stop, said looters had visited the filling station the night before. Stay off the road, he added, or the highway robbers will get your car.

Someone in the car suggested asking a young shepherd if he knew where to find gas. Bad idea. The boy pulled a gun and muttered, "Stay away."

Hashem flagged down a car. Five burly men got out, eyeing Hashem's vehicle. One asked Hashem if he knew that there were looters on the road. Another told Hashem to follow them to their village. It sounded like something a looter might say. Hashem declined.

Hashem has had to scrape to fill his car for years. Unlike the rest of Iraq, the Kurdish autonomous area where he lives has few gas stations. Kurdish drivers have depended on petrol smuggled in from Iran and sold in translucent plastic canisters on the side of the road.

Like lemonade, it comes in two colors, yellow and pink -- pink being the excellent gas, as Hashem put it.

But how was he to find gas of any kind on the Mosul-Baghdad highway? A vulture circled overhead, ominously.

And then, Hashem spied a small Bedouin settlement.

What saved Hashem that day is something called "dehilaq," the code of hospitality that has allowed Bedouins to survive in their hostile desert environment for centuries.

"Today we save you; tomorrow you save us," explained one Bedouin tribesman as he siphoned a few quarts from his aging Toyota.

"Dehilaq" won't get you a full tank, but each Bedouin Hashem met added a few more quarts. Before long, he had enough to make it back home to Kurdish territory.

The first thing he did was fill up his car with some of that excellent pink Iranian gas.

This story ran on page A24 of the Boston Globe on 4/16/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.