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Chapter 2631 Baghdad Under the Night (Second Update, Please Subscribe)
Baghdad.

As the most prosperous city in the Middle East, with its skyscrapers, neon-lit cityscape, and modern people, especially girls in miniskirts, it's hard to associate it with the Middle East.

But this is Baghdad.

An extremely prosperous and secular city. The constant flow of petrodollars has brought prosperity and modernization to this place.

Of course, it has also changed the lives of many people and brought unprecedented impact to the city.

Especially after nightfall, the city's nightlife will bring an unprecedented shock to all newcomers.

Baghdad's night was bathed in dazzling neon lights, with cars flowing along the wide streets and pedestrians crowding the roadside.

As night falls, Baghdad becomes even more lively.

People are leaving their homes to enjoy life here. In addition to enjoying delicious food, shopping at department stores and supermarkets, and watching movies, there are all sorts of entertainment options available.

Among them are dance halls and bars.

To some extent, compared to the dance hall itself, the bar holds a very different symbolic meaning in this land. It symbolizes taboo, but also freedom.

As a metropolis with a population of 400 million, this city boasts thousands of bars. Scattered throughout the city, they attract hundreds of thousands of patrons every night.

This is taboo, but also exciting.

Upon entering, the loud music mingled with the scents of perfume and alcohol, immediately creating an atmosphere of both freedom and taboo.

The bar was packed, with bottles of various kinds of liquor displayed behind the wooden bar counter. The music and the laughter of men and women mingled together, creating a vibrant yet somewhat taboo nightlife scene.

Among the guests were many stylish young Iraqis, but even more eye-catching were the slender and voluptuous Iraqi girls—most of them wore daringly cut tank tops that revealed their delicate shoulders and necks and beautiful collarbones, with smooth legs under their mini-skirts and high heels.

As they moved through the crowd, their skirts swayed gently, and every turn drew several intense gazes. Some chatted and laughed with them, holding wine glasses, while others watched from afar, their eyes filled with admiration and restlessness. This boisterous and open atmosphere seemed to be completely different from the outside world's preconceived notions of Baghdad.

It all looks so trendy, yet it all looks so disjointed.

This kind of modernity seems out of place to some, after all, this is no ordinary place.

In the innermost corner of the bar, several sofas were pushed together to form a small booth, where four or five people were sitting.

Two of them stood out conspicuously from the relaxed atmosphere around them—their backs were taut, their hands were awkwardly placed on their knees or holding wine glasses, their eyes kept drifting away and then quickly looking down, and even their breathing was somewhat hurried.

Clearly, they haven't adapted to this environment yet, and the root of this maladjustment lies with the women wearing tank tops and miniskirts.

Whenever a girl walks past the booth or even approaches them to chat, they become somewhat awkward.

For Wang Jianguo and Yang Song, everything here was something they had never experienced before.

Although they had been to bars in Beirut, it was different there, as Beirut was still affected by the war.

Even if it is in the process of recovery, it is still a war zone, and its so-called prosperity is far from comparable to that of normal areas.

And what about Baghdad?
It is a thriving metropolis.

And in the bars here, the people also exhibit unusual behavior.

"Hey, look at you two, you're like startled rabbits."

Fang Kangjie, who was traveling with him, couldn't help but laugh out loud as he looked at his two colleagues from another country.

"It's just about dressing fashionably, why are you being so reserved?"

Another person chimed in with a joke:

"If you keep your head down like that, you'll stare a hole through the wine glass."

Two days ago, Yang Song and Wang Jianguo arrived in Baghdad by plane. Since there are currently no flights to Gwadar, they are temporarily staying in Baghdad.

In fact, they had been recalled by the country several months earlier. However, it was easy to come but difficult to go back because there were no civilian flights available. So they could only wait, and a month passed. During this waiting period, they received a new telegram instructing them to stay in Lebanon and continue their reporting, while also requesting them to cover as much news as possible related to the military and the war.

Although they didn't know exactly what was going on, they immediately understood the reason when they saw the ASEAN coalition's performance on the other side that shocked the world.

The domestic audience wanted to understand this military unit, not just rely on secondhand information from foreign journalists, so they conducted even more thorough interviews.

However, all interviews were conducted under military control. They could conduct interviews at military bases, but only in designated areas. They could take photos of drones and even enter the drone control room with journalists from other countries.

There, they and their colleagues witnessed the drone attack.

Beyond the shock, they felt a void in their hearts, because they clearly saw the gap between them.

However, even with the delay, they were still going to come back eventually. Finally, two days ago, they arrived in Baghdad on a military plane and began their journey home.

After learning from friends that there were two journalists from Tangshan, some SEA journalists in Baghdad invited them to dinner, and after dinner, they invited them to a bar for a second round.

But I never expected the other party to be so conservative.

"We're just not used to the environment here."

Yang Song took a deep breath and then said:
"And this is completely different from what we imagine Baghdad to be, after all, this is the Middle East."

When he spoke of the Middle East, he emphasized it, as if everything there didn't belong to this land.

Wang Jianguo immediately followed up:

"Yes, ever since I arrived here, I've felt that this place doesn't feel like the Middle East at all; it feels more like a Western country from a movie."

“This is indeed the Middle East, there’s no problem with that.” As he spoke, Chen Zaidao, who was sitting opposite Wang Jianguo, turned his gaze to the women who were chatting with the men.

The vast majority of those people were locals, dressed in modern and fashionable clothes. Not only that, they were also drinking alcohol.

For this land, alcohol itself is taboo.

Looking at all this, Chen Zaidao's eyes were filled with pride:

"This is Baghdad now,"

He glanced around at the hustle and bustle and the fashionable surroundings, his voice not loud, but loud enough for everyone in the booth to hear, and then said with certainty:

"Modern, open, and civilized."

He paused, deliberately slowing his speech, as if showing off a prize:
"Can you imagine what it was like a dozen years ago? The women here were still wrapped in thick black robes, completely covered from head to toe, not even their faces could be shown. Back then, Baghdad was a conservative and closed-off small Middle Eastern city, a place that seemed to have been abandoned by world civilization."

"But what now?"

Chen Zaidao spread his hands, his gaze sweeping over the stylishly dressed girls, his tone becoming even more boastful:
“Baghdad is in no way inferior to Chang’an, Paris, London or Frankfurt.”

see it?

They were dressed in the latest fashions, sprayed with SEA perfume, chatted about the latest Kuching movies, and listened to globally popular singles.

Every night, they come to nightclubs like this to drink, dance, laugh, and fully enjoy their lives—this is what life should be like.

At this point, he slightly raised his chin, his tone carrying an undeniable air of smugness:

"And all of this was brought by us. By our army. We came here, liberated this city, overthrew the brutal rule of the previous government, and brought a new order and a new future."

Of course, secularization is even more important.

Driven by the royal family, this land is integrating into modern society at an unprecedented pace.

All the old, conservative, and dogmatic things are being abandoned by people.

After this country entered the modern era, these women were freed from the constraints of the black robes, and for the first time, they had the right to pursue fashion and enjoy freedom.

Chen Zaidao's words suddenly made the relaxed atmosphere in the booth somewhat heavy.

After a few seconds of silence, Yang Song slowly spoke, his voice not loud, but carrying a certain questioning tone:

"And what about the traditions here?"

He looked at Chen Zaidao, his eyes filled with doubt, and said:
"The modernity and openness you speak of have indeed changed many things, but does all of this conform to Iraq's traditions? Does it conform to the culture and beliefs passed down through generations here? Is everything here what they need?"

"What do they need? Do they need poverty, ignorance, and backwardness?"

Chen Zaidao seemed to have anticipated this question, showing no sign of panic. Instead, he chuckled, his tone laced with disdain and sarcasm:
"Tradition? You're too fixated on outdated things. We're all over 40, and we're well aware that many things are changing."

He swirled the glass, the ice cubes clinking against the liquid, and said:

"Fifty years from now, everything we see now will become a new tradition. Think about it carefully, isn't tradition formed through constant change?"
The old will be eliminated and the new will be inherited. This is the law of history and the inevitable path of civilization's progress.

Just like where you are, 30 years ago, women wore cheongsams, put on makeup, and wore perfume.

But now? You've made plain clothing your new tradition.

Although his voice was not loud, it carried an undeniable forcefulness.

The reason for this is that they are all witnesses to all of this.

They witnessed the establishment of a new tradition, just like in SEA, where Hanfu was revived and people finally rediscovered their own clothing and their own traditions.

Of course, in the process, they formed new traditions. They were participants in all of this, and they were the driving force behind it all.

Yang Song opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but he couldn't, since what the other party said was true.

He recalled the women in black robes he had seen in Pakistan.

Baghdad should have been no different from there.

When faced with Chen Zaidao's statement that "tradition is constant change," he suddenly became speechless.

A thousand words stuck in my throat, ultimately turning into a silent sigh.

Wang Jianguo, standing to the side, opened his mouth but didn't say anything.

The upbeat music in the bar was still loud, and the girls' laughter was still clear and cheerful. Chen Zaidao took a sip of his drink with a smug look on his face.

Yang Song simply watched all of this quietly, her eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment—in fact, she too had sensed the change.

It's not just here; many other places are undergoing tremendous changes.

Just then, the cell phones suddenly rang. It was Chen Zaidao's phone, and Fang Kangjie's and others' cell phones also rang.

The sudden ringing of a mobile phone startled them. Almost instinctively, they realized—something big was about to happen.

When they answered the phone, although they didn't know what the other person was saying, Wang Jianguo and Yang Song both realized from their extremely shocked expressions that... there must be big news.

Just as they hung up the phone, before Wang Jianguo and Yang Song could speak, Chen Zaidao said:
"We're going to the military medical center, do you want to come with us?"

(End of this chapter)