Philip Ball

Sep 21, 2024 | laphamsquarterly.org | Nicolas Pelham |Philip Ball |Sarah Ruden

Few places would better qualify for hell on earth. In Basra, gas flares from oil wells shoot upward. They turn the sky orange at night and bake what is already one of the hottest places on earth by day. The ground is cooked to toast. The wreckage of past invasions and wars litters a landscape otherwise unremittingly barren and flat. Most of the palm trees that covered the surface have either wilted or been severed by shells.