Any old promotor drivers around

I mentioned in a recent post the Scud missile that landed near the Masgouf fish restaurants on the banks of the Tigres off Abu Nuwas street in Baghdad. I have found a couple of photos of the inside of one of those establishments. Its interesting looking at the pictures on the walls portraying Saddam and of the restaurants themselves. The depicted photos shows a group of mainly exhibitors from the Baghdad Fair. At a guess I’d say about 87 or 88. The event was organised and paid for by Andy Mclean (Jazzandy) of Orient Transport Services. Now we never usually visited those places as they were very expensive, up to 100 dinar per fish, but paying with black market money and asking for a group discount you could get the price down to an almost acceptable level. The fish were Carp and kept alive in tanks. You chose the fish which was then killed and prepared in a way that had been handed down over the years then grilled. They were very large fish so a group of you was always needed otherwise much of it was wasted. It was also a long process to kill and prepare the fish so much downing of Johnie Walker, well thats what the locals did, took place prior to actually eating it.