"Cafes, clubs and bars are proliferating. There are shopping malls with cinemas showing the latest releases, including a glitzy glass enormity..."

"... with a Dubai-style helicopter pad on the roof. There are restaurants on the river and plays at the theater and comedy nights at the coffeehouses. On Fridays, poets recite their works and artists show off their paintings in the Ottoman-era gardens surrounding Mutanabbi Street, named for a 10th-century Iraqi poet who lived when Baghdad was at the epicenter of the civilized world.... [T]here’s a widespread consensus that at no time in the past 40 years, since Saddam Hussein acquired absolute power and led Iraq into a series of ruinous wars, has Baghdad been as free and as fun as it is now. 'Every Iraqi has reached the conclusion that it is important to have as much fun as you can before you die,' said Alaa Kahtan, a theater director who had come to Coffee and Books, one of Baghdad’s hip new cafes that attracts a mostly literary crowd."

From "Baghdad gets its groove back/Violence is receding and Iraq’s capital is partying again" (WaPo). I love the photographs.