OMAR IS REPORTING FROM BAGHDAD and offers quite a few pictures of subjects ranging from sidewalk cafes to construction sites. There are a lot of the latter. He reports:

You can’t walk in any street now without seeing piles of bricks or small hills of building sand or gypsum.

It’s also interesting to know that the prices of construction materials have considerably increased since the liberation; for example, the price of 4,000 bricks (the default load of a 6-wheel truck which are usually hired to carry bricks) was about 60,000 ID in 2002, compared with about 100,000 ID in May 2003, now, the same number of bricks cost about 400,000 ID. The same thing applies to cement as the price of one ton has increased from 50,000 ID in 2002, to about 200,000 ID in 2004. This is mainly a result of the increased demand of the Iraqi market for these materials.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Don’t miss this interesting Iraq roundup by Jeff Jarvis. It’s a must-read.