In Baghdad it’s not all the smoke of bombs, drifting is catching on, too

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It’s five o’clock on a Friday afternoon in the Baghdad area of Zeyouna, and it’s racing time. In a city that sees almost daily bombings, weekly rallies of fast cars still attract crowds of mostly young men.

“We love cars,” says one of them, hanging about with drivers of BMWs, Challengers, Infinitis and even Mustangs, all showing the capabilities of their cars.

The smoke rises high into the sky behind the mosque where the rodeo-ground is situated and the smell of burned rubber is thick in the air. Tires shriek and smoke, while engines roar and bits of rubber fly around, when drivers drift their cars on their pumped-up front tires.

With the black humour that Baghdadis are known for, they call this ‘executions’, and the cars used are mainly fast ones that have been adapted for the races but are also still driven around the town.

And there, they attract much attention as some drivers like it to be known by revving their engines and making smoky turns and stops, that once a week they are real racing car drivers.

There are no prizes to be won though, says Ahmed Farook, 26, who organises the weekly event. He only prepared the present venue recently, after the government closed a site in the area of Jadiriyah that was previously used for these ‘executions’ as well as for car races.

That site, with an incomplete motor racing tack of about 400 meters, will be rebuilt to accommodate the races in a better and safer way.

In Zeyouna, Farook asphalted the much smaller ground and erected tribunes on top of the back of a row of shops. Yet many of the young men watching – no women to be seen here – just stand around, taking pictures and videos, and often have to jump out of the way of fast swerving cars.

Some of the drivers let children drive with them in the passenger seat, others hold on to the wheel and with one hand and wave to the onlookers with the other like a man riding a horse in a rodeo.

Safety has no priority here, in a town where bombs can explode any time. “We are still alive,” says one of the young men. “That is our reality,” adds Farook.

Applause is given only to those who turn the best pirouettes, and some of the onlookers have lit their water pipes (shisha) next to the stationary cars to watch in leisure. Many are dressed in shorts and T-shirts, as even in the late afternoon the temperatures still remain high.

Farook started the races with just BMWs, and he still drives one. He has doctored the engine so much for racing that he has had to remove the bonnet to cool it during the competition. But when others joined the club, they brought different cars, and now all kinds of fast automobiles take part.

Every driver pays a little towards the rent of the ground, part of which is used as a parking lot for racers as well as onlookers.

“I encourage the drivers to also go to races in other towns,” Farook says, mentioning Basra, Hilla, Babel, Najaf, Karbala and even Kirkuk as possible locations. “We want to make it a national thing.”

He agrees that it is also a way to keep young people out of mischief in a city that offers them little amusement.

In the Kurdistan Region too, these events take place at a big parking space just outside the capital Erbil.

Before the demise of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, motor races were held in Iraq, often sponsored by his son Uday.

After 2003, the Iraqi motorsports club organised some racing events. And when they became popular, owners of BMW and motorcycle dealerships stepped in and created their own ‘execution’ racing tracks.