"in Erbil for an hour"

This was in my inbox this morning:

I’m back to Erbil city since half an hour ago to check out on the house, we are now in a small village in the mountains that is one hour and half far from Erbil.. its a big crowd in a house that belongs to my brother-in-law’s sister … few family are stuffed in few rooms, so inconvenient but it is fine.. at least safe! the city is pretty much empty and you can feel how vacant it is! it makes me sad to see that! but yet there are policemen in the city that makes you feel things are under control yet! thanks God!!
We are listening to the news all time, if there are power then through TV otherwise a radio can do! anxiety and worry is the atmosphere all day time !! Seems the war pace is too slow than expected…. people all are disappointed about that.. we wished the war to be faster than that to get back to usual life… to see an end to war fear… to get in touch with rest of family and beloved people and see how are they! as longer this war will take time as worse people’s situation will get to! people are making jokes saying that seems Saddam will finish up US and Bush this time!! We all know it must be hard to make this war fast ending.. there must be lot difficulties and so on… but people here got fed up and wish it to get to an end.. a good ending that a day we will wake up and Saddam is no more there and we can start a new life!
Baghdad is not in a good shape! we already knew that in war time no one is allowed to leave home unless very high emergency cases and that will be managed by special units assigned to every neighborhood by the government… streets in Bagdad are empty and people are terrified of teh big blasting sounds.. I wonder how are my little nieces in Baghad!! they must be terrified! :(
Well.. thats it’s for now, I’ll try to write once again when I visit Erbil to check on houses.. I hope this Internet to be working then as it does now!
Keep safe and say hi to B for me.