Troop Weblog

Puzzle Palace

As I said in an earlier post, I work in the Al Faw Palace. It has earned the nickname the “Water Palace” because it sits in the middle of a man-made lake. I, however, have begun to refer to it as the “Puzzle Palace.” As you can see from the pictures below the palace is enormous.

It is difficult to tell from the pictures, but it has three floors. The windows you can see are from the first and third floors. Most of the rooms around the outside of the palace have vaulted, two-story ceilings. That makes the second floor the smallest of the three. The second floor does have windows but they mostly open onto balconies overlooking interior courtyards.

When you enter the palace, through the largest door I’ve ever seen (takes two hands to push or pull it), you arrive in the main rotunda. The octagon floor, surrounded by huge green pillars is large enough to fit our entire property in Killeen, Texas (house, lawn and driveway!).

My office is at the top of the spiral staircase. If the chandelier were hung a little higher you would see my desk just beyond the balcony. There is only one other staircase, opposite mine. Due to the fact that I am adjacent to one half the palace traffic I spend much of my day giving directions to folks who are lost. Most of the time they are looking for an office on the third floor.

They number the first floor of the building “0,” the second floor “1,” and the top floor “2.” So everyone looking for room 215 searches the entire second floor and then comes to my desk with a look of confusion upon their face. In an effort to become a better tour guide I did a thorough recon of the third floor. It’s huge and the complex network of rooms and hallways can be disorienting; hence, the puzzle palace. Here’s a typical hallway:

The ceilings on the third floor are the tallest in the building. To put it into perspective that is a 7-foot tall cabinet in the shadows of the right foreground.

No one I’ve spoken with knows, with any certainty, how the palace was used before the war. The running theory is that it was a Ba’ath Party Retreat. If you walk around and imagine what the rooms looked like before we filled them with “Dilbert” style cubicles, you can figure out which were meeting rooms, banquet halls, and bedrooms. The bedrooms (typically 1200 square feet) are some of the nicest rooms with large windows and ornate ceiling decorations:

Despite the size and ornate detailing of the palace, there is a lack of substance in its bones. Most of the Marble, which is very beautiful, covers up shoddy craftsmanship. The brick and mortar, electric, and plumbing are sobering sites. It’s no wonder the power goes out and the plumbing fails so often.

With some investment they could turn it into a very nice museum some day. Maybe I’ll come back as a tour guide?

Posted by Daniel at May 5, 2004 11:13 AM