Not anymore.
And most service stations needed quite a bit of attention.
Here's a typical one:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM35zYb4pbNRrPDrbhJyT8UVcrMXFTSo1HmnnWi2cOalv_Ka1_456lMOfEc-ccb-4Io0EKJk453Vopb4I2ZhE-pH2Ux747vRWTvIPOcvvKQI06tWKge20DSACf7S92r6iBpKMFVg/s320/PICT1065.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXc_FCLr7IYyAmUWGKBDkvTFuNd7StoePPUv3rYWMRmrzBsIxYGbAmQFvwU9btLMtvHMuOcPCRs-sQyAcs9JeypcQJn3Jejiy4zd_s9N1MNg_pNbrRbEm__-uwVlN0xot3qFvhyQ/s320/PICT1059.jpg)
Notice: we're not using the pretty modern pumps. Instead, we fill up from a pump that looks like this:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQR9uSSwToPFaLj16estv8GppSYNnPoWW_GVf2Pw05gB043DPYd2gUHQanBoT6eDPm20aVE8bPqh5Oc-UNaJCB0X8PNhIRSf1DJ-EhHpWgE09E0udnqQgzphTONl9nHXC7ZjEH8Q/s320/PICT1063.jpg)
And the price?
Well. . . . Just before we headed back into Turkey, we filled up at one of the least expensive stations in northern Iraq:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwPl4knXROJVYtJt5vEkEpeG5fjGhkpl2aomzUsVEalmyp9Y_9Ktjrdd2zKhASlmqwyK-wLPP2D6XD5oUT1iclPvjvUk39ShgGWRF4H5aJWQ8wHJctjG7tROkm-OXBTmRRNbsK8Q/s320/PICT0496.jpg)
That price is in Iraqi dinars. Except inflation has been so horrible, you're not looking at the actual price in dinars, but at one-one-thousandth (0.001) times the real price.
The price was not 0.825 dinars per liter, but, instead, 825 dinars per liter. We were able to trade our dollars at a rate of about 1300-to-1. (If I recall accurately, we could exchange a US$50 bill for 64,250 dinars).
We saw very few filling stations in Iraq. Far more common were scenes like these:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRbpNKf1VJY4SL4Sh7xAH_lfNwG6oLzGH01Z-y5e5I7Jwy7qLg7cMNx0cT24I99rGX3e5kRA9S1wpqHE8zxhYvJGQyfJ5VQPBgSoWlrLMPymIdG7xxcxzbXUqpEaZriYXxZdW_-Q/s320/PICT0592-1.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Wu2qFtqU0CW-H7ZIL6gsdf8xjbVZJENJIz6pNAU8U-WkIN5q3gtOQSkUjjxdvp0zykbVAC-wbI71dttfCwQcpyHodYvFncIt7idCWAHKwkBhWUKgUgXFz2Eal_AyZuNGce0jjw/s320/PICT0756-1.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghyphenhyphenxQgS8XPvDaRgc7p8NTl-nqR1QabarnlthUqo7Jm-Pqru6tl98GcWYGBh1Mkvohh7fq7uptCvZYgKCIWb0CMlznRgNZzysfTq6mRHrr80MHxyOoarPHVdAIq6r2-sxRC3nJzIw/s320/PICT0139.jpg)
The different colored gasoline came from different countries.
No fuel is refined in Iraq itself. So some came from Turkey; some from Syria; some from