Dateline: Iraq – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
Moises Saman does not need a timetable to know that things have changed in Iraq — however tenuously — since his last rotation there a year ago as a photographer for The New York Times. “You hear music on the street sometimes,” he said Monday in a telephone interview from Baghdad. He’s also noticed that people linger outdoors at night. (Indeed, the music from the park opposite The Times’s bureau was so loud last night that it was hard to hear Mr. Saman sometimes.) “I think there’s more life on the street,” he said. “Without painting too rosy a picture, there’s a definite sense that life is moving.”