The United States surpassed 18 million reported Covid-19 cases on Monday, figures from Johns Hopkins University showed, as the virus surges nationwide.
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The US has the world’s highest absolute number of cases as well as the most deaths related to the virus, according to the figures.
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It had a total of 18,006,061 reported cases on Monday evening and more than 319,000 deaths.
The country began administering vaccines a week ago and has given approval to immunisations developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
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States and cities have imposed varying levels of restrictions in a bid to slow the virus spread, but outgoing President Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed its seriousness and urged reopenings.
Trump’s behavior has come despite having been hospitalised with the virus himself.
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President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the November 3 election, has been far more cautious, urging mask-wearing and abiding by social-distancing rules.
Earlier Monday, Biden received a Covid-19 vaccine live on television in a campaign to boost Americans’ confidence in the jabs.
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Youssef Abdelkarim’s storefront on one of Baghdad’s most historic streets is a time capsule — literally. Thousands of wristwatches fill the tiny shop, where three generations have repaired Iraq’s oldest timepieces.
The dusty display window on Rasheed Street features a single row of classic watches in their felt boxes right at the front, with a mountain of haphazardly piled pieces behind it and others hanging from hooks overhead.
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Inside, there are watches in plastic buckets on the floor, packed in cardboard boxes on shelves and stuffed into suitcases.
In a far corner, behind an old wooden desk, 52-year-old Abdelkarim is hunched over an antique piece.
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“Every watch has its own personality. I try to preserve it as much as I can, as if it were my own child,” he told AFP, squinting through black, thick-framed glasses.
Abdelkarim began fixing watches at the age of 11, after the death of his paternal grandfather, who opened the store in the 1940s.
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His grandfather had already passed the trade onto his own son, who began to teach Youssef.
He has repaired expensive Swiss models, including 10,000-euro Patek Philippes, and what Abdelkarim calls “the poor man’s watch” — a Sigma. And he suspects he even fixed a piece that belonged to Iraq’s feared dictator Saddam Hussein.
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“It was a rare watch brought to me by the presidential palace, with Saddam’s signature on the back,” he recalled.
It cost 400 Iraqi dinars to repair — more than $1,000 in the 1980s but less than a dollar today.
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– A timeless trade –
Indeed, much has changed since then.
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People swapped their analog wristwatches for digital models, then dropped them altogether for smart phones.
But Abdelkarim insists an original timepiece isn’t a thing of the past, telling AFP with a wink: “A man’s elegance begins with his watch. And his shoes.”
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That may be right: his shop is still packed with customers of all ages and styles, including former ministers in sleek suits, collectors looking for vintage classics and younger Iraqis bringing newer pieces for him to fix.
“Everyone finds what they need here,” he said proudly.
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With his eyesight starting to falter, he fixes just five pieces a day now, compared to the 1980s when he sold and fixed hundreds every day.
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At the time, Rasheed Street was bustling with business during the day and the top place to be seen at night.
Abdelkarim still remembers the famed theatres, movie halls and coffee shops: “They never closed!”
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His shop was competing with dozens of other repair stores then, but they started to shutter in the 1990s, when crippling international sanctions left many households struggling to feed themselves.
– ‘Something different’ –
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Then, the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam and opened a pandora’s box of sectarian violence, including car bombs on Rasheed Street.
Abdelkarim moved to live in a safer neighbourhood but still walked to the family store to keep it open.
Even last year, when Rasheed Street was shut for months by a huge protest camp in nearby Tahrir Square, he managed to keep working.
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“I’d open once or twice a week, because the riot police often clashed with protesters here, but I still came,” he told AFP.
All around him, the vintage clothing stores or bookshops have closed, transformed into warehouses or stores selling car accessories.
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“The street’s features were erased and most of my friends moved. But there’s just something different that sets it apart from every other place in Baghdad,” he said.
He is teaching his sons, Yehya, 24, and Mustafa, 16, to take over the family business.
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But he insists they will preserve the store as it is, with its cracked walls framing the door, its dusty shelves and its mountains of timepieces.
“This shop hasn’t changed in 50 years, which is what keeps people coming back,” he said.
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“That’s what preserves its identity.”
Deprived of its usual tourist influx by the pandemic, Bethlehem will celebrate a quiet Christmas this year that is less about commerce and more about religion, says its parish priest.
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In a normal year hundreds of thousands of visitors flood the Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, located less than 10 kilometres (six miles) from Jerusalem.
Those seeking a quiet moment of contemplation in the Church of Nativity — the site of Christ’s birth, according to tradition — generally have to use their elbows to manoeuvre through the crowds.
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While the lack of visitors has been devastating for business owners, it has also offered a rare opportunity for solemn worship, said Father Rami Asakrieh, Bethlehem’s parish priest.
“Sometimes there are more than half million people who arrive in this period to visit the Nativity Church,” he told AFP.
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But with coronavirus restrictions making travel to Bethlehem all but impossible for foreign worshippers, the Church of the Nativity has been eerily calm in the days before Christmas.
Under the Grotto of the Nativity, the recitation of Armenian prayers by four monks echoed clearly through the basilica deserted of its typical throngs of visitors.
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The Christmas Eve mass on Thursday, regarded as the most important annual event at the church, will be closed to the public.
– ‘Heartache and pain’ –
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Not even representatives of the Palestinian Authority will come to Bethlehem on December 24, Asakrieh said.
“It has never happened before,” he explained, citing only past restrictions during the Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, against Israel’s occupation.
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“I think that this Christmas is different because people are not busy with the external manifestations of the feast,” the priest said, referring to the gift-buying that has, for many, become synonymous with Christmas.
“Now (people) have the time, and they are obligated, to concentrate on the essential… the theological spirit of Christmas,” he said.
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“Less business, but more religion.”
In the lead-up to Christmas, the small Chapel of Saint Catherine, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, was opened to the local Palestinian population.
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Many turned out in their Sunday best, including Nicolas al-Zoghbi who said that this year the joyfulnesses of Christmas had been replaced by “depression”.
He recounted the “heartache and pain” felt by those like his son who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
“We hope the Lord will destroy corona, just get rid of it so we can return to our previous life,” said Zoghbi, who is in his 70s.
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Bethlehem’s economy is driven partly by an annual Christmas rush that benefits small shops selling postcards, rosaries carved from olive tree wood and other Nativity-related souvenirs.
– Christians in Gaza –
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Sitting outside his Bethlehem store on a plastic chair, Georges Baaboul told AFP he “hadn’t sold anything for nine months”.
“In the last few days I sold about 170 shekels ($52)” worth of goods, he said.
Sixty-year-old trader Saif said he had never seen things this bad through his 60 years in business, including during the intifadas.
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This year, West Bank tradesmen cannot even count on Christian customers from Gaza, the coastal Palestinian enclave controlled by the Islamist group Hamas that is under Israeli blockade.
Gazan Christians generally receive special permission to cross to Bethlehem for Christmas, but this year those permits have not been issued, said Father Youssef Asaad of the Latin monastery in Gaza.
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Hamas has imposed strict measures to limit the spread of the virus in the strip, including the closure of mosques and the Latin Church, but masses are being broadcast online.
Christian Gaza resident Issa Abou George said he could not buy gifts for his children this year, but will participate in services online.
“My family and I will pray to God for the pandemic to end as well as for peace, in the Holy Land and the world,” he
