Baghdad: three lives under duress

In different neighborhoods, a shopkeeper, a Christian, and an imam try to carry on amid daily dangers.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 22, 2007 edition

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BAGHDAD - Haidar Abdel Haathez knows that business at his makeshift market is good in part because of Baghdad's violence.

That's not always a good feeling, he says, his two young sons close by his side. So he does what he can to smooth the rough edges of his customers' lives.

"There is danger in the big markets now, so the people come here more," he says as he stands behind the counter in his 10-by-20-ft. bazaar of stacked cans, neatly shelved cleaning products, colorfully packaged local staples, and imported specialties with names like Heinz and Kraft. "I try to do things to help them out."

The surge that is set to put 30,000 more troops in Iraq by mid-June has led to fewer bodies turning up on Baghdad's streets from sectarian violence. But it has also spurred an adaptable insurgency to redirect attention to potential high-casualty, high-impact targets – forcing different adjustments in different neighborhoods of this sprawling city of 5 million.

In Jamiyah, Mr. Haathez's middle-class enclave at the top of an oxbow bend in the Tigris River, the new phase means residents stay closer to home.

In the mixed neighborhood of Dora, where the US military says their push has been a success, Iraqi officials were on hand recently for the reopening of a neighborhood market. But local Christians have also faced demands, of murky origin, to convert to Islam, leave, or die.

And in the historic Khadimiya district on the west bank of the Tigris, the golden dome of the Imam Kadhim shrine is a beacon to Shiite pilgrims – and a source of anxiety for US officers who remember the sectarian storm unleashed by the bombing of another Shiite holy site in Samarra last year. There, an uneasy cohabitation has settled in between sworn enemies with a common interest in keeping the shrine safe.

Not unlike inhabitants of cities around the world, many of Baghdad's residents have preferred large markets with the widest variety of products, turning to small neighborhood stalls when the sugar bowl was empty or the children pined for a treat. In Baghdad, open-air markets have been favored by housewives for the freshest produce and best biryani spices, and by middle-class families for the latest imported gadgetry.

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