Western-Style Social Life Disappears in Iraq
BY BORZOU DARAGAHI
©2004 Newhouse News Service
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- It is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting and mourning in honor of the prophet Muhammad, in a year when Iraq's troubles have driven more of its people toward faithfulness.
Numbed by constant violence and cowed into piety by a religious wave unleashed along with Saddam Hussein's downfall, the lives of Iraq's decadent and fun-loving have become increasingly drab, the country's cheap thrills increasingly hidden and rare.
Liquor stores have closed. Amusement parks shut down early. The movie theaters showing soft-porn films along Rashid Street have closed, at least for Ramadan. No one goes out on dates.
Observant men shun short-sleeved shirts and even modern women don modest headscarves. The muezzins call out prayers late into the night as Iraqis focus their thoughts on the spiritual.
"There are no parties," says Hassanein Ibrahim, 21, a student at the Baghdad Technology Institute. "For fun, I watch television or listen to heavy metal music."
Ibrahim, a well-heeled young man thumbing through Metallica and Slayer titles at the Radio One record store, says his girlfriend dumped him about a year ago, when her parents arranged a marriage for her. He has been unable to find a replacement.
"Their parents don't let them go out," he says.
Young women complain that the security troubles -- kidnappings, car bombings -- have ended the good times. Gone are the days when Nada Helen, a 30-year-old secretary at a Baghdad bank, and her girlfriends would meet up with a group of guys on payday and splurge on food and merriment.
"My only fun is surfing the Internet at home, running up the phone bill," she says. "Now, the Internet is the only way out."
After classes, Mohammad Kanan al-Jumeili, a biology student at Mustansiriya University, hangs out at a coffee shop and plays dominos. At about midnight, the 22-year-old meets a friend who operates a cigarette and soda stand outside Yarmouk Hospital.
Together they view the nightly parade of ambulances, soldiers and cops. "It's like watching al Jazeera but it's real," he says.
Once, he and his friends attempted to pick up two prostitutes from the Dora neighborhood. They began driving them to the home of one of Jumeili's friends, whose parents were out of town, when they were stopped by police.
The police, quickly aware of what was going on, threatened to arrest them, but relented when an officer realized one of the young men was an acquaintance.
"The one time the police do their job is when we wanted to have a good time," Jumeili says.
Many Iraqis say their countrymen are moving toward a strict interpretation of Islam because of the U.S. military occupation, which many Iraqis view as an attack on their faith.
An Iraqi journalist tells the story of Abdullah al-Dulaymi, 45, a hard-drinking, womanizing blacksmith who had nothing to do with the resistance until April 13, when an American bomb fell on his house, killing his wife and children.
Three days later he had sworn off the bottle for good and found religion. He organized a group of fighters, mostly relatives and friends, and began launching attacks on U.S. forces.
He's now a leader of a group in Fallujah that calls itself the Noori Jihadi regiment, easily recognizable as the clean-shaven, well-groomed resistance fighter who always wears a splash of cologne, according to the Fallujah-based Iraqi journalist, who asked that his name not be published for his own security.
Iraqis who enjoy indulging themselves find they're becoming a minority, as more and more of their carousing pals defect to religion. Haydar Jawad and his best friend Fallah Ismail Jassem used to sit around, get drunk and listen to the music of Um Kalthoum, the Egyptian pop legend.
"We were close friends for a long time," says Jawad, a 45-year-old antiques merchant. "We drank together. We had fun together."
But shortly before the U.S. invasion, Jassem began turning to God, praying five times a day and reading religious tracts.
Now he has a new idol.
"Every 100 years comes a man to reinvigorate Islam," says Jassem, a handsome 31-year-old also in the antiques business. "This man is Osama bin Laden."
Jawad, standing next to his old friend in a meeting arranged by a reporter, shakes his head.
"When I stop by his house, his father says I'm no longer to come around and that I'm no longer Jassem's friend," Jawad says. "I'm shattered."
In an alleyway behind discrete brown metal gates along a busy commercial street in Baghdad is a colorful garden of earthly delights: a clandestine liquor store.
It is well stocked with bottles of Jack Daniels, Foster's beer, wines from Lebanon, and it is brimming with customers paying cash and walking out with paper bags full of alcohol.
The cashier is a jovial 63-year-old who asks that just his nickname, Abu Wissam, be published.
"We drink," he says, "we drink every day. It's a normal thing. But we don't consider it a good time anymore, because our country is in pain. Every time I try to enjoy myself and have a drink an explosion goes off."
Abu Wissam says he is bitter about the changes he sees taking place all around Iraq, the shift toward religion and violence.
He sang recently at a party, a gathering of 25 of Baghdad's artists and intellectuals. Just as everyone began singing along, an explosion went off, shaking the windows and sending the guests scurrying home.
"I have grown to hate weapons and hating all military people," he says. "The world is shaping up as a battle between literary and the military people. I hate the men of war. All of our beautiful youth has been lost because of the men of war."
Nov. 10, 2004
(Borzou Daragahi wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at
[email protected].)
