For craftsmen, US invasion brought freedom, frustration
BAGHDAD -- Aidan al Shamari stapled upholstery to an overstuffed chair. Sultan Ibrahim sat behind a sewing machine, stitching chair covers. The narrow street outside was piled with iron grillwork, antique wooden shutters, and new sofas.
One year ago, Mohannad Lazim and his five Shi'ite Muslim employees shuttered their two-room workshop and fled to their family homes to sit out the war. But yesterday, as the shop hummed along on the eve of the one-year mark since the US-led invasion, no one was thinking about the anniversary until an American visitor arrived and ignited a fierce debate.
"What have you done since you've been in Iraq?" Shamari, 39, exclaimed. He jabbed the chair with the electric staple gun that dies during each of the blackouts that still plague the neighborhood, cutting into his piecework income. "There is no electricity," he said. "There is no security."
"Our work stops when the electricity stops," said Ibrahim, 40, looking up from his spools of copper thread. But he defended the invasion.
"Life is much more beautiful now," he said. "We used to live in fear and anxiety. Anyone who stopped by your shop could be intelligence [agents] or secret police. You would feel this fear whether you had done anything or not."
The men worked as they hashed out what had changed for better and worse over the past year, stopping to gossip and chain-smoke with Sunni Muslim friends -- drivers and guards from a parking lot next door.
The craftsmen, who have worked together since Lazim opened the shop two years ago, no longer fear repression for practicing their Shi'ite faith. But now, they must contend with car bombs, shootings, and fears that civil war could break out between Shi'ites and Sunnis. They are thrilled to see Saddam Hussein gone, but humiliated at living under foreign occupation. Business is better, but more uncertain.
Life may have improved, they say, but not as much as the United States promised.
Sitting on a pile of fabric swatches, Lazim confided his biggest frustration: The end of sanctions against Hussein's regime means he can buy better, more varied fabrics for less money, but it has also brought competition from abroad. Lazim had hoped for big government orders that were denied to most Shi'ites. But now, government orders for furniture are going to Syria, Taiwan, and China.
"The other countries don't need this business," Lazim said. "We are the people who have suffered."
He showed off photos of his workers sitting on sofas they had made, models called "Flower" and "Butterfly."
Still, wealthier Iraqis are on a redecorating binge, spending growing government salaries or income from the booming electronics and auto trades. Even a small slice of that market translates into more cash for Lazim's workers. "Before, I didn't have a television," said Ali Hamid, nicknamed Abu Zeinab, the oldest of the group. "Or refrigerator, or a DVD player."
But times were not as good for the craftsmen's Sunni friends. Raid Muhi, 29, a taxi driver, used to make two trips a day between Baghdad and Samarra, his hometown. Now he goes once a day at most, because of mushrooming traffic, the risk of roadside bombs, and the constant movement of US convoys.
"They don't let us pass," he said, referring to the US troops. "We're certain they came to invade, and not to help us."
Shamari wakes at dawn to commute by van from an area south of Baghdad plagued by insurgent attacks. Sometimes he arrives to find the electricity is out; though his colleagues insisted the blackouts have grown less frequent lately. He is angry about a recent explosion near the shop that injured a child; about a relative who was arrested after failing to open the door to US troops whom he thought were thieves; about cracks in the walls of his house from Americans blowing up an ammunition dump. But, he said, without the war, he wouldn't have his house. Hussein's security forces claimed it after accusing Shamari of taking part in the 1991 Shi'ite uprising. Then they arrested him and pulled out his toenails. The army officer who took Shamari's house fled last April.
A year ago, the men were sure Hussein would prevail and end up even stronger -- "like a second God," said Hamid.
Then came the news that he had disappeared.
"We got rid of someone who we never thought we'd get rid of," said Hamid. "We thought that if we got rid of Saddam, his son Uday would come, and if not Uday, then Uday's son."
The first thing the workers did with their newfound freedom was make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala -- some walking scores of miles -- for the first free celebration of an important Shi'ite holiday in three decades. Next, they hung up a portrait of Ridha, a descendant of the founder of Shi'ism, that now watches over the shop from the wall of cracked blue-and-white tiles. "Before they would have burned your house for that," said Dhia Messin, 25.
"Don't act so religious!" interrupted Bakr Abbas, 20, one of the Sunni drivers. "We both know you're not religious -- we drink together every night."
Everyone laughed. But below the surface was concern that recent attacks on Shi'ite and Sunni mosques may spark sectarian violence.
"People have different opinions," Hamid said quietly. "But you cannot clap with one hand. This small group works together; I can't work alone. We're all connected."
Anne Barnard can be reached at abarnard@globe.com.
