By Jonathan Finer and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 26, 2005; A18

BAGHDAD -- At midday, the stores and sidewalks of Sadoun Street, Baghdad's once-bustling commercial center, were nearly deserted.

A pharmacy's double doors were held closed by a rusty chain. The manager of a family restaurant had no patrons to feed. And a dealer in Swiss watches mused about moving to a city where wealthy customers would not be afraid to shop downtown.

But tucked away on a side street, Ghassan Aboudi's shop was busier than ever, he said. This month, three car bombs have exploded in the neighborhood, across a bridge from the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. Each blast shattered hundreds of windows over several blocks. And for Aboudi, a glass salesman, each added to what has become a flood of unfortunate customers.

"I don't like to think about it like this, but the disasters of some people are the benefits of others," said Aboudi, 32, whose father, Karim, founded the window and aluminum-frame store in 1970. "When I hear there is a bombing, I think of the tragedy. And I also know that people will be coming to see me soon."

At any other time, in almost any other place, Aboudi's would not be such a morbid, and lucrative, profession. But Baghdad has had as many car bombings this month as in all of last year. The city's glass salesmen acknowledge, sheepishly, that the bloody month has been a bonanza for them.

"We used to stand outside and count the passing cars because there was nothing else to do," said Aboudi, sipping coffee in a showroom filled with cabinets, translucent desks and stacks of large rectangular panes for storefront windows. "Now, business is better 99 percent. It seems like we are working all the time."

The windfall, however, carries with it intense feelings of guilt over profiting from the misery of others, Aboudi and his colleagues say. The Sadoun Street bombings that lined their pockets killed 34 people and wounded dozens.

Iraq's security and infrastructure woes have fueled several unusual niche industries, such as private security companies and firms that import gas- or diesel-powered electric generators, which are available on almost every corner. But few trades benefit so directly as Aboudi's from an escalation in attacks, such as the wave of violence that has claimed more than 600 lives in the past month.

"I sometimes wish they did not come to me, because I feel so badly for taking their money," said Talib Nafi, 32, owner of a hole-in-the-wall window shop near the Industry Ministry, another recent target of a car bombing. "When someone comes in and their shop is destroyed, and they have to pay 1 million dinar [about $700] to replace the windows, I always think, 'They do not deserve this. What did they do wrong?' "

Aboudi, who imports his wares directly from China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and other glass-producing countries, said that "hearing people's stories can be too painful." He gave a large discount to one customer, he said, after a bombing at a nearby market razed his perfume shop, destroying his merchandise and incinerating much of his savings, which he kept inside.

Within a few hours after an explosion, Aboudi's phone starts ringing with orders for new windows -- sometimes before the blood has been cleaned from the streets. He dispatches a team of deliverymen to pull shards from blackened window frames and install new panes.

In an already sputtering economy, the repairs can be a burden for storeowners. Khalid Gul Mohammed Amir, the owner of a medical supply shop, waited two days to call salesmen after a blast May 8 blew out his windows, knowing that replacing them would be costly.

"This time I lost 400,000 dinars [$275], but the glass salesmen won 400,000," he said. "This is life, winning and losing."

Some shops send salesmen directly to the scene of a bombing, because they know demand will be high. Ahmed Abdul Salam Omar, who sells watches, was sifting through wreckage after a recent blast when a young man showed up and asked whether he could replace the windows. Omar hired him on the spot, he said, but found himself wishing he had shopped around when he found out he had been overcharged.

"If I saw someone doing that, I would beat him," Nafi said. "Salesmen should let customers come to them. It is like someone is dead and you are going to rob him."

As bombings have become more frequent, many people have replaced the standard windows, which are 6mm thick and sell for $5 per square meter, with the 8mm variety, which are more than twice as expensive.

"The thinner ones will get broken if a car bomb goes off 100 meters away," Aboudi said. "But the eight-millimeters should not break unless it is closer than 50 meters. Then there is nothing you can do."

About the only two things that could threaten the glass salesmen's prosperity is a ratcheting down of the violence, or perhaps this: Some potential customers said they have simply given up. The last bombing on Sadoun Street was almost two weeks ago, but many stores have not yet replaced their missing windows. Instead of glass, some have chosen expensive plastic sheets that simply blow in, rather than shatter, in an explosion.

Muqdad Rasool, a restaurant manager, said his windows were broken twice during the recent bombings. The second time, "we only fixed the front glass," he said, pointing to a piece of plywood he had placed across the rear windows.

"I expect another car bomb at any moment," said Omar, the watch salesman, who opted to buy cardboard instead of new glass. "Why would I fix all of it when it will just be broken again?"