By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; A10
BAGHDAD -- If you found the artist, someone must have told you about him, and this was precisely what scared him, because it could have gotten him killed.
He neither advertised his services nor hung a sign on his door. But he could be found: through a small art gallery on the first floor of an anonymous two-story building in downtown Baghdad, up a narrow, twisting flight of stairs, and into the cramped, dank studio with only one low window obscured by a purple curtain.
"You shouldn't have come here," he said the other day, after pulling back the curtain to reveal a machine gun propped on the sill. "If they find me, they will cut off my head."
The artist drew tattoos.
In Iraq's current climate of intimidation by religious extremists -- accused of murdering those who immodestly wear shorts, or drink alcohol, or happen to be born with a particular name -- body art cannot be practiced openly. Some Islamic scholars consider tattoos haram , or prohibited by the religion: a desecration of God's creation and the chosen emblem of thugs and convicts. Worse, some consider the practice an imitation of the "occupiers" from America.
But in market stalls and private homes and small rooms tucked out of sight, tattoo artists are plying an increasingly popular trade, and their young Iraqi customers say they take inspiration from foreign soldiers, American athletes and the traditional Islamic body decorations common among elder generations before Saddam Hussein cracked down on the practice.
"Saddam did not allow it, and people who had tattoos would be imprisoned because it is an imitation of the West," said Ibrahim Samat, 19, sitting with his shirt off inside the Baghdad tattoo shop as the artist inscribed the head of a tiger onto his left shoulder. "I want one because it is a beautiful thing and because lots of young people are doing it."
When U.S.-led troops knocked down Hussein's government, they also took out the Baath Party's influence over television stations and the Internet, opening the door to a burst of Western culture. Many Iraqis despise the United States and its military, but it does not prevent them from spending hours on the couch watching Oprah or Dr. Phil.
Such cultural exchanges are common in wartime. The British left behind cricket when they departed the Greek Island of Corfu in the 19th century. After World War II, Italian singer Renato Carosone famously crooned to his countrymen: "You want to play the American."
What invading militaries unwittingly bring with them "really has a kind of secondary impact that is in some ways more lasting," said Benjamin Barber, the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World."
"We're much better at selling [our culture] unintentionally than we are at selling democracy," he said.
Khaman Aziz Qasab Oghlo, 18, a Turkmen student living in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, paid $75 to have an eagle tattooed on his back after admiring the body art of U.S. troops patrolling the city.
"I didn't only have an eagle drawn on my back, I also went to a fitness and weightlifting course, and also boxing, to build up my body and be impressive," he said. "Because many of the Iraqi girls do not like skinny and poor guys, or weak ones, so for me I consider it a symbol of strength and my personality."
On the walls of the cramped tattoo parlor in downtown Baghdad, hundreds of slips of paper show possible designs: a flaming skull, the "Metallica" logo and the city's most pervasive architectural flourish, the coil of razor wire. The designs are drawn by Sadiq Salman, 29, whose more ambitious work includes an eight-foot-tall coffin sculpture containing an infant constructed entirely of cigarette butts.
Some days, there is a line in the hallway as Iraqis -- government bureaucrats, students, soldiers, policemen -- wait to go under the buzzing stylus.
"They don't want something beautiful like a rose or a girl," said Salman, less concerned about anonymity than the artist who owned the shop. "Most of the people now have sadistic ideas. They don't love roses or nature, because the atmosphere here encourages an angry mentality."
As for the artists in the war zone, "we are all surrealists now," he said.
Growing up in Baghdad, Jafr Rahdi, 29, admired his mother's facial tattoos, a series of colored dots running along her chin and eyebrows, a decoration that has fallen from favor among younger Iraqi women. When he was imprisoned under Hussein for deserting the Iraqi army, Rahdi, a Shiite, tattooed a snake on his left shoulder with a needle. Across his chest, he pricked out the letters: "When will tears smile?"
Fearing beatings or torture, fellow inmates tattooed Hussein's face on their bodies, believing no one would touch the image of the dictator, he said, while others wrote on themselves: "We all pay allegiance to you, Saddam."
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Rahdi wanted to apply for a job as a police officer with the Interior Ministry, but he learned that during the initial strip search, those with tattoos were weeded out. So he injected painkillers into his arm, heated an iron and seared off his snake.
"You could smell the flesh burning," he said.
He got the job.
His friend, Mortada Ali, tattooed a forked sword on his right forearm while living abroad in Lebanon. The image depicts the sword of Imam Ali, a cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, and is a dead giveaway that Mortada Ali is a Shiite.
"Because of this tattoo, if I drive through a Sunni area I will be killed," he said.
In the friends' neighborhood of Sadr City, a tattoo artist works in a market stall powering his tools off a car battery. The owner of the shop learned his trade while living in Lebanon in the early 1990s. When he returned to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, he found the wartime economy desolate and opened his shop because he could not find other work. He worked clandestinely, hoping for a more tolerant future.
"I don't want to talk about politics. I just want to live a normal life," he said. "But they won't let me, because everyone tries to force their ideology on me."
Back in the tattoo parlor above the art gallery, the owner turned to Ibrahim Samat and hurriedly finished his tiger tattoo while there was still electricity in the shop. When he finished, Samat walked across the room to the full-length mirror.
"Beautiful," he said. "Very beautiful."
This week, the owner's secret was revealed. Police officers from the Interior Ministry found Dawood Salaman Saleh in his shop, took him to headquarters and forced him to sign a letter promising he would never draw another tattoo, he said. He suspects he tattooed one of the policemen, who then informed his superiors.
Saleh plans to seek asylum in Egypt, someplace where a man could live a quieter life, where a man could draw a picture of a tiger.
Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis in Washington contributed to this report.