Women Lose Ground in the New Iraq

Zahra Khalid, 30, left, shops in Baghdad on her first outing in two months. With Islamic fundamentalism and sectarian warfare on the rise in Iraq, more and more women live in fear. (Photos By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)

"Anyone who's in her 20s and drives a car for the first time, you feel very happy and very independent," she said. "Like you can do anything."

Since the Samarra bombings, she said, she has felt she can do almost nothing.

Relatives had seen fliers warning women not to drive. They pleaded with her to stop. She resisted.

Shimirya, who has a doctorate in psychological studies, had been driving since she was 20.

But the stares started to bother her. They came from men anytime they saw her behind the wheel of her 1984 Toyota Crown.

So she hired a car service to take her to her job at Baghdad University. She stopped going out unless it was necessary. No more dinners with her girlfriends. No more walking the streets of her affluent Mansour neighborhood.

"It's become so bad that a woman who drives a car will be slaughtered, and a woman who doesn't put a scarf on her hair will be slaughtered," she said.

When classes ended in July, Shimirya and her husband, an engineer, sold their cars, locked up their large, modern-style house and headed to Dubai.

"I miss my home," she said, speaking by phone from Dubai. "I miss my colleagues at work. I miss my neighbors. I miss my family. I miss the air in Iraq. There is nothing more beautiful than Iraq."