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The Bookseller's Story, Ending Much Too Soon
After the invasion and the government's fall, Hayawi described himself much as other Iraqis did in that first uncertain year: as neither for Saddam nor happy with the Americans. He was angry, of course -- at the chaos, the insecurity, the lack of electricity.
"The American promises to Iraq are like trying to hold water in your hand," he told me in one conversation. "It spills through your fingers."
  Mohammed Hayawi, a gentle man, died in a Baghdad car bombing. (By Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post) |
But he was never strident; he was filled with a thoughtfulness and reflection that survival in Iraq rarely permits these days.
Hayawi resented the occupation but voted in the elections the United States backed. He was a devout Muslim, but feared the rise of religion in politics. In his bookstore, once-banned titles by Shiite clerics, imported from Iran, vied with books by radical Sunni clerics, among them Muhammad Abdel-Wahab, the 18th-century godfather of Saudi Arabia's brand of Islam. Profit may have inspired his eclectic mix, but Hayawi also seemed to be making a statement: Mutanabi Street, his Baghdad and his Iraq would respect their diversity.
He was always a proud man. Every so often, Hayawi would repeat this story: He was driving to Syria on business in his yellow Caprice and was stopped at a U.S. checkpoint, manned by two Humvees, outside the Euphrates River town of Ramadi, in western Iraq. Through a translator, one of the American officers, clad in camouflage and dusty from a desert wind, began to ask him routine questions.
" 'What are you doing here?' the soldier asked.
"I said, 'What are you doing here? You're my guest. What are you doing in Iraq?' "
"He laughed and he patted my shoulder," Hayawi recalled.
Bookstore Retreat
The doorway of the Renaissance Bookstore was a border in a way. Outside were the sirens of ambulances and police cars. Gunfire was common. Horns blared in two lanes of traffic, one more than Mutanabi had been built for. Inside Hayawi went about business as he had every day since he inherited the shop from his father.
The last time I saw him, in 2005, he was sitting behind his desk, sipping a cup of tea that cost 10 cents, a pack of Gauloise cigarettes next to it.
As he did every morning, hour after hour, Hajji Sadiq, the money changer, ambled into the bookstore.
