Returnees Find a Capital Transformed

"It's totally secured," said Hashimi, who was an intelligence officer during the government of Saddam Hussein. But a few days ago, he drove across the main highway to another section of Dora. He felt a familiar fear. "You're lost there. You don't know who controls the area, Sunni or Shia, American soldiers or Iraqi security forces. It's still chaotic."

He never drives on side streets, afraid of the unknown. On a recent day, he wanted to visit a Shiite friend in Amil, a district controlled by the Mahdi Army, whom he had not seen in a year. But his friend advised him not to come. Hashimi felt relief. "I'm afraid to go to Shiite areas," he said.

Before Hashimi left Iraq, he used to pick up a friend every day from the mixed enclave of Bayaa and take him to the security firm where they both worked. But during his time in Syria, Shiite militias cleansed Bayaa of Sunnis. "It's impossible for me to go there now," he said.

So he spends most of his days in his once-mixed neighborhood, now a mostly Sunni area. A nearby tea shop is open until 10 p.m., but all other shops close by 7 p.m. Under Hussein, they used to be open past midnight. The walled-off streets have squeezed the pool of customers. Electricity, Hashimi said, is still scarce.

Kareem Sadi Haadi, a civil engineer, did not want to return to Baghdad. Nor did most of the Iraqis he knew in Syria. He and his family had escaped there five months after the U.S. invasion. But he ran out of money after two failed attempts to smuggle his family to Europe. Two weeks ago, they returned to Karrada, the mostly Shiite district where the family once lived.

Today, they live in a rented apartment with furniture given to them by relatives. Haadi said he is shocked by Baghdad's metamorphosis -- the checkpoints, road closings, traffic jams, razor wire on buildings, and the blast walls.

"Baghdad feels like a military base," said Haadi, 48, a Sunni. "Safety without these barriers is real safety."

Although he has been back in the capital for two weeks, he has not yet seen his sister who lives in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Alam, controlled by the Mahdi Army. She warned him that any stranger would be killed.

"Security is when I can get in my car at 10 p.m. and drive to see my sister," Haadi said.

Four days ago, gunmen kidnapped a man outside the house of Haadi's in-laws, also in Karrada.

"We don't go outside Karrada," said his wife, Anwar Mahdi, 43. "Now I am afraid to go to my parents."

As soon as they can save enough money, Haadi said, they hope to go back to Damascus. That could prove difficult. Syria now allows only Iraqis with special visas to enter.