Page 3 of 3 <

Quietly Surviving in A Not-So-New Iraq

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Yousif's immediate family remains in Jordan, where they have lived since mid-2004. He hopes that they will be able to return in the summer of 2009, perhaps to resume life in their Baghdad villa. He brought me once again to the house, which he now uses to store goods for his company. We walked through the dusty atrium, the formal living room filled with gilded furniture draped in sheets, the overgrown garden.

As we parted, we stood in the driveway. He pointed to other houses in the neighborhood. "This is an empty house, this is empty house, this is empty house, this is empty house, this is empty house," he said. "You cannot live alone, in an empty area."

The main threat is kidnapping, and Yousif's response is discretion. He stays in his brother's house in a middle-class part of Baghdad. He keeps his SUVs on cement blocks so they can't be stolen and drives a decrepit Volkswagen Golf.

He could afford to hire bodyguards, but they attract attention. And just as he did during the Hussein regime, he doesn't use a part of his name that would identify him as a Shiite from the south. Emad T. Yousif could be Shiite or Sunni or Christian. He could be nobody.

barrc@washpost.com

Cameron W. Barr is The Washington Post's Middle East editor.

< 3