When Home Becomes Hell

Iraq's middle classes were also the least-sectarian slice of society. Brahim's block in Mansour was once a comfortable mix of Sunni and Shiite. The same is true of his friends and family. One of his daughters is married to a Sunni, and so are at least seven more first cousins that I know of. But most of Brahim's neighbors—many of whom worked with him in the Oil Ministry before they retired—fled a year ago when sectarian violence engulfed the city. Now, he says, their homes are empty or inhabited by strangers. "Sunni, Shiite, no one care before," says Brahim's pregnant daughter, Aliya, in heavily accented English. "Now it is the reason they use for this killing."

Brahim says there is some hope. U.S. and Iraqi troops have set up more bases throughout Baghdad to quell sectarian fighting, and the number of anonymous bodies found each morning with gunshot wounds, drill holes and missing limbs has declined drastically in recent weeks.

Once vibrant neighborhoods, however, have become fearful redoubts; surrounded by members of their own sect, residents have developed a deep distrust of outsiders. Aliya can waddle out to the grocery store in her eighth month because her husband, a member of the Iraqi Congress, can lend her his bodyguards. But if the fighting is particularly intense that day, even the guards won't brave the market, so the family simply goes without milk or those tasteless, diabetic "breadsticks" that Brahim loves. "Saddam was bad, but this?" says my uncle. I can tell he's gesturing wildly when his wheelchair starts to squeak. "There is no clean water, people are killing each other like the animal, and I can't even go to the mosque to discuss this with God."

Leaving has also become more difficult with each passing week. Brahim refused to pay $2,000 in bribes for a set of Iraq's new updated passports (which most Iraqis must now have to travel), so three months later they still haven't been issued. To get to Jordan or Syria by car, he'd have to pay a driver anywhere from $250 to $600 per passenger (which is still less than one-way airline tickets), and they'd need to pass through Iraq's deadly Anbar province. They could not bring more than a suitcase or two with them, for fear of alerting border agents that they were planning on more than a vacation. If by some slim chance they did make it past Jordanian immigration, they'd face disgruntled locals, a cost of living that's tripled since 2003 due to the massive influx of refugees and no prospects of work.

They'd also face the emptiness of exile. When I visit my cousin Silma, in Amman, it's clear she's painfully homesick. Her cell-phone screen saver is a silhouette of the state of Iraq. Like most Iraqis, she and her husband cannot legally work here, so her family of five is squeezed into a small two-bedroom apartment. She tries to muster up some excitement as she shows me the herbs she's growing on her windowsill but instead starts to cry. She misses her real garden, in her real house, in her real country. Brahim's daughter Mahia also lives in Amman, but in order to pay for their apartment, her husband continues to work in Iraq. They see each other once a month at most. "This is not a life, Loreen," she said last fall when I saw her. Their apartment was so empty our voices echoed off the walls. "I am lonely, and the people here, they don't like us."

Those in Baghdad are lonely, too. All of Uncle Brahim's kids and grandkids, except for Aliya and her son, are gone. I once asked him why he chose not to move to America when my dad did, in 1954. His answer was simple: "I like it here." At 6 feet 2, the young Brahim was a rabble-rouser. He picked fights at school, fell in love with a woman he wasn't set up to marry (despite their unarranged marriage, she's my aunt now) and joined Gamal Nasser's United Arab Republic party in the 1960s. When the Baathists (Brahim calls them "the communists") came into power in 1968, he was jailed for three years when he failed to renounce his ties to his Pan-Arab organization. His vision of a modern, peaceful Iraq, and a united Arab world, now seems quaint and obsolete.