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thedrifter
12-24-06, 01:01 PM
It's lonely on "Christmas tree row" in Baghdad

By Nancy Trejos
The Washington Post

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Nouri Dawoud has one of the most dangerous jobs in Baghdad. He sells Christmas trees.

For seven hours a day, he stands on the same street corner in a neighborhood where drive-by shootings and snipers are not uncommon. He caters to Christians, among the most targeted people. On a good day, he attracts a crowd, a draw for suicide bombers.

Dawoud has sold trees at the same corner in the Karrada district every Christmas season for 10 years. At 77, he is not ready to abandon his spot.

He may have no choice. Christmas once was a holiday that Christians and a few Muslims in Iraq enjoyed. They now fear celebrating it. These days in Baghdad, even buying a Christmas tree can lead to death. "People now, they have a lot of things to worry about other than trees," Dawoud said, his mouth full of pumpkin seeds, a popular snack.

On Monday, one week before Christmas, Dawoud was the only tree vendor on his street, which in the past had become "Christmas tree row" in early December. His colleagues, he said, were too afraid to join him.

"They said, 'You go check it out first. You're an old man,' " he said.

With a black-checkered kaffiyeh wrapped around his head, he placed five tall, anemic-looking trees against a wall and waited for people to show up. Few did. With his one good eye, he scanned every car. He called his presence a "fidai" — a suicide mission — and broke into a hearty laugh.

"Why should I be scared?" he asked. "The old men, they don't care like the young people."

Dawoud is a Muslim, but he has lived among Christians in the mixed Karrada district for years. "We are brothers," he said, expressing a tolerance increasingly rare in Baghdad.

For centuries, including under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Christian minority coexisted with Muslims. Saddam's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian, one of an estimated 600,000 to 1 million people of the faith living in the country before the U.S.-led invasion overthrew Saddam in 2003.

Militant Islamic groups since have waged a campaign against Christians, in part because some ran liquor stores and took jobs on U.S. bases. But they appear to have been targeted mostly for not being Muslims.

In recent years, churches have been bombed and priests, ministers and worshippers have been kidnapped or killed. The violence picked up after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial citing this year of a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's description of Islam as "evil and inhuman."

Shortly after that speech, armed men in the northern city of Mosul opened fire on the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit. A priest from the Syriac Orthodox Church was kidnapped, then decapitated.

The violence has led many Christians to flee the country.

Carlo Aziz, a monk at the Church of the Roman Catholic in Karrada, estimates about 400,000 Christians remain.

His church once had 300 families. In October 2004, a car bomb exploded at the church, destroying the building and everything in it except for a wooden cross now prominently displayed on the altar of the newly rebuilt edifice. But more than half of its families have fled, Aziz said.

At no time is the exodus more evident than Christmas. Churches, now hidden behind barbed-wire fences and blast walls, do not advertise their Christmas services. Aziz stood at the altar of his church Tuesday. There were no decorations. No Christmas tree. No Nativity scene.

"Celebration doesn't always mean making a show," he said. "The celebration is inside the heart. Jesus is here inside the heart of the human being."

Yusef Zawet and his brother Assem used to sell natural trees on the sidewalk of their flower shop in Karrada. They imported them from Turkey, Iran and Syria. But the lack of security on the roads has made shipping trees, or anything else, too expensive. They now keep artificial Christmas trees inside their shop.

Dawoud won't settle for that. He has been planting the real thing at his farm north of Baghdad for 35 years.

He sold three trees Monday. He sold 10 Tuesday. He would sell 20 or 30 in one day in past years, he said.

He said he was starting to feel lonely at his corner, which faces a telecommunications center and is near restaurants that no one goes to anymore. For company, he had only two young brothers who sell cigarettes and orange soda from a kiosk.

"No one is coming to ask about trees," he said.

A man then walked up. He picked out a tree, paid for it and left in minutes. He acted like a thief, Dawoud said when he was gone. "When they steal, they look over their shoulders and hide," he said. "That's what they're doing now when they buy trees."

Ellie