Alpha Ideas

Sinan Al Dulaimi, 43, works for the United Nations in Baghdad, where he has lived in the eastern Zayouna area since he was 14.

In a telephone interview on June 16, he described life in a 1,300-year-old capital with about 7 million people that has fallen from being one of the Arab world’s cultural hubs to a ghettoized city marred by bomb blasts and sectarian killings.

His neighborhood was established by former President Abdel Karim Qasim, who took power in a 1958 coup and gave 600-square-meter plots to army officers to build homes

“The situation in Baghdad is very bad. The entrance to the city closes at 10 p.m.; it used to close at 1 a.m. Curfew starts at midnight and ends at 5 a.m.

‘‘You can see huge lines of people outside banks trying to withdraw cash. Otherwise, the streets are mostly empty

‘‘We’ve stockpiled food. We’re all worried about food — cooking oil, rice, those basics — and prices are rising. Ten kilos of rice usually costs $10, now it costs more than $25.

‘‘I want to avoid car bombings, another reason I don’t leave my neighborhood. I do shopping here though it costs more – – five loaves of bread is $1 versus in the local market outside where $1 buys 10 loaves. Here, it’s about $14-15 per kilo of mutton, outside it’s $10.

‘‘Tap water isn’t healthy for cooking or drinking; we have to buy that, too.

‘‘Power only comes on for about 4-6 hours a day so I supplement with private generators. I pay, like, $250 a month for that. You can’t use ACs with private generators, just TVs, fridges, lights and air coolers.

‘‘There’s no electricity and there’s garbage everywhere, but house prices have been getting higher and higher. In my neighborhood, you can’t buy a house for less than $300,000 and that would be for a 150-square-meter house. For 600 square meters, it’s not less than $900,000, up to $1.2 million.

–from Bloomberg