BAGHDAD (AP) – From the outside, the building looks like just one of many in central Baghdad that are deteriorating with years of misuse – quiet, windows closed.
After 6 pm, a knock on its steel doors and a portal opens to a different world rarely found in the Iraqi capital.
Bodyguards check bags for weapons. The names are verified in a list. Poor club beat sounds resonate, getting louder at each level of a cascading staircase. On the top floor, a bartender works skillfully behind a lighted counter. Above him, shelves of drinks shine like jewels under a neon sign with the name of the bar.
Ask for a menu and he replies coldly: “I am the menu”, and prepares a cocktail with the confidence of a magician.
The bar’s manager, Alaa, a Syrian citizen who has barely been in Iraq for a year, has a vision for the place: an underground establishment that can serve as a refuge for his handpicked clientele who want to escape the stigma of drinking alcohol in a conservative Muslim majority society. But being a bartender is a dangerous activity in Iraq, where liquor stores are often the target of disapproving militias.
“This place is not for everyone,” he said. “We are living in fear, especially in this place … but I have to put up with it. It’s my job. The workers here, I have to protect them. My clients too. ”
British crime series posters Peaky Blinders are framed on the walls. The show, which follows the exploits of a Birmingham gang, was Alaa’s main inspiration for the bar’s decor. “It is very similar to this place (Baghdad), unfortunately,” he said.
Opened just a few weeks ago, Alaa could not have chosen a worse time to open a bar. Bombings of shops selling alcohol are on the rise in the Iraqi capital. The Alaa supplier was among those affected. On Tuesday alone, two bombs exploded near two different stores, causing property damage. It was the fourth such attack in a week.
Baghdad’s bars are quiet and limited to a handful of restaurants that also serve alcohol. Even these have an uncertain future and are closed periodically. Their mistake, Alaa said, was to be open to the general public. Absurdly, the survival of the Alaa bar depends on keeping customers to a minimum.
The opening of the bar also takes place at a time when Iraq, a crude oil exporter, is battling the coronavirus pandemic and a devastating economic crisis caused by low oil prices last year. In response to the serious liquidity crisis, the Ministry of Finance recently devalued the Iraqi dinar, which is pegged to the dollar, by more than 20%.
“These things affect business, but I am still finding customers. There are a lot of people here who have money. Legal, illegal does not matter. It makes no difference to me, ”said Alaa.
Seized by fear, he watches the comings and goings on surveillance cameras day and night. He asked the Associated Press to refer to him only by his first name and not contain the name and location of the bar to avoid reprisals from armed groups.
He also has other rules: word of mouth is the only form of advertising he accepts, every sponsor candidate must send a text message directly to him requesting a reservation, it should not be too loud inside the home. Alaa knows each customer by name.
Those who break the rules or “create problems” are put on a growing black list.
It is not the most frightened he has ever had.
Being a witness to Iraq’s faltering rule of law is just the most recent chapter in the odyssey of his life, which began with the war that devastated his native Syria in 2011. He remembers the bomber planes flying overhead while taking exams at the University of Damascus. At one point, his village in southern Syria was surrounded by militants from the Islamic State group and Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with Al Qaeda. Then Lebanon came, where he spent years preparing for one crisis after another.
“I went through all the crises in the region – Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,” he said. With them, he learned only one lesson: “Earn before you spend”.
In all phases, he looked for work doing the only thing he knows best. Nightlife, he said, is in his blood.
Your resume looks like a weekend rager in Beirut. His mixing talents have adorned many bars along the famous festive streets of Beirut, Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael. In 2017, he was unable to return to Lebanon from a trip to Syria after authorities refused to renew his residence, a policy that affected many Syrian workers at the time.
He returned to his native Sweida, a predominantly Druze village in southern Syria, where he tried – and failed – to open a car trading business. A cousin told him that he would make money in Baghdad, where many Syrians found work in hospitality.
It was late 2019 and Alaa had a choice: earning a living in Baghdad, where security is precarious, or risking a dangerous sea voyage to seek asylum in Europe. “I could never accept being a refugee and living a life without dignity and freedom,” he said.
Creating the bar was a fluke.
The Iraqi owner was about to sell the building when Alaa stepped in and offered to renovate the place and share the profits. Raising $ 5,000 a week and often crowded on weekends, the bar is showing its first signs of success. News of its opening spread like wildfire on social media, including closed Facebook groups run by Iraqi lawyers, doctors and engineers – the kind of patron Alaa is looking for.
The success of your business is closely linked to your family’s well-being at home.
His mother and sister still live in Sweida, where most residents earn only $ 30 a month in wages. The bar has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it meets the growing demands of Iraq’s underground drinking scene.
“The other is to put food on the table back home,” he said.