BAGHDAD — The road home for Abdulla Muhammadi is filled with military checkpoints and suspicious glares.
Every time the 31-year-old electronics salesman approaches the barbed wire and wrecked buildings of his hometown of Fallouja, he faces wary Iraqi and U.S. troops who guard each entrance to the city and search all arriving vehicles and people. He and others must sometimes wait for hours to get in.
"When I enter my city," said Muhammadi, a Sunni Muslim Arab, like most Fallouja natives, "I feel like a stranger."
Fallouja's reputation as the hub of the nation's brutal insurgency has branded young men like Muhammadi as suspected terrorists.
Many went into self-imposed exile in Baghdad even before the November invasion led by the Marines, reinventing themselves and pursuing their education or careers while remaining emotionally tied to their infamous hometown.
Others, like Muhammadi, returned to Fallouja after the Marine assault but come often to Baghdad.
For many of these young men straddling two worlds, Fallouja is seen as a city that proudly stood up to foreign occupiers -- not as the terrorism capital linked to beheadings, suicide bombings and the slaying and mutilation of four U.S. contractors, as it is seen in much of the world. The people there face hostility from U.S. and Iraqi authorities -- as well as ordinary Iraqis, especially Shiite Muslims -- who often view them as terrorists, though Muhammadi and others interviewed said they had no interest in joining the insurgency.
Muhammadi's friend Marwan Jaf, 29, spends time in Fallouja and the capital. He works as a car salesman in Baghdad and operates a juice shop in Fallouja. Profit from the juice shop has plummeted since the U.S. attack and the destruction of much of the city.
Even in Baghdad, though, Jaf cannot escape his Fallouja background.
While he was driving in the capital in December, Jaf said, a police officer stopped him at a checkpoint. "The policeman asked me why I live in Baghdad after he saw my ID. He acted as if I'd come from another country."
Jaf buys cars from Jordan and sells them in Iraq. He said that owning a car registered in Al Anbar province, which includes Fallouja and is considered the heartland of the insurgency, subjected him to harassment and dirty looks.
"I love my new Rover 2000 car that I bought last year, but now I don't drive it," said Jaf, explaining that the vehicle had one drawback: Al Anbar license plates.
