BAGHDAD — Hussain Attar-Bashi watched the American-led invasion of Iraq on live TV, his illegal satellite dish hidden by cloth strategically draped across the roof of his home.
Five years later, Iraqi laws restricting access to foreign television and the Internet are long gone, and Attar-Bashi is among those riding a communications revolution that has swept the country.
Nowhere is that boom more evident than on the cacophonous stretch of road in central Baghdad called Sinaa Street, where Sunnis, Shiites and Christians shop for the latest high-tech gear at stores such as Attar-Bashi's Alreem Computer Center.
The fortunes of Sinaa Street, like those of the nation, rise and tumble with the course of the war. When violence ebbs, business thrives. When violence increases, it suffers.
Merchants such as Attar-Bashi have made a living selling their wares along the broken sidewalks here since the March 2003 invasion, in what would seem to be an irreversible connection to the global Information Age.
But though Iraqis are now free to communicate with the outside world, they are still wary of speaking their minds in front of people who might disagree with them -- even customers in their own cluttered shops. And after five years of war, bombings, kidnappings and slayings, Iraqis still do not feel they can move about freely.
Merchants on Sinaa Street do what most Iraqis do in their spare time: wonder whether the relative calm will last, and compare life now to the lives they had before the war.
Here, Iraqis' newfound freedoms are evident in a variety of goods, including pirated copies of Oscar-nominated films and sophisticated laptops on which to play them. On a recent afternoon, vendors were selling "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "Juno" alongside religious DVDs and the latest version of the video game "Grand Theft Auto."
Disappointment is also on display. Attar-Bashi, speaking inside his sprawling store on a recent afternoon, said he had welcomed the arrival of the Americans.
"We thought, 'Oh, we'll be free.' We thought: 'We'll be able to go out and talk to anyone. We'll be free.' It didn't turn out that way."
Iraqis see that violence has dropped in the last few months, yet Sunnis still worry about being targeted by Shiite militiamen and Shiites are afraid to visit Sunni neighborhoods.
All are bitter about the violence and hardship the war has wrought and fearful that widespread bloodshed could return.
