BAGHDAD - On a good day, it takes Jabbar two hours to get to work; on a not-so-good day it might take five. Same to go home.
He takes a cab, walks a couple of blocks, takes a bus, walks a couple of blocks, takes another cab, then walks some more. He varies the route every day. His wife knows what he does, but no one else in his family does. The reason is simple: To work for Americans as Jabbar does can - and very often does - mean death.
Jabbar is real, but he's also a composite of the 140,000 to 170,000 Iraqis (the exact number is elusive) on the payroll of government and private reconstruction efforts. Some are custodians; some are food-service workers; some are design engineers; some are contractors themselves. If they see a batch of official-looking people show up where a water plant is being built and especially if they see anyone pull out a camera, they hide their faces or scatter. Glad to have the work, but not the publicity. Not yet. Still way too dangerous.
The number of people here who are hopeful for a peaceful, stable future after 30 years of rule by tyranny and fear is said to be growing. Could be 60 percent of the population; could be more. But the intensity of those wanting the effort to fail doesn't seem to be lessening. Summary executions in the suburbs are an almost daily event. In the compound where the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers is based, if a "local" doesn't show up for duty, worry begins. Too often, days or weeks later word will circulate that his or her body has been found.
Jabbar, who is middle-aged, is a writer and serves the emerging free media here.
He's intensely curious about America and the American press. He seems to sense that television, in and of itself, is not informing people with the depth and context needed for "big picture" understanding, so he asks whether most Americans get their news from small media, which I represent, or large media such as The New York Times.
He seems surprised when I tell him the Times is not even available where I live, except by mail or the Internet, and that probably no more than a couple of dozen people in Vicksburg are regular Times readers.
Then he asks me what kind of news is in my paper, and I tell him what I think is the truth: Our market, layered outward, is Vicksburg, then other area communities, then Mississippi, the United States and - space available - the rest of the world.
He nods, but he's perplexed and wants to know why.
Iraq is a country where everything has come from the national level.
There's been nothing similar to America's concentric circles of government, where towns can have their own laws and states can have their own laws, and actions of the president and Congress don't mean that much to us day in and day out.
Newspapers are commercial products, I said, and the smaller papers try to provide local information, usually because we are the only ones doing so.
This "exclusiveness" is what we sell - and there's not a lot of room for global issues, especially since we're a people also interested in sports and celebrities and finance and health.
Jabbar accepts the explanation, but I can tell he finds it a bit troubling.
Answering the calls here and in America for immediate withdrawal, Jabbar doesn't understand why more of his fellow Iraqis won't join the majority - 11 million - who voted in December to elect the nation's first free four-year parliament and instead continue to battle the "occupation" of their home.
In an essay, he wrote that these people "need to read the history well. The first elections that took place in Germany, Japan, Italy (after World War II), South Korea and Egypt were under occupation."
And he closed with a story:
"'Dad, do you know what our teacher has taught us?' young Ahmed asked one day.
"Hand-in-hand are strength, dirham (a coin) plus dirham make wealth, and a rock plus a rock make buildings.
"Hopefully, the adults of Iraq can learn from this young student's lesson."
Jabbar is a patient man. It will take many patient, persistent Iraqis to make this country work, especially given the violent opposition here and the short shrift given to the overall situation in most of America's press.
But you have to be patient and persistent, don't you, to spend two to five hours getting to work and two to five getting home - knowing a gunman might visit at any time.
