WAR WOUNDS.(Baghdad during Iraq War)

Jeffrey Goldberg on Iraq's rival opposition groups

Hendrik Hertzberg on the not so short war

An archive of NewYorker.com's coverage of the war in Iraq

Photographs of Baghdad the day the American troops took control of the city

A portfolio of photographs of the fight for the Iraqi capital

Photographs of Baghdad taken before the coalition troops entered the city

When the bombing of Baghdad began, Karim, who has a small barbershop on a nameless side street near the city's main bazaar, closed his business, but a few days into the second week of the war he reopened, and I asked the Ministry of Information for permission to visit him. (Restrictions on the activities of journalists had become so draconian by then that simply going to the barber without a minder looked suspicious.) Karim is a perfectionist. A shave and a trim can take forty minutes, which is very relaxing. He was finishing up with two clients--older men who had had their hair and mustaches dyed--when I arrived at the shop with Sabah, my driver. Iraqi men are very careful about their personal appearance. Mustaches are de rigueur, but other facial hair is shaved or plucked. One of Karim's clients was standing near the door, letting the thick black paste in his mustache and hair dry; the other one, an Army officer, to judge from his uniform, was in the barber's chair. He said, "Hello, hello”--an Anglicism that Iraqis employ as an all-purpose salutation. He was wearing a holster that held a gold-plated revolver. "Iraq just needs peace. Only peace,"he said in English when he got up. He said goodbye to us and left with his friend. Outside, people were looking up at the sky. You could hear the slow-rushing roar of a B-52 overhead. A few moments later, there were a couple of loud explosions, and the rattletrap building across the street shook. The plastic covering on its windows flapped violently. Karim paid no attention.