Women lose ground in the new Iraq

Aseel Bahjet and her mother shot nervous glances at each other as the 23-year-old spoke to a stranger in a Karrada perfume shop on a recent afternoon. Her mother wore an abaya. Bahjet wore a long black skirt, a black sweater and a head scarf. The shopkeeper closed the door so that no one would see a foreigner talking to the young woman.

Bahjet, a petite figure with pale skin and big brown eyes, recently graduated from Baghdad University with an engineering degree. But she doesn't know what to do with it.

Her mother, Shadam, wants her to stay at home as much as possible, saying she has heard too many stories about young women being kidnapped. Bahjet has nothing to do at home, other than talk to her friends on the phone.

"There's no chance to build our future," she said.

She lowered her voice and spoke slowly as she searched for the right words in English: "I joke that we should go see psychiatrists. All Iraqis are depressed."

Many young women at Bahjet's alma mater worry that they, too, will have nothing to do after they graduate. On a recent afternoon, Enas Moyad sat in an empty classroom at Baghdad University contemplating her future. Ask her if she is depressed, and she's quick to answer: "I'm psychologically tired."

She is 21.

Like many Iraqi parents, Moyad's had encouraged her to go to school. Now they don't.

This month, a Sunni Arab insurgent group asked Sunni students and professors not to attend classes while it "cleanses" the campuses of Shiite death squads. The group later said in a statement that it was canceling the rest of the school year. The threat was circulated so widely that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement urging students to ignore it.

Fearing attacks on the way to campus, Moyad and nine other students have pitched in to hire a Kia minibus to take them there. Some of her girlfriends carry knives in their bags. Others take pistols, she said.

For months, attendance has been falling at the College of Education for Women, where Moyad is in her fourth year. One sociology professor said he had given only two lectures since Sept. 3. Normally, he gives 22 lectures a week.

Moyad, who shows her rebellious side by letting a few dyed blond bangs show from under her green hijab, or head scarf, said she worries about what her degree will do for her in the new Iraq.

"We are afraid that no one will take them," she said.

Many educated, professional women have struggled with the question of whether to stay in Iraq.

Muna Nouri, 52, a high school teacher, doesn't want to leave, even if it means having to abide by rules she does not believe in.

As a college student in 1974, Nouri showed off her long black hair. She wore short skirts. She walked around campus with friends who happened to be boys.

As an adult, she and her two daughters -- one is 20, the other 17 -- took walks around their neighborhood in the Hadra district, wearing whatever they wanted.

"I consider myself and my daughters liberated women," she said. "We go out and walk in the street. That was last year even. But this year, it's more difficult. Every day, it's worse than the day before."

The wife of one of the security guards at the mosque across the street, an impoverished woman to whom Nouri had given money, urged her to wear a head scarf for her own good, she recalled.

The day after sectarian violence erupted in Sadr City late last month, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr instructed women to continue wearing their hijabs.

"There are some voices being heard against the hijab, from inside and outside Islam," Sadr said. "I say it will remain a protection for our women and call on our sisters to be patient, not to listen to these voices."

Nouri considers herself a religious woman. She prays and reads the Koran. The Islam she knows does not oppress women, she said.

"I think Islam is more liberated than that," she said.

This year, more than 300 teachers and Education Ministry employees have been killed, according to government reports. Nouri does not want to make herself a target at the all-girls' high school where she teaches. So she wears long skirts and a head scarf to work.

"I don't like it, because I think the women here are very beautiful," she said, speaking by phone because she did not want her neighbors to see a stranger visiting her home. "This scarf is not beautiful."

Like Nouri, Bushra Shimirya, 42, had considered herself an independent woman. That changed dramatically in just a few months, she said. She knew things were bad when she could no longer drive her car.

"Anyone who's in her 20s and drives a car for the first time, you feel very happy and very independent," she said. "Like you can do anything."

Since the Samarra bombings, she said, she has felt she can do almost nothing.

Relatives had seen fliers warning women not to drive. They pleaded with her to stop. She resisted.

Shimirya, who has a doctorate in psychological studies, had been driving since she was 20.

But the stares started to bother her. They came from men anytime they saw her behind the wheel of her 1984 Toyota Crown.

So she hired a car service to take her to her job at Baghdad University. She stopped going out unless it was necessary. No more dinners with her girlfriends. No more walking the streets of her affluent Mansour neighborhood.

"It's become so bad that a woman who drives a car will be slaughtered, and a woman who doesn't put a scarf on her hair will be slaughtered," she said.

When classes ended in July, Shimirya and her husband, an engineer, sold their cars, locked up their large, modern-style house and headed to Dubai.

"I miss my home," she said, speaking by phone from Dubai. "I miss my colleagues at work. I miss my neighbors. I miss my family. I miss the air in Iraq. There is nothing more beautiful than Iraq."

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