Yet that show led to other exposure, and his experience with the media has helped him enormously as a neophyte journalist. "When you hang out with the press, you learn a lot of things," he says. "Which side of the story to put the light on, how you can get information by asking the right kinds of questions."

After the war, Rabi'a went to the Al Fanar, which sits in back of the journalist-overrun Palestine Hotel, to look for work with the media. There, he ran into Ramzi Kysia, a 34-year-old volunteer with Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based nonprofit that deals exclusively with Iraq issues. Kysia said Voices was interested in helping to start a newspaper, and Rabi'a said, "I'm in, definitely!"

Voices in the Wilderness provides funding and Kysia helps the paper's staff with English translation, but the direction of the paper is entirely up to the Iraqis who work on it. Rabi'a points out that editorial meetings are held in Arabic, which Kysia doesn't speak. Sixteen-year-old Majid Jarrar, a friend of Rabi'a's, negotiated the paper's contract with a Baghdad printing press. He also does most of the layout, takes pictures, and reports -- in the first issue he had a story about Iraqi Palestinians evicted from their homes after the war, and now he's working on a piece about the Free Iraqi Fighters, the militia organized by the Iraqi National Congress's Ahmed Chalabi.

On Wednesday, Jarrar and Rabi'a headed out to report a story on the vices that have burst out into the open since Saddam's fall. Baghdad's dirty movie theaters once showed B-grade beach pictures, but now feature real nudity. Hardcore VCDs, once contraband, are sold openly in shops throughout the city. Public consumption of alcohol used to be illegal, but now men hawk bottles of liquor from roadside stalls.

Heading to the Roxy Theater, Rabi'a, who wears an Iron Maiden T-shirt and an HBO cap, asks the driver to play a gothic metal tape by a band called Moonspell. Jarrar, wearing an NBA hat and a Calvin Klein belt, objects -- he wants to listen to the rock group Nickleback. Westernized as they seem, though, they're worried about America corrupting their country. "Now even a 13-year-old child can buy a bottle of whiskey or rent a sex movie," says Rabi'a, appalled. "I'm really anti-tradition," adds Jarrar, "but if I had to choose between our real culture or a new culture coming from the West, I'd choose the real culture."

At the theater, the two reporters seem surprisingly assured. In the lobby, Jarrar takes pictures of pictures of buxom women in lingerie, while Rabi'a makes notes on the men who stumble by. "Most of these people are taking drugs," he says, adding that Valium and Xanax are popular. "All of them are drunk."

After a few moments, a man slams Rabi'a's notebook shut and starts yelling at him, accusing reporters of ruining Iraq's reputation. Rabi'a yells back, and soon a crowd has gathered. One onlooker says that no one would go to the porn theater if the coalition government turned the electricity back on, but without it, there's nothing else to do. The yelling turns political as people scream out their dissatisfaction with the occupation.

Outside, Rabi'a says, "This is not the same Iraq we were living in."

Al-Muajaha is a vehicle for them to make sense of the Iraq they've been thrust into. "When I read the newspapers in the market, they're all crap," says Jarrar. "You can't find any independent newspapers." Adds Rabi'a, "We just want our newspaper to be able to tell the truth."

For now, the newspaper is their lives. School started three weeks ago, but teachers' salaries haven't been paid and classes run only from 8:30 until 10 a.m. Rabi'a has only shown up twice. Two weeks ago he left home and has been crashing at friends' houses. Jarrar tries to go to classes four times a week.

Their real education is taking place in the city, where they're covering the remaking of their world. For his story on the Free Iraqi Forces, Jarrar has been interviewing people in the INC compound, the intrigue-filled headquarters of the men vying to lead Iraq. A few weeks ago, he couldn't even talk about Iraq's leaders. "It's strange, like I'm living in a dream."

It's something they say over and over again; there's a sense of incredible unreality to everything that's happening around them. "When I saw the statue fall on an Arab satellite channel, I thought, This is a dream, this isn't true," says Rabi'a. "When I realized Saddam Hussein was gone, I thought, We're going to break the chains around our necks. I thought, I'm going to make a concert in the street and sing heavy metal all day."

Now, as he runs around the ruined capital, that elation has evaporated. "We don't trust any government," Rabi'a says. "We don't believe someone good is going to rule Iraq. The truth is, even if it was me who was going to run Iraq, I wouldn't trust myself. We can't trust anyone anymore." A sad sentiment surely, but also the reason Rabi'a is no one's propagandist.

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