"I know you guys are from the press," the man with the beard whispered. "You are asking very sensitive questions. If you ask Hajji Mohammed about it he might suspect you of something." The man with the beard didn't feel like talking about the bombing. We went to the front of the cafe and found Hajji Mohammed, who is slightly grizzled and irritable, stuck behind his small desk where he rings up the customers. When we asked him about the bombing he said that he couldn't remember a time when people were killed for absolutely no reason. Hajji Mohammed went on to speak wistfully about the old monarchy, saying Iraq had its best days under the king. We asked him why he'd closed the cafe last Friday on its busiest day of the week.

"Fridays I lose so much money because people buy a tea and sit all day and when it comes time to pay, they come to me and lie about how many teas they had. So I closed the cafe. We also had generator problems," Hajji Mohammed said. It was a massive lie, which he did not expect us to believe. Fridays are the busiest day for the Shabandar, the day that writers from all over the city come to discuss, translate and work on manuscripts; business booms. Mokhtar also makes a point of being at the Shabandar on Friday where he holds court. The real reason Hajji Mohammed closed the cafe, which everyone on the street knows, is that he has been receiving threats from insurgent groups who don't like his clients and their politics. Mokhtar is likely one of the reasons, and there are other dissident groups as well. We would find one such semi-clandestine organization two days later and they would confirm that the Shabandar was receiving threats, but they couldn't say who was behind them. The men never show themselves.

We left the Shabandar and found a man around the corner who said that Hajji Qais' son was not killed in the bombing, and only found out about his father's death on television. He said that Ahmed Qais was working around the corner in another small stationery store, called the Nadeem. The bookseller said we could talk to him if we were interested.

Hajji Qais' son, Ahmed Qais, is in his early 30s, a well-educated Sunni engineer. He's clean-shaven and polite, not an extremist. Ahmed Qais is a little heavy-set from consuming sugary tea and bread. He's well-spoken in Arabic, and he understood a great deal of spoken English, often responding before the translation came in. For a man whose father had been killed a few days before, Ahmed Qais was pretty calm and focused. It took a little while to convince him to talk to a reporter but he relented after a few minutes. We found a room in the back of the stationery store where we could talk.

"Who do you think killed your father?" I asked him. He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"Everything is suspected. He worked all day and all night, so there's no way he could be involved in something. The police came and conducted a short investigation and then left, but in a destroyed country like this, they can't investigate anything. There are also some strange people here who think that my father was selling valuables or Easter gifts and some people think that might be the wrong thing to do."

Ahmed Qais talked for an hour about how it was important for his family to move on with their lives, which seemed like an odd comment to make so soon after the killing. Ahmed Qais didn't back any particular theory of the crime. In fact, he stayed away from saying anything specific and wouldn't name anyone he thought was involved. He was obviously extremely frightened and thought that talking about the assassination of his father would only bring him problems. Ahmed Qais asked if I heard what happened to the ice seller in Dora and we said yes, that story was going around and we knew it. I asked him about threats his father might have received and he said that there weren't any, that his father didn't have enemies on the street.

Just as I was leaving, I handed him a piece of paper with my contact information on it. He said, "Even if I had some information, I would keep it to myself." Ahmed Qais told me that he had two families to support and that it was a big responsibility.

"We should just forget it," he said.

I was stunned. "Forget the killing?"

"Yes."

Hajji Qais Anni had only been dead for six days. His blackened store is a monument to the assassination and also a warning to other Al Mutanabbi Street vendors. On Sunday, three days before I met his son, another man selling cassette tapes of the Quran was assassinated by gunmen. He worked in a store a block away from Hajji Qais' place.

Two days later, on Friday, in the faint hope of finding the Shabandar open, we went back to Al Mutanabbi Street to meet Hamid Mokhtar, but the cafe was shuttered. The street was filled with booksellers and book buyers. At 10 in the morning, it was 115 degrees, while street vendors yelled out, "Drinks! Cold! Drinks! Pepsi! Miranda!" It was hard to move in the crowd. There were hundreds of men in the street shopping for books spread out on carpets, buying religious tracts, technical manuals. Copies of pirated software were placed respectfully by ornately bound Qurans.

We found Mokhtar waiting in front of the Shabandar. He said, "We can't stay here." So we walked to a bookstore called Adnan's Library where we drank tea, while Mokhtar scouted for a safe place. He led us through winding streets below Al Rasheed Street, small alleys that branched off Al Mutanabbi, narrow canyons whose walls were white in the sun. Mokhtar was worried that we would be attacked; he'd taken this route many times before, trying to ditch the Mukhabarat (secret police) men in the old regime days. On Rasheed Street, there is a dark pit of a place called Hassan the Foreigner. Men who couldn't get into the Shabandar were there drinking tea and smoking. Students worked at a nearby table taking careful notes. It was impossible to see what they were working on. The place was ancient, unimprovable and collapsing down into itself in slow motion. A faint rectangle of light came through the windows and died long before the back wall where we found a free bench.

"I discovered that a girl I knew from college was writing reports on me [for the secret police]. I was surprised but this gave me an idea for a new book." I asked him if he was able to write these days. Mokhtar got upset with the question. "No, I can't write under these conditions, I have to calm down. I need some time to think. It's too soon." Like all other Iraqis, Mokhtar has been pushed into the rapidly splintering future without time to cope with the past.

As he was talking, other middle-aged men gathered around us very quietly and sat down after long ritual greetings. They were all poets and former political prisoners; they were all Mokhtar's friends. All the prison men are the same. They talk about prison, how they survived, and they carry pictures of those days like wedding photos. In the photos, taken on the special occasions when their families were allowed to visit, they are hunched in groups and hollow-eyed. Prisoners form tight-knit groups and the photographs showed the circle of men whom Mokhtar trusted. It is a special honor to see these pictures. Mokhtar carries them with him. We were being allowed inside Mokhtar's cell.

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