BAGHDAD — From the outside, the building seems just one of the many in central Baghdad that are decaying from years of misuse — silent, windows shut.
After 6 p.m., one knock on its steel-plated doors and a portal is opened to a different world rarely found in Iraq’s capital.
Bodyguards check bags for weapons. Names are checked against a list. Faint sounds of club beats resound, growing louder every level up a cascading staircase. At the top floor, a bartender works skillfully behind an illuminated counter. Above him, shelves of liquor glow like jewels under a neon sign with the name of the bar.
Ask for a menu, and he responds, coolly: “I am the menu,” and produces a cocktail with the confidence of a magician.
The bar’s manager Alaa, a Syrian national scarcely in Iraq one year, has a vision for the place: A clandestine establishment that can serve as a refuge for his hand-picked clientele wishing to evade the stigma of drinking alcohol in a conservative Muslim-majority society. But being a barman is a dangerous trade in Iraq, where alcohol shops are frequently targeted by disapproving militias.
