Today, Saif's family stores are running full tilt after years of off and on business. Self-service, it isn't. To buy a bottle of Scotch, a customer confronts an iron gate that keeps him 3 feet away from Saif. By vaulting two steps back, Saif can hide behind the wall where he displays bottles of liquor.
However, even the iron gate wasn't enough to protect the store from insurgents who threw a Molotov cocktail inside the family store in Karrada in mid-May. "The fire cost me $10,000," Saif reckoned.
Forced to close, he repainted the store and reopened it in late May. Other Islamic prohibitionists then placed a bomb near the shop. The explosion meant more losses, but he opened the gate again a few days later.
Saif's family, who are Christians, are nothing if not resilient. They once owned 13 liquor stores all over Baghdad but lost nine to Islamist insurgents, Saif said. Now iron gates protect those that have reopened.
On the other hand... Yeesh!
In his store on Sadoon Street, Dawood offers more than a hundred kinds of beverages, including whiskey, beer, vodka and wine. Prices range from less than $1 for Iraqi hooch to $3,000 for a single bottle of Black & White Scotch.
One reason for the high price is the cost of previous attacks. About 18 months ago, insurgents from the Mahdi Army, a Shiite Muslim militia, stormed into the liquor store of one of Saif's friends, cut off his arm with an electrical saw and left. Saif's family closed their stores for several months, which cost them about $90,000.
Holy crap a bottle of Scotch in Iraq is even more expensive than a gallon of gasoline in New Orleans... although admittedly not quite as tasty.
Damn this war.
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