Jill Carroll – Correspondent

Baghdad has been a violent place for over two years now, but when I got back this time I noticed people were more afraid of sectarian violence than they were before. Now people have to dance around these Sunni-Shiite divides in order to work.

In the street in Shiite areas, my driver, my interpreter, and I call one another by Shiite names, in case we are overheard. In Sunni areas we use Sunni names. These days, the ethnic and religious background of our drivers and interpreters matters much more to the people we are interviewing. It comes up almost every time we talk to someone.

Luckily my interpreter is a Christian, and to all but the most extreme people here, he is viewed as a more or less neutral party and, thus, above suspicion.

One time we were picking up a Sunni man my interpreter knows who was going to take us to meet his family. After arriving at the house, he pulled my interpreter aside, gestured toward our driver and whispered, "Who is this guy? You know, Sunni or Shiite?" He was reassured to know our driver is Sunni.

Several times my interpreter and I have had to take taxis when our car breaks down. When we get in, my interpreter quickly assesses the ethnicity of the taxi driver on the basis of religious pictures and trinkets displayed on the dashboard and adjusts the answers to the inevitable questions about our identities accordingly. One time he slipped up, at first saying I was his Sunni wife and then later saying he was a Christian. The driver remarked at such a highly unusual match in Iraq.