Even Dating Is Perilous In Polarized Baghdad

Qais Jassim, 26, a Shiite, says he spent his wedding night petrified that his Sunni wife's relatives would behead him.

BAGHDAD -- He was a dashing young computer engineer. She was a shy student at his alma mater. They fell in love over lunch last year in the university cafeteria and promptly became engaged.

As they prepared for a future together, the couple barely discussed a subject that, under Saddam Hussein's rule, amounted to a footnote in matters of the heart: He was a Shiite Muslim; she was a Sunni Kurd.

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