Perspective: The invisible man

In Baghdad, nobody is what he seems. People invent stories to hide who they are and what they do. They tell their acquaintances they work for a relative, but head off to a job in the Green Zone that could get them killed. Others carry an ID with a Shia or Sunni name to escape death at the hands of the city’s armed militias.

But what happens if you are exposed. What then in a country mired in sectarian warfare, where the discovery of your religious identity or political allegiance could leave you with a bullet to the head? Thirty-three-year-old Dr. Abdul Abbas knows. Since September, he has lived every Iraqi's nightmare after he was unmasked as a Sunni at work.

For two years, Abbas survived on a cover story at Baghdad’s largest hospital Medical City, where the Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, patrolled the hallways. Abbas had heard stories of Sunni patients disappearing and militiamen beating doctors.

He was terrified of what would happen if the Mahdi Army found out the truth: he had been raised a Shia Muslim but had become a Sunni as a young man. His traditional Shia name fooled the other doctors at the hospital. His few Sunni colleagues at the hospital also tried to fade into the woodwork and give the impression that they were Shia.

Abbas took many precautions. He locked the door to his office when he prayed. If he heard the Shia doctors call Sunnis terrorists or insult Sunni religious figures, he kept his mouth shut.

Eventually, his secret life unraveled. In late September, an old acquaintance spotted him walking through the hospital cafeteria.

Read the rest at the Times of London