Four years ago, Mohammed Shakr sent his son away. Shakr (not his real name) lives in Baghdad, where he works as a translator, and he wanted the young man, Omar, to escape the oppression of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. So he sent Omar to a vocational school in the United Arab Emirates, where he studied automotive maintenance. But as the years went by, Shakr, 50, began to be worried about his son. Omar wrote letters to his father, a smoker, lecturing him about Islam's disdain for tobacco. He chided his mother for wearing Western-style clothes to work. Omar finally returned to Baghdad this spring, after the fall of Saddams regime. When he showed up at the family home, his father's heart sank. Once clean shaven, Omar now wore a long beard, and his dishdasha, the traditional Islamic gown, fell several inches short of the floor. These are trademarks of Islamic fundamentalists. This was no longer the carefree young man he knew, Shakr thought, the son who loved to dance and go to parties. Now whenever the music channel was on television, Omar got up and left the room. One day he sternly told his father, who works for an American company, that the U.S. was the "enemy" of Islam. Shakr's concern deepened. Finally he told friends at work," I have to rescue Omar. I have to bring back my son."
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