BAGHDAD - The sectarian conflict raging in Iraq four years after the US-led invasion has provoked an exodus of two million refugees and left some once-bustling districts of Baghdad all but deserted.
But, while many businesses have suffered, one at least has prospered.
"Trade is good! It's going well," smiles Safea Ali, a 36-year-old shopkeeper who specialises in the one product that every war weary Iraqi family can't do without -- luggage, and lots of it.
His shop is packed with gleaming new arrivals; suitcases, travel bags, all kinds of trunks. Sales are booming, and new deliveries regularly restock his shelves as one family after another packs its bags to flee.
"People always need suitcases. They go on holiday when things are good. They leave when things go bad. They travel to visit their families and they store things at home. What model are you after?" he asks impishly.
Splashes of colour in a city of dusty concrete and barbed wire, heavy duty luggage spills out from shops and on to pavement displays in the central Baghdad districts of Rusafa and Karrada.
In some areas, eight or nine shops succeed each other one after the other, selling almost identical models of bags. Prices per suitcase range between 20,000 and 50,000 dinars (15 to 40 dollars).
Such plenty amid misery is easy, if disheartening, to explain.
Tuesday will be the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.
Since the conflict began, two million Iraqis have fled the country outright and 1.8 million more have been displaced within its borders, according to figures compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Every month 50,000 more Iraqis leave for foreign lands in what has become the biggest exodus in the Middle East since Palestinians left the new country of Israel in 1948 to become stateless refugees.
More than 600,000 Iraqis and perhaps as many as a million are now in Syria, some 750,000 are in Jordan and at least 120,000 in Egypt.
Some of those who took flight are wealthy.
The Iraqi middle class is fleeing the envy of those who suffered under Saddam Hussein's former regime, the greed of kidnappers and the fury of extremists opposed to the trappings of secular modernity.
Property prices are spiralling in places like the Jordanian capital Amman as well-to-do Iraqis invest in real estate.
Other refugees are poor; twice exiled Palestinians fleeing as their parents did, members of minority sects and Sunnis fleeing Shiite areas, and vice versa. Whether rich or poor, all need something to hold their belongings.
"Often those who buy a case have never travelled before, they don't have a lot of bags. Some have never flown in plane before the one they board to get out of here," says 64-year-old luggage merchant Fadhel Abbas.
"People tell me they're leaving. Most are leaving the country, but others are just moving from one district to another," adds Abbas, who gave up his job as a photographer to get a slice of the burgeoning travel bag market.
But, even if he's now making a good living serving the needs of the refugees, he doesn't seem to be getting any joy out of it.
"Violence and terrorism make it impossible to live here. Iraq is a becoming a country of the dead," he sighs, an old man working alone in a dusty shop piled high with shiny new "Made in China" merchandise.
Where are his children? What do they do? Abbas can't answer, overcome by a painful memory. Instead tears run down his elderly face.

03/16/2007 02:07 GMT