BAGHDAD: In these days of great uncertainty Iraqis are developing a taste for the simple things of life: date syrup, honey, sesame seeds — and most coveted of all, a well of one’s own.

Gone are the last few years when Iraq rebounded from war and sanctions, and the well-to-do went shopping. At the top of most people’s wish lists nowadays are wells and non-perishable food items.

Faris El-Hadi got started last month, calling the workers in to his garden to drill down 10 metres into the ground.

The water from El-Hadi’s well is not fit for drinking, or even watering the garden. It is cloudy and six times as brackish as the Tigris which flows through the city.

But many people in Baghdad are installing wells at home as insurance against an American attack now widely seen as inevitable. The regime has also begun digging communal wells in poorer sections of the city, and anyone who can afford one is preparing to dig up their garden.

“We remember what happened in the last war in 1991, when water mains were destroyed,” El-Hadi said. “Water is the most important thing.” El-Hadi, the distributor in Iraq for Samsung and other brand appliances, would be the first to admit that the new focus on essentials is playing havoc with the economy.

In his own household, they are stocking up on non-perishable food items, especially date syrup and sesame seeds, which provide a high calorie diet in case of a siege.

Mineral water — which has a sell-by date — will be bought in later, followed by kerosene for oil lamps and petrol for the generator once El-Hadi finds a safe way to store the fuels.

The private war preparations appear at odds with a city that struggles to present a picture of normality.

At the Baghdad stock exchange, elderly gents, dressed with care in vintage 1970s suits, jostle for a view of trading. The exchange director said the market rose higher despite a state of the union address from President Bush that appeared to bring the war closer.

But Iraqi businessmen say the economy has sunk into a slow paralysis since last autumn when the US administration intensified its campaign against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Shops are closing around the city. Others are barely hanging on. Garages say people are holding back on car repairs.

El-Hadi has placed only a single order with his suppliers abroad since June, and that was a relatively modest $12,000 shipment of cookware — not the big ticket electrical items that are his speciality.

“Since this crisis started to become very sharp, we stopped our imports and all others did the same,” he says.

The mood of uncertainty has even spread to Arasat street, the smartest commercial area in Baghdad, where rows of exclusive shops and restaurants cater to the whims of those grown rich through the bustling trade in imported goods in the last four years.

The lack of faith in the future has seen the Iraqi dinar fall from 1,700 to 2,200 to a dollar in the last five months as people convert their savings to hard currency, or empty their accounts so that they have cash at hand.

At the Bank of Baghdad, one of the premier private financial institutions, deposits have shrunk by five per cent this year. “When the situation is uncertain of course people keep money for unforeseen circumstances,” said Mowafaq Mahmood, the bank’s CEO.

In recent weeks, he says, customers have been flocking to him for advice on what to do with their savings.

Some of the well-to-do have spirited their money away for deposit abroad, although it is illegal for Iraqis to hold foreign bank accounts.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.