Dhia Jabbar of Baghdad was harassed by religious extremists for teaching the oud.

By ERICA GOODE

BAGHDAD - Dhia Jabbar hides his oud in a sack when he walks down the street in his Baghdad neighborhood.
He used to teach students in the back room of a photo shop, where the sound could not be heard. But one day, militia gunmen invaded the store, destroying one of his instruments and ordering him to stop teaching. He had dreamed of a performing career, but now he has lost hope.
“Iraq is dead,” he says. Eleven thousand kilometers away, Rahim Alhaj, who fled Iraq in 1991, carries his oud without a second thought through the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he now lives. In New York, Washington and other cities, he plays for audiences of hundreds. An album he recorded was nominated for a Grammy Award.
The two musicians are bound by their passion for the oud, a pear-shaped instrument whose roots run deep in Iraq’s history. Some say that in its music lies the country’s soul.
Both men trained at the same prestigious conservatory in Baghdad. Both have a deep love for traditional Iraqi melodies.
But Mr. Jabbar, 29, and Mr. Alhaj, 40, are also tied together by having watched - one from close up, one from far away - their country’s descent into sectarian violence.
Mr. Alhaj worries about his mother and brother, who live in Baghdad’s dangerous Sadr City neighborhood, in a house without electricity or running water. “I’m so far away from them and so far from their struggle, and I feel helpless,” he said.
The violence he reads about stirs troubled dreams: images of being tortured, as he was in the 1980s under Saddam Hussein’s government.
In 2004, he returned to Baghdad to give a concert at his family’s house. The friends he grew up with, he said, felt uncomfortable listening to him play; secular music was considered “haram,” forbidden.
One morning he heard his niece singing a famous love song. But the lyrics had been changed; the words no longer spoke of romantic love, but only of God, heaven and damnation. “What happened-” Mr. Alhaj asked.
Mr. Jabbar watched the transformation of Baghdad from his family’s house in the Shaab neighborhood, where he used to sit outside and play for passers-by. Salons and casual concerts, once common, became rare and clandestine. The teaching and performing jobs that used to await talented oud players when they finished training disappeared.
“I have lost 10 years of my life,” he said, “the years that I worked to be able to play for people.”
Iraq was once famous for its oud players. Even Saddam Hussein was not immune to the instrument’s charms. He ordered a renowned oud player to teach him how to play, but arriving in the dictator’s presence, the man was so terrified he could not speak.
When American tanks rolled into Baghdad in 2003, Mr. Jabbar was filled with excitement. But the new freedom did not last. He heard stories of musicians threatened by religious extremists. One of his professors was attacked while driving from Syria to Baghdad. The gunmen smashed the man’s oud, and said they would kill him if he continued to play.
Mr. Alhaj arrived in the United States in 2000, after years in Syria. He knows he is lucky to be able to play freely, to be able to speak out without fear. “I have a chance to raise my voice here,” he said.