Baghdad’s Mutanabi Street has, for centuries, been one of the centers of Iraqi intellectual life, as reflected in the avenue’s bookshops. Dissidents, professors, religious clerics, and ordinary Iraqis gathered together at Mutanabi’s open-air book marts to trade ideas and debate philosophy. “In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein crushed intellectual life, forcing Mutanabi Street’s alternative ideas and books underground. Secret police informants infested the cafe tables, ready to overhear whispers of dissent. But six months after the U.S. occupation, Mutanabi is again in ferment.”