A Drink in a Bar, a Dip in the Tigris: Mosul Returns to Life

MOSUL, Iraq — The bar, in eastern Mosul, is somewhat hidden, without a sign out front and curtains pulled, but a steady flow of customers trickled through its doors on a warm evening this month.

One group of men, drinking heavily and excited about where they were, explained that they were from Baghdad. “We are tourists,” one of them exclaimed.

Less than a year ago, Mosul emerged from the nearly nine-month battle to retake it from the Islamic State group.

Now, in many parts of the city, life is returning and the feeling of security is palpable. New businesses are open and people stay out late into the evening for the first time in years. There is a sense among people here that at last Mosul is unshackled from criminal gangs and hard-core Islamic factions.

The aftermath of the Islamic State is full of hope, but will that last?

The bar, the Nights of Beirut, opened in April. Songs by Lebanese singer Fayrouz wafted through the smoke-filled room on the recent night, adding to an illusion that you could be somewhere else.

Drinking alcohol was strictly forbidden under the Islamic State, but even before that Mosul had become a conservative city; the last bars and nightclubs had closed soon after the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Just a few minutes’ drive away, Mosul University is also bringing life and energy back to the war-ravaged city.

The young minds needed to rebuild a country so fractured and destroyed are coming back in force to attend classes at the prestigious institution, which was heavily damaged during the fighting.

Some of the first students to graduate since the defeat of ISIS celebrated wildly recently at a reception hall in eastern Mosul. With extended families in attendance, each graduate was paraded through the party under a shower of exploding glitter and booming Iraqi pop music.

On Valentine’s Day this year, the decorations and outpourings of affection seemed to be in overdrive, as if the years of repression people had endured were exploding in the form of giant “I love you” balloons.

Despite the signs of a city resurgent, the reminders of the war and what it had cost to defeat the Islamic State are still evident, especially in the Old City, in the more heavily damaged western side of Mosul.

Civilian vehicles destroyed and abandoned throughout the Old City are slowly being collected and stand as a quiet, rusting symbol of the terrible fighting. Walking amid the towering piles of cars and trucks stacked underneath an overpass, you can almost hear the sound of the war that obliterated them.

Beside the newly rebuilt Old Bridge, which goes over the Tigris River, a group of young scrap collectors took a break from work to cool off. Some of the boys did not know how to swim and were stuffing pieces of polystyrene down their underwear to keep them afloat.

The image of them frolicking in the shallows, under the beautifully refurbished iron bridge, was in stark contrast to the lifeless piles of rubble on the western side of the river. Compounding the juxtaposition was the knowledge that so many people were killed on that very stretch of river as they tried to escape the Old City in the final assault last summer.

But this is what Mosul is like, full of contradictions. In so many ways it can appear normal until you turn a corner.

At a shooting gallery in the middle of an amusement park on the eastern side of the Tigris, Hussain Muthar did not miss his target once.

He hit more than 10 brightly colored balloons. Each time, a wry smile appeared on his face as he pulled the trigger, suggesting that he was not surprised by his accuracy.

Last summer, he was an Iraqi special forces sniper in western Mosul, battling Islamic State fighters.

Today that district, where the bloodiest stage of the war played out, is still devastated, and hundreds of Iraqi special forces soldiers are in the city to help bolster local police forces.

“Now I am stationed in Mosul,” Muthar said. “During my leave I don’t even go home to Nasiriyah, but stay and enjoy myself here. I never would have done that before.”

Around him at the amusement park, families with children lined up for a few rides that were functioning, including a Ferris wheel and bumper cars.

“We often think about this, how everything has changed and now everything is as if nothing happened at all,” he said.