A theme constantly reiterated by the Iraqis we spoke with was that whenever the new Iraqi government might be formed, in order to be fair to all the different ethnic groups in Iraq, the government must be secular, not religious. To prove that Iraqis can forge a community no matter what their ethnicity or religious affiliation, Maher, one of our three “fixers” (a fixer is a driver/translator), insisted on taking us to the multi-ethnic neighborhood where he and his brother-in-law, Assam, stay while they are working in Baghdad. Here, according to Maher, people of different ethnicities and religious beliefs live in harmony.