Family's brief escape from terrifying realities

Baghdad: The young men at the checkpoint couldn't have been older than his own teenagers. Wielding Kalashnikovs, they brusquely ordered 50-year-old Shamil Hashem Suhaili and his 16-year-old son, Ahmad, out of their car.

They demanded identification. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? It was degrading for a man of his age and accomplishments. But the hydro-engineer could do little but submit.

"I answered them politely," he said. "If you make a mistake they could do anything to you. If they want, maybe they will get your mobile phone, your money, maybe they take my son. They are the judge. They do whatever they want." Frightened and angry, Suhaili headed home for lunch with his wife and three children. Afterward, he powered up his generator and wound down his nerves with one of the few things that give him comfort: the "Dr Phil" television show.

In a world of armed gangs, random shootings, blackouts and trash heaps, salves are where you find them. For Suhaili, they're a family lunch, gardening and Dr Phil, the balding American talk-show host from Texas, whose weekday television programme airs here with Arabic subtitles on a popular Lebanese-based satellite channel.

For Iraqis, they offer a window to a world in which people are more concerned with bedroom and workplace foibles than mortar rounds and death squads.

From the moment Suhaili clambers out of bed, his travails are beyond the scope of a Dr Phil episode. He struggles through the dark and muggy heat, hoping there's enough water for a shower.

In his beat-up Volkswagen, Suhaili girds himself for the hour-long ride past multiple checkpoints. If he's short on gas it means a dangerous wait at the fuel station, or paying steep black-market prices for fuel from a jerrycan.

His work at Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources seems the perfect metaphor for his life: spending the day plugging the cracks in Iraq's dams.

A Sunni Arab, Suhaili's eyes glisten as he recounts his family's brushes with disaster: An explosion near his home shattered every window and door frame. A mortar round struck his son Abdullah's school.

But much of the frustration is more mundane: Hours of work are lost on his computer because the power goes out at the ministry. A checkpoint delay holds him up for an hour. Teachers demand bribes to help his two sons, Abdullah, 19, and Ahmad, 16, advance in school. Fear of suicide bombs at a crowded no-frills market forces him to shop at a one that's more expensive.

He worries about the unspeakable. His daughter, Yasmine, 22, travels along dangerous roads to medical school. His wife, Hadel Hazem, a retired electrical engineer who runs a small nonprofit organisation for widows, insists on driving herself around the city.

After work, school and errands, the family gathers mid-afternoon for lunch and shares stories of terrible fates that have befallen others.

But sometimes the anxiety explodes. An argument breaks out. "We can't storm out of the house," Abdullah said. "We can only raise our voices."

There are tears. But also hugs and apologies, quiet moments of reflection.

And Saturday to Wednesday, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., there is Dr. Phil C. McGraw, the best-selling author and TV host who exhorts viewers to "stop talking and do something."

"I feel that he has really great power to understand people's problems and how to solve them," Suhaili said.

During rare idle moments, Suhaili composes imaginary letters to his favourite television host.

"Dear Dr Phil," he begins. "How I can live this difficult life? I forgot what normal life is like. Sometimes I work in the garden to keep my mind off my troubles. I feel more comfortable working in a green place. But some days even the garden doesn't help when you hear that old friends have been murdered and people have fled the country."

Suhaili doubts Dr Phil can help him or Iraq. He adds: "How would Dr Phil disarm a militia?"