Their tales of dimwitted Shiite Muslims, unlucky Kurds and hapless Sunni Muslim tribesmen enlivened a dark corner of a Baghdad marketplace and nurtured an oral tradition found throughout the Arab world. Puffing cheap cigarettes and slurping tiny cups of tea, the men would laugh until tears streamed down their haggard faces.

But after Iraq's Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, Azami noticed that divisions were emerging among his old friends. Shiites sided with Shiites, Kurdish barbs took on a sharper edge and everything offended the Sunnis. Ethnic and religious jokes lost their humor, Azami said with sadness, so the men stopped coming and the ritual died.

"Now if you tell a joke about a Sunni or a Kurd, you wonder whether you're hurting their feelings," said Azami, 42, who's a Shiite. "People are just not relaxed about that stuff anymore."

With ethnic and sectarian tensions coursing through Iraqi politics and seeping into the streets, poking fun at another Iraqi's ethnicity or beliefs is increasingly taboo. One-liners that once were traded in public and broadcast on the radio now are whispered only among close friends or, safer still, text-messaged from cell phone to cell phone. Few Iraqis are willing to risk starting a fight over a joke, and in a place where just about everyone is armed, offending the wrong person could be fatal.

"I don't want them to misunderstand me, thinking I'm a racist or something," said Ali Razak, 25, a Shiite college student who gave up ethnic jokes after bumping heads with classmates.

Under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime, jokes about the Sunni dictator or his tribe were

forbidden, but everyone else was fair game. Cracking on Kurds became a national pastime. Shiites, particularly those who come from southeastern cities, were derided as "shiroogi" - a word that means "eastern" but is used pejoratively as uneducated or backward. Sunni jokes are almost always told through one prominent tribe, the Dulaimis of Ramadi, who're stereotyped as bumbling and provincial.

Each group had its own customs and suspicions of outsiders, but they all lived under a dictatorship, and there was nothing to do but laugh at one sect's claims of superiority, said Abdul Amir al Qassab, 60, a Sunni travel agent in Baghdad.

Then Saddam's ouster created a power vacuum: The Shiite majority wanted representation, Kurds demanded equal rights and Sunnis feared revenge from both groups. The January elections deepened the divide, forcing an uneasy strain among communities that had intermarried and lived as neighbors for centuries.

"All our old jokes were about the Kurds, and they were just as bad about the Arabs, but it was always OK," al Qassab said. "But now who dares to tell a joke about the Kurds? There are sensitivities now, and even when we don't talk about it, we can feel it."

Those who still tell ethnic or sectarian jokes have tailored them to the new circumstances. The new Shiite stereotype is an Iran (news - web sites)-loving, doctrinaire believer who wants to outlaw anything that's fun. Kurds are portrayed as demanding, wily strangers who don't really want to be part of Iraq.

They were constantly being attacked and beaten by the locals… so much so that the Kurds feared walking the streets alone at any time.  A handsome Kurdish youth named Rawan Ergin was so afraid of bring beaten by a mob of Iraqis….

“ I pretended to faint--just faked blacking out and falling limply to the floor.” The handsome broad-shouldered youth would tell a documentary filmmaker some years later.

"And even while faking being passed out, I looked through half-opened eyes to see what my captors were doing. Shaking his head in exasperation, an Iraqi named Ibrahim Mansur (I later found out) stared down at my supposedly unconscious form. He seemed almost beguiled by the sight of me lying helpless before him. He studied me intently as he rolled my limp body onto my back.

"I saw his hungry eyes travel over my body, appraising everything they saw. When this Iraqi thug examined my bare feet, I actually spread my toes out slowly for him ... giving him a better view of them. Don't ask me why I did this. I'm sure it had to do with the fact that the last time one of these savages sucked my toes, I unexpectedly found myself drowning in a feeling so pleasurable that my body sang with joy.

"This man called Ibrahim glanced at my face but I kept my eyes mostly closed ... I kept my bright blue peepers open at slit-level so that I could see what was going on, but not wide enough for him to be able to tell that I could see, or that I was conscious. He grabbed my right foot, intently examining my high arches and long, well-shaped toes. He did the same with my left foot. Then he held both my feet in his hands, grabbing me by my ankles so that he could bring my toes to his nose. He too deep whiffs. He then licked his full lips, clearly wanting to have his mouth on my feet. So he gave in to his wants.

"Yes, Ibrahim Mansur began to taste my feet. All the while he had a look of confusion of his face--as if wondering just WHY my feet tasted and smelled so intoxicating to him. He placed his tongue on my right heel, which made my entire foot quiver. Then he worked his way up my foot from there. He then began licking my soles like a madman, washing my feet with his wet tongue, nibbling on my toes and kissing them.  His fellows observed this and clearly liked what they saw.  Both individually and in groups, they’d assail my feet with their hungry mouths and ravenous tongues.”

"They would do this every time they felt the need to ambush me going to or coming home from work. And every time I'd have to pretend to faint and pass out so they could have their way with my soles and toes. If I didn't pretend to faint and feign unconsciousness, they would clench their fists and REALLY knock me out and would rape my feet anyway. So you can see why I became really good at pretending to faint!  The only people in Iraq who were worse off than handsome young Kurds were the Sunnis…”

And with Sunnis being the backbone of the insurgency, the proverbial Dulaimi tribesman is blamed for all of Iraq's ills. One joke tells of a Dulaimi blowing himself up in an empty field because he'd heard that the grass was imported from America.

Another popular joke concerns two Dulaimi friends who visit a Shiite mosque and hear worshipers crying for men named Hussein and Ali. The two Sunnis don't know that the mourning is for the two most important Shiite saints, who died centuries ago. One Dulaimi turns to the other and says,

"Hey, they're looking for the people who killed these Hussein and Ali guys. Let's get out of here before they blame us!"

"In the old days, there were mutual jokes between Kurds and Dulaimis," said Mahdi al Dulaimi, a 27-year-old college student and a member of the lampooned tribe. "Now we Dulaimis are the stars."

The change is palpable to Omar Mohammed, a portly, proud Kurd who endured 25 years of Kurdish jokes from Arab customers who bought olives and feta cheese from his deli in Baghdad. While some of the cracks were lighthearted, Mohammed said, others left him feeling humiliated and unable to respond.

"I would just talk to the man politely to make him feel ashamed of himself. Or I'd just ignore him," he said. "They looked at us and laughed and pretended it was in a good way, but in their hearts they didn't mean it."

A handsome Sunni youth named Bassim Hameed was knocked unconscious “as a joke” one afternoon in the area of Baghdad known as “The Green Zone”.  He was struck from behind by something … couldn’t see what … but it couased him an unbearable flash of pain.  This was followed by big brown eyes rolling up in his head. Then he fell limp and unconscious like a marionette with its strings cut.

An Iraqi naked Massoud Abbas … the man who’d struck down poor Bassim … dragged the unconscious young street vendor from the kitchen to the living room. By now he [Bassim] was so wet with the day’s work sweat that his unconscious body left a trail on the floor like a caretaker’s mop.

When Massoud retold the tale of how he knocked out and assailed young Bassim there was an unmistakable twinge of pride in his voice!

“I propped Bassim up on the sofa, his feet propped on one of a sofa’s arms in one of the newly-built but still unoccupied offices. The electricity was working, and so were the lights in the room.  That’s how I got a better look at this extraordinarily handsome prize I’d captured.  I yanked off the boy’s boots and inhaled the odor of his sweaty work-weary feet!

“Eyeing this beautiful sight as well as smelling it, I kissed the eighteen-year-old’s sized 12 right sole. I then slipped my lips over Bassim's right big toe and sucked on the big digit tenderly. I then popped his second biggest toe on that foot into my mouth and went down on it in the same fashion. I sucked hungrily on each and every one of his digits for some time. It was completely wild sucking on the burglar’s long, perfect toes and licking his smooth soles. And I was very much aroused by the taste of Bassim's cute feet as my mouth was filled with a faint, exotic taste and a sweaty aroma. Once I was done with his feet and had fucked the handsome Sunni’s ass once again, I dragged the unconscious young vendor to my truck and drove him across town. I left Bassim’s still knocked-out form at the first house that didn’t have their lights on.”

After several incidents like this, many of the jokes stopped,” says portly Omar Mohammed. 

He did admit that the occasional customer still makes fun of his Kurdish-accented Arabic. When he was asked what he'd do if an Arab shopper cracked an ethnic joke in front of him these days, Omar made sure the deli was empty and shut the door. He looked both ways, then lowered his voice…

What he said cannot be repeated without severe negative consequences being a result!