Sept. 13: The Coral Palace

By James Rupert | Staff Correspondent

September 13, 2003

Baghdad, Iraq - Ghassan is a brave man. Last fall, as the George Bush administration ratcheted up its warnings to the government of Saddam Hussein, Ghassan, a middle-aged Lebanese businessman in Baghdad, could see the war coming as clearly as anyone. But instead of buying a ticket home to Beirut, he bought a building on one of Baghdad's main squares and began refurbishing it as a small, luxury hotel. He imported air-conditioning systems, had marble flooring and attractive woodwork put in, and called it the Coral Palace Hotel.

Ghassan's bet was that there would not be the big battle for Baghdad that many people feared - and that the Iraqi economy would begin looking up soon after the war was over.

He won the first part of that bet. He had sent his family home - and when Baghdad got really dangerous during the war, "I left for just about 10 days." He called the hotel staff every day, watched the newscasts carefully to see how close any fighting was coming to his place.

That awful spasm of looting broke out in Baghdad following Saddam's fall, of course, but people were out for revenge against Saddam's Baathist state. They left private businesses alone. Ghassan drove through Syria and Jordan, back to his chief investment, and found it unscathed. "We even had three or four guests, Jordanians, in the hotel when I got here," he said in his office off the lobby this week.

But the second part of the bet? About the economy recovering? It hasn't happened, of course. Ghassan scored a contract with the International Committee of the Red Cross to house their staff here - but they pulled out after the UN headquarters was bombed last month. "We survived the war," he said, "but now we have to survive the instability."

And while the city is a mess just now, he's betting, again, that he will.