Purveyors of home furnishings in Iraq are having to change their inventory:
Before the war, low-ranking civil servants would have been content to earn the equivalent of $20. Now, they complain at anything lower than $300, observers say.
The result, according to carpet importer Ahmed Haji Rasul, has been a radical change in consumer taste. “In the past, people made do with what they could afford,” he told IRIN in the Sulaymaniyah bazaar. “Now they want colour-coordinated house interiors, European stuff. We’ve had to start importing from further afield.”
Read the this story and many more in Arthur Chrenkoff’s latest Good News from Iraq.