A couch trip to the WAR ZONE

Saturday May 29 2004

Renting furniture in battle-scarred Baghdad isn't just profitable, it's exhilarating. Fionnuala McHugh meets a Hong Kong businessman on a mission

LAST WEDNESDAY, Christopher Exline, who has lived in Hong Kong for six years, took Cathay Pacific flight CX 731 to Dubai. Then he took another plane that swiftly corkscrewed into Baghdad airport, the direct approach not being considered sensible in these fraught times. By last night, he was installed in his usual villa within the Green Zone - a vast compound area on the banks of the River Tigris, from which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is attempting to impose law and order on Iraq while winning its citizens' hearts and minds.

In theory, the Green Zone is safe because of the extreme magnitude of security that surrounds it. In practice, it's a target for any disaffected bomber or marksman. On April 7, a mortar landed about 15 metres in front of Exline's front door. The following day, another mortar shattered his bedroom window. Luckily, he was in the bathroom at the time, suffering a possibly life-saving (and certainly injury-preventing) bout of food-poisoning. 'With a mortar, you know what it is when it's overhead and it's close,' he says mildly, while waiting for his Dubai flight at Chek Lap Kok. 'Oh golly, not a good evening.'

Exline, a 37-year-old American, is president of Home Essentials, an Ap Lei Chau-based furniture-leasing company he founded in 1997. Last year, Exline decided that what Iraq was going to need was furniture - lots of it. He can remember the exact date this piece of lateral thinking changed his life. 'Tuesday morning, March 11, 2003, on a flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong,' he says. 'I was reading in a newspaper of the administration's plans for post-conflict Iraq and I was struck by the magnitude of what they wanted to accomplish. They were going to need expatriates to do it - and I was going to give them their beds.'

The following week, the war started, and by May 1, President George W. Bush was standing under a 'Mission Accomplished' banner, declaring its end. Two months later, in July, Exline was in Amman, Jordan, preparing to take the 12-hour overland journey to Baghdad.

Until that trip, Exline had never been to the Middle East. Until eight years ago, he'd never even had a passport. He's certainly made up for that, now claiming to be American Airlines' top frequent flier in Hong Kong.

Exline was born in Ohio, grew up in Chicago, then lived in Dallas where he had a real estate company. In 1996, some friends who'd moved to Singapore encouraged him to visit. It was the first holiday he'd taken since he was a child. He flew from Dallas, just for the weekend.

While he was there, his expatriate friends complained about having to buy a television set which was not compatible with the US system. When he asked them why they didn't just rent one, he discovered that the world of residential-furnishings rental was unknown in Singapore. He sold his real estate company, moved to Hong Kong, set up business and, as he puts it: 'It's been a blast.' Which is, possibly, an unfortunate expression in the circumstances.

Exline is enthusiastic, agreeable and single-minded. 'OK, bad word choice,' he says. 'What I do is a rather pedestrian endeavour, but coming to a market as vibrant as Hong Kong is exhilarating.'

In Hong Kong, he deals with multinationals such as Disney ('All Disney families who come here rent my furniture') and developers who want him to provide fully furnished units. But the other side of the business means sourcing the furniture from southern China. At the moment it's Chinese beds and sofas, which are being shipped in containers to Dubai, and then sent by truck, on an eight-day journey to Baghdad where US and British government officials find a home for them.

Whatever your feelings about the war, you have to give Exline - voted 'most likely to succeed' in his Illinois high school year - credit for persistence because, leaving aside the security issues, it hasn't been an easy task drumming up business. The trip last July yielded absolutely nothing. 'Nobody wanted to be my customer,' he says. 'They were all nice, but they didn't want to rent my furniture.'

Wasn't he upset? 'Not upset, but I was a little naive thinking I could just walk into Baghdad, saying 'I can give you sofas.''

One might take that as a metaphor for the whole coalition experience, but Exline doesn't want to get into the politics of the situation. 'My venture is a commercial endeavour,' he says. 'I'm a sofa salesman. There is pride, seeing how hard they work - the US Agency for International Development [USAID] and the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA] - 14-hour days, seven days a week, trying to build a better country. That's been inspiring - and if I can give them a better night's sleep ... '

Exline returned to Baghdad in August, still convinced he had a terrific idea. 'I knew at my core that our service was needed.' Again, nobody seemed enthusiastic until, on his way back, in Dubai, he had a phone call from USAID looking for bedroom furniture. He had those units assembled locally. Then USAID wanted office cubicles. After that, he was in business.

Now he has 15 Iraqi employees and a showroom in Mansour, a smart suburb of Baghdad ('the Peak of Baghdad,' as Exline, who lives on the Peak here, puts it). He also has a vital, albeit misspelt, 'USAID contractor' photo pass, the golden key to the Green Zone; he has his Green Zone villa and he's been to Baghdad at least a dozen times. He was there 12 days ago; and he's there as you read this, making another business pitch to the CPA. Exline is single and has no children. 'I guess I've been a somewhat nomadic individual,' he says. Perhaps the lack of immediate family here is just as well. On Wednesday, the day he left, Russia decided to pull its contractors out of Iraq after two were shot dead and six wounded.The previous morning, two British contractors had been incinerated at the CPA gates when their car had come under mortar fire. It was exactly a fortnight since American telecommunications contractor Nick Berg was beheaded on video.

What about Exline's parents? His father still lives in Dallas. 'But my mother passed away on December 6,' he says, quietly. 'Now, she was not happy about Baghdad. She cried.' After her death, of a lung condition, he discovered she had carried an inflatable globe of the world with her everywhere so that she could pinpoint her son's exact position on it at any moment.

Does he have nightmares about Baghdad? 'No,' he replies. Does he like the adrenalin buzz? 'Perhaps.' Does he miss it when he's not there? 'No, because I know I'm going to go back.'

What Exline radiates, to a marked degree, is a calm confidence - a religious belief. 'I am confident in myself, because I'm doing exactly what my Lord Jesus Christ wants me to do,' he says. 'Where I am right now is where Jesus wants me to be.'

He adds, quickly, in case anyone gets the wrong idea, that his religion and commercial ventures are not linked. Neither was there a divine instruction to go to Baghdad. Of Islam, he simply states: 'My belief in Christ teaches me that all people are equal.' In April, Exline was interviewed by a Seattle radio host visiting Baghdad about whether Christians and Muslims could work together. Exline, who did the interview with one of his Iraqi staff, says, affably: 'Sitting in a Baghdad rental showroom, talking about it wasn't just bizarre, it was surreal.'

He produces, on request, the Bible he always carries from his hand luggage. It looks well-thumbed, along with his other reading material, Discovering the Bible. Whatever you might think of his beliefs, it seems to provide him with faith in the face of all the appalling news stories coming out of Iraq. .

As he heads for the immigration counters, it's impossible not to feel an ominous pang at what his trip might hold, but Exline isn't having any of that. 'Worrying is a sin,' he calls out, as he hands in his health declaration form. 'I don't worry.'