By Yasir Faisal

BAGHDAD, July 2 (Reuters) - Shi'ite driver Basim Mohammed sits by his dusty truck at "Friends Garage", an informal Baghdad transit point where passengers are swapped depending on their sect.

Not long after, Abu Ali, an old Shi'ite man forced by gunmen to leave his home in the Sunni area of Abu Ghraib, turns up in a pickup truck. His belongings are stacked in the back.

His Sunni driver is too scared to venture into the mainly Shi'ite suburb where Abu Ali will live with relatives, so he has brought him to "Friends Garage".

"I was afraid they would kill my five sons so I decided to move," said Abu Ali, wearing a tattered brown robe and watching workers carry tables, chairs, bedding and other belongings onto Mohammed's truck.

"I had to use this point of transfer because drivers can't risk going into areas where they may be killed ... There is no difference between us (Shi'ites and Sunnis), I just don't understand," he added, tears trickling down his ageing face.

Baghdad, a city of 7 million, was founded some 1,200 years ago on the banks of the Tigris River by Abbasid Caliph al Mansour and has been religiously mixed for most of its history.

But since the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006, communal violence has reshaped its fabric, carving out sectarian fiefdoms.

Sunni Arabs now increasingly live on the west side of the river and Shi'ites on the east.

POINT OF EXCHANGE

Truck drivers have created the garage as a point of exchange for passengers fleeing the sectarian tension, and for goods imported from Syria and Jordan through Sunni Anbar province but destined for Baghdad's Shi'ite wholesale markets.

The dozens of Shi'ite and Sunni drivers who work in the garage on the city's western outskirt say they avoid heated debates about politics and get on well with each other.

Mohammed started working at the garage after he himself was forced to flee a Sunni area just outside Baghdad.

"The drivers have no problems with each other, we eat together, we get on fine," Mohammed said during a brief break from loading some of Abu Ali's furniture.

The garage is on a main highway just outside the mainly Sunni Ghazaliya district. Iraqi soldiers guard both entrances to protect it from attacks by militants. Trucks reverse toward each other to make unloading easier.

While the garage offers a way to navigate this increasingly divided city, some drivers bemoaned there was no other option.

One Sunni driver, who gave his name as Mohammed, said he had just brought in food and other goods on his semi-trailer truck from neighbouring Jordan for the Shorja and Jamila wholesale markets near Shi'ite militia strongholds.

He will lose some of his wage because he will have to share it with a Shi'ite driver who will make the actual delivery.

"I've brought these goods from Amman and I have to hand them over here because I can't reach Baghdad's wholesale markets. If I went to Shorja they would kill me and take my truck because I'm Sunni and they are Shi'ite," he said.

"I wish I could go to Shi'ite areas again but the reality is I have not seen Baghdad for three years."

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