BAGHDAD, Iraq - The spice merchant was standing by his open-air stall, which smelled strongly of curries and pepper amid the hyperactivity of a market where people inevitably gossip as well as shop. A government official, a "minder," was present for the conversation because that is what the government insists upon.
In his understated way, Tirgam Nashaat, the merchant, merely said what every citizen already knows: In their separate ways, the government and people of Iraq are preparing themselves for a new war with the United States and are resigned to it.
That is, business is down, Nashaat cautiously said. No one in this situation - the minder right there - could comfortably say anything more direct.
"The last five years it was good, in fact," Nashaat said. The Sharjah market, where his stall stands, was established 400 years ago when the Ottoman Empire ruled what is now Iraq. The good times of the past five years came thanks to the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which helped return foodstuffs and consumer goods to the economy.
"Now I'm being affected by the problems," he went on. "The Americans want inspections. They want to strike Iraq; that is what I'm hearing."
Everyone seems to have heard. On Karada Street, a more prosperous part of the city, another merchant motioned for a clerk to close the glass door so he could ask a few questions in private. No official was there, but the atmosphere was stifling. A sandstorm that turned the morning sky a sickly yellow had knocked out the electricity and deprived everyone on the street of air conditioners and fans.
How old, he wanted to know, is President Bush?
Does he have a military background?
He and his friends listen regularly to short-wave radio broadcasts of the Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corp., he said. He is well-informed, perhaps better than most Americans, about details of the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq. Yet any new scrap of information that might explain the mysterious giant, the United States, would be welcomed.
Three weeks ago, he said, he began stockpiling gasoline and water.
"This is about greediness for oil," Camila Jellah, an elementary school teacher shopping back in the Sharjah market, said to the government translator. In years past, the political reality created by this authoritarian regime would have demanded that even a shopper interviewed at random would reflexively add extravagant praise of President Saddam Hussein. Iraqis praised their president more than their children. Jellah, though, said nothing of the president.
"Just leave the Iraqis alone," she said. "What we have, our infrastructure, our country, you want to destroy."
Impoverished shadow
Effects of the last war are still in plain view. Twelve years after the United Nations imposed economic sanctions to punish Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait, and 11 years after a broad coalition led by the United States defeated Hussein's army there, the country remains an impoverished shadow of its former self.
Of all the oil-rich Arab states, before the 1990 invasion, Iraq alone could boast of having nurtured a thriving middle class. Literacy rates were the highest in the region. Infection rates from tuberculosis, measles and other preventable diseases were among the lowest. Baghdad itself, a city of more than 5 million people, was a gaudy showcase of construction projects.
The middle class - teachers, doctors, government officials - is now working class. For her work in the classroom, an experienced teacher can at best earn about 50,000 Iraqi dinars a month, about $25. A teacher just starting out will make less - $5 a month.
A pound of bananas at the Sharjah market costs about 50 cents. A pound of limes, about 25 cents. There is rent to pay, electricity, clothes and the needs of children. So middle-class Iraqis hold second jobs as cashiers, third jobs as taxi drivers. The worst off, having long ago sold their jewelry and carpets, resort to selling food on the sidewalks.
Stores have DVD players from China stacked to the ceiling, men's suits made of English wool, cheap plastic sandals, beauty products from France. For $10, two people can dine on endless courses of chicken or beef in a comfortable restaurant. But that has moved out of reach for a teacher.
Children, too, are poorer. UNICEF reports that 20 percent of the children it has screened this year are malnourished. That percentage is more typical of nations suffering from drought than one rich in oil. The immunization rate against measles dropped to less than 30 percent last year from more than 90 percent in 2000.
School attendance in the past five years has dropped 20 percent. Among the children who start school, the dropout rate is up 5 percent. Four out of five primary schools are in poor condition, and Iraq's Ministry of Education acknowledges that it needs to build 5,100 more schools to educate the children in the system. In the dry language of the United Nations, "the quality of education is further impaired" by teachers whose morale is low because they are so poor.
Baghdad itself looks tattered. Saddam City, the neighborhood that houses thousands of working-class families, is trash-strewn, the streets more dirt than asphalt. In the heart of the city, the sidewalks are jumbles of broken bricks. On the streets, every vehicle, except those carrying government officials, is at least a decade old and showing its age. In a sky that used to be filled with construction cranes, there is only the blowing sand.
Another war
Before the regime's disastrous invasion of Kuwait, there was Iraq's disastrous war against Iran. It ended only when both sides became utterly exhausted in 1988, and Iraq was saddled with debts of more than $70 billion, owed mostly to Kuwait and other Arab states.
Iraq's oil revenues after the war were about $15 billion a year. That was not enough to create jobs for newly demobilized soldiers, continue the secret development of new weapons and also repay the debt. Hussein's response to the problem was the invasion of Kuwait. It was his misjudged attempt to erase Iraq's debt and increase the country's influence over the price of oil.
Now the government is trying to ready itself for a new war. Some of the preparations are diplomatic: The government says it will welcome the return of United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix and guided by previous Security Council resolutions. And it has not explicitly ruled out complying with a new, tougher resolution that the council may pass as early as this week.
"Iraq has approved all means and all remarks made by Hans Blix," Izzat Ibrahim, Hussein's second in command, said last week. "We give him absolute acceptance. We are going to receive the inspectors."
In case of a new resolution, "We shall define our position once the resolution is passed."
There are other preparations. Military units are being reinforced in the north, near the Kurdish areas no longer controlled by the government. The additional troops, a European diplomat said, are "in case of an Afghan situation" - Kurdish forces mimicking the role of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan by attacking with the aid of American technology and intelligence-gathering.
In the Shia-dominated south, Hussein appointed governors in recent weeks in the cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf, perhaps to have stronger hands in charge. Throughout the country, many of the 2 million members of the ruling Baath Party are receiving military training, a measure that increases their sense of having a stake in the regime.
New communications equipment is being mothballed rather than put to use, apparently to protect it from bombing. The same is being done with high-technology equipment for the oil industry and equipment for generating power.
Hussein's chief ally may be the reports from Washington that the Bush administration might want to replace him with a military government led by an American commander. "If the Americans think for one minute they can stay in this country, it will become a cemetery," an Arab diplomat said. "Even the infidels will become religious."
Given a choice between Hussein and an American military governor, "the resentment to both will be equal."
It is, for example, hard to imagine American soldiers successfully governing the Bedouin who live on the parched lands northeast of Tikrit, Hussein's hometown. Thanks to Hussein and the Baath, Sheik Hajam Halaf Adabeya tells visitors, members of his tribe have houses and electricity.
Tribal loyalties can be bought. That was the Ottoman way in this area until the collapse of their empire at the end of World War I. It was also the way of the British after they drew the borders for a new country in 1920, named it Iraq and chose a king for a monarchy that they created. Hussein, too, in a more modern, brutalizing way, has proved expert in the buying of allies. Anyone taking his place will have to repurchase the loyalties.
"We will not let any of the enemy take part of this land," said the sheik.
Hard, too, is imagining an American military governor immediately making a favorable impression on Zahar Abdullah, a computer science teacher in Baghdad.
She dresses in the dark, shapeless gown of the religiously conservative. Her hair is covered. Last week, she used her classroom computer to prepare a Power Point presentation honoring Hussein. The sound of gunfire was the soundtrack. The images were the stock portraits of Hussein as seen at every major intersection: Hussein in a business suit, Hussein as a sheik in robes fringed in gold, Hussein as a simple tribesman, the president saluting an unseen audience as fireworks explode behind him. Abdullah's greatest pride, she said, is that the computer came as a gift from "my president, Saddam Hussein."
23 years of Hussein
How her students and other young Iraqis really see the world is difficult to know. Anyone younger than 30 has no real experience of any leader other than Hussein, president for the past 23 years. People can get used to the bombast, the rote recitations of support for Hussein, to this being the way things are, even if they seem unhinged, and then people simply do what is required of them.
Many seem to sense that Hussein and the Baath may not be in control forever. Bribery, which used to be invisible, has become a part of everyday business. Almost no one is fooled into believing that a perfect 100 percent of the population supports Hussein, though that is what the government said in announcing the results of a presidential vote that had only a single name on the ballot.
Active members of the Baath, and Hussein's inner circle, have much to lose if the regime comes to an end. Hussein has proved smart enough to remain in power for all these years. There are no visible opponents at home. But it's not clear that many people, even in the military, are willing to risk their lives for him.
"Everybody in this country is afraid of the regime," said the European diplomat. If an American military attack seems imminent, "people will start thinking of the future."
"People will go into their homes, close the door and turn the key."
They have already proved they can accommodate themselves to almost anything, and they will not venture out, or voice support for whatever government might one day follow Hussein's, until they believe it safe.