Poised on the edge of war, this is a city moving in several directions at once, none of them encouraging, some of them infinitely sad, all of them frightening. The authorities have tried to give outsiders the appearance of business as usual. But there is no hiding the reality that, be there war soon or a few more months of hair-trigger peace, life for the Iraqi nation is changing irrevocably.
The countdown to a finale has begun, and almost everyone here seems to know it, hostages and hoteliers, the men in the souk, the women in black abayahs, % the few young dancers left in the discotheques. The tension is evident in the conversation of Iraqi ministers, at one moment fevered and passionate, the next dazed and even depressed. It surfaces in the frustration of the businessman who cannot comprehend that "an Arab solution" is not enough for the rest of the world. It stares out from the eyes of the mother whose sons have just been discharged from eight years at the Iranian front.
There are more imported delicacies available in this city than there have been for years, quail and cheeses liberated from the refrigerators of Kuwaiti sheiks and destined for the tables of privileged Iraqis. But there is almost no medicine for high blood pressure, heart conditions and asthma. Some factories are beginning to shut down, people are hoarding their money, many shopkeepers sit idle. In the diplomatic residences of the fashionable Al- Mansur neighborhood, ambassadors and attaches debate the options for Saddam and the U.S.: almost all are bad, and most end in grief or horror. Among Westerners, there is some gallows humor. Among ordinary Iraqis, it seems, there is acceptance, chagrin, forlorn hope or simple noncomprehension.
There are rumors: of 28 people killed in the town of Mosul during a demonstration protesting food shortages; of an attempt by the President's first cousin to assassinate him; of generals executed for plotting against Saddam. The rumors come not from diplomatic intelligence sources but from Iraqis, many of whom, despite the pervasive fear and security apparatus of the state, insist that opposition and dismay with Saddam Hussein run deep.
"Go out and talk to the people," Information Minister Latif Nassif Jassim told a group of reporters one night last week. "It is more important than what any minister says." He would not be pleased with the results. Despite the demonstrations organized by the government, enthusiasm for Saddam seems muted. "The people here are tired of war, tired of him, tired of not traveling, of not living," says a young man tending a store with no customers.
Signs of Saddam's contradictory legacy abound: housing projects only half- finished, soccer stadiums and no foreign teams to play in them, empty hotels with antiaircraft batteries on their roofs. The city is at once sinuous and Stalinesque: palm trees and concrete mausoleums with a martial theme. And everywhere the gaze of the maximum leader. Hundreds of billboard-size portraits are painted on buildings, framed in traffic circles, displayed in lobbies: Saddam drawing sword, Saddam on stallion, Saddam in sunglasses, Saddam in camouflage fatigues, Saddam looking like Xavier Cugat in white suit, Saddam slaying the infidels. In the city center is a new statue, 60 ft. high: Saddam, ramrod straight, arm outstretched in salute.