VIEW FROM BAGHDAD: A surreal sort of normality has descended upon Baghdad where, despite the bombing, people still go about their everyday tasks, reports Lara Marlowe
President Saddam Hussein's monumental Palace of the Republic rises above lush gardens, a couple of kilometres as the crow flies from my hotel room balcony. The first time it was attacked by US cruise missiles, on the night of March 21st, huge flames devoured its facade, and I expected to see a pile of ashes in the morning.
But my report of the destruction of the immense complex, like oft-announced US-British successes in southern Iraq, was premature. The burn marks are there on the side of the stone structure, and part of its roof is missing. Though no one seriously thinks the Iraqi leader is inside, the US still bombs the palace almost daily, and motorists instinctively speed up when they pass it.
Saddam's palace is a fitting allegory for Baghdad itself. For the first days of the war, the capital played dead. The streets were deserted and shopfronts blocked by metal shutters, if not completely bricked up. The bombardments have not diminished - on the contrary, they are more frequent - but a strange thing has happened two weeks into the war: battered, limping, at only a fraction of its pre-war pace, Baghdad lives.
Red and white Chinese-built double-decker buses ply their regular routes. Boys on donkey-drawn carts hawk cooking gas and kerosene. At the Shorja market in the city centre, there are tonnes of powdered baby milk on offer, fresh lettuce, oranges, tomatoes, bananas and cigarettes.
Judging from the number of Iraqis nervously puffing away, tobacco consumption has doubled.
The tailors' shops in al Rashid Street are closed - "People don't need clothes during a war", an official explains - but street vendors have hung camouflage T-shirts, militia and army uniforms from the fence along a major traffic circle.
For some reason I haven't fathomed, Baghdad has more barber shops than anywhere I've been, and most of them are still open.
Yesterday I saw water tankers emblazoned with the words, "Baghdad Municipality. Keep Your City Clean", hosing down streets and watering plants in three areas of the city.
"We're still working, every day," Sa'el Hussein, the deputy mayor in charge of the capital's water supply, roads and city planning, told me. "Collecting rubbish and sweeping streets is our way of resisting."
A former brigadier in the Iraqi army who trained as a mechanical engineer in the northern city of Mosul, Mr Hussein wears a green militia uniform and proudly shows me his revolver. "I spend four hours a day on guard duty in the street," he says. "I sleep here [in the municipality building] at night, to set an example."
Life in Baghdad is a strange mix of normality and terror. Several times, I've seen boys playing football on vacant lots, as I drove to the site of bombings. Blue-uniformed traffic cops wear helmets with camouflage netting and wave Kalashnikovs as they shout at cars, "Keep moving. Keep moving." Iraqis stopped respecting traffic lights when the war started - surprising in a country where the tiniest infraction brings swift punishment.
"As long as there is bombing, people shouldn't stop at intersections," the deputy mayor explains. "Because the Americans concentrate on any accumulation of cars; they consider them a target. We haven't made a formal announcement, but those with military experience know this."
The air raid alert was on when I arrived at the municipality, and listless men filled the lobby. "I send the staff to the ground floor during air raids," Mr Hussein explained. It was pay-day for his 9,000 employees. All receive their salary - the equivalent of 10 US dollars on average - including women who stay at home with their children, and men whose places of work have been destroyed. Construction projects, like the massive Saddam Hussein Mosque, stopped with the first bombardments.
The deputy mayor's biggest concern is potable water. "We have 14 water purification and 23 sewage plants in Baghdad," he says. "One of the water plants received a direct hit, but others have been damaged by cut pipes and cables."
Though the 1,600 employees of the city water company produce 2,250,000 cubic metres of drinking water each day, there's a chronic shortage, "because of the embargo," Mr Hussein says. "We've had no hard currency for new plants, and chlorine has been scarce since the last war."
Now he fears US bombers will target electricity plants, without which he cannot pump water.
Despite the municipality's efforts, and the resumption of morning traffic jams downtown, the siege of Baghdad has already started in the minds of the capital's inhabitants. Middle-class Baghdadis have retreated into their homes.
Idle teenagers complain that Iraqi television no longer shows films - only imams citing Koranic verses about jihad, and patriotic anthems. Cinemas are closed, and Baghdadis now make a sport of standing on roof-tops, trying to spot US cruise missiles and bombers.
The last Internet cafes shut down last week. So did international phone lines, after six telephone exchanges were bombed. With Iraq's isolation from the outside world almost total, daily newspapers give pride of place to anti-war protests from Djakarta to California, and Iraqi claims of heavy US and British losses.
Every day, there is an entire page of gruesome photographs of civilian dead and wounded. For once, the poor quality of the printing is a mercy.
The government has ordered all bakeries to remain open; bakers continue to receive daily deliveries of wheat flour and oil from the trade ministry. Most economic activity is linked to the war. Television aerials are the hottest selling items on the pavements of Jumhurriya Street. Iraq's last remaining television station blinks on and off as the US bombs its transmitters.
The government has improvised mobile broadcasting stations, but their signal is weak, hence the need for better reception. With a cheap Chinese antenna - which costs nearly a month's wages - Iraqis can watch the Arabic service of Iranian TV. Sorting out fact from fiction in news reports from neighbouring countries is as great a challenge as deciphering their own government's propaganda.
The items stacked for sale beside downtown streets speak volumes about how poor Baghdadis hope to survive: cans for fuel and water; plastic sheeting to replace broken windows; kerosene lanterns; battery lamps that can be charged from mains electricity, for use during power cuts.
The rich long ago acquired water tanks and generators. Luxury shops and restaurants shut down for the first 12 days of the war, but a few are beginning to stir, sniffing a long conflict and the possibility of profit. A super-market that specialised in gourmet pre-cooked meals reopened this week, but its shelves are almost empty.
"I can't sell fresh food because it will spoil if the electricity goes, and I'm not restocking because I worry about looters," the owner says.
The office of Mr Hussein, the deputy mayor, is cluttered with relics of past achievements and unfulfilled dreams: a scale model of a Spanish water-pumping station; a plaque commemorating the completion of the "Saddam Quarter" housing project in 1985; the map of the "Baghdad Comprehensive Transportation Study", including ring roads and a metro, drawn up by Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick and Partners of West Byfleet, Surrey.
The walls are papered with Polish architects' impressions of a master plan for "new Baghdad". Since the plan's conception in 1989, the paper has faded, the edges curled. "I want Baghdad to be as it was in history - the bride of the east - under the Abbassid caliphs, in the 13th century," Mr Hussein says. Until two weeks ago, he was working with Baghdad University on a new "master plan", target date: 2027.
Now, from the sixth floor of the municipality building, Mr Hussein contemplates columns of smoke, stretching across the city. Baghdad is burning; the blackest smoke is from the oil fires lit by Iraqis to confuse US bombers. White or grey smoke usually indicates a newly bombed target.
Our conversation is interrupted by a loud explosion. The windows rattle and the floor vibrates, and I wonder which fantasy is more deluded: the deputy mayor's vision of a glorious city, or the US-British determination to impose "freedom and democracy" on this tortured country?