Fear dominates life in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Abu Mustafa heard the call to morning prayer drift down from the tiled green minaret at the Shanshal mosque. The call was familiar, but the voice was different. The regular muezzin had been killed a week ago when he'd rushed to defend the mosque against an attack.

Still, Mustafa welcomed the sound. He'd made it through another night alive.

"I cannot sleep at night," he said. "Instead, I put my head on the pillow and stare at the dark — stare at nothing, listen to nothing. The call to prayer tells me it is now time to fear the day."

Three years after U.S. forces invaded Iraq, residents of this troubled capital live lives that would seem bizarre nearly anyplace else. Abu Mustafa passes the nights with a pistol on his pillow, lest anyone steal his wife's jewelry. A mother has to push through a mob to get her daughter to school. Gunfire breaks out at random moments. Car bombs explode. The fear is so great that people rarely allow the publication of their full names.

The city is infuriating, depressing and deadly, as Knight Ridder reporters found when they fanned out on a recent Monday to record life in this ancient city.

7:50 a.m., Jadria Bridge. A man who identified himself as Abu Sarah, 34, sat idling in traffic. Five lanes of cars were piling onto the three-lane bridge. Motorcycles clogged the sidewalks.

Before the war, crossing the Jadria Bridge, a concrete span over the Tigris River, could take as long as five minutes. These days, half an hour is quick.

Before, he could cross the larger 14th of July Bridge. But U.S. forces have closed that bridge, nine major roads and dozens of side streets to protect the Green Zone, the center of Iraq's new government and foreign embassies. The closure has created a traffic nightmare in a city where the number of cars has more than doubled in the past three years, from 400,000 to an estimated 1 million.

As Abu Sarah idled, gunfire erupted, followed by a voice from a loudspeaker: "Clear the road. Move to the right."

Five lanes of cars scratched and pushed against each other to clear a path for three Chevrolet pickups loaded with Iraqi police commandos. The commandos fired several more bursts of gunfire from their AK-47 rifles and rolled past. They're always targets and they can't afford to get stuck in traffic. -->

8:30 a.m., Al Taji, a neighborhood in northern Baghdad. A roadside bomb exploded near the Arabic Oil Institute. One man was killed, and six others were wounded.