An Uncertain Dawn On a Scarred Street

Billboards along highways with heaps of trash marketed the mobile phones of Asia Cell. "Now your voice is heard," they declared. Another pictured a fingerprint, the hoped-for symbol of the January election, when voters dipped their index fingers in dye to certify they cast ballots. "Iraq," it intoned. Those faded posters were now dusty, some of them torn. Graffiti on a dirty wall in the capital's Sadr City slum spoke to the present: "You traitors, we don't want elections, we want electricity." In Amal's neighborhood, another poster, its meaning ambiguous, suggested the past: "Today is the same as yesterday."

"Today was quiet, and no one spoke about anything except electricity, which comes only for short times," Amal wrote in her entry on July 4. "Water is not available because the terrorists are targeting water pumping plants every day. The rich can live outside Iraq very comfortably, but the poor who can't have to stay suffering."

As they had during the war, Amal and her sisters still filled buckets of water each day from a leaky faucet in the courtyard, then lugged them up two flights of stairs. The summer before, her family sometimes had as many as 12 hours a day of electricity -- cycles of two on, two off. For an entire week in June this year, they had just two hours. It was one hour a day for stretches in July. In August, it had doubled to two hours.

As they sat in the dark on one sweltering day, the lights flickered on. "God's prayers on Muhammad and the family of Muhammad!" they shouted, with weary smiles. In 10 minutes, the lights dimmed again. "Is this real?" Karima asked, shaking her head.

In one of the bedrooms, a visiting Zainab was gathering blankets from the floor, where Karima's five daughters had slept together. From the kitchen, Amal brought in tea and a single fried egg. The others shared this, along with Iraqi bread known as samoun .

Their conversation that morning turned to money, then to their lack of it. Neighbors had purchased a small generator, but a share of its power was expensive: $10 a month, along with $1.50 a day for the fuel. The Karrada bombing had damaged the nerves in Hibba's right forearm; she could no longer grip a pencil. A doctor's appointment cost $5, and physical therapy ran $2 a day. Given the family's budget, they would let her try to heal on her own. The money would go instead to put the youngest daughters through school.

'Death Is All We Hear'

Like many in Iraq over nearly three years, Amal's family was locked in a cycle of moments of optimism, followed by long months of brutality and dejection. There were turning points -- Hussein's fall, the formal end of the U.S. occupation in 2004 -- and Iraqis often greeted them with anticipation and hope. Disappointment typically followed. One of those turning points was the election in January, when Karima, Ali, Mohammed and Fatima defied insurgent threats and walked cheerfully to the polling station.

"I regret that I went to the elections and voted," Karima said seven months later, as she sat with Amal and her sisters over breakfast. "What did we elect? Nothing."

"If we voted or didn't vote, it's still the same thing," said Fatima, her oldest daughter and most pessimistic. "If the Americans want to do something, they'll do it."

Karima nodded, her veiled head cast to the ground. It was a gesture that seemed to mean: What more can be said? Her city was mahjura -- forsaken or abandoned.

"I feel sorry for Baghdad," she said softly.

In the worst days of the invasion, Karima once said something as Amal and her sisters sat around her. "It's like we're part of a play on a stage," she said, her voice reflective. "Life's not good, it's not bad. It's just a play."