Iraqi Women See Little but Darkness

"Women lost ground in the constitution," agreed Hajim M. Hasani, the speaker of the National Assembly.

Hasani held out hope that ground could be made up if moderate Sunni Arabs, and secular politicians in general, won more seats in the new parliament to be elected in December and were able to counter the fundamentalist tilt of post-invasion Iraq.

Shiite marshals roam the southern city of Basra, chastising women for showing a bare arm or calf and beating them for picnicking with male friends. Female lawmakers from the governing Shiite religious parties talk with relish of establishing a husband's right to beat wives -- albeit subject to regulation. Female officials speak with approval of a woman in the southern city of Najaf who was denied a judgeship because of her sex.

Milla says she has seen more and more colleagues retreat under head scarves, saying they fear becoming targets of the fundamentalism, linked to anti-American sentiment, that has been growing since the war.

She has resisted wearing a scarf, or hijab , however, and covers her head only when she goes into a conservative neighborhood. "I feel inside myself that my belief, my heart, is stronger than hijab," she said.

Born in 1952, Milla was a teenager at a time when women in Baghdad and other Muslim capitals, including Kabul and Tehran, wore miniskirts and let their pageboys and flip haircuts lift in the breeze. She graduated from Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute and traveled freely to Russia, Jordan, Egypt and France.

In the 1990s, after the Persian Gulf War, fundamentalism closed in on women as sanctions did on President Saddam Hussein. The government instituted a rule that no woman could travel outside the country without a male relative. Hussein's pride had been stung, Iraqis said, by rumors that the women of Iraq, freer than most of their counterparts in the Arab world, were going abroad to prostitute themselves.

Until the spring of 2003, Milla could still move about freely in Iraq. "It was, my God, wonderful," Milla said, sitting in her dark office at a metal desk and chair, furnishings scrounged from the wreckage left by looters. "I used to go out. I used to shop."

When the Americans came, security collapsed. Crime and war shut the door on women.

Milla and the other women in her department are now driven to and from work by male chauffeurs. Milla seldom leaves the house otherwise. She and her colleagues once taught six classes of 30 students each. Today there are 15 students in the whole school. The rest have fled the country or holed up in their homes. Some sent word they would miss this school year but would come after the referendum, hoping for a downturn in violence, Milla said.

One day last week, a handful of young female students in head scarves risked their lives to venture out for art's sake. They worked alongside young men in Milla's drab classroom, smiling, talking and scrutinizing their sculptures.

Milla's own daughters are among the legions of unseen women. Her 25-year-old, a literature graduate, and 29-year-old, who holds a bachelor's degree in science, gave up searching for jobs amid the violence. One donned a head scarf at the request of her husband; the other, like Milla, wears one only when necessary.