A Bus, and Talk of Iraq's Future, Course Through a City's Streets

BAGHDAD -- The call went out as it does every few minutes, along a line of parked minibuses that ferry Baghdadis across town. "New Baghdad!" the driver shouted. "New Baghdad!" Dhia Abbas, with a clutch of papers tucked under his arm, clambered into a seat next to the window and, with a sigh marking the end of his workday, sat back for the ride home.

His tattered city sprawled beyond the cracked glass. Election posters festooned concrete barriers, a dash of color across the ubiquitous gray. Yellow barrels, to deter car bombs, snarled traffic.

"My sense is that Iraq is being destroyed day after day," Abbas said, a hint of pain in his voice. "Iraq and the Iraqis."

He handed his fare to the driver -- 17 cents. He looked back out the window and for a moment, savoring the quiet, sat silent.

The bruised and battered minibuses that ply Baghdad's streets are known as kias , the name borrowed from a specific Korean model. In a city divided by sect, ethnicity, class and so on, they glide across its psychological borders, at times a bit recklessly. Rich and poor, religious and secular, Sunni Arab, Shiite Arab and Kurd gather inside, brought together by circumstance. In a forum of sorts, the conservations that follow swirl around life, death and, these days, the election this week to choose a new parliament.

Iraq's last parliamentary election, in January, was perhaps most remarkable for what it symbolized: a long-repressed people exercising democratic rights. The constitutional referendum in October was often described as a means to end the country's prolonged uncertainty. A sense of dread and desperation underlines this vote. It is frustration with a year in which people's lives have improved little. It is unease, too, over a contest in which visions for the future are polarized.

Abbas's kia was soon barreling down the streets, through the congested commercial avenues of the Karrada district and into the jumble of shops selling spare tires and auto parts in an area known as Rashid Camp. A line of cars at a gas station wrapped around the corner. On a fence topped by barbed wire was a poster that had been put up for the vote on Iraq's constitution: "The guarantee for Iraq's future."

Newer posters vied for Abbas's attention: for a coalition of religious Shiite parties, for the Kurdish list and for new entrants to electoral politics -- Sunni parties that boycotted the parliamentary vote in January. "Expelling the occupier is our goal, building Iraq is our project," one of their posters read.

Abbas said he would vote Thursday for the list of Ayad Allawi, the former interim prime minister. Allawi was appointed by the United States in 2004. He was professional, Abbas said, and neutral. He was unlike the religious Shiites empowered in January. He could do something about the proliferation of militias in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere. He was a strong leader.

Echoing a view heard often, Abbas said Allawi's appeal was what he was not -- ostensibly sectarian and overly religious.

"If he loses, we'll remain in the same vicious circle," he said.

The kia crossed what was once known as the Great Saddam Bridge. It is now named for Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, a Shiite cleric assassinated in a car bombing in Najaf in August 2003. Its railing was variously bent, missing or crumpled in the street. At its exit was coil after coil of barbed wire before the New Baghdad police station. A billboard advertisement by a mobile phone company, Iraqna, celebrated more than 1 million customers. "We appreciate your trust," it read. In Abbas's neighborhood, municipal water no longer flowed as it did before the U.S. invasion. Like others, he paid about $3 for a tanker to bring water each week to his street.