A Cautious Comeback on Campus

"You know, for example, we are two girls and a man," said computer science student Nour Kamal, 21, as she sat with friends eating popcorn in the cafeteria. "Some people don't like this idea at all, girls talking to a man. They will instantly mark you with an X. These people are savages."

Abbas Saad, 21, recalls a heated conversation about Islam he had with a group of classmates during his freshman year. Two days after the argument, a dozen of the students involved were abducted as they left the campus; he said their fates were unknown. "I don't talk about religion very much anymore," he said.

Saad took a year off while his family was moving from Mahmudiyah, a town south of Baghdad in what is known as the Triangle of Death, after his uncle was beheaded by insurgents.

"If you will compare the security situation to last year it is much better. Last year even the professors were afraid to come to class," he said. "But of course the militias are inside the university, and they're involved in almost everything."

Living with this constant state of wariness infuriates Sara Mohammed, a 22-year-old chemical engineering student. She wears jangly silver bracelets and thick blue eye shadow, and refuses to cover her black hair. "There are so many things we can't do," she said.

The chemical engineering laboratories have only the most meager equipment. The students read photocopied versions of old textbooks. Their degrees are not recognized outside the country. A barren job market awaits them after graduation. A former student sitting nearby said he paid a bribe of $200 to the Labor Ministry to secure his employment.

Mohammed said she was abducted last year and held for a day in western Baghdad before her parents paid $50,000 -- "everything we had," she said -- to secure her release. She believes that her acquaintances at the university arranged the kidnapping.

"Everybody around us now could kill you," she said loudly, motioning at her peers in the cafeteria, while her friends at the table urged her to be quiet. "I hate this country," she said, ignoring them. "Believe me, I hate this country."

Later that day, she wrote a text message in rough English about how she was simply tired of being afraid. "Tooday my friends tell me that Sara are u crazy! How u dare! There's many derty eays watching. I said God is hear with us thats all."

Yet whether born of fatigue, or defiance or a desire to forget, the outlines of a more stable routine have emerged on campus. Many students' complaints have descended from the terrifying heights of life-and-death to the mundane concerns of clogged traffic, high tuition costs for evening classes, insufficient rest and the difficulty of finding time to picnic with friends.

Several students complained that seasoned professors who have fled the country have been replaced by younger, inexperienced lecturers. Professor Majid Salman, 37, who has spent 12 years at the university, said the classroom dynamic also has changed.

"The relationship between the lecturer and the students is closer now, better than before the war. We're more like equals," Salman said. But he has a few gripes of his own. "The students now are not afraid to tell you their opinion about you. Or they will go to the head of the department and tell him, 'We want to change our professor.' I guess we have democracy now."

Special correspondent Dalya Hassan contributed to this report.