As Turmoil Ebbs, Iraqi Women Seek Freedom of Road Again

Salman said she longs to "jump in the car" and go shopping or visit friends. But driving is about more than convenience, she said.

"The country is developed now. It's a period of fast change," she said. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, she noted, Iraq has ceased to be cut off from the world. Its citizens have acquired satellite TV, cellphones, computers.

"If the country has Internet and technology, it's an old-fashioned thing -- a shameful thing -- that we don't know how to drive," she said.

For a year, during the height of the bloodshed, her family had decamped to Syria. Salman saw women driving everywhere. "They have freedom," she explained. "This is our motivation."

As she spoke, four more people arrived for driving classes.

"All of them are women -- look!" said Ahmed, gazing at the veiled students.

The cousins' driving lesson offered a glimpse of the obstacle course that Baghdad's motorists encounter. Ahmed slid behind the wheel of a red Daewoo subcompact, next to al-Riyadh's ace driving instructor, 71-year-old Ismail Kareem Ismail. She pulled out onto Palestine Street, a bustling six-lane commercial strip. Within a few blocks, the traffic was funneled through one of the many checkpoints maintained by the growing Iraqi police force.

"When you approach a checkpoint, put it in first gear," the driving instructor advised. Ahmed eased the car to a crawl. The young police officer, munching on a piece of flat bread, froze in mid-bite. "They're astonished when they see us -- a woman driving," Ahmed observed.

She turned onto a side street lined with dilapidated mansions and confronted a series of 12-foot-tall concrete barriers blocking most of the road, a common measure to deter speeding car bombers.

"With the blast walls, you have to gauge the space," the instructor explained. Ahmed slowly guided the tiny car between the giant walls -- and stalled.

Many parts of Baghdad are walled off by such barriers, including the heart of the city, the six-square-mile Green Zone. With no working traffic lights, police frantically wave green or red lollipop-shaped signs to control intersections. Cars are forced to halt as U.S. military convoys or Iraqi police vehicles race past, topped by menacing-looking gunners.

Women in other Iraqi cities have been slower to return to the roads. Mona Saud, a women's activist in Basra, the country's second-largest city, said female drivers used to be common but are now rare. "Women in Basra still have the fear of being killed or kidnapped," she said.