IRAQ: Thieves, petrol shortages and power cuts are just some of the challenges, writes Michael Jansen.
The Iraqi painter and diarist Nuha al-Radi says: "Iraqis who survived 35 years under Saddam will survive the Americans. We know how to adapt."
Indeed they do. Today they must cope with a daily increase in the number of attacks by criminal elements, erratic supplies of electricity and petroleum products and an absence of telephone connections. Iraqis deal with these challenges with verve and inventiveness.
Their priority is thieves, nicknamed "Ali Babas" by all and sundry - although Ali Baba was the hero not the villain of the tale in the One Thousand and One Nights.
Most households have at least the one gun permitted by the US occupation authority; many have several, including assault rifles and old-fashioned tommy guns. Businessmen and bankers who carry large amounts of cash are expected to obtain gun permits from the authority. Those who fail to do so are not penalised if they circulate with a single sidearm.
Many girls and women, fearing abduction and rape, leave their homes only in the company of male relatives. Women do not drive cars. Over the past two weeks I saw only one headscarfed woman behind the wheel.
Professional women who drove for many years now depend on trustworthy taxi-drivers or relatives. Businessmen lay on cars or minibuses for their female employees, who are delivered to their homes by 5 p.m. Few people go out after dark.
Hotels, shops, commercial firms and wealthy families hire guards to deter thieves and defend premises. Neighbourhoods unable to afford gunslingers have set up local watch committees and duty rotas.
On certain residential streets cars must zigzag between fat palm-tree stumps, depriving theives of a quick getaway.
The customs holiday following President Saddam Hussein's removal in April encouraged Iraqis to import nice new cars. But most do not risk car-jacking by driving these vehicles.
Instead, they ride in taxis or use battered bangers. They hide their acquisitions in locked garages or courtyards in the hope that the vehicles will escape the well-organised car mafia.
While in principle there is supposed to be equality in the provision of electricity, in practice distribution is unfair. The rule is supposed to be two or three hours on and two or three hours off. But reality rarely conforms to the rule.
In my hotel in the middle-class district of Karada, the routine was two on and two off with a five-minute pause for the generator to be switched on or off. But since power arrives and departs without warning, few residents take the lift.
Other districts, particularly where the poor live, make do with less current. This has forced Baghdadis to adopt Beiruti civil war methods for dealing with power cuts. Iraqis who have generators share or sell electricity to those who do not.
Overhead cat's-cradles of power lines lace one side of a street to the other, thick bunches of low-slung cables or massive yellow generators block roads.
Although Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the region and has resumed exporting crude, there has been a severe domestic shortage of petrol and diesel since the war ended.
Long lines of cars two or three abreast form early in the morning at petrol pumps where Iraqi facility guards have replaced US troops to make certain there is no violence.
Black-marketeers stand on nearby street corners hawking plastic jerry cans of expensive, perhaps watered, petrol. For those who do not have six, eight or 10 hours to bake in the Baghdad oven, these vendors are both blessing and curse. If the petrol is pure, cars run as they should; if not they cough, start and stop.
US bombers took out key telephone exchanges during the final days of the war. Looters and arsonists finished off most of the rest. For the first three months of the occupation, Iraqis relied on satellite phones. The rich bought their own, the poor paid 1,500-2,000 dinars (around €1.25) for a minute's conversation.
Over the past month satellite Internet centres and cafes have sprouted up in many neighbourhoods.
One centre, called Karada Barra, or "Out of Karada", boasts 50 computers enclosed in claustrophobic cloth screen cubicles, where customers can surf the Web, send e-mail or converse in relative privacy. Half-an-hour costs less than a dollar.
In less cramped e-mail cafes entire families, including conservative women enveloped in black chadors from head to toe, huddle round computers to read e-mails and speak to friends and family.
E-mail has become a common means of contact from district to district in this vast city. Unfortunately, satellite providers often break down, electricity fades and generators fail without diesel, forcing desperate Baghdadis to brave the Ali Babas and rush from one Internet facility to the other in search of a connectio'n.