The convoy did not exactly steal out in the middle of the night, but the unannounced departure of almost the entire UN staff from Baghdad spread alarm through the city as soon as it became known. Mohammed, who works for one of the foreign broadcasters here, immediately sank into a pit of gloom. "What do the think they will achieve by bombing us? We are already suffering under sanctions and now this," he said.
Mr Prakash Shah, the UN Secretary-General's personal envoy to Iraq, was left to a virtually deserted compound to explain the decision to evacuate the UN teams from Baghdad.
He said contact with American officials had indicated that the safety of UN personnel might be affected. "This was in the background of possible military action against Iraq," he said. He tried to urge Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, to back down from the current confrontation with the UN Security Council, but to no avail. Mr Aziz told the UN envoy that the government would not change its position unless the Security Council took "some action with regard to sanctions against Iraq".
The UN departure coincided with the first deluge of winter, filling the capital with a soggy gloom. Many residents of Baghdad have been unaware of the impending crisis. Unlike the last major set-to with the US and Britain, this time the ruling Ba'ath Socialist Party has not mobilised its members on the streets and there has been little of the normal propaganda offensive in the media. In a society controlled as rigidly as any in the old Eastern bloc, readers and viewers may have noticed an increase in anti-UN rhetoric, but apart from that there has been little to indicate a military threat.
But the currency traders keep a close eye on events. The illegal foreign exchange bureaux which have sprouted up since the Gulf War of 1991 immediately marked the Iraqi dinar down against the dollar. In the heady days of the 1970s, many here remember that one dinar would buy three dollars and thousands of middle-class Iraqis flew to Europe for holidays. The latest exchange rate is 1,750 dinars to the dollar.
Leisure is the furthest thing from most people's minds, as the threat of military action from the gathering flotilla of US warships and missile carriers in the Gulf and Red Sea looms large.
The business of making ends meet keeps women such as Samira - Mohammed's wife - preoccupied. After receiving her monthly ration of flour, rice, cooking oil, sugar and tea, she noticed that the monthly allowance of a kilogram of pulses had been cut by more than half, leaving her holding a miserably small bag of chick-peas - the only source of protein in the diet of perhaps millions of people. "We have some money hidden, but what about the others? How can they buy from market at high prices?", she asked.
She also noticed that her gas cylinder was less than half full and promised to fill it up as soon as one of the travelling gas-sellers passed by the house. When she heard the rattle of his cart she was amazed to discover that hundreds of her neighbours were ahead of her. She was too late. All of the gas was sold out and, like many others, she is frightened about the future.
Golan (20), the taxi-driver who ferries Mohammed and his neighbours around the city, has also noticed a major increase in security around the city. At roadblocks heavily-armed soldiers are checking identity cards. "They ask me about military service. I showed them papers and they let me go. They stopped me five times coming into Baghdad today," he said.
The nonchalance of the Iraqi leadership in the face of the international threat speaks volumes about the gulf that exists between governors and the governed. Following a cabinet meeting chaired by President Saddam Hussein, the official government statement expressed its "high appreciation of the stand of our steadfast people and their alert commitment and preparedness to confront American aggression".
As the rush-hour traffic subsided and an uneasy calm took over the grimy streets of Baghdad, most residents phoned relatives and prepared for the worst. It speaks not so much of commitment and preparedness as fear.