IRAQ: The Iraqi government declared a four-day holiday from Thursday until yesterday to allow the referendum on the constitution to be held. The mostly Shia Muslim middle-class neighbourhood of Jadriya celebrated the vote with a lightness of heart that has all but disappeared from today's Iraq.
Because all civilian traffic was banned, residents were freed for one day from the fear of roving gunmen, suicide car bombers and kidnappers. They lingered in the streets, smiling and chatting while boys raced by on bicycles.
Except for the policemen standing guard every few hundred metres and nervous glances down the empty boulevards, Jadriya almost felt like it was in a normal Arab country.
Sohad Mohamed (40) walked towards the polling station at Mohamed Bakr Hakim school, holding her small nephews and a niece by the hand. "I am going to vote Yes, because we need a rest. We're tired of war," she said.
"We have to say yes, but we don't know if it will make a difference."
In the school entrance, Taleb Ibrahim Hussein waited for his 3,150 eligible voters like a maître d'hôtel, dressed in his best sports jacket and tie.
"Voting for the constitution is like getting an identity card for the country," said the polling station manager and school principal. "We prevailed through 35 years of Saddam. This election is our way of standing up to the terrorists and Zarqawi [ the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq]."
A US helicopter thundered overhead, raising a choking cloud of dust and shaking the leaves off the tree in the school courtyard. A young man defiantly wagged a purple- stained index finger, proof that he had voted, at the chopper: an apt symbol for an election held under US protection, with the goal of forcing the Americans to leave.
Few voters were familiar with the contents of the constitution, and they preferred to discuss the conflict in their country.
Mohamed Abdel-Rezak (21), a dental student, adopted the discourse of denial that I have heard in every civil war I have covered. "Most of the violence is coming from abroad," he said, despite evidence to the contrary.
"There is no difference between Sunni and Shia. They are not killing each other."
Hussein Najjar (48) and his wife Ghoussoum (34), looked like a happy couple, standing in the queue to vote. They were voting Yes "because we have to get through this crisis, because we want to be able to go out without being afraid," Ms Najjar said.
Mr Najjar, an editor at Iraqi television, had read the constitution carefully, and discussed it with his wife. "The most important thing to me is freedom of opinion," he said, "but the government has fed us so many promises that I have serious doubts. I want to live like a human being, like a European."
Why are they not living like human beings? "First of all, I blame the United States of America, because they are occupying us," Mr Najjar said.
"They have a duty to protect us, to give us human rights and let us live decently."
US officials say the misery of Iraq is the fault of terrorists, I noted. "Why do terrorists become terrorists?" Mr Najjar asked? "And who are the terrorists? The mistake of the occupation was that they planned nothing. They left the border open."
But asked whether he wanted US forces to leave now, Mr Najjar hesitated. "They have created an impossible dilemma," he continued.
"If they leave now, we may have a full-scale civil war. If we could get a decent Iraqi government, the people of Iraq might solve these problems."
Iraq has had three governments in two years, but none improved life for Iraqis. Baghdad receives only 1½ hours of electricity for every four hours of blackout.
There are still kilometres of petrol queues in the country with the world's second largest oil reserves. An estimated 1,000 people are murdered by criminals every month in the capital - not including those killed in bombings.
Beneath the superficial cheerfulness of the polling station, there was almost unbearable sorrow.
Saying goodbye to the Najjars, I asked how many children they had. Husband and wife looked fleetingly at each other. Ms Najjar bent her head and began to cry.
"We had one child, Zaid," Mr Najjar explained. "He filled up our happiness. We were determined to give him a good education. He was three years old and he was kidnapped by a gang last year. We were coming home and gunmen grabbed him from his mother and hit him on the head with a pistol."
The couple feel certain their son is dead. "People are dying in the streets and it has been more than a year," Mr Najjar said. "They were animals. How could he still be alive? The people who were oppressed by Saddam are oppressing us now."
The Najjars have sought fertility treatment for Ghoussoum, who has been unable to conceive again, but there is no treatment available in Baghdad. They wanted to know if there was an NGO that could help them travel abroad so they might have another child.
Voters melted away as the polling station filled with men in green camouflage uniforms, soldiers from a commando unit under the orders of the minister of the interior. They were stationed at a nearby base and had come to vote, but they seemed to frighten the civilians.
I walked up to a tall, muscular Iraqi with a killer look in his eyes. He had pushed a black balaclava back on his forehead. There were three gold stars on his epaulettes and a paratroopers wings on his chest.
Why had he brought his unit to vote? I asked. "You answer," he shouted at his men. "We want a new Iraq," piped up a skinny man in a grimy camouflage T-shirt.
No, the captain snarled when I asked if he'd been been trained by the Americans. He turned away, out of disdain or so I couldn't see his face.
There are persistent reports that the Shia commandos of the interior minister's Wolf Brigade arrest Sunnis during house-to- house searches, then torture and kill them and dump the bodies, presumably as revenge for the hundreds of Shias killed by bombers.
"Didn't we already arrest her?" a subordinate standing next to the commander asked menacingly, referring to me.
If the polling station was going to be attacked, this was the moment. It seemed like a good time to go.
I found only Shias voting at Mohamed Bakr Hakim school, though up to 15 per cent of Jadriya's population is Sunni.
A few blocks away, I met Mohamed, a Sunni laundry manager. He wasn't voting. "We all fought Iran together - Sunni, Shia, Christian, Turkmen," he said, referring to Saddam Hussein's 1980-1988 war.
Mohamed held out his left arm to show me the scar of a bullet wound and rolled up a trouser leg to show me another. "I have a steel plate in my leg," he continued. "Our problems come from these people who were outside [ the Sciri and Dawa parties, who are now in power].
"They lived in Iran and they have come back and they are doing whatever the Iranians tell them. If Saddam returned, they would run away because Saddam knows them like the back of his hand."