At Ground Zero

By Johanna Mcgeary/Baghdad

When the darkness falls in Baghdad, you sit there looking out at the starry desert sky and you wonder, When will the gently twinkling lights be snuffed out by a sudden explosion of fire? When will the neon lines of tracers redraw the contours of the landscape in unthinkable ways? Will the trees and houses and mosques and suspect sites spreading peacefully toward the horizon be nothing but dust and rubble tomorrow? Will people die?

But when the sun comes up again, you wonder if the night was all a bad dream. Iraqis go about their business of struggling to survive. The cityscape looks the same, shabby but nothing worse. People talk about how little they slept, but they show no other outward signs of stress. This is a curiously surreal war that starts on schedule after dark and stops before dawn, its most intense drama and damage so far taking place mostly out of sight.

Iraqis have learned to be surprised by none of the disasters that two wars, a dictatorial regime and an American enemy have dealt them for two decades. They accept almost everything, not given to frantic preparation in the face of another frightening challenge. Yet they were startled by the suddenness of this latest trial. A few days ago, Baghdadis were worrying about which four hours of the day they would go without electricity.

For four nights now they have had something horrific to fear. But the lights still blazed in the city each night in typical Iraqi bravado. Shops show off wares that only black marketeers can afford to buy, and in the night-vision goggles of American pilots, they signal Iraq's defiance. Streetlamps cast a reassuring sulfur glow, though only a modest number of cars race the highway behind al-Rasheed Hotel downtown. It is not that Iraqis are afraid or battened down in their bomb shelters. There is little to keep them out after dark, even on a peaceful night before the holy month of Ramadan. Baghdad is worn down by an eight-year-old embargo. Iraqis hurry home at nightfall to count the nearly worthless dinars they have managed to earn this day, to plot and scheme how they will bring in a few more in a life of meager survival. What happens will happen. They have known neither peace nor prosperity for more than 18 years. Who are they to disagree when Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz comes on the TV news to say it matters little whether Iraqis die from crushing U.N. sanctions or deadly American bombs?

But only fools are not afraid when the warning siren sounds. Families huddle in houses, unable to close their eyes as they await the concussive smack of a bomb. Unlike Operation Desert Storm, when the country was pounded mercilessly for 38 days, Operation Desert Fox has come in tense fits and starts through the long nights.

The first night brought the sporadic crack of antiaircraft guns and glimmering showers of red tracers that fell through the sky like dancing fireflies. The show had a certain beauty, but the acrid smell of spent Tomahawk warheads and rising layers of fog proved that something malign was happening. From somewhere in the suburbs came the crump of heavy explosions, and somewhere else a yellow flash set off a tall plume of smoke. It all happened with heart-stopping rapidity, then just as quickly subsided. Several hours went by before another crescendo of attack, this time closer to downtown as the invisible missiles pinpointed their targets. When the occasional brilliant explosions lighted the sky, no one was sure exactly what had been hit or where.

By daybreak Thursday, everyone agreed it wasn't so bad. At the showcase "civilian-casualty site," nothing more than a deep crater in a residential street, a man observed jokingly that "this is a gift from Clinton to us for holy Ramadan." A 12-year-old boy said he was scared when he heard the "very big sound," but his parents told him to be brave. "Never be afraid," they said. "Never." People seemed more curious about the damage than angry. "What can we do?" was the refrain. Another man seemed surprised that the Americans could have made such an error in dropping their missile in so poor a residential area. "The targets are well known," he said, waving toward the horizon.

Iraqis are proud to act as if nothing terrible is happening and don't like to show that they take it seriously. "I put some tape on my windows, maybe a blanket, that's it," said a woman on her way to market. She was less concerned about bombs than about the way the price of cooking oil had doubled overnight. Zahara Abdul, who has 15 children and grandchildren, was buying a dress: she would pay 2,000 dinars (about $1.67) now and chip in the other 8,000 at 100 a week. "We are not guilty of anything," she said. "I wonder why America does this to us, but we don't hate the Americans. Of course we are afraid, but we believe in God to protect us." Ahmed Zaidan was standing idly in his electrical-supplies shop: "We have already witnessed what the Americans can do to us. We lost many in the war, so why be afraid now?"

Others were worried, though, and repeatedly asked each other if the assault would get worse. On Thursday night the bombs must have been dropping elsewhere in the country. Then at 10:30 a series of guided missiles drove through the roof of the Administration of the Military Industrial Complex, 200 yds. from al-Rasheed Hotel, obliterating whatever was inside but leaving the walls intact. It was almost six hours before another deafening crash signaled a direct hit on a nearby government building. On Friday the brilliant yellow tail of a heavy cruise missile sailed straight past the windows of the hotel, at sixth-floor level. For 40 min. missiles turned Baath Party headquarters and two other downtown sites into lethal orange starbursts, exploding with a force felt several miles away.

As the fearful crashes died down, the musical call to dawn prayers wafted into the sky, sounding the start of Ramadan. Iraqis devoutly hoped God would not allow his holiest month to be profaned by American bombs. But at night they started to fall once again.