afid Hamid, who makes his living selling tea on the pavements of Baghdad, helped topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein last month. Seeing his neighbors struggle to climb on to Saddam's statue in Paradise Square, he fetched a ladder from his lock-up, allowing his friends to clamber up.
The destruction of the statue, relayed around the world by crews encamped in the Palestine Hotel opposite, provided the most symbolically important moment of the war and sent a signal to the Iraqi people that Saddam had lost power.
Hamid, 24, remains euphoric. He hauls the ladder out together with a T-shirt he was wearing that day. It bears the letters USA, his own private welcome to the US tanks.
ILLUSTATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
"I hated Saddam. Two of my uncles were imprisoned by him in 1979 and I have not seen them since," he said.
But the euphoria has long been lost on others in the crowd that day and throughout Iraq. The US-led reconstruction of Iraq is foundering. Washington prepared thoroughly for war but not for its aftermath. US President George W. Bush's appointment of former Lieutenant-General Jay Garner to run Iraq has proved disastrous and he has been replaced.
The rigid police state of Saddam has given way to lawlessness on a grand scale, stretching the length of the country.
Looting persists and criminal gangs make travel risky. In Paradise Square, street traders sell Kalashnikovs for US$75 within feet of one of the few police cars on duty in the capital.
While US soldiers tally the number of illegal weapons they manage to confiscate each night on patrol, hundreds more are being sold to Baghdad residents desperate for weapons to protect their homes.
Crime tops the list of Iraqi complaints, but they also grumble about a severe electricity shortage that leaves most of Baghdad in total darkness night after night. Beginning to run out of money, they worry too about when -- or if -- they will get their old jobs back.
The pedestal on which the Saddam statue stood now has a message to the US in red letters: "All Done, Go Home." Many Iraqis are happy for America to stay on while lawlessness is rampant, but not for too long. The danger for the US is that the various Iraqi grievances will congeal into resentment directed at the American forces.
There are frequent warning signs for the Americans of what might lie ahead. Almost every day, US forces trade fire with Iraqis throughout the country. In Baghdad last week, a US soldier was killed in a bold daylight attack on one of the bridges over the Tigris. An Iraqi walked up to him with a pistol and opened fire.
The previous day, two Iraqis fired at a reconnaissance patrol of the 3rd Infantry Division with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades north of Baghdad. An Iraqi was killed. On the same day, near the northern town of Baiji, a convoy from the 4th Infantry Division came under fire from Iraqis with rifles and machine guns.
It is very different from the welcome the US soldiers received in Paradise Square a month ago.
Adnam Mohammed Sayeed, a former Iraqi Airlines pilot, whose schoolboy son was the first into Paradise Square that day to hammer at the base of the statue, said "We can't wait two months, or one month, or even next week for the US to sort things out. The weather is getting hotter. We can't go on living like this."
Sayeed translated for the crowd that day, asking the US for a rope and the horsepower to drag the statue down. He now regrets his and his son's participation and described the event as "unpleasant."
Iraqis were among the best-educated people in the Middle East until stifled by Saddam and there is determination among them that, after a totalitarian regime, three wars and being impoverished by sanctions, to grab this opportunity for change. But the US performance so far has not instilled confidence. They are unimpressed by the provisional government Washington has been cobbling together.
That government, dominated by exile groups, could prove shortlived. Power now lies elsewhere, with the majority Shia Muslims, who were suppressed by Saddam. Many of them have a different agenda from Washington.
The US and British administration lodging in Saddam's presidential palace by the Tigris issues regular upbeat statements that life is fast returning to normal, that there are more police on the streets, that the education, health and other ministries will soon be up and running, and that full electricity and other basic services will be restored.
But the gap between such pronouncements and the daily lives of Iraqis is enormous.
In a country with the second biggest oil reserves in the world, lines kilometers-long form each morning outside gasoline stations. Sitting in his car in a line in Baghdad, Abdul Wahed Shukri Hamadi, a pharmacologist, said "Nothing is better since Saddam has gone."
The worst time is at night. Most people lock their doors after 8pm, unwilling to take the risk of being out in the dark because of criminal gangs or the chance of being shot by a US patrol. A city-wide curfew falls at 11pm. Bursts of gunfire continue throughout the night.
One of the best places to test the mood of Baghdad before the fall of Saddam was the Cafe Shabandar, off Rashid Street, an old tea house with fans on the ceiling and rare photographs of old Baghdad on its walls. It is popular with intellectuals who were more inclined to speak their minds than most residents, but cautious enough to avoid trouble with the secret police.
There is a spontaneity to life in Iraq that did not exist during the Saddam days and that is evident in the Cafe Shabandar. At one table, eight men are having a loud discussion about the politics of the new Iraq with a frankness that would have been impossible before.
But the lawlessness is uppermost in everyone's minds. The cafe walls are bare. The portrait of Saddam will not make a comeback but the manager said he had taken the valuable pictures of old Baghdad home for safety from looters and did not feel it was safe enough yet to return them.
The US has failed to find weapons of mass destruction, the stated aim of the war, or Saddam. The prevalent view among Iraqis, whose extended family ties provide them with a good information network, are convinced he is still alive and in Iraq.
The failure of the US to find him has left many Iraqis uncertain, including Sayeed, who provided the translation in the square the day the statue fell. It is one of the main reasons why he regrets the participation of himself and his son.
"My son is scared that Saddam's people will take revenge," he said. "He is right to be scared. Many people round here still love Saddam."
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