Iraqis savor a taste of democracy

BAGHDAD -- As the sun came up on election day, Jabbar Hussein Jabbar al-Rubaie drew the curtains to let in the light and fired up the kerosene heater, because, once again, the electricity was out.

Rubaie, 37, is no fan of the US occupation, but yesterday he was willing to forgive because he was about to cast a vote that would, in his mind, redeem his family's suffering under Saddam Hussein.

"Some evils are better than others," said Rubaie, a construction contractor who played the role of neighborhood ward heeler, urging people to turn out to vote. "Electricity, water, gas -- you can get these with money. But what can you do if Saddam executes someone? You can never replace him."

As a barrage of insurgent mortar shells shook his house -- close, but not too close -- Rubaie spoke of how three of his mother's brothers were executed, along with his sister's husband, for working in the Da'wa party, a Shi'ite Islamist movement that Hussein viewed as a threat. Rubaie's mother had several heart attacks and died, he believes, from those stresses.

But now Rubaie and his father, Hussein Jabbar Hamoud, 71 years old and bearing a black mark of piety on his forehead from touching it to the ground in prayer, were about to vote for the most prominent Shi'ite candidate slate, which includes the once-outlawed party.

"We didn't imagine we would have such a thing, because we lived under a dictatorial regime and didn't know the meaning of freedom, like a baby in its mother's womb that hears it's going to come out and be able to eat and breathe freely," Rubaie said.

Across the street, his neighbor, Thamer al-Amary, 50, was running on a little-known ticket he formed expressly to challenge the Islamist parties.

"Unfortunately, some of the candidates use religion to affect the people," he said.

But whatever the internal disagreements, their heavily Shi'ite, middle-class neighborhood in the Jadriya section, an enclave of relative safety where nearly everyone knows everyone else, was an oasis in a capital city where some areas suffered mortar attacks, suicide bombs, and intimidation.

Rubaie's cousin in the Dora neighborhood to the south got a note under his door, saying, "If you leave your house, we will separate your heads from your bodies." But outside Rubaie's house, a parade of neighbors -- men, women, and small children -- snaked between four rows of concertina wire, laid out two days earlier by US soldiers, on their way to the polling center in the Ibn al-Khatib elementary school.

There, Hamdiya Yassin and her daughter-in-law stood uncertainly by a voting booth, saying they would not know who to vote for until Yassin's husband told them.

But others knew exactly what they wanted.

Mohi Jabbar Adhab, a silver-haired retired judge who under Hussein had ordered merchants' hands chopped off for war-profiteering, until he refused and was sent to prison, wanted a constitution that enshrined the rule of law and freedom of religion. He refused to say how he voted.

Maliha Hassan, 79, who limped into the polling place in a billowing abbaya, said she had chosen the main Shi'ite list. "Our candle!" she exclaimed, referring to its campaign symbol.

"I want gas, oil, and water. And safety!" she said. "And buses! The buses don't run, and I can't go anywhere. Where are the buses?"

As she walked out the door, she ululated, letting out a trill of joy.