Baghdad Prepares

AN eerie air of excitement, horror, fear and expectation hung over the capital yesterday. Small groups gathered to discuss the latest news at street corners, and friends and families assembled behind closed doors to mull their fate.

By midday, almost all shops had shut and armed men, both in uniform and in civilian clothes, were out on the streets.

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Closing up his shop for the duration of the war, one man, delighted rather than furious as one might have expected at finding this Briton as his last customer, said he thought that the Saddam regime would crumble within days of the first missile strikes. And then, with a broad grin on his face, he said: "Democracy!"

It was almost certainly the first time in the last three decades that he had ever dared utter such a word to a foreigner, a stranger and in front of other Iraqis whom he did not know. "From today," he said, "No more fear." He was not alone.

More here.