Five women confront a new Iraq

Several well-known actresses have fled the country, and another, Rana Shaker, has reportedly been murdered. Gumar herself thought of leaving. "It is impossible for an artist to work in these circumstances," says Gumar. "Since the war, living standards have changed. Everything has changed," she says. Sitting in the dark past nine in the evening, a night-after-night blackout that jars in comparison to the curtain calls of the past, it is hard for her to say it has changed for the better.

Yet life is stirring inside Baghdad's National Theater of Iraq. There, actors and directors meet, broken glass and looted debris swept aside, to discuss future productions. Mona As-Safar, a colleague of Gumar's, is preparing to star in a new one-woman play in which she portrays five characters struggling to survive the war.

Recently, as As-Safar, also a blond, was walking through the market, a man cornered her and held a knife to her stomach. "He said, 'Didn't you act during the regime?' They think we're Baathists," she says. As-Safar used her acting skills to talk her way out of being stabbed.

As-Safar had to fight with her family to allow her to act, begging an uncle to take her to the theater when they were supposed to go to the zoo. She isn't about to give up. "I like the excitement of the theater. I'm not afraid. I'm Aaarnold," she laughs, feigning a Schwarzenegger accent.

She will not give in to pressures to stay off the stage, or to cover her hair. "Wear hejab?" she shakes her head. "I'll die first. This is our personal freedom, to wear what we want. If that changes, it might be better to leave Iraq."

An unstable postwar Iraq is testing the fortitude of many Iraqis - but the challenges are especially acute for women. While ongoing violence is keeping some women from going out at all, others are pushing their way into the public arena and grasping the opportunity to reshape their country.

Ashtar Jassim al-Yasari is the founder and editor of a new satirical weekly paper that specializes in spoofing some the absurdities of Iraqi society. Alia Khalaf teaches English classics at Mustansirriye University, where she struggles against new pressures from Islamic fundamentalists and the loss of her sister during the war. Zakia Hakki, an exiled former judge, has returned from the US to put her legal expertise to work in building a more just Iraq.

Lena Aboud is a physician and a rising politician who leads a group of women demanding more representation in public life - and a change in laws that restrict women's rights. Mona as-Safar and Mays Gumar are two actresses from Baghdad's once-thriving arts scene - one keen to perform; the other, afraid to leave home for fear of attack.

To many in postwar Iraq, violence and insecurity pose as much of a threat - albeit of a different sort - as they did under Hussein. In a report released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch says the instability plaguing Baghdad and other Iraqi cities "has a distinct and debilitating impact on the daily lives of women and girls, preventing them from participating in public life at a crucial time in their country's history."

The New York-based group says that the lack of security has spurred a widespread fear of rape and abduction that is keeping women at home. It is a problem that may have a profound impact on how women, like the ones profiled here, will shape their roles in a rapidly changing Iraq.

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