For Iraqis, a growing insecurity

"It reminded me of the old regime," says Mohammed, glumly slumped in an armchair. "They used to do the same thing."

The school closings were eerily reminiscent of last October, when a flier circulated throughout Baghdad urged all schools, offices, and shops to close for three days starting Nov. 1. "Anyone who does not abide by these instructions assumes the risk to his life and belongings," threatened the flier, signed by "the Baath Party." Baghdad's rumor mill exaggerated the warning, translating the three-day strike into three "days of blood."

The men in Hurriya didn't say who they were. Some wore ski masks. But Mohammed thinks they came from the Mahdi army, Mr. Sadr's militia. Mohammed walked to school anyway. A gangly, studious youth with wire-rimmed glasses, he wanted to do well in his upcoming finals, particularly English grammar.

But when he got to his high school, the principal and vice principal were standing at the front gate. They told him to go home. "I'm not sure, but I think I saw fear in their faces," says Mohammed.

At Mohammed's high school, the principal is still afraid. The black-clad men had showed up there,too, and commanded him to close the school. "I didn't follow their orders, because I take my orders from the Ministry of Education," says the principal, a portly, balding man with a potted rosebush in his office.

"Not everybody at this school agrees with what is going on," adds the principal, who begged that his name be withheld. "But I can't give you my opinion, because the situation is very dangerous right now. How can the press help us? Please forgive me, the situation is very bad."

Like Mohammed, the principal disobeyed the men in black. He reopened school the next day, Tuesday, April 6. But hardly any students showed up. "They're more afraid of the Mahdi army than they are of failing their exams," says the principal, shrugging sadly.

The "day of denunciation" - the Mahdi army's grandiloquent name for a general strike - followed a week of escalating clashes between Sadr's militia and US-led occupation forces. On March 28, US troops shut down Sadr's newspaper, Al Hawza, for 60 days for inciting violence against the occupation. The padlocking of the newspaper touched off days of protest in Baghdad and Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.

"Everything has become very tense since the Americans closed Al Hawza newspaper," says Hermiz. "They say they want freedom of expression, so why did they close this newspaper? Some people protested peacefully - the Americans tried to stop them, and that provoked the people."

Normally, Hermiz and his family would have had friends and relatives over for a long dinner Sunday evening. But this year Easter dinner was Easter lunch because their family and friends, like most Iraqis these days, are afraid to be caught out at night. "Now we have become used to the explosions, the attacks, and the violence around us," says Hermiz. "We sang and danced, and tried to forget all these things that are happening."

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