To leave or stay in postwar Iraq?

The greatest relief for Janon Kadhim came on New Year's Eve, when she and her family finally left behind the car bombs and kidnappings of Iraq, and arrived safely in Jordan.

That night, as the crash-boom-bang of fireworks heralded the New Year, Mrs. Kadhim had flashbacks that affirmed her decision to leave.

"I still can't believe it," says the Iraqi-American architecture professor and mother of three. "Baghdad was just so crazy, a nightmare. Every time I hear a pop [here], I look out the window and realize I don't have to be afraid anymore."

Kadhim's tale of fleeing Iraq - and that of another architect who has returned from exile and is determined to stay - embody the despair and hopes that permeate this nation as it prepares for elections on Jan. 30, amid American military occupation and the violence of an insurgency.

Both Kadhim and Maysoon al-Damluji went to the same elite high school and studied architecture together at Baghdad University. But today, their different paths underscore the dilemma faced by many Iraqi professionals as they decide whether their ambitions to build a new Iraq is worth the risk.

Ms. Damluji, who returned to Iraq from 22 years of living in Britain just weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, is determined to soldier through the violence. Not far from the Kadhim's old house in Baghdad, she welcomed the New Year full of cautious promise for an upcoming election in which the deputy minister of culture is a ranking candidate.

Thirty members of the women's group that she leads - despite the murder of two founding members and multiple kidnappings of family members that have forced others out - gathered to escape their problems and to celebrate.

"They started dancing at 6 p.m., and just kept on dancing all night long, until eight in the morning," Damluji says with amusement. "Women are so brave here."

But for Kadhim, the time arrived when the violence became too much. Last October, when the family was battling the bureaucracy to get passports and get out, a tired Kadhim explained her desire to leave.

"We've had more than enough action for one lifetime," she explained in American-accented English. The family had survived Mr. Hussein's rule, three wars, and a brutal decade of sanctions, only to finally lose heart in the ugly aftermath of the war.

"We send the children to school, and afterward just see if they will come home," Kadhim said. "This is not a way of living. We have too many thoughts, dreams, and visions for the new Iraq - we don't know what to do with them."

"How many times have you been in a place, and the next day there is a big explosion there? How many times can they miss?" asked Kadhim's husband, Hosham, also an architecture professor, asked at the time.

"I keep saying: 'The war is not over yet.' We had the occupation, now we have the war of liberation," he continued. "A lot of people who were optimistic are terribly depressed. People took all their money, and left."

For Damluji, the news of other professionals' departure is no surprise. "It's very sad, but I don't blame them," she says, after hearing of the Kadhims' recent departure. "They will be back, I'm sure, because things will improve. They will not ever completely settle anywhere else."

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