A CLOUD OF TENSION AMID THE DUST
BAGHDAD — Two storms -- one natural and one man-made -- swept through this waiting capital Tuesday, stirring up the dark imaginings and late-night fears just below the surface. Like an eerie reprieve before a momentous event, they gave people in Baghdad time to reflect on the upcoming battle for their city.
"I have told my parents that I am ready to die," said Hussam Hussein, 23, a skinny university history student wearing a helmet too large for his head and wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher that he dropped as he gestured.
Accentuating the sense of portent, the wind raged and the sky turned a sickly yellow light that was neither day nor night. Pedestrians leaned into the gusts as they struggled through nearly empty streets, their lungs tightening and their eyes stinging.
Elderly residents of Baghdad said they could not remember a sandstorm so fierce. At least some thanked God for it.
"This storm, this rain [of sand], is our new weapon against their new weapons," said Hasan Uad Ahmed, a street volunteer from the ruling Baath Party, referring to the U.S. forces bearing down on Baghdad.
"It is God sending us a signal that he is with us, and that we are doing the right thing," Ahmed said as he took shelter in a sandwich shop in the center of the city.
The sandstorm's wrath was matched by another fury. The steady bombardment of Republican Guard compounds to the south and east of Baghdad created thunderous rumbles that rolled over the city like the crashing of waves.
As if the wind, the sand and the thunder of explosions were not enough, the city remained swathed in smoke from more than 20 flares of oil -- house-size pits dug out with bulldozers, filled with petroleum and set afire. Near these fires, the air is not merely dim -- it is black, the color of the sky before a tornado, and the flames shoot up wildly.
Cars kept their lights on at midday, and the soldiers and volunteers, who in the last few days had kept busy digging still more trenches and foxholes, huddled in doorways or behind sandbags to get out of the lashing wind.
In the midst of the storm, about 30 Japanese activists suddenly appeared parading near the Palestine Hotel. They waved banners and shouted into the wind: "No to war! No to war!" Aside from a few news photographers, no one paid them any attention.
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