WHAT FREEDOM LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT IS NEW.

It's not all bad, though.

In Saddam's time, the mere act of pointing at something -- a building, a person -- risked attracting the attention of a secret policeman. Now people freely jab their index fingers on the streets. To a visitor returning, it's something of a shock.

Another shock: Car windows are adorned with glossy portraits of Imam Ali and Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam's most revered saints, depicted as green- or brown-eyed, beautifully coifed, lips sensual, lashes perfectly combed. Saddam, a secular Sunni, banned such images.

In Nimo Dinkha's beauty salon, whose customers included Saddam's second wife, Samira Shahbandar, the power was out and the room was dark and stuffy. An assistant was shaping a customer's eyebrows while another fanned her with a promotional brochure for shampoo.

An elderly woman came in asking to have her hair colored. "I don't have any water," snapped Dinkha. "I can put the dye on but you'll have to do the rinse at home."

Although her body glistened with sweat, Dinkha was one of the few Iraqis I met who did not mind the discomforts of her new life.

"Saddam is out of our lives. This is a small price to pay," she said.

"I wish I could hang him outside the salon so that every Iraqi who has been hurt by him would have the chance to slice off a piece of him," she added.

At the mention of Saddam, the dozen women in the salon erupted with stories of atrocities: rape, disappearances, torture, mass graves.

"When Saddam's wife came here, we pretended we didn't know who she was," said Dinkha. "We were too scared to bring up the subject."