TRAFFIC WOES

“There is no way to go,” my driver, Annas Mazin, says, raising his hands off the wheel in the commuter’s universal gesture of futility.

After a moment, he changes his mind, steers his Olds Cutlass up over a stone median, and reverses direction, angling toward an alley. “This is a new way,” he says as we bump over the median.

Traffic has become one of Baghdad residents’ prime irritations, following somewhere behind blackouts, cooking gas prices and crime. You might think a city that has survived deprivation and bombing runs wouldn’t care about crowded streets. But with phone service still spotty, business has to be done in person, and that means driving.

By midday, traffic turns into a rugby scrum. Crossing an intersection requires playing chicken with oncoming Brazilis (cheap Volkswagens made in Brazil) or wading through a line of waiting cars. Picture Los Angeles without working stoplights.

Police control traffic at some of the larger intersections. If it’s too hot, however, they sometimes take a breather in a spot of roadside shade and let drivers fend for themselves. Many Baghdad residents swear traffic is getting worse, and they may be right. Unlike in Basra, where gasoline shortages touched off a stone-throwing demonstration today, residents of the capital can almost always find gas, either from regular stations or the black market. The price and the quality may vary, but it’s there.

In addition, there may be more people on the streets here than there were before the war. Baghdad residents suspect that Iraqis from the countryside are flocking into the city in search of work, swelling a population that most people peg at 5 million.

Whatever the cause, the worsening traffic jams have awakened in drivers a reckless creativity that has become the norm. Mazin merely makes an annoyed “tsk” noise when drivers head the wrong way on a street, aiming straight at our car. “They should not do that,” he says.