Bye, Baghdad

‘‘The war is here,’’ the 70-year-old said, looking out above his thick-rimmed, black glasses. Desperate, unsettled scenes were repeated across the Capital on Friday, as many residents of the city abandoned the air of resiliency that had enabled them to weather weeks of hardship, and finally suggested that they’d had enough.

Long before sunrise, after a night spent in the darkness of a citywide blackout, residents snarled the main road out of Baghdad to northern Iraq, with bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching for as many as five miles.

Most were headed to Diala, a relatively tranquil province of farms irrigated by a river of the same name and known for its orange groves. Many said they would find houses, hotels or share space with relatives already there. No one seemed prepared to say for how long.

‘‘When it’s calm, we’ll come back,’’ said Osama Jassim, who with his three brothers put their families in a flatbed truck loaded with bags of flour, wool blankets, mattresses and a radio. ‘‘Maybe tomorrow, maybe a week, maybe a month. It all depends on God.’’

His departure, decided Friday morning, cost his families’ life savings. They paid the equivalent of about three months’ salary to rent the truck, about $15 at current exchange rates. Rent for a house in the town of Khalas would run 10 times what it cost before the war.

But Jassim said they had little choice. There was no water and the blackout showed no signs of lifting. His three children — ages 2, 3 and 4 — were afraid and he acknowledged the toll bombing had taken on him. ‘‘War is death,’’ the 33-year-old said. As he spoke, two Iraqi tanks rumbled by.

Along the street were soldiers and knots of people waiting for rides, sitting beside their televisions and carpets on sidewalks soaked in sun. A chaotic line snaked around a gas station, where cars, vans and trucks filled up or a drive of one or two hours. Sweat pouring down their foreheads on the first sweltering day of spring, several men pushed a broken-down red truck carrying eight women in black chadors, as traffic lurched ahead.

Some people spoke of the helplessness that has become a constant theme in Baghdad during the past two weeks. Others spoke of God and complying with his will. Many shared rumours that raced through the Capital, gaining credibility with every retelling.

Much of the gossip concerned the cause of the blackout. It was the Americans, some said, preparing for their final push into the bastion of Saddam’s rule. Others looked to their own government as the cause — that it was seeking to compensate for the Americans’ technological superiority, that it was eager to keep residents from hearing foreign broadcasts.

Other rumours sprang from the fear that has finally gripped Baghdad, as artillery and machine-gun fire reverberated in the distance and fighting sent dozens from villages on the Capital’s outskirts to overwhelmed hospitals. Jassim insisted that President Bush had issued a public warning to Baghdad’s residents to leave within 48 hours. Afterwards, the city would be devastated. Others guessed at how close the Americans had come.

In the neighborhood of New Baghdad, 24-year-old Aqil Mohammed fretted over what he would do with about $700 in cheese, yogurt and butter stacked in refrigerators and freezers that didn’t work. If he kept the doors tight, he said, he could maybe keep them from spoiling for a few more hours. He kept frozen chicken on ice, he said, but that would do for just two or three days. ‘‘We’ll sell some, take some to our houses and if it’s rotten, we’ll throw it out,’’ he said.

A handful of shoppers passed his grimy store, hordes of flies settling over the goods. Women put their palm on the yogurt container to make sure it wasn’t hot. Some shook their heads and walked away. Others squeezed the chickens, eager to determine how frozen they still were. To drum up business, Mohammed said he cut the prices by a fourth for yogurt, but too few customers were coming.

‘‘People are hearing rumours, and they are trying to get out of Baghdad,’’ he said, looking out at the usually teeming market. ‘‘We’ll see what happens. What can we do? It’s out of our hands.’’

Fatalism was also a leading sentiment along the road to Diala. Raid Kadhim had packed his family of 10 in a minibus, its windows bulging with bedding and blankets. On the floor was rice, flour, oil and tea, what they had left from government rations.

As he spoke, his mother in the front seat, Um Abbas, got angry. They were late, she yelled. ‘‘Hurry! Hurry!’’ He got in the car, leaving his home behind. For how long he didn’t know. That depends on God. But it was time to go. He looked out of the window and said goodbye. ’’God save you,’’ he shouted. (LAT-WP)