They are a cross section of the Iraqi people -- a cleric, a clerk, a student, a doctor and a former soldier -- and their lives have changed since Saddam Hussein's government was ousted by U.S. forces.

While the cleric and the doctor at least have had a chance to help reshape their country, the others are finding the going tough.

Sheik Abbas al-Rubayee, 37, Shiite cleric

Sheikh Abbas al-Rubayee wields newfound power with a delicate touch. He carries himself as a quiet, pious man who lives humbly, shuttling between his offices in the chic neighborhood of Jadiriyah over the gigantic bridges and jammed streets of Baghdad to the poor Shiite slums of Sadr City in a beat-up Toyota.

Perhaps no other group has emerged more forcefully in the dynamited social topography of postwar Iraq than Shiite clerics, the natural leaders of the Shiite majority that had been kept under the thumb of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni minority. Like pop stars, their faces adorn walls and shop windows.

Since the bombing death in Najaf of Ayatollah Mohamad Baqer al-Hakim, the powerful rival to al-Rubayee's patron, the firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr, the career potential for smart, upwardly mobile Shiite clerics has only increased.

More devout than his parents since he was a child, al-Rubayee was classified under Saddam as a member of the opposition and kept under surveillance. But he kept his mouth shut and followed the rules. Allah's tug lured him to the holy city of Najaf in 1993. He enrolled in the Hawza, excelling in his studies and befriending Moqtada al-Sadr, the son of the famous Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr.

In 1999, Saddam cracked down on Sadr and his followers. The grand ayatollah was murdered. Al-Rubayee, then a father of two with another on the way, fled to Jordan and then Syria, returning eight months later and hiding out in Baghdad for four years. "I had no contact with anybody except my father and my brother," he said. "Only they knew where I was."

After the collapse of the government, al-Rubayee emerged from the shadows. He was among the men who helped organize trash and garbage pickup in Baghdad in the first days after the fall of the city, much to chagrin of American forces watching Shiites fill the power vacuum.

He renewed helped forge the Martyr Sadr Organization, which has become one of postwar Iraq's most powerful groups and perhaps the most vocal and organized force opposed to the American occupation and the U.S.-backed Governing Council.

Sadr's followers have vowed to create their own parallel government and army. In Sadr City, a rundown swath of Baghdad overwhelmed by the smells of raw sewage and rotting garbage, the young men line up to join Sadr's new force called Mahdi's army. Al-Rubayee watches approvingly as the recruiters jot down names in neat cursive Arabic.

	Borzou Daragahi
	Hashem Mohammad, 26, store clerk

Hashem Mohammad, 26, store clerk

Fear and anger rule the life of Hashem Mohammad, 26, an employee of a tobacco shop. He's afraid of the criminals that roam the streets. He's angry at the world for making him work so hard, for making him take a crummy shared taxi to work every day, for not giving him enough salary to get married and buy a car. But mostly, he's angry at the Americans for the accidental death of his father during a gun battle in central Baghdad a few weeks ago.

"I am afraid. I am always afraid," he said. "We have no security. We have no peace. There's so much robbery in the streets."

The other day, a group of troublemakers entered the store and began grabbing cigars, he says, laughing as they took the merchandise from right in front of him. "I couldn't do anything because I didn't have a weapon," he said. "If I had a weapon I would have shot them."

Mohammad's father was killed several weeks ago, an innocent bystander during a gun battle between U.S. forces and anti-American militants. A taxi driver rushing to get away from the scene ran over him. Since his father's death, Mohammad says, he's felt a gaping hole in his life. Saddam tapes help fill the void.

"Sometimes I just wish to hear his voice," he said. "It reminds me of better times."

The incident has made him consider fighting against the U.S. occupation himself. "The Jihad is an obligation for us," he said. "If the situation doesn't change soon, I will join the Jihad against the Americans."

But it's a confused sentiment. In an eyeblink, his view changes

"If the Americans leave now, there will be killing in the streets," he saids. "Maybe it's better if they stay awhile."

Borzou Daragahi
Aza Hiwa, 15, student

Aza Hiwa, 15, high school student

Aza Hiwa will always remember the summer vacation that never was. The boy had anticipated a long, luxurious summer of bike riding, hanging out with friends late into the evening and fidgeting with the computer his dad had just bought him.

But the war and a delayed school closing left him and his buddies with a shortened break. Baghdad's heightened security fears have meant that his nervous middle-class parents won't let him stay out past dark. And the city's frequent electrical outages have hampered his ability to play games or write programs on his desktop computer.

Plus, he says, there's a certain meanness in the city that he's never sensed before. The biggest threat are reckless drivers who cut him off as he's riding his bicycle. They never used to be this way.

Just the other day someone threw an empty bottle of liquor at him and his friends as they rode their bikes.

"I don't understand it," he says, brushing his just-sprouting mustache. "We didn't do or say anything to him. It seems like everyone is driving around very angrily."

For Baghdad's young people, life has become infinitely more complicated. The city's new lawlessness means their parents want them home by dark even during summer months when people in hot Arab countries spend the nights carousing. The sudden change in the country's social fabric has them rethinking their futures.

Hiwa dreams of becoming an engineer and driving a big, blue Chevrolet Caprice through a big American city. He loves loud, fast American dance music. He watches American television shows and movies on satellite television. "I'm not a big fan of Arab music," he says.

Despite the lack of electricity and safety, Hiwa does his best to lead a lazy summer existence. He usually ambles out of bed around 11 a.m., chows down breakfast and heads over to the computer. If there's no electricity, he gets on his bike, tracks down his friends and starts cruising.

There's the ice cream joint where they hang out, unless the ice cream has melted from the lack of power. There's the field where they sometimes kick a football around, unless the gypsy liquor dealers are there selling booze. There's the Arasat, the fancy street where pretty girls once grazed the window displays, though most of the girls now stay home for fear of crime and many of the stores have yet to reopen since the war.

Along the way, Hiwa says he's on the lookout for bad actors. There have been a spate of kidnappings for ransom throughout the city, another worry for his parents.

Hiwa's dad, who used to work at the Ministry of Information, still dotes on him, giving him $10 a month for clothes, bicycle supplies or chocolates. Hiwa wants to study physics, biology and chemistry when he graduates from secondary school.

During war, Hiwa spent the days playing football in the streets. At night he huddled with his family as they listened to the bombing outside.

He claims to hold no opinion about the American soldiers occupying his country. They're nice to him. He's nice to them.

But he wishes the Americans would bring law and order to Baghdad so he and his friends could once again ride their bikes around without having to worry. "They should bring Iraqi police back," he said. "But good police, not corrupt police."

There are advantages to postwar life, he says.

One is satellite television, which provides a looking glass into the wider world he'd like to explore. "I want to go abroad," he said. "Hopefully to America."

Dr. Raja Khuzai, 57, Governing Council member

Dr. Raja Khuzai has lived a life of charity, commitment and professionalism. She was rewarded by Saddam Hussein with a life of betrayal and disillusionment.

Now, says this member of the Iraqi Governing Council, she is slowly becoming disillusioned and feeling betrayed by the American occupation force that replaced the Iraqi dictator.

Almost single-handedly, the British-educated obstetrician twice in 12 years saved her children and women's hospital south of Baghdad from looters and vandals. So she's no pushover.

Yet this secular 57-year-old mother of seven once tried to quit the Governing Council, frustrated by the pace of the 25-member council's work and her lack of say in its proceedings. It is dominated by powerful Kurds, Shiites, U.S.-backed exiles and men. Khuzai is one of three women members.

Her husband and the Baroness Emma Nicholson, a human rights activist, talked her out of quitting. Plus she felt obligated to stay, if only to speak up for women. "Many women congratulate me by telephone or send me letters or visit my home," she says. "They encourage me to raise women's voice."

"It's hard," she said. "They don't respect women. They don't listen to women."

When the Governing Council recently nominated 25 ministers to Iraq's new cabinet, only one -- Nasreen Sidiq Barwari -- was a woman. "We had a big fight," Khuzai said. "We made our male colleagues promise there would be more women deputy ministers."

Her independence is curtailed by a small army of Marines that follows her wherever she goes. Her drivers and bodyguards communicate with walkie-talkies. "My family is suffering," she said. "I'm away from them six days a week."

Khuzai stays mostly behind fortified concrete barriers at the Baghdad Hotel, separated from her compatriots by the harsh realities of Iraq following the bombings of the Jordanian embassy, United Nations compound and the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.

The U.S.-led civilian authority picked her to be on the Governing Council, the interim Iraqi government that is assigned to design a new Iraqi political system. The council's work has been slow and stressful. The meetings are long. The speeches are dull.

From the start, Governing Council members have demanded a greater role in maintaining Iraq's security and rebuilding the country's armed forces and police.

"Our biggest problem is security," she said. "We need to have a secure country. We told them you don't know the Iraqi people. We know them. If you give the security issue to us. We'll solve it."

	Borzou Daragahi
	Yahyah Hamid Ismail, 26, former soldier.

Yahyah Hamid Ismail, 36, ex-soldier

Stubborn pride prevented Yahyah Hamid Ismail from trying to join the new Iraqi Army being organized by the Americans. And stubborn pride caused him to leave his wife after she borrowed money from friends to buy some fabric.

Now, alone, angry, poor and disabled, the bony 36-year-old former soldier and motor vehicle repairman spends his days holding vigil outside the gates of coalition headquarters at Saddam's former Republican Palace.

In Ismail's emotionally charged logic, it was more honorable to legally divorce his wife of 20 years than humbly accept the charity of friends. And it is more honorable to stand among a throng of protesters every day in the violent sun and demand compensation for his war wound -- his left arm was damaged in the war -- than to seek a job in the private sector or with one of the new Iraqi security branches the Americans are setting up.

"I wanted to join the Iraqi Army," he said. "But when I learned that it would be organized by the Americans and be in opposition to the Iraqi people, I refused to join. Just like the police, they're placing them against the people."

Ismail fears no one will want him and his useless arm. "How can I work?" he said. "What can I do?"

Masses of poor, angry men crowd Iraq's streets and sidewalks. Like Ismail, many are veterans of Iraq's disbanded army. And like Ismail, they have little left to lose.

Ismail served in the army for 18 years. His skull was fractured by a bullet in the Iran-Iraq war. He helped invade Kuwait. In southern Iraq during the most recent war, a British soldier put a bullet through his shoulder. His arm dangles uselessly, preventing him from fixing transmissions in American and Japanese cars, his one-time trade.

One day in April, his wife came home with a stretch of fabric to keep busy and sew some clothes for their two children, ages 9 and 6. Ismail said he flew into a rage when he found out she had borrowed the money from neighbors to buy the fabric. "I cannot even afford to buy my own cigarettes, and she went and borrowed money to buy something we didn't need," he said. "We had a big fight over why she bought this fabric.

"I divorced her. I didn't want her anymore," he said angrily.