Surely there has never been an election quite like the one in Iraq.

On Friday evening, I went out to get a feel for election preparations with the Monitor’s driver and translator, racing against the 7 p.m. curfew that will hold through Monday, the day after the vote.

We wound our way between the gates and barriers cutting off our hotel compound from Baghdad and headed out onto the eerily deserted streets.

All the shops were shuttered and few people were on Baghdad’s main roads, except for Iraqi and US forces. Thousands of US troops in Baghdad have fanned out from their bases to smaller bivouacs throughout the city.

It feels like Baghdad is holding its breath, with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

We park in a Shiite neighborhood about 150 yards away from a school that will serve as an election center.

A car-load of menacing cops stand out front of the school. When my translator tries to ask one a few questions, he shoots back: “What’s in it for me?”

But further down the street we meet Mohammed Sa’ad and his three sons, one of whom had just picked up the list of polling places for their district from the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite electoral list that is expected to win the most national assembly seats on Sunday. The family was scanning the list to see at which spot Dad could vote.

Mr. Sa’ad was laughing with a friend over the last time he voted – the 2002 “referendum” on Saddam Hussein’s presidency – a rigged vote which returned 98 percent approval for Saddam. Did he vote for Saddam? “Of course I did. I’m not stupid – they might come and take you away if you didn’t.”

At the time, it was common practice for people seeking to reassure Saddam of their hyper-loyalty to prick their fingers and mark the “yes” box in blood. Sa’ad remembers with a laugh a neighbor who, in his haste to get his blood on the ballot, accidentally marked “no.” “He didn’t sleep for weeks.”

Sa’ad says he’ll be taking his sons on Saturday to the polling booth “so I can show them what this is all about. So they’ll learn and remember when it’s their turn.”

It brought back the last time I was in a polling booth. I was a kid in New Jersey and my mother wanted me to see what it was all about. I think she let me pull the lever. All of my votes since have been cast absentee.

Mr. Sa’ad’s youngest son Ali, who just turned nine, says he’s not afraid and hopes he’ll be allowed to vote on Sunday.

Asked who he’d vote for, he says. “My dad.”

The joy of Najaf on Saturday was a relief after weeks in bleak Baghdad.

Iraq's capital has become a constricting place. Not a day goes by without some sort of insurgent attack, and it’s hard to feel that much good is going on.

But the almost entirely Shiite city of Najaf, home of the Shrine of Ali, is filled with people who are grateful to have the chance to vote.

Imam Ali was killed not far from here nearly 1,400 years ago in the war over who would succeed the prophet Muhammad that led to the Shiite/Sunni split in the Muslim faith. Imam Ali’s death not only spawned a religion that celebrates martyrdom, but one that holds a deep conviction that those who suffer will ultimately prevail.

By current Iraqi standards, Najaf is blissfully peaceful. There are few kidnappings here, and I enjoy the freedom to wander the streets of an Iraqi city for the first time since August. While many in Baghdad won’t vote Sunday, either out of fear or, among Sunnis, because they reject the whole process, the Shiites of Najaf seem ready to turn out in force.

After hundreds of years in which Iraq’s Shiite majority had little say in how they were governed, they can almost taste the victory they expect will ensure they’ll never suffer the predations of another Saddam Hussein.

There were massacres here during the 1991 Shiite uprising against the regime, the city’s clerics were harassed and killed for much of the 1990s, and the damage of the US battle with the militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr last September was great. All of it makes people here feel they’ve earned what comes next.

It was a little after 7 a.m. in Baghdad.

Locked into an anxious dream one minute, I was sitting bolt-upright the next, and, I think, screaming. My bed was showered with glass shards and there were shouts and confusion outside.

I’ve been back in country since New Year’s Eve and, as with every time I resubmerge into Baghdad, there’s been a long adjustment period. I have been in and out since September 2003. Each time I return, the footprint that it’s safe to travel in feels smaller.

Most foreign journalists don’t leave Baghdad now, since insurgent checkpoints mushroom often and unpredictably. A foreigner, or any Iraqi with a foreigner, doesn’t stand much chance of making it through the ring of peril around Baghdad.

But you can get used to anything. I’ve ditched the beard I usually wear here for a mustache that our driver assures makes me “look Iraqi ... well, maybe Turkish.’’ I have also adopted a local wardrobe: dark local pants, a rather hideous plaid shirt, and a checkered headscarf. These measures make me feel like I blend in and I’ve been getting out onto the street and talking to more Iraqis.

But feelings of safety dissipate quickly in the new Iraq.

This morning’s rude awakening was a truck bomb. No surprise, I guess. But at first I thought it had hit our relatively secure compound. I quickly threw on some pants and headed out.

All of the windows in our lobby were gone, and most of the hotels on our narrow street were in similar shape. A group of Indians who have been stranded in my hotel for weeks after a contractor cancelled their work were already sweeping the glass and debris from the floor, helping the Iraqi staff.

Out on the main road I saw that the bomb had in fact hit about 200 yards away, at the half-finished building that serves as the main Australian outpost in Baghdad. All that was left of the truck was two burning tires, one still stuck to half an axle that survived the blast.

The Australian soldiers inside the building were fine. But two bystanders were killed: a homeless man, who used to drift around our compound living on handouts from foreigners and shop owners, and another Iraqi man, who was crossing the street with his wife. Someone on the scene before me said that she didn’t have a scratch on her, but she was wailing.

Two other car bombs, coordinated with this attack, echoed around Baghdad at about the same time. An hour later another went off. All told, about 26 Iraqis were killed. After watching for a few minutes, I drifted back to the hotel – there wasn’t much to do, or sense to make out of the bomb. Such attacks have become an almost daily occurrence.

The US 1st Infantry Division (ID) was in force at the scene, locking it down and keeping onlookers back. Though the US often talks about handing more and more security authority to Iraqis, US forces still bear the brunt of the work when the insurgents strike.

Before I left the scene, a hulking member of the 1st ID came running towards me, his riot shotgun held by the barrel and ready to smash my camera. Feeling that having my windows blown out gave me some right to be there, I said: “Hey man, back off.”

He looked startled, but told me I had to clear out. A few minutes later he came up to me and apologized. “Look, I didn’t know who you were. Pictures are real money makers for the terrorists.” I nodded. One piece of good news at least – maybe the mustache is working.