Streets Quiet, Shops Shut as Baghdad Watches Clock : Iraq: Some attend rallies held to show support for Hussein while others head out of the city.

Shops closed, residents streamed from the city, troops constructed last-minute defenses and Baghdad watched the clock Tuesday, the eve of Iraq’s transformation from a country under diplomatic pressure to one that at any moment could come under massive military attack.

Except for a couple of government-sponsored rallies, the city of 4.5 million was uncommonly quiet. Stores on Rashid Street, a main thoroughfare, were shut with metal grilles drawn across their glass doors. Sidewalks were deserted in Jedariah, Masbah and Mansour, all neighborhoods usually thronged with shoppers.

In occupied Kuwait, Iraq made no move to order its troops from the sheikdom, defying the powerful American-led force that is poised in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to drive them out.

In the last remaining day before the United Nations deadline for withdrawal, the rallies in Baghdad and other cities were pointedly organized in support of President Saddam Hussein, who has pledged to hold the annexed state at all costs.

“Leave Kuwait?” laughed Information Minister Latif Jasim. “Kuwait is a province of Iraq and beyond discussion.”

Even in the Baghdad shops that stayed open, there was an air of anticipation. “Now we will see,” said Tarik Tahir, the owner of an antique shop near the book bazaar in downtown Baghdad. “What does God will?”

Only along the placid Tigris River, where open-air restaurants continued to serve the sweet river fish mazgouf, a traditional favorite, was there signs of bustle.

“I eat mazgouf every Tuesday,” said Omar abu Said, a businessman. “War or no war, I have come for my fish.”

In contrast to the becalmed downtown, traffic jammed roads leading out of the city, north to the towns of Mosul and Sulaymaniyah and southwest to Kerbala and Najef as the pace of individual evacuations quickened. Orange and white taxis, private trucks and sedans, battered buses--all were jammed with passengers and packed with supplies of flour, rice and cooking oil.

“I’m just taking care of the house,” said Ibrahim Leithe, a restaurant worker who sat alone in his living room in Saddam City, a sprawling working-class satellite of Baghdad named after President Saddam Hussein. “Everyone went to Najef, but I have to stay to stand guard.”

Saddam City boasts a well-known market that residents call the Ali Baba Bazaar, after the mythical thief of “A Thousand and One Nights.”

“The Ali Babas will be very happy because people are leaving and the houses will be free for them,” said Leithe, who sat beneath a wall clock decorated with a smiling portrait of Hussein.

New public works projects displayed fears that Baghdad, as the center of government, would be bombed by American jets. Mounds of dirt topped by antiaircraft batteries have been popping up around the city. New asphalt roads have been built down to the banks of the Tigris to eventually be connected by makeshift bridges and ferries in case the permanent bridges over the river are blasted away.

Iraqi officials have predicted that if there is a war, the United States would lose--if not in the short run, then in the long term--through massive disruptions of social order in the Middle East.

“This is a war the United States cannot win,” said Saadoun Zobeidy, a Foreign Ministry official.

Iraq’s air force chief said that his pilots are prepared to carry out guerrilla attacks on regional targets, an announcement that, to some observers, suggested kamikaze-style raids.

“The air force personnel love to die for the sake of the nation,” said Air Marshal Mohammed Saab Hassan.

Iraq seemed to be counting on a repeat of America’s drawn-out, losing experience in Vietnam, something President Bush has vowed not to let happen.

“They were forced to leave Indochina, taking home over 50,000 body bags and some 300,000 wounded,” asserted an editorial in the state-run Baghdad Observer newspaper. “Bush’s boys have not seen real action for a long time now. So how will they face well-dug-in people like the Iraqis?”

At one of the Baghdad rallies, the assembled crowds reacted with mixed enthusiasm.

In the well-to-do district of Mansour, with international television cameras looking on, tens of thousands of bureaucrats and youngsters chanted “Kuwait is ours!” and burned an effigy of Bush.

Cheerleaders whipped the crowd into enthusiastic dances of defiance. In answer to a reporter’s question, a woman claimed to have five sons at the front in Kuwait and said she was prepared to sacrifice them all to fight the U.S.-dominated forces poised to strike from Saudi Arabia.

Soldiers continued to hitch rides south to occupied Kuwait and the battlefront while more and more members of Hussein’s personal guard, identified by red braiding on their uniforms, roamed the city.

In general, the mood among Baghdadis staying behind was one of resignation, as if they were forced spectators at a contest whose rules they don’t understand.

Said antique store owner Tahir, in a typical comment: “This is a game between Bush and Saddam. It is far above our heads.”

It is difficult, in this atmosphere of police vigilance and calls for national unity, to pretend to know the hearts of the Iraqis.

There are, of course, the many jingoistic expressions of confidence. “I don’t need weapons. I will tear the Americans apart with my hands and nails,” said Hamed Yayah Tahi, 70, a tailor.

Abdul Majid Azerehzmel, a watch merchant, offered to “sacrifice my sons for Saddam.”

Opposing opinions are more difficult to come by. The other day, a reporter asked an old woman if Iraq, which has designated Kuwait its 19th province, would ever leave the occupied sheikdom. Speaking of Hussein, she answered: “I know this man well. He will never leave Kuwait.”

How was it that she knew Saddam? “I lost two brothers and a son to him,” she responded dryly, referring to the eight-year war that Hussein began with his 1980 invasion of Iran.

Often, Baghdadis leave enough ambiguity in their remarks to invite wide interpretation. At the Qadimiya Mosque, a Shiite Muslim shrine in Baghdad, reporters asked preacher Musaam Musavi what would happen if war broke out.

“God willing, there will be no more,” he said. “If there is, all that is evil will be defeated.”

A reporter prodded, asking if he meant the Americans. The sheik answered, “All that is evil.”

Sometimes, the most mundane question gets the most surprising response. A visitor was strolling along the Tigris near a public garden when a soldier came up and offered to guide him to an old mosque. The visitor remarked that Baghdad by the river was beautiful.

The young soldier was silent, and the stroller asked if he did not agree.

“It would be,” he replied, “if I wasn’t wearing this.” He tugged at his olive sweater and fatigue pants.

Among foreign workers left in Baghdad, there was no confusion of mood: They were disconsolate. Tens of thousands of Asian and Arab workers labor at mostly menial tasks here. Jordan has closed its border to a potential wave of refugees and, in any case, some Iraqi managers are holding their passports, refusing to return them for fear of inciting a general flight.

“We are prisoners here,” said Aziz, an Egyptian hotel worker. “No one lets us go.”

In the past few days, Baghdadis of whatever political stripe have been most revealing in the questions they ask.

Reporters who returned to Baghdad in recent days were greeted by the disbelieving query, “Why are you here?”

And as the vital deadline approached, the question turned to, “Are you leaving?”

And by Tuesday evening, the questions became more pointed: “Will it happen tomorrow?”