THE GOOD LIFE GIVES WAY TO FEAR

They married 28 years ago after meeting at a university and living what he calls a “love story.” He became a famous actor and theatrical director; she pursued a career with state radio.

They had two sons, followed by twin girls -- babies who have grown into plucky dark-haired teenagers, making their parents proud by having read “War and Peace” and “Gone With the Wind.” By all appearances they are a happy, close-knit family, pursuing almost an American suburban lifestyle in the midst of Baghdad.

But war is relentlessly encroaching on the family of Mohsen Ali and Jinan Abdul Hamid. Masking tape has gone up on their windows and cracks have appeared in the plaster of their two-story villa from the concussions of the nearby air-defense guns.

On Tuesday afternoon, as a new round of explosions shook their neighborhood, Mohsen put his arm around his wife, Jinan. On the couch next to them, twin sisters Miriam and Fatma, 14, chirped nervously. Miriam, the braver, feigned boredom, acting -- her mother said -- “as if on Valium.” Fatma, in a long-sleeved striped red T-shirt, was more frightened, putting her fingers in her ears and hunching down. Standing by the kitchen entrance was Omar, 22, a square-jawed aspiring actor, his body-builder muscles tense.

Since the outbreak of war March 20, the family has huddled in this house, situated just behind the former U.S. Embassy in the Arasat district of central Baghdad. They no longer use their upstairs, and they sleep together in one room where the only window has been blocked by a bookcase. Many nights, they say, they are still awake at 5 or 6 a.m., waiting for the bombing runs to end, before letting themselves drift off to sleep.

The walls of their living room are mostly bare except for the dust marks left from the removed framed pictures and paintings. Their knickknacks and antiques also have been put on the floor for safety.

Weighing on their minds is the knowledge that U.S. forces are advancing toward Baghdad, and a battle for the city is forecast. They are distraught about the civilian casualties, and even mourn the American and British soldiers who have died, along with Iraqi fighters. And they have a sense of betrayal about the United States a country that they had always admired for its modernity and its great people.

“Maybe some people were deceived that the Americans, when they come, would bring benefits -- as if they planned to hand out dollars on the street,” said Jinan. “Now, everyone is convinced that they are savages, brutes.”

But she quickly adds: “We don’t have anything against the American people. They have the best films, the best people, the best all over the world.... [But] that respect for America has turned to hostility and enmity on the part of the Iraqi people.”

Mohsen speaks of how heartened he is by American opposition to the war. He said that he recently watched a tape of last month’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, purchased at one of the local video shops still operating, and saw filmmaker Michael Moore denounce the war.

“We were very glad when we saw that American actors were resisting the American administration,” he said. “These are the American people we knew.”

Mohsen, a roundish man with lively eyes, dressed casually in a black open-necked sports shirt, offers a glass of wine to visitors and seems disappointed when they decline. He directs his own theater in this capital, but it is now closed because of the war. Jinan’s office and studio at Baghdad state radio are also idled. She fears she has lost her professional prizes during last week’s bombing of the state television center, including the taped archives that record her long career as musical director of the station.

Unlike the women, father and son occasionally leave the house, Mohsen to trade gossip with actor friends and theatrical colleagues at a tea house off Sadoun Street, Omar to take out his tensions lifting weights at the gym “even during the bombing.” Their oldest son, Ali, 25, is safely out of Iraq, living in Doha, Qatar. Also an actor, he is now working as an editor at Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s most popular television network. The family worries because they can no longer phone him to say they are unharmed.

Although they serve the cultural arm of the government, Mohsen says he is an independent man. Even in the presence of an official interpreter, he acknowledges to American visitors that there is opposition to the government of President Saddam Hussein. But he says the war is making people more loyal to their leader.

Jinan said she was heartbroken by the report that U.S. soldiers had killed seven women and children at a checkpoint in Najaf on Monday.

“They say they are liberators, but their actions show they are really behaving like invaders and criminals,” she said.

And she said she is suffering from her confinement. “Since the first day of the bombing, I did not leave my house.”

Only a few weeks ago, she and her daughters used to go to nearby Karada Street, to shop and sit in the coffee shops. As she speaks of that, she suddenly bursts into tears. Her daughters put their arms around her while Mohsen and Omar look on awkwardly.

The severing of phone service occurred over the weekend -- accomplished by precision strikes on local telephone exchanges across Baghdad -- has also been a hardship, said Fatma. She used to talk several times a day to her best friend, checking to make sure she was safe. But for the past four days there is no contact, she said.

The family fears that the suffering will increase when U.S. forces finally get to Baghdad.

Jinan said that Fatma is already so unnerved that she asks her mother to accompany her to the bathroom during the night, and even tries to tie her shirttail to her mother’s.

It is a pleasant neighborhood of fenced-in single-family homes, with yards out front and tree and shrub-lined driveways.

Their misfortune, however, is that there are official buildings nearby and a presidential palace just across the river. Their concrete and stucco home shudders and shakes when the big bombs from the B-52s fall just a half-mile or so away.

Suddenly, a burst of anti-aircraft fire erupts from someplace nearby. The whole house shakes, doors fly open and Fatma throws her arms around her mother.

For one seemingly secure and successful family in this capital that is awaiting its next act, it is painfully evident how fragile life has become.