Election fever is picking up. Almost every single wall in the city is covered by hundreds of posters, some pasted over others, giving a sense that Baghdad is itself one big collage of big heads, white beards and moustaches mingled with the Samsung phone ads. By far the most distributed poster is that of the Shia list.

A workman is pinning a banner to the wall as a chill draft swirls through the near-empty ballroom at the Palestine hotel. ”An equal, secular Constitution is the first step to total fairness,” the sign says in Arabic. This is supposed to be one in a series of pioneering public meetings to address the growing inequalities of women in the new Iraq. But since the war, life has badly deteriorated for women, and girls are being forced to wear the veil again.