Many third world cities look better at night than during the day. Darkness hides shabbiness. You have to imagine what the city actually looks like. If you live in a first world city yourself, you might fill in the blanks with what you're familiar with. It's only during the day that you can see just how run-down the place really is.

Baghdad isn't like that. Baghdad looks worse at night because you can barely see anything. When your mind fills in the blanks, real and imagined roadside bombs, militiamen, booby traps, and snipers lurk in the shadows.

The city can be spooky at night. Millions of people live in Baghdad, but it's dark after hours. Few lights illuminate the mostly empty sidewalks and streets. The city's electrical grid is still offline half the time and must be replaced. Homes without generator power are dark more often than not, and almost everyone who owns a generator turns it off when they go to sleep. Baghdad after sundown is as poorly lit as a remote mountain village.

But it's not a remote mountain village. The sound of gunshots is still a part of the general ambience. You'd be surprised by how quickly you get used to hearing them. They're like background noise as long as they aren't too close and you aren't the one being shot at.

While walking the sidewalk of the Adhamiyah district with United States Army Second Lieutenant David Dimenna's patrol unit, I heard three pistol shots in rapid succession from just a few blocks in front of us, followed by a fourth.

“Iraqi Army?” Lieutenant Dimenna said.

An Iraqi civilian passing by looked concerned. "There's a checkpoint down there," he said.

Another civilian walked past us as though nothing had happened. He was used to the sound of gunfire in Baghdad.

These days when American soldiers hear gunshots, they assume the shots were fired by Iraqi Army or Iraqi Police. Iraqi security forces are famous for bad trigger discipline. They enjoy firing shots into the air, and they regularly shoot themselves and each other on accident. Lieutenant Dimenna still took the shots seriously, though. We were in Baghdad, after all, which, despite the dramatic reduction in violence, is still a dangerous city.

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