The Iraqi police directed traffic on a bright Sunday afternoon, a few shops were open, and the call to prayer echoed mournfully through the streets.
But right around the corner, the scars of battle linger, with the spirit of resistance.
''All the people of Falluja are with you, mujahedeen,'' read swirling Arabic graffiti scrawled on a wall.
Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, Falluja is balancing on the brink between conflict and recovery, after weeks of battling between American marines and insurgents. Which way things go may be determined in the next few days, as a new Iraqi security force struggles to bring order to the city after fighting that killed more than 600 residents, according to doctors.
With so much fighting, ''people were being buried in the gardens of houses,'' said Muhammad Jeza, a doctor at one of the four small clinics in the town, about 35 miles west of Baghdad.Continue reading the main story
The new American-approved Iraqi force, which took up positions on a few quiet corners in the southeast of the town on Saturday, is expected to grow to 1,000 or more. It could soon spread to other neighborhoods, American officials said.
On Sunday afternoon, the profile of the force seemed low. In the course of a few hours that one reporter spent here, there was no sight of organized patrols. Some of the troops sat in the sun inside the sandbagged Civil Defense headquarters, inside high concrete blast walls.
There is evident damage around town. In the Jiraifi neighborhood, rubble hangs uneasily from the roofs of bombed houses. Cars veer around the charred wreckage of an ambulance. Downed power lines sag from poles, and children sometimes venture out from garden gates for a few steps to collect food distributed by Islamic charities in trucks.
Members of the new force already in place are to be examined for any links to the military and intelligence forces of Saddam Hussein's rule, American officials have said.
That did not worry those who saw Baath Party membership as a necessity for getting by, for military men and university professors alike.
''The days of the ways of Saddam Hussein are over,'' said an Iraqi captain, Mahmoud Dulaimi, who was manning a checkpoint. ''But what we have returned to is a way for us to get our units back into the area.''
The places where there was the most fighting, in Askari in the center and in northern neighborhoods, are basically left to the marines, the Iraqi police and pockets of resistance fighters. Few on any side were visible on Sunday afternoon. On the Askari's edge, an informal checkpoint run by men in plainclothes was set up to stop and inspect cars.
The walls of houses are pockmarked by unevenly spaced bullet holes suggesting the spray of wild gunfire.
In the courtyard of the Iraqi Civil Defense headquarters, about a hundred men crowded around a small table to sign up for what they called the new Iraqi army. A gray-haired man with a thick mustache directed the registration, wearing the olive uniform and three stars similar to that of Saddam Hussein's former army. Some of the younger recruits looked as if they had just stepped off of streets where days before resistance fighters had stood watch, clutching assault rifles.
''I volunteered for this army because I want to bring stability to Falluja,'' said Omar Salim, 21. ''I want to prevent chaos.'' His hand was heavily bandaged because of an injury he would not discuss.
Asked what he thought was causing the chaos, he said, ''Everyone has the right to defend his country.''
American military officials say that the Iraqi force is supposed to be under the command of the Marines. The Iraqis at the registration were unmoved by that assertion. ''The people of Falluja will not be under anyone's control,'' one man said.
At a military checkpoint at the eastern entrance to the town, American forces and Iraqi Civil Defense units checked long lines of cars trying to enter, some of them full of families making the journey back to homes they had fled after the fighting started on April 5.
''Bring your car forward,'' said one of the Iraqi defense forces to journalists trying to enter.
''Shouldn't we ask the Americans first?'' said the man's partner.
''No, we are in control,'' the first man answered.
As families inched through the checkpoint in cars weighed down with mattresses, blankets, cooking pots and clothes, fliers were handed out promising the ''coalition forces'' would start to consider compensation for battle damage. It asked for lists, photographs and estimates of repair costs.
The fliers also served as introduction letters for the new Iraqi force in Falluja.
''The Falluja protection force is going to track down and get rid of the criminals hiding among you,'' it said.
''Peace will soon come to Falluja,'' the flier proclaimed.Continue reading the main story