By Lennox Samuels 

It is mid-afternoon on a Friday and the noise level is rising in Al-Wiyah Club, as urbane Baghdadis walk in and stake out their places at coveted dinner tables. Men seated at the legendary teak bar smoke, drink and call out affable greetings to new arrivals. A few people walk through to the tennis court and pool area out back, but most head for the restaurant, where waiters in white shirts and black trousers weave in and out of the aisles. “Come! Your place is here,” a beaming Dr. Tahseen Sheikhly commands a group of six, waving them over to his large corner table. “Sit down; what will you have?”

The crowds have been returning to Al-Wiyah, a venerable social club that for years was a metaphor for the good life in Baghdad. Founded by the British in 1924, it became a popular retreat for the city’s gentry. The colonial grandeur is mostly gone now, the décor more workaday than elegant; the carpet a bit worn; tablecloths faded. The building’s exterior is still pocked from insurgents’ gunfire, most of it aimed at neighboring high-value targets like the Palestine hotel, once a base for U.S. Marines. The violence that engulfed the capital city forced the club to close for more than a year, in 2003-’04.

As recently as the mid-1970s, men had to wear a coat and tie in the club and during Saddam Hussein’s regime, membership was limited mostly to business leaders, senior Baath Party officials and ranking military officers. The membership and dress code are far less strict now, of course, and the club exudes more than a whiff of middle-class inclusivity, as well as secularism. Lawyers, academics, government ministers and military types are jostled by young men in sneakers and teenage girls in tight jeans and makeup, their flowing hair uncovered. The waiters briskly deliver soft drinks, along with beer, Bulgarian wine and stronger spirits.

The din rises as a singer named Muhanna sings a farrago of Arabic dirges and romantic songs. Maryam al-Rayes comes in with her expatriate sister, Hend, who is visiting with her children from the Netherlands. “They’re very surprised because all they hear about is bombings, deaths, bad things,” says Maryam, a foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “I tell them it is not like that. There’s life here in Baghdad.” Samarra Waffaa, a middle-aged high school geography teacher tastefully restrained in an elegant light-blue hijab that frames eyes ringed with kohl, says Iraq is getting better “every day, every week, every month.”

Tahseen, ever more avuncular as the day progresses, chuckles and gestures with his Cuban cigar as he tells stories about “outdated” assumptions Coalition staffers make about Baghdad. “I ask them what they think about the rest of the city [outside the Green Zone],” he says. “They say that’s dinosaur land; Jurassic Park. I think that’s just a problem with communications, though, because things are better over here now.” He has a point, but there’s still a way to go, for there’s an accelerating need for better infrastructure and public services. As diners attack their mazgouf. a roasted river fish, a brief blackout interrupts Muhanna, mid-song.