Baghdad, Iraq ? The entire neighborhood was ordered out onto the street. Militiamen with machine guns stood guard on surrounding rooftops. Commandos brought out the young man, hands bound behind him. His parents gasped.

Quietly, the crowd began to chant “Allahu akbar” — God is great. It was all they could say as a militiaman pulled out a box cutter and sliced off part of Firaz Adnan’s tongue. His crime: He had cursed Saddam Hussein and his family.

It was March 5 — two weeks before the start of the war.

“There was no justice. There was no law,” the 23-year-old Adnan mumbled Friday, his voice slurred by his deformed tongue.

Since American troops drove Saddam’s government from power, Iraq has been in the midst of a chaotic, violent and confused transformation. But for many, the most monumental change has already come: For the first time in many people’s lives, they are free to speak their minds.

“In the past we couldn’t talk about anything. Now we can talk about everything,” said Raad Abdul Hamid, a 36-year-old taxi driver.

Hamid sat on a plastic chair in front of a lawyer’s office, basking in the sun and chatting with a few friends. The old friends can talk all day. Suddenly, their discussions are fascinating.

“The regime was fascist!” proclaimed one, Abdul Razak Abbas, 50.

“I didn’t know you thought that,” said Abdul Muteleb Mohammed, 42. Then he corrected himself: “Everyone thought that. They just didn’t say it in public.”

The group even felt free enough to criticize those who made their discussion possible — the American and British troops now in the midst.

Firaz Adnan, 23, Baghdad, recounts how militiamen imprisoned him and cut off part of his tongue for cursing Saddam Hussein. After decades of being afraid to speak their minds, Iraqis suddenly are able to talk freely.

“The Americans came as liberators, but we have seen no liberation,” Hamid said. “We will be free when the Americans leave.”

The transformation of a society of silence into a culture of chatter has been so sudden that some people haven’t registered it. As a journalist interviewed some teenagers about newfound freedoms, their mother hissed from the house: “Just tell him everything is normal.”

Her fear is understandable. Only a month ago, as Adnan and thousands more can attest, speaking openly was a crime punishable with jail, torture or death.

Yedullah Jani, a Kurdish ironworker who lives in Baghdad, was arrested in 1982 for talking with members of the Kurdish opposition in northern Iraq. Three or four times a day, he was pulled from his prison cell and told to confess to opposition activities.

“They would handcuff me and hang me by the hands from a hook on the roof. They used electric shocks and pulled off my toenails,” he said, taking off a sock to reveal a hobbled foot.

Jani finally confessed and was sentenced to life in prison. He was released after four years under a blanket presidential pardon granted during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.

“For two years my wife didn’t know where I was,” he said. “We were living in fear and terror. Nobody could say anything.”