Baghdad, Iraq ? At 2 p.m. on April 9, 2003, Razak Abdu Zahra limped from his small apartment to the curb and wept with joy as U.S. tanks clattered into Firdos Square, soon famously to topple a statue of Saddam Hussein.

“My tears were not because I believed that now the United States is here, we will all be rich,” Zahra said. “I am poor and will be. But I dreamed that we would be free.”

On Friday, as he spoke, Zahra stood in a trash-filled vacant lot half a block from where Saddam’s statue was toppled a year ago. It was as close as he could get. Coils of razor wire and concrete triangles — in place to protect reconstruction workers, journalists and businessmen staying at the Palestine and Sheraton hotel complex — block his way.

“I kept believing that we would be freed from the fear,” Zahra said. “I kept believing in the Americans. I kept believing.

“I don’t know when that died, but it was recently, the last month, maybe, the last week, when everything started looking just as bad as it ever had.”

Zahra, 38 and a father of four, is just one Iraqi out of 24 million, and some will argue his opinion isn’t typical. Recent polls, officials of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority note, find most Iraqis surveyed still want the Americans here.

But Zahra is typical — a poor Shiite Muslim dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and thick green sweatpants, in spite of Friday’s warmth, because those are the only clothes he owns. Against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest weeks in Iraq’s yearlong war and so near the empty plaza where there would be a celebration if times were happier, Zahra’s opinion matters.

Saddam was a horrible man, and Zahra doesn’t want him back. “But at least under Saddam, we knew the rules,” he said. “We knew the source of our troubles.”

What kind of freedom did he dream of? The freedom to travel? The freedom to push through class barriers? The freedom of religion?

“These are fine things, these freedoms,” Zahra said. “But what I wept for that day was the freedom from fear. That was my dream, that my family would be safe now, that we would not have to live with such fear.”