The first time I met Hassan, I was talking to people on the street in central Baghdad about the approaching troops. He had joined in a group of men parroting the official line–that Iraq would turn back the invaders, that Saddam Hussein was a great patriot. I was with my Iraqi Ministry of Information minder at the time, and I remembered that Hassan had made a comment curiously open to double entendre, something like, “What else would we say?” About a week later, it was the morning of April 9, and U.S. troops were just outside the city, so close that the ubiquitous secret police were receding from the streets. I still had my minder but the minute Hassan saw me, he smiled and said he could finally speak freely. He told me that he had gone to jail years earlier for dodging the draft during the Iran-Iraq War and his brother had been killed by members of Saddam’s extended family. The Marines hadn’t set foot downtown yet, but it was at that moment that I knew the regime had truly fallen. I’d see him now and then as I passed his restaurant in my work. I ate there once or twice but then that got too dangerous for foreigners. I walked by one day and noticed him walking through his doorway with a Kalashnikov rifle–something that had become a fairly normal and legal tool of self defense for business owners.

There’s been little public recognition of the anniversary in Baghdad or in local media. (Actually, for Iraqis the anniversary would be on Thursday since the first missiles struck a few hours after midnight local time March 20.) Hassan did not know until we reminded him that the date was anything special. Now in his mid-50s, it’s been a long five years for him. He recounted the bombings that had narrowly missed his small grill–there were three on the same block over the years and he said they’d decimated his business. On the plus side, his family was safe. He had sent one grown son to live in Sweden and a daughter was studying in the university locally.

He started a lament about American mistakes in Iraq. “We have many people who did nothing but are in [American] prisons,” he said, adding that on the street people believe the Americans are in a secret alliance with Al Qaeda to allow the bombings. That’s a fairly common conspiracy theory put forward amid frustration over the relentless attacks. “The Americans must be good with people, build their trust,” he said. If they can’t manage that, he said, they should leave the country. “They should go but not now,” he said, saying U.S. troops–if they can correct their ways–will be needed for a few years more. He allowed that security has improved of late, as could be heard in the dominoes slapping down on tables outside. The games were going into late afternoon-much later than they were able during the mayhem taking place months ago.

As I sat on the plastic chairs, huddled over the table so my English would not be too audible, I thought about how it seems like we’ve all aged more than five years since 2003. Hassan was grayer and worn. I know I’ve lost a lot of hair and picked up the weight it appeared he’d shed. As it happened, when I returned to our office I flipped on CNN to see Gen. David Petraeus in an interview saying how he felt everyone–it’s not clear who he meant–had aged beyond the years that have passed. It’s a matter of all the ups and downs, everything we’ve thought and relearned, the shocking attacks and affronts that happened so much they stopped shocking us.

The city shows its age too, its very topography changed with the roadblocks, blast walls, garbage heaps. Walls and street signs are plastered with the faded posters from elections filled with hopes that went largely unfulfilled. Posters, commissioned under the guidance of U.S. psychological operations specialists urge steadfastness with an almost Orwellian wishful tone: “Al Qaeda has no place to hide in Iraq,” and “Iraq is big and our disagreements small.”