I often walk at this hour along the Tigris. There is almost no one there now. The families that used to spread their blankets on the strip of park next to the river no longer picnic, and the hawkers of cheap biscuits and orange soda have all gone home. So the silence of this twilight walk makes for a sad if peaceful interlude. Soon it will be too hot for walking even at night, but for now the evenings are soft.

Baghdad, a city of about seven million, is usually a cacophony. The infrastructure is dilapidated and litter lies in heaps, but the city had been defiantly alive.

Until the curfew, the streets were a jumble of armored 4x4 vehicles, cheap Iranian-made taxis and the occasional horse-drawn cart. Given that many people live in small houses or apartments, life happened mostly outside. At dusk the streets were crowded with shoppers, kids kicking soccer balls, and men playing dominoes on flimsy card tables.

Not anymore.

Even in the worst days of the 2003 war, when the Americans were bombing, it was hard for people to stay inside. But the invisible enemy of the virus has hit people’s nerves differently. They are staying home because they are afraid. Although the number of confirmed cases nationwide is relatively low, about 1,400, there is fear that many more infected people are going undetected because of the stigma associated with illness and quarantine.

Almost all the demonstrators who had gathered to protest government corruption and Iranian influence have withdrawn from Tahrir Square, though many of the tents, tattered by the wind and rain, remain. There are still some food vendors selling bowls of warm chickpeas to the few protesters who have stayed, but the music and art and a sense of political possibility are long gone.

It is as if someone has dimmed all the lights.

I go shopping for food and feel privileged. Many Iraqis are running out of money because they cannot work under the lockdown, so the outdoor markets are filled with women picking things up and putting them down again after checking the price. It seems a small inconvenience that I am getting bored of halloumi cheese. The sweet-tart citrus fruit called sindhi — a cross between a grapefruit and a pomelo but drier, so you can pick up peeled slices and not get your fingers sticky — is still in the markets. Soon, though, its season will be over.

To keep people close to home, there is a car curfew; exceptions are made for “essential workers” and journalists, who are given badges that the police can check. The curfew is being observed more scrupulously in wealthier areas. But in poorer places tuk-tuks still zoom around and sidewalk vendors lay out their wares, then quickly gather them up when the police come around the corner. For the most part, though, Baghdad has come to a standstill.